Using secret, closed-source software developed by the file system designers.
What's your point?
NTFS is an overly complex file system, with incomplete documentation. Making small changes to it tends to break it and/or corrupt data.
Furthermore, why not just run NT/2000/XP on Ext2? Use a small FAT32 boot partition, and keep all your data on Ext2.
File system driver here. You can get read/write support on Ext2 on all major operating systems, and Linux will journal Ext2(Ext3 is a transparent upgrade).
I prefer KDE to Aqua. I prefer Linux to Darwin. I know Linux. I know my way around Linux. Also, there are way more packages out there for APT4RPM (on SuSE) than Fink. Plus, X11 apps on OS X don't have the right look-n-feel, while they do on KDE.
I use OS X for the Adobe apps, Macromedia stuff, and final cut. I use Linux for everything else.
There's no non-Windows write support for NTFS, barring captive NTFS (which uses Window's DLL) and the latest linux NTFS driver, which does NOT support changing file sizes or creating new files (frankly it barely qualifies as write support).
NTFS is a moving target. Reading is not a big problem, since it won't corrupt the disk. Writing to the disk is very difficult.
Don't blame Apple, blame Microsoft. HFSplus is properly documents, NTFS is not......
Look at it this way; you say that NTFS support is limited on OS X? Well, what about HFS+ support in Windows? Right; it doesn't exist.
Use diskutil's resizeVolume command to create (up to 4) the partitions you need. You cannot have more than 3 "real" partitions on your system (OS X uses #1 for the EFI stuff).
BootCamp works by having an MBR and a GPT partition table simultaneously. There are no partition tools out there that correctly edit both at the same time. Doing it by hand via's OS X's GPT/FDISK tools often fails, as well. I have no idea why.
I'm one of the people who started messing with this triple boot first. Trust me; you don't want to mess with parted or fdisk (in Linux/FreeBSD/whatever). If you do decide to, go to mactel-linux.org, and get the parted patch, and then make sure you use the GPT tool in OS X to create a set of matching MBR/GUID partition tables.
But I promise you; you'll have to wipe your disk if you start messing with these partition tables. Nobody knows the correct way to handle them, yet. More experimentation is needed, and there's a good chance that at any given point in the process you'll corrupt your disk.
It's finished, and it still works post-bootcamp-csm. I haven't tried the latest FGLRX with it, though.
Use rEFIt->elilo, and pay some attention when you build the kernel. It does work.
AFAIK, the primary limitation is not elilo; it's the kernel's EFI support. While it supports a reference implementation, there are enough hacks in Apple's version that some bugfixes/minor workarounds are necessary.
Beagle indexes my whole system. I've got / as one of the "directories to index". Of course, stuff that isn't accessible to my user isn't accessible by Beagle.
You could run a beagle daemon as root all the time; it won't take up much CPU once the index is built. Then, you can use either the command line or GUI to search.
*shrug*..... Beagle may not be a 100% replacement for locate, yet; but it's really close, and I think that with a few work arounds you can use it as a replacement.
And Rosetta will allways be an emulator no matter how good performance it provides.
Intel Macs have lots of problems and currently Apple is fixing them.
It really depends how recent your PPC mac is. I "upgraded" from a 1 Ghz 12" G4 Powerbook to a MacBook Pro 2 Ghz. I can conclusively say that the MacBook Pro is significantly faster in all applications, Rosetta stuff included.
The only limitation is the few apps that don't work in Rosetta. I haven't run in to these yet, but I've read that they are out there. Oh, and Classic, but I was a switcher in the OS X era, so I don't have any classic apps.
*shrug*.... don't know what to tell you, but I'm just as happy with my MacBook Pro as I am with my Dual 2.7Ghz PowerMac. The only problem with the MacBook Pro is the cpufreq whine, but my 2.7 Dual does the exact same thing.
For me, I don't like slocate/locate, because I leave my system powered down (suspend/standby), and I'd rather not have updatedb grinding on the hard disk when I bring the system up. It makes my games stutter.
For whatever reason, beagled doesn't grind on the drive as badly as updatedb. It certainly doesn't affect my gaming. I'm sure the memory requirements are horrific, though.
The rich are the only one's that can do anything about it. over half the economy in the US is maintained by the top 20% of populous. If they chose not to be against something, they are indirectly supporting it. There are many organizations wealthy enough to undercut Wal-Mart, or make a better product at a lower price, but they don't because they want higher profits, just like Wal-Mart. Letting the Nazi's take away your Jewish neighbor when you have just as larger of an arsenal or more, is just as bad as supporting the Nazi's (that is after all how finland was considered part of the axis powers). Godwin's law aside, I do not a) believe that the upper class spends an order of magnitude more at walmart than the middle/lower class. b) I do not believe Walmart is the cheapest. I think they've brainwashed a large segment of the populace to believe this is true (like yourself). There are few products I can think of that are cheapest at Walmart; at least in my area, you are almost always better served by bargain hunting at other retailers.
Food products in particular are much cheaper at local retailers in my area than at SuperWalmart/SuperTarget, and not to mention of better quality. And by local retailers I don't mean local chains; I mean the vegetable store down the street, or the grocery two blocks over. They genuienly sell commodity items like chicken breast, salad stuffs, whatever. I taught my GF how to shop for groceries, and she was stunned that SuperWalmart doesn't actually save you money.
I'm not in the top 20%, but someday I hope to be. I don't shop at Walmart, because I like local retailers, and because I know that if I maintain a proper relationship with them (and take care of them) they'll take care of me. One consumer cannot make much of a difference with Walmart. One consumer can make a big difference with Joe Caputo's Grocery.
Oh, and the company I work for takes pride in making high quality products as cheap as possible. We're a small firm, and we compete with other companies many times our size (100Xs). We survive on quality, and on keeping our prices low. We don't turn a ridiculous profit margain, but we service our customers well, and we work closely with our buyers, be they government agents or local construction contractors. Oh, did I mention that all of our chemical products are 100% biodegredable within 30 days?
You don't have to be evil to participate in capitalism. You can make a conscious effort to be good. Capitalism, after all, means a market oriented system where the "players" express their preferences. Economists often make the mistake of assuming that all the "players" prefer to make as much money as possible. In reality, that's not the case; for us, profit rates highly, however, we have other considerations in our business practices (and dare I say my own life) as well.
If you are talking by amount spent you are also way off (The top 10% spend more on a single home than most of us will ever see in a life time). So tell me how you are measuring this so I can drink the cool-aid too.
Simple. Just because you make 10x the money doesn't mean that you spend 10x at Walmart. The upper class spends their money on yatchs, homes, cars, planes, etc. . . Sure, they buy more "consumer" level goods as well, but not proportionally more. Bill Gates does't consume 100,000 times as much gladware or saran wrap as you. Maybe 10x. Maybe 50x. But not proportionally more.
Fraud is some how on the same level as rape and murder. Just shows you that we all draw our own opinions around what are "basic ethical principles."
I don't think they are the same. Perhaps I used the wrong choice of words. I believe that the government should only decide certain rules. Included in this category is a monopoly on violence, a strict ban against fraud, and a few other principles. I do not believe that the government should think about a persons religion, about reproductive rights, about other "principles".
I'm not sure what the right word is, but I do not equate rape with fraud. Still, I do think fraud is bad, mkay?
In my area, Walmart is significantly more expensive than most local retailers. Especially for groceries, electronics, housewares, and clothing.
No, I'm not joking. Fruits/Veggies are significantly cheaper when I purchase them at Vally's Produce, or Joe Caputo's Grocer.
Walmart isn't cheap. People think Walmart is cheap. It's not. It's cheap crap, but thats a different issue.
My GF was surprised when I taught her how to shop for groceries. The SuperWalmart and SuperTarget are two of the most expensive places to shop for groceries in my area.
The people supporting Walmart are not the rich. The majority of the America's consumers are middle class. Billionaire playboys don't spend a significant fraction of their cash at Walmart.
This is a fine example of economic democracy. I think it sucks, too; it pisses me off that Microsoft wins for the same reason. But who am I to dictate was is right and wrong. If the masses choose something, and it doesn't violate basic ethical principles (such as murder, or fraud, or rape).... then there's not much I can do about it.
Continuing to shop at Walmart is no different than voting for .
We don't stop people from voting for white supremesists, we don't stop people from voting for fascists. Why should we stop them from shopping at walmart?
If you aren't happy with the local market, then yes, I do agree that sometimes it is unfortunate companies can excessively leverage economies of scale. Fortunately, your local town council has an answer; tax breaks for indie retailers. And if your town council won't do that, well, then, I think the course of action is clear. Kick them out of office.
The average township is not big. The average township can be dominated politically either through money, lots of grunt work, or public disatistfaction.
I've seen communities that make a concerted effort to keep the smaller shops alive. People actively discuss (and advertise) the fact that they refused to shop there, unless they cannot purchase a product elsewhere.
This can maintain enough of an economic base for other stores to survive.
You're splitting hairs, and you're excessively generalizing.
Iowa City has a population of around 60,000 people, and 3 Walmarts. Approximately 45,000 of those are consumers (the remainder are children or eldery whose choice of retail store are made by a consumer. (not necessairly product bought, but _where_ its bought)
Of those 45,000, roughly 10% comprise 60% of the shopping dollars. As such, if one can organize ~3,000 upper class consumers, one can seriously damage the local walmart's profits, while sustaining the local shops.
This is exactly what happened. Not every election is based upon 6 billion voters. Some are much smaller.
The same with markets. Not every market is global. Some are national, some are regional, and some are local. The average consumer drives 15 minutes and purchases 70+% of their goods at a brick and mortar store. Organize these consumers on a regional basis, and you have a force capable of succesfully leveraging market forces against regional stores.
Then again, the political angles matter, too. There's a reason there aren't any Walmart stores in the City of Chicago proper.
Mankind's heat output in the forseeable future is neglible, including extreme possibilities like global nuclear war.
What you mean is to discontinue the use of fossil fuels. A more refined way of looking at is to insure that our energy sources are carbon neutral.
BioFuel is carbon neutral, and doesn't require us to replace our existing energy infrastructure. In the long run, nuclear (fission/fusion) and solar can provide unlimited amounts of energy.
The path of utilizing less energy is a dead end. We need to a)utilize energy efficently, and b) insure that our energy generation does not substantially damage the environment. Rapidly switching to carbon neutral energy sources is a big part of this, and if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, it'll be inevitable. There's nothing wrong with using energy; its not a bad word. Fossil fuels are the problem, not thermodynamics.
I, for one, welcome gradual rise of oil prices. I want to see oil at $200 a barrel in 10 years. If we see linear growth of oil prices between now and then, we'll see substantially deployment of BioFuel between now and then.
I agree with the reduction in standard of living. Less fuel, food (and reduced power usage) will help out a lot.
Capitalism resolves these kinds of issues with efficancy. Look at the recent popularity of hybrids in the U.S. Combine hybrids with expensive (but very light) composite materials, not to mention smaller engines, and you've got SUVs that get 40 MPG (the lexus hybrid SUV gets low 30s, IIRC).
In the intermediate term, it looks like the American solution to fuel constraints is going to be BioFuel (no, not corn based ethanol, that's a dead end). Furthermore, we can get far more efficent in terms of energy usage, and there's nothing like gradually increase energy prices to get the free market to build those kinds of solutions. Hell, the electric company in my area is offering serious credits on your bills if you switch to fluroscent lighting, and acheive a certain level of home insulation. Not to mention how much they love you if you install some kind of renewable and sell energy back to the grid (they pay you for it !). We preformed some serious upgrades on our office space (in terms of efficancy), and not only did we save the money back that we spent, the power company credited us the majority of the costs.
The only one I'm not concerned at all about is food. The tragedy with food is not limited supply, in the huge amount of waste out there, and the inequitable distribution. A lot of this has to do with western farm subsidies. When a peasant Ethiopian farmer _personally_ asks you why the west must subsidize farming, and _personally_ asks you why the west would keep the global supply price of corn so low that he can't profitable sell his corn.... well, it gnaws on your brain. There's no reason the 3rd world can't produce agriculture. They can; there are intelligent people there, and with low labor prices agriculture takes very little in capital costs. However, if us in the "developed" world refuse to buy non-domestic food products for prices greater than 20% of real cost, they can't export to us.
Go tour rural africa, or south america. The biggest complaint you'll hear is not, "Why doesn't the west provide more development aid?". The biggest complaint you'll hear is, "Why doesn't the west want to buy our (corn/coffee/cotton/fruit/whatever).
I'm all ears for anyone who says the a small company can survive in this environment - please post solution.
*shrug* We do....
We're a small company. Very small. We manufacture "green" surfactants, organic fertilizer, energy drinks, and license/develop our proprietary remediation technology.
Our website is crapped up at the moment, and we have a very small marketing staff. Strangely, however, 80%+ of our business is overseas, either in terms of sourcing materials or actually selling product. Our primary customers are located in Europe, the Middle East, and S. America. We're discussing operations elsewhere, as well; our business is expanding. Furthermore, when we look for suppliers and distributors, we don't restrict ourselves to our region of the US; we look everywhere. Part of this is because we've got someone who is _very_ good at securing low shipping rates, but a larger part of it is that we look for business of a similar size (or larger) than ourselves internationally.
There are plenty of small companies (in China, in Europe (especially Northern Europe), in S. America, in India, in Africa) and a few larger companies who _love_ to cooperate with us, because we can reap the same benefits the multinations you refer to can.
Printing costs, for example, in the UAE are incredibly low. You can produce pallets worth of marketing materials for a fraction of the cost here, and if you're shipping product over there you can bring inputs/marketing materials back on the return trip.
*shrug*.... the multinationals really aren't that scary. For the most part, local officials abroad _hate_ multinationals. Everytime we've partnered up with a larger company (who generally does try to screw with us), the local officials abroad firmly take our side. Even better, the level of middle management that multinationals often place abroad are incredibly incompentant. Of course, this probably isn't true for Microsoft's China office and the like; but I'm not sure I'd worry about some U.S. conglomerate chemical company's representatives in, say, Austria. We fly over our founders/top execs, they send their vp of so and so regional manager. And in the end, we get the contract.
I will say that it has a lot to do with what you do. Who you market to, where you produce things, etc, etc. . . . But don't be afraid to search out companies your size, and hell, even in your business abroad. You might be able to bring something to the table (captial, technology, commitment of resources, even an innovative marketing strategy *shrug*) that they would be happy to partner with you on, and if you're afraid of (Insert Multinational Here), they are five times as afraid. Nobody wants their local shop to face Walmart. Nobody wants their local soft drink manufacturer to face Coca Cola.
Abroad, you have allies you'd never suspect. Finding them if the problem.
But what do I know:) I have no idea what you do. . .
And don't look at the market cap numbers as buyout targets.
MSFT has ~$34 billion in the bank. A buyout backed by that kind of cash.... well, lets just say that if they picked a company that wasn't loosing money (like Sony, who tends to break near even) MSFT could purchase assets in the hundreds of billions dollar range.
You really can't underestimate the financial power of $12 billion in operating profit and a $40 billion war chest. There really isn't a company in the world MSFT couldn't consider buying.
You aren't looking at the whole financial picture. Sony's got a lot of revenue. Revenue, however, does not = profit. Sony made about ~800 million in proft FY2004. FY2005 may end up in the red once they finish adjusting. They operate on a 2% operating margin. They also have about 7 billion in long term debt.
Microsoft, on the other hand, made about 9 billion in profit FY2004, and will end up around 13 billion for FY2005. Microsoft carries no debt load. Microsoft runs on a 40% operating margin. They've also got 40 billion in cash reserves.
Microsoft could _easily_ purchase a controlling stake in Sony (say 20-30%), bill it as an "alliance", and then gut the company for the pieces they wanted.
The essence of the problem is that you've got Sony, this behemoth of a company that operates in near-free market conditions (nearly no profit, low margin), versus Microsoft, a smaller company that operates in near-monopoly conditions (vast profit, huge cash reserves, very high margin). Sony, because they operate in a competitive framework, ends up vulnerable, and $.5-1 billion means there is little room for colossal failure.
Microsoft can book a $2billion loss for years, and not even break a sweat. If Sony had a $2 billion loss in _any_ of their departments.... the very existance of the company will be at stake.
Of course, you have to remember that the Japanese banking system (with government help) is generally more than willing to cover this kind of debt with extensive loans (that smell like grants). But to be frank, the landscape really isn't very fair; you can't force a monopolist to compete in a purely financial sense with a company operating on a competive field, because the monopolist has so much extra profit margin.
Sony's not in bad shape, but $2 billion up or down on the balance sheet will make a huge difference. Microsoft can include a $2 billion loss as part of the business strategy. Sony can't really afford a lot of mistakes that size, and they'll see extensive corporate restructoring (if not a buyout) if that occurs.
Did you miss the previous posting about AT&T delivering network traffic to the NSA, which unsurprisingly comes 2-3 years after all the hubbub about carnivore?
Did you miss the stories about how MSN, AOL, and Yahoo had no problem turning over whatever information requests the gov't had about search usage?
I'm not too paranoid, and I don't think the gov't can process this stuff fast enough for it to matter, but don't be naive enough to believe that every major corporation out there respects your privacy. As it is, AT&T owns Cingular. Cingular routes plenty of its cell traffic over AT&T's backbone. I'm sure they've already sent some of your conversations to the NSA.
And to broaden my rant: Who are these people who think that playing TV programs and games on a phone is a great idea? Me. And most of my friend. And no, we aren't in highschool; the youngest of us is 25. Where are these people? I would love to see all of the marketing and R&D dollars poured into these stupid, stupid features go instead into producing smaller phones that have increased range, longer battery life and a user interface not designed by a team of raccoons. Is that so ridiculous?
Buy a nokia? Nokia phones generally have exceptional battery life, excellent reception, and the symbian interface, although not familiar for either Windows, OS X or Linux users, is actually very intuitive.
Some people use their phones as more than a simple radio. I use mine as a mobile bluetooth dialup modem, as a PDA, an SSH term, a mediocre camera for when I don't want to lug around my SLR, an IM device, a mobile e-mail device, and a video player for those times when I'll be stuck in transit for more than a few minutes. I carpool to work, and I'm often waiting around at various offices. Have a small, pocketsized device which is almost a computer, that functions as my phone, and provides me with entertainment is a serious plus.
I can do everything an alpha geek with 15 devices on his belt can do, except I only carry one. A Nokia 7710. Oh, and I only charge it once every three days or so, and I average 2000 minutes a month usage in talk time (its my primary home and business phone).
And while I am quite the geek, my GF is not, nor are most of her friends. They game on cellphones because, quite frankly, cell phones games are they type that appeal to them. They play "snood", "solitare", and "tetris", with a bit of old school super mario in there as well. Cell phone games are perfect, and once again, don't require them to carry around another device (they'd never be caught dead with a gameboy, PSP, or whatever.)
How do you get this "virus"? You have to run infected code, right?
Meh. Sounds like a non-issue to me. Especially considering the rarity of cross-platform Win32/Linux binaries.
Just how does this badboy get on to my system in the first place?
People need to understand that any system that permits a user to run unsigned executable code is susceptible to some kind of "malware", if you can call it that. I place these "viruses" in the same category of rm -r -f / wrapped into a shell script.
Our Honeywell system runs just fine over Vonage circuits. We had to have a technician add the *99 prefix to the dialing sequence; this requests "Fax" capabilities from Vonage.
Apparently, we don't have a perfect "sync" rate or whatever, but its good enough that its not a problem. We've never had a perfect sync rate anyways, because we used that line for secondary incoming faxes.
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Yet hundreds of millions do it every day.
Using secret, closed-source software developed by the file system designers.
What's your point?
NTFS is an overly complex file system, with incomplete documentation. Making small changes to it tends to break it and/or corrupt data.
Furthermore, why not just run NT/2000/XP on Ext2? Use a small FAT32 boot partition, and keep all your data on Ext2.
File system driver here. You can get read/write support on Ext2 on all major operating systems, and Linux will journal Ext2(Ext3 is a transparent upgrade).
I do this.... why? Honestly?
I prefer KDE to Aqua. I prefer Linux to Darwin. I know Linux. I know my way around Linux. Also, there are way more packages out there for APT4RPM (on SuSE) than Fink. Plus, X11 apps on OS X don't have the right look-n-feel, while they do on KDE.
I use OS X for the Adobe apps, Macromedia stuff, and final cut. I use Linux for everything else.
There's no non-Windows write support for NTFS, barring captive NTFS (which uses Window's DLL) and the latest linux NTFS driver, which does NOT support changing file sizes or creating new files (frankly it barely qualifies as write support).
.....
NTFS is a moving target. Reading is not a big problem, since it won't corrupt the disk. Writing to the disk is very difficult.
Don't blame Apple, blame Microsoft. HFSplus is properly documents, NTFS is not.
Look at it this way; you say that NTFS support is limited on OS X? Well, what about HFS+ support in Windows? Right; it doesn't exist.
Do NOT mess with the partitions. Seriously.
Use diskutil's resizeVolume command to create (up to 4) the partitions you need. You cannot have more than 3 "real" partitions on your system (OS X uses #1 for the EFI stuff).
BootCamp works by having an MBR and a GPT partition table simultaneously. There are no partition tools out there that correctly edit both at the same time. Doing it by hand via's OS X's GPT/FDISK tools often fails, as well. I have no idea why.
I'm one of the people who started messing with this triple boot first. Trust me; you don't want to mess with parted or fdisk (in Linux/FreeBSD/whatever). If you do decide to, go to mactel-linux.org, and get the parted patch, and then make sure you use the GPT tool in OS X to create a set of matching MBR/GUID partition tables.
But I promise you; you'll have to wipe your disk if you start messing with these partition tables. Nobody knows the correct way to handle them, yet. More experimentation is needed, and there's a good chance that at any given point in the process you'll corrupt your disk.
It's finished, and it still works post-bootcamp-csm. I haven't tried the latest FGLRX with it, though.
Use rEFIt->elilo, and pay some attention when you build the kernel. It does work.
AFAIK, the primary limitation is not elilo; it's the kernel's EFI support. While it supports a reference implementation, there are enough hacks in Apple's version that some bugfixes/minor workarounds are necessary.
Beagle indexes my whole system. I've got / as one of the "directories to index". Of course, stuff that isn't accessible to my user isn't accessible by Beagle.
You could run a beagle daemon as root all the time; it won't take up much CPU once the index is built. Then, you can use either the command line or GUI to search.
*shrug*..... Beagle may not be a 100% replacement for locate, yet; but it's really close, and I think that with a few work arounds you can use it as a replacement.
And Rosetta will allways be an emulator no matter how good performance it provides.
.... don't know what to tell you, but I'm just as happy with my MacBook Pro as I am with my Dual 2.7Ghz PowerMac. The only problem with the MacBook Pro is the cpufreq whine, but my 2.7 Dual does the exact same thing.
Intel Macs have lots of problems and currently Apple is fixing them.
It really depends how recent your PPC mac is. I "upgraded" from a 1 Ghz 12" G4 Powerbook to a MacBook Pro 2 Ghz. I can conclusively say that the MacBook Pro is significantly faster in all applications, Rosetta stuff included.
The only limitation is the few apps that don't work in Rosetta. I haven't run in to these yet, but I've read that they are out there. Oh, and Classic, but I was a switcher in the OS X era, so I don't have any classic apps.
*shrug*
Meh.... I suppose.
For me, I don't like slocate/locate, because I leave my system powered down (suspend/standby), and I'd rather not have updatedb grinding on the hard disk when I bring the system up. It makes my games stutter.
For whatever reason, beagled doesn't grind on the drive as badly as updatedb. It certainly doesn't affect my gaming. I'm sure the memory requirements are horrific, though.
Is there any reason to use slocate/locate rather than have beagled index everything on your system?
I'm genuinely asking. I have no idea. But do you really need to use locate when you can use beagle-query?
The rich are the only one's that can do anything about it. over half the economy in the US is maintained by the top 20% of populous. If they chose not to be against something, they are indirectly supporting it. There are many organizations wealthy enough to undercut Wal-Mart, or make a better product at a lower price, but they don't because they want higher profits, just like Wal-Mart. Letting the Nazi's take away your Jewish neighbor when you have just as larger of an arsenal or more, is just as bad as supporting the Nazi's (that is after all how finland was considered part of the axis powers).
Godwin's law aside, I do not a) believe that the upper class spends an order of magnitude more at walmart than the middle/lower class. b) I do not believe Walmart is the cheapest. I think they've brainwashed a large segment of the populace to believe this is true (like yourself). There are few products I can think of that are cheapest at Walmart; at least in my area, you are almost always better served by bargain hunting at other retailers.
Food products in particular are much cheaper at local retailers in my area than at SuperWalmart/SuperTarget, and not to mention of better quality. And by local retailers I don't mean local chains; I mean the vegetable store down the street, or the grocery two blocks over. They genuienly sell commodity items like chicken breast, salad stuffs, whatever. I taught my GF how to shop for groceries, and she was stunned that SuperWalmart doesn't actually save you money.
I'm not in the top 20%, but someday I hope to be. I don't shop at Walmart, because I like local retailers, and because I know that if I maintain a proper relationship with them (and take care of them) they'll take care of me. One consumer cannot make much of a difference with Walmart. One consumer can make a big difference with Joe Caputo's Grocery.
Oh, and the company I work for takes pride in making high quality products as cheap as possible. We're a small firm, and we compete with other companies many times our size (100Xs). We survive on quality, and on keeping our prices low. We don't turn a ridiculous profit margain, but we service our customers well, and we work closely with our buyers, be they government agents or local construction contractors. Oh, did I mention that all of our chemical products are 100% biodegredable within 30 days?
You don't have to be evil to participate in capitalism. You can make a conscious effort to be good. Capitalism, after all, means a market oriented system where the "players" express their preferences. Economists often make the mistake of assuming that all the "players" prefer to make as much money as possible. In reality, that's not the case; for us, profit rates highly, however, we have other considerations in our business practices (and dare I say my own life) as well.
If you are talking by amount spent you are also way off (The top 10% spend more on a single home than most of us will ever see in a life time). So tell me how you are measuring this so I can drink the cool-aid too.
Simple. Just because you make 10x the money doesn't mean that you spend 10x at Walmart. The upper class spends their money on yatchs, homes, cars, planes, etc. . . Sure, they buy more "consumer" level goods as well, but not proportionally more. Bill Gates does't consume 100,000 times as much gladware or saran wrap as you. Maybe 10x. Maybe 50x. But not proportionally more.
Fraud is some how on the same level as rape and murder. Just shows you that we all draw our own opinions around what are "basic ethical principles."
I don't think they are the same. Perhaps I used the wrong choice of words. I believe that the government should only decide certain rules. Included in this category is a monopoly on violence, a strict ban against fraud, and a few other principles. I do not believe that the government should think about a persons religion, about reproductive rights, about other "principles".
I'm not sure what the right word is, but I do not equate rape with fraud. Still, I do think fraud is bad, mkay?
In my area, Walmart is significantly more expensive than most local retailers. Especially for groceries, electronics, housewares, and clothing.
No, I'm not joking. Fruits/Veggies are significantly cheaper when I purchase them at Vally's Produce, or Joe Caputo's Grocer.
Walmart isn't cheap. People think Walmart is cheap. It's not. It's cheap crap, but thats a different issue.
My GF was surprised when I taught her how to shop for groceries. The SuperWalmart and SuperTarget are two of the most expensive places to shop for groceries in my area.
The people supporting Walmart are not the rich. The majority of the America's consumers are middle class. Billionaire playboys don't spend a significant fraction of their cash at Walmart.
This is a fine example of economic democracy. I think it sucks, too; it pisses me off that Microsoft wins for the same reason. But who am I to dictate was is right and wrong. If the masses choose something, and it doesn't violate basic ethical principles (such as murder, or fraud, or rape).... then there's not much I can do about it.
Continuing to shop at Walmart is no different than voting for .
We don't stop people from voting for white supremesists, we don't stop people from voting for fascists. Why should we stop them from shopping at walmart?
If you aren't happy with the local market, then yes, I do agree that sometimes it is unfortunate companies can excessively leverage economies of scale. Fortunately, your local town council has an answer; tax breaks for indie retailers. And if your town council won't do that, well, then, I think the course of action is clear. Kick them out of office.
The average township is not big. The average township can be dominated politically either through money, lots of grunt work, or public disatistfaction.
Depends on the community.
I've seen communities that make a concerted effort to keep the smaller shops alive. People actively discuss (and advertise) the fact that they refused to shop there, unless they cannot purchase a product elsewhere.
This can maintain enough of an economic base for other stores to survive.
You're splitting hairs, and you're excessively generalizing.
Iowa City has a population of around 60,000 people, and 3 Walmarts. Approximately 45,000 of those are consumers (the remainder are children or eldery whose choice of retail store are made by a consumer. (not necessairly product bought, but _where_ its bought)
Of those 45,000, roughly 10% comprise 60% of the shopping dollars. As such, if one can organize ~3,000 upper class consumers, one can seriously damage the local walmart's profits, while sustaining the local shops.
This is exactly what happened. Not every election is based upon 6 billion voters. Some are much smaller.
The same with markets. Not every market is global. Some are national, some are regional, and some are local. The average consumer drives 15 minutes and purchases 70+% of their goods at a brick and mortar store. Organize these consumers on a regional basis, and you have a force capable of succesfully leveraging market forces against regional stores.
Then again, the political angles matter, too. There's a reason there aren't any Walmart stores in the City of Chicago proper.
Huh?
Why is that?
Mankind's heat output in the forseeable future is neglible, including extreme possibilities like global nuclear war.
What you mean is to discontinue the use of fossil fuels. A more refined way of looking at is to insure that our energy sources are carbon neutral.
BioFuel is carbon neutral, and doesn't require us to replace our existing energy infrastructure. In the long run, nuclear (fission/fusion) and solar can provide unlimited amounts of energy.
The path of utilizing less energy is a dead end. We need to a)utilize energy efficently, and b) insure that our energy generation does not substantially damage the environment. Rapidly switching to carbon neutral energy sources is a big part of this, and if fossil fuel prices continue to rise, it'll be inevitable. There's nothing wrong with using energy; its not a bad word. Fossil fuels are the problem, not thermodynamics.
I, for one, welcome gradual rise of oil prices. I want to see oil at $200 a barrel in 10 years. If we see linear growth of oil prices between now and then, we'll see substantially deployment of BioFuel between now and then.
I agree with the reduction in standard of living. Less fuel, food (and reduced power usage) will help out a lot.
Capitalism resolves these kinds of issues with efficancy. Look at the recent popularity of hybrids in the U.S. Combine hybrids with expensive (but very light) composite materials, not to mention smaller engines, and you've got SUVs that get 40 MPG (the lexus hybrid SUV gets low 30s, IIRC).
In the intermediate term, it looks like the American solution to fuel constraints is going to be BioFuel (no, not corn based ethanol, that's a dead end). Furthermore, we can get far more efficent in terms of energy usage, and there's nothing like gradually increase energy prices to get the free market to build those kinds of solutions. Hell, the electric company in my area is offering serious credits on your bills if you switch to fluroscent lighting, and acheive a certain level of home insulation. Not to mention how much they love you if you install some kind of renewable and sell energy back to the grid (they pay you for it !). We preformed some serious upgrades on our office space (in terms of efficancy), and not only did we save the money back that we spent, the power company credited us the majority of the costs.
The only one I'm not concerned at all about is food. The tragedy with food is not limited supply, in the huge amount of waste out there, and the inequitable distribution. A lot of this has to do with western farm subsidies. When a peasant Ethiopian farmer _personally_ asks you why the west must subsidize farming, and _personally_ asks you why the west would keep the global supply price of corn so low that he can't profitable sell his corn.... well, it gnaws on your brain. There's no reason the 3rd world can't produce agriculture. They can; there are intelligent people there, and with low labor prices agriculture takes very little in capital costs. However, if us in the "developed" world refuse to buy non-domestic food products for prices greater than 20% of real cost, they can't export to us.
Go tour rural africa, or south america. The biggest complaint you'll hear is not, "Why doesn't the west provide more development aid?". The biggest complaint you'll hear is, "Why doesn't the west want to buy our (corn/coffee/cotton/fruit/whatever).
That's shameful.
I'm all ears for anyone who says the a small company can survive in this environment - please post solution.
:) I have no idea what you do. . .
*shrug* We do....
We're a small company. Very small. We manufacture "green" surfactants, organic fertilizer, energy drinks, and license/develop our proprietary remediation technology.
Our website is crapped up at the moment, and we have a very small marketing staff. Strangely, however, 80%+ of our business is overseas, either in terms of sourcing materials or actually selling product. Our primary customers are located in Europe, the Middle East, and S. America. We're discussing operations elsewhere, as well; our business is expanding. Furthermore, when we look for suppliers and distributors, we don't restrict ourselves to our region of the US; we look everywhere. Part of this is because we've got someone who is _very_ good at securing low shipping rates, but a larger part of it is that we look for business of a similar size (or larger) than ourselves internationally.
There are plenty of small companies (in China, in Europe (especially Northern Europe), in S. America, in India, in Africa) and a few larger companies who _love_ to cooperate with us, because we can reap the same benefits the multinations you refer to can.
Printing costs, for example, in the UAE are incredibly low. You can produce pallets worth of marketing materials for a fraction of the cost here, and if you're shipping product over there you can bring inputs/marketing materials back on the return trip.
*shrug*.... the multinationals really aren't that scary. For the most part, local officials abroad _hate_ multinationals. Everytime we've partnered up with a larger company (who generally does try to screw with us), the local officials abroad firmly take our side. Even better, the level of middle management that multinationals often place abroad are incredibly incompentant. Of course, this probably isn't true for Microsoft's China office and the like; but I'm not sure I'd worry about some U.S. conglomerate chemical company's representatives in, say, Austria. We fly over our founders/top execs, they send their vp of so and so regional manager. And in the end, we get the contract.
I will say that it has a lot to do with what you do. Who you market to, where you produce things, etc, etc. . . . But don't be afraid to search out companies your size, and hell, even in your business abroad. You might be able to bring something to the table (captial, technology, commitment of resources, even an innovative marketing strategy *shrug*) that they would be happy to partner with you on, and if you're afraid of (Insert Multinational Here), they are five times as afraid. Nobody wants their local shop to face Walmart. Nobody wants their local soft drink manufacturer to face Coca Cola.
Abroad, you have allies you'd never suspect. Finding them if the problem.
But what do I know
And don't look at the market cap numbers as buyout targets.
.... well, lets just say that if they picked a company that wasn't loosing money (like Sony, who tends to break near even) MSFT could purchase assets in the hundreds of billions dollar range.
MSFT has ~$34 billion in the bank. A buyout backed by that kind of cash
You really can't underestimate the financial power of $12 billion in operating profit and a $40 billion war chest. There really isn't a company in the world MSFT couldn't consider buying.
You aren't looking at the whole financial picture. Sony's got a lot of revenue. Revenue, however, does not = profit. Sony made about ~800 million in proft FY2004. FY2005 may end up in the red once they finish adjusting. They operate on a 2% operating margin. They also have about 7 billion in long term debt.
Microsoft, on the other hand, made about 9 billion in profit FY2004, and will end up around 13 billion for FY2005. Microsoft carries no debt load. Microsoft runs on a 40% operating margin. They've also got 40 billion in cash reserves.
Microsoft could _easily_ purchase a controlling stake in Sony (say 20-30%), bill it as an "alliance", and then gut the company for the pieces they wanted.
The essence of the problem is that you've got Sony, this behemoth of a company that operates in near-free market conditions (nearly no profit, low margin), versus Microsoft, a smaller company that operates in near-monopoly conditions (vast profit, huge cash reserves, very high margin). Sony, because they operate in a competitive framework, ends up vulnerable, and $.5-1 billion means there is little room for colossal failure.
Microsoft can book a $2billion loss for years, and not even break a sweat. If Sony had a $2 billion loss in _any_ of their departments.... the very existance of the company will be at stake.
Of course, you have to remember that the Japanese banking system (with government help) is generally more than willing to cover this kind of debt with extensive loans (that smell like grants). But to be frank, the landscape really isn't very fair; you can't force a monopolist to compete in a purely financial sense with a company operating on a competive field, because the monopolist has so much extra profit margin.
Sony's not in bad shape, but $2 billion up or down on the balance sheet will make a huge difference. Microsoft can include a $2 billion loss as part of the business strategy. Sony can't really afford a lot of mistakes that size, and they'll see extensive corporate restructoring (if not a buyout) if that occurs.
*giggle*. You must be in a good mood, huh? :)
;-) And she drags me to Salsa lessons. Real GF's are a PITA, but worth it.
She's real. The mood swings confirm that
Did you miss the previous posting about AT&T delivering network traffic to the NSA, which unsurprisingly comes 2-3 years after all the hubbub about carnivore?
Did you miss the stories about how MSN, AOL, and Yahoo had no problem turning over whatever information requests the gov't had about search usage?
I'm not too paranoid, and I don't think the gov't can process this stuff fast enough for it to matter, but don't be naive enough to believe that every major corporation out there respects your privacy. As it is, AT&T owns Cingular. Cingular routes plenty of its cell traffic over AT&T's backbone. I'm sure they've already sent some of your conversations to the NSA.
And to broaden my rant: Who are these people who think that playing TV programs and games on a phone is a great idea?
Me. And most of my friend. And no, we aren't in highschool; the youngest of us is 25.
Where are these people? I would love to see all of the marketing and R&D dollars poured into these stupid, stupid features go instead into producing smaller phones that have increased range, longer battery life and a user interface not designed by a team of raccoons. Is that so ridiculous?
Buy a nokia? Nokia phones generally have exceptional battery life, excellent reception, and the symbian interface, although not familiar for either Windows, OS X or Linux users, is actually very intuitive.
Some people use their phones as more than a simple radio. I use mine as a mobile bluetooth dialup modem, as a PDA, an SSH term, a mediocre camera for when I don't want to lug around my SLR, an IM device, a mobile e-mail device, and a video player for those times when I'll be stuck in transit for more than a few minutes. I carpool to work, and I'm often waiting around at various offices. Have a small, pocketsized device which is almost a computer, that functions as my phone, and provides me with entertainment is a serious plus.
I can do everything an alpha geek with 15 devices on his belt can do, except I only carry one. A Nokia 7710. Oh, and I only charge it once every three days or so, and I average 2000 minutes a month usage in talk time (its my primary home and business phone).
And while I am quite the geek, my GF is not, nor are most of her friends. They game on cellphones because, quite frankly, cell phones games are they type that appeal to them. They play "snood", "solitare", and "tetris", with a bit of old school super mario in there as well. Cell phone games are perfect, and once again, don't require them to carry around another device (they'd never be caught dead with a gameboy, PSP, or whatever.)
How do you get this "virus"? You have to run infected code, right?
Meh. Sounds like a non-issue to me. Especially considering the rarity of cross-platform Win32/Linux binaries.
Just how does this badboy get on to my system in the first place?
People need to understand that any system that permits a user to run unsigned executable code is susceptible to some kind of "malware", if you can call it that. I place these "viruses" in the same category of rm -r -f / wrapped into a shell script.
Our Honeywell system runs just fine over Vonage circuits. We had to have a technician add the *99 prefix to the dialing sequence; this requests "Fax" capabilities from Vonage.
Apparently, we don't have a perfect "sync" rate or whatever, but its good enough that its not a problem. We've never had a perfect sync rate anyways, because we used that line for secondary incoming faxes.
It's an old (10+ years) system, too.