So, I'm still asking, where the fuck did their money go to?
The last company I worked for was a software company that delivered it's products over the internet. By your logic, we should have spent 99% of our income on software development. This was absolutely not the case, as only 30% of the staff were engineers. There is a lot more to a company than its core business: marketing, sales, HR, operations. Salon needs all of these (and before you dispute it, salesmen are needs to sell ads).
Anyway, if you want to know where their money goes, just look it up. It's all in the SEC's EDGAR database. Here is their most recent filing. If you don't want to look it up, last year they spent about 4.5 million on "content production" and about 2.5 million on sales. They spent about 1.5 million on "administrative and general" which I'm sure includes that enormous rent, and all the management and HR staff positions.
Furthermore, if you read the link above, you'll see they had a 17% increase in revenue last year and a 21% decrease in operating expenses. Combined, these led them to reduce thier losses by 55%. Clearly, they are on the right track and just need more time.
Over the last few years, I have consistently been impressed with the quality of journalism found in Salon's pages. To all those of you that have enjoyed some of salon's work over the years, please consider subscribing.
Try this: Go to the Slashdot search page and search for "Salon". I get over a hundred results in the last year alone. And these are not just links to AP newswire stories hosted at Salon, these are original content, bankrolled by them. For all you out there bitching about "how can a website spend 80 million dollars?" that's how. They spend that much by funding the production of original, quality content.
It's also hilarious to see some of you bitching about how Salon is going out of business by alienating their readership by publishing perspectives that are too liberal or too conservative. While having a liberal slant in general, Salon publishes perspectives that challenge their readers. I disagree with most of what Andrew Sullivan writes, but I appreciate the diversity of perspectives that his writing provides. If I wanted a news medium that always told me what it thought I wanted to hear, I'd just tune into the network news every night.
Do you want to see this source of independant journalism go out forever? If they don't a big jump in subscriptions, it will. I know lots of you out there are unemployed, but lots of you aren't. the $20 or $30 salon subscription is nothing to you highly paid software engineers.
I'm not working right now (I'm a student), so money is tight, but I have subscribed and after I write this, I am going to go over and try to extend my subscription. And yes, I have done my best to encourage friends and relatives that read occasionally to subscribe as well (with three successes).
They are a quality publication that you have all been sporadically enjoying for many years and now they need your help. Please subscribe.
HanzoSan, I suspect this is just flamebait, because the differences obvious. Set down the crack pipe for a moment and listen up:
The RIAA, MPAA are not government entities. they are private organizations. they are composed of citizens.
The people they have problems with (those illegally pirating music and movies) are also citizens.
One of the functions of government is to preserve the rights of its citizens. In this example we have a struggle between the rights of different citizens. On the one had we have Hilary Rosen and crew, who, under our current scheme of fostering content creation, have the sole right to distribute the music and movies they create. On the other hand, we have the fair use rights of consumers, who must be allowed sufficient flexibility to enjoy their purchased content however they see fit.
There's this famous quote by one of the founding fathers of this country (I forget who) "the right for you to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". Analogously, we need to pass laws that allow both parties sufficient room to swing their fists while still outlawing the hitting of noses.
Now, in this case, I completely agree that the laws (DMCA) are too much in favor of the content creators and do not preserve the rights of consumers enough. I not only hold this view, but I have acted on it on many occasions though letters to politicians and donations to related groups.
This is not "the USA [censoring] in the name of Capitalism" at all. It is the USA passing laws that try to balance the rights of its citizens.
Our leaders are NOT censoring negative information about them. There is no firewall that separates americans from unamerican content on the internet. Criticism of american policy and laws is everywhere and legal. No one goes to prison for such criticism.
Are some powerful citizens in our society weilding that power to further their aims? yes. does that piss me off? yes. Is this somehow the governemnt controlling what we see and hear? no.
and I think we'd all appreciate it if you took your communist drivel somewhere else. as exciting as your "social programs" sound, something tells me AMERICANS would rather build enormous lasers in space. I know if I got to choose what my tax dollars went to, I'd certainly pick something big, something fast, and something deadly. space lasers are all of these.
next you are gonna be telling me we should explore the oceans instead, but don't even start. everyone knows lasers don't work underwater.
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open markets. Big difference.
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open societies. From the bio on his website:
Today he is Chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States--these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society.
Hahaha... The author bio on the Salon piece says
on
.NETly News
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two.Net titles for Apress slated for release later this year.
I suspect that at one point that link led to a form asking for personal data, and only after submission did they serve up the "gotcha" page.
evidence to support this can be found on the gotcha page where they say:
Finally, McWhortle asked victims to supply a major credit card and social security number, "for identification purposes." The FTC wants you to be aware that by stealing your name, credit card number and/or social security number, fraudsters can effectively steal your identity and ruin your credit rating. Read more about identity theft here. (And by the way, we have not collected any information about you.)
I can't find McWhortle's request for CC or SSN on the current site, so perhaps the site has been changed
who knows why they changed it. even though they "have not collected any information about you" perhaps they didn't have https set up and they realised that having morons sending that information in the clear was a bad idea.
The SEC didn't get Yahoo to write a story on them, they just released a press release through PRNewswire. Yahoo picks these up and carries them. Note both the "WASHINGTON, Jan. 25/PRNewswire/" at the beginning and "SOURCE: McWhortle Enterprises, Inc." at the top and bottom.
Slashdot's motto is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." It's not "Market analyzation. What drives sales."
This story is geek info, nothing more. It's exactly what slashdot should be posting.
NO ONE said that IPC performace is what consumers are looking for when they purchase a machine. No one said that "a half-decent GUI and a huge set of tools" are unimportant.
The article makes no claims to the effect of: "the high performance of pipes on linux will yield the imminent demise of microsoft". The series is titled "High-performance programming techniques on Linux and Windows." It is covering exactly what it should be.
So, to all those/.ers who pooh-pooh this article as being unimportant, shut up. Neither this article, nor slashdot claim to be anything more than they are.
To accuse "the government" of not using common sense is ridiculous. The actions of the government are the actions of thousands of individuals making decisions (informed or not).
The decisions made by bureaucrats are a influenced heavily by lobbying. The concentrated interests of the RIAA, MPAA... are a significant lobbying force in washington.
We absolutely need actions like those of the EFF. We need to defend our distributed interest by supporting them.
I just donated $100 through the link in the story description. If any of you want to make a difference, and really care about this issue, stop yacking about it and give them some cash. Their opponents have deep pockets and the EFF needs *financial* support!
Many of you posting on the subject of Mac OS X on Intel seem convinced it will never happen. It may happen for the following reasons:
1.) the traditional argument about why Apple does not release a version of its operating system is that it would kill its hardware sales, and as a result, its revenue sream would dry up and it could not survive long enough to live on software alone. This used to be true. It is not true anymore.
Why? consider the traditional reason to buy a macintosh. the operating system was Apple's crowning jewel and the primary motivator for its sales. This is not the case anymore. Between its technical limitations and various incompatibilities (hardware, software...) and the ease of use of windows (ok, not as easy as the mac, but not too far off) the MacOS is not the driving force behind Apple's sales.
The driving force behind Apple's sales is its innovative hardware designs. Today, people buy a mac because it looks so damn cool. If the iMac (or cube, tower, etc) were running windows, people would buy it. If people can get the Mac OS on a white box PC, there will still be many many people that purchase iMacs and Cubes for style.
2.) The other thing preventing Apple from making a major push on to the PC desktop is the sheer breadth of hardware available on the PC platform and driver support. Delivering the level of compatibility that microsoft does with windows would be a monumental effort.
This is why Darwin exists. Apple hopes that the OSS process will apply to its darwin and individual developers will scratch their respective itches and bring breadth to darwin's hardware support.
This is where we come in. If we want to make OS X on Intel a reality, it is 90% in our hands. If we start scratching some driver itches, OSX/Intel will become technically feasable.
If the day comes when OSX/Intel is feasable, it will be in Apple's hands to actually deliver it. That much is beyond our control. But if you would like to see this, start looking at darwin. Subscribe to the developer mailing list. When the intel installer is available (currently its a real pain in the ass to get it installed on intel) throw it ona spare machine and check it out.
Now, I am really not trying to be a troll when I say this, but:
SHUT UP!
This website is not a news website. Slashdot *is* opinions.
When was the last time Slashdot broke the story on anything? How many reporters work for slashdot?
This website consists of finding news elsewhere and exchanging views on the issue. CmdrTaco should not be exempt from these discussions.
Another thing: to claim that he is somehow abusing his position by throwing his slant into the headlines is nonsense. Microsoft stories have carried the Borg Bill logo as long as I have been a reader, blatantly throwing the Slashdot staff's views into the mix. This is an OPINION website and this exactly the sort of expression I'd like to see here.
It would be nice to only have one input device. It's a pain in the ass to move my hand from my keyboard to my mouse all day. It would be really cool to replace both and be able to do all sorts of 2-d input and text input at the same time.
Additionally, the notion of a frontmost window would go away. You could just define the destination of text entry as the area of the screen that the mouse/pen was in when the text entry began. So I could switch between xterms just by writing on different parts of the wacom.
Slashdot Mirror
...it uses webDAV
The rest should go to content production.
So, I'm still asking, where the fuck did their money go to?
The last company I worked for was a software company that delivered it's products over the internet. By your logic, we should have spent 99% of our income on software development. This was absolutely not the case, as only 30% of the staff were engineers. There is a lot more to a company than its core business: marketing, sales, HR, operations. Salon needs all of these (and before you dispute it, salesmen are needs to sell ads).
Anyway, if you want to know where their money goes, just look it up. It's all in the SEC's EDGAR database. Here is their most recent filing. If you don't want to look it up, last year they spent about 4.5 million on "content production" and about 2.5 million on sales. They spent about 1.5 million on "administrative and general" which I'm sure includes that enormous rent, and all the management and HR staff positions.
Furthermore, if you read the link above, you'll see they had a 17% increase in revenue last year and a 21% decrease in operating expenses. Combined, these led them to reduce thier losses by 55%. Clearly, they are on the right track and just need more time.
Over the last few years, I have consistently been impressed with the quality of journalism found in Salon's pages. To all those of you that have enjoyed some of salon's work over the years, please consider subscribing.
Try this: Go to the Slashdot search page and search for "Salon". I get over a hundred results in the last year alone. And these are not just links to AP newswire stories hosted at Salon, these are original content, bankrolled by them. For all you out there bitching about "how can a website spend 80 million dollars?" that's how. They spend that much by funding the production of original, quality content.
It's also hilarious to see some of you bitching about how Salon is going out of business by alienating their readership by publishing perspectives that are too liberal or too conservative. While having a liberal slant in general, Salon publishes perspectives that challenge their readers. I disagree with most of what Andrew Sullivan writes, but I appreciate the diversity of perspectives that his writing provides. If I wanted a news medium that always told me what it thought I wanted to hear, I'd just tune into the network news every night.
Do you want to see this source of independant journalism go out forever? If they don't a big jump in subscriptions, it will. I know lots of you out there are unemployed, but lots of you aren't. the $20 or $30 salon subscription is nothing to you highly paid software engineers.
I'm not working right now (I'm a student), so money is tight, but I have subscribed and after I write this, I am going to go over and try to extend my subscription. And yes, I have done my best to encourage friends and relatives that read occasionally to subscribe as well (with three successes).
They are a quality publication that you have all been sporadically enjoying for many years and now they need your help. Please subscribe.
exploring the ocean makes me wet.
why? you want your own live-in soldier?
how did you know that my assignments have been late? is this you professor gonzalez?
HanzoSan, I suspect this is just flamebait, because the differences obvious. Set down the crack pipe for a moment and listen up:
The RIAA, MPAA are not government entities. they are private organizations. they are composed of citizens.
The people they have problems with (those illegally pirating music and movies) are also citizens.
One of the functions of government is to preserve the rights of its citizens. In this example we have a struggle between the rights of different citizens. On the one had we have Hilary Rosen and crew, who, under our current scheme of fostering content creation, have the sole right to distribute the music and movies they create. On the other hand, we have the fair use rights of consumers, who must be allowed sufficient flexibility to enjoy their purchased content however they see fit.
There's this famous quote by one of the founding fathers of this country (I forget who) "the right for you to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose". Analogously, we need to pass laws that allow both parties sufficient room to swing their fists while still outlawing the hitting of noses.
Now, in this case, I completely agree that the laws (DMCA) are too much in favor of the content creators and do not preserve the rights of consumers enough. I not only hold this view, but I have acted on it on many occasions though letters to politicians and donations to related groups.
This is not "the USA [censoring] in the name of Capitalism" at all. It is the USA passing laws that try to balance the rights of its citizens.
Our leaders are NOT censoring negative information about them. There is no firewall that separates americans from unamerican content on the internet. Criticism of american policy and laws is everywhere and legal. No one goes to prison for such criticism.
Are some powerful citizens in our society weilding that power to further their aims? yes. does that piss me off? yes. Is this somehow the governemnt controlling what we see and hear? no.
and I think we'd all appreciate it if you took your communist drivel somewhere else. as exciting as your "social programs" sound, something tells me AMERICANS would rather build enormous lasers in space. I know if I got to choose what my tax dollars went to, I'd certainly pick something big, something fast, and something deadly. space lasers are all of these.
next you are gonna be telling me we should explore the oceans instead, but don't even start. everyone knows lasers don't work underwater.
later comrade.
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open markets. Big difference.
No, Mr. Soros is a ferocious advocate of open societies. From the bio on his website:
Today he is Chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States--these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society.
About the writer
Peter Wright is a software consultant and the author of numerous books on Visual Basic programming. He is currently working on two .Net titles for Apress slated for release later this year.
I suspect that at one point that link led to a form asking for personal data, and only after submission did they serve up the "gotcha" page.
evidence to support this can be found on the gotcha page where they say:
Finally, McWhortle asked victims to supply a major credit card and social security number, "for identification purposes." The FTC wants you to be aware that by stealing your name, credit card number and/or social security number, fraudsters can effectively steal your identity and ruin your credit rating. Read more about identity theft here. (And by the way, we have not collected any information about you.)
I can't find McWhortle's request for CC or SSN on the current site, so perhaps the site has been changed
who knows why they changed it. even though they "have not collected any information about you" perhaps they didn't have https set up and they realised that having morons sending that information in the clear was a bad idea.
The SEC didn't get Yahoo to write a story on them, they just released a press release through PRNewswire. Yahoo picks these up and carries them. Note both the "WASHINGTON, Jan. 25 /PRNewswire/" at the beginning and "SOURCE: McWhortle Enterprises, Inc." at the top and bottom.
Look,
/.ers who pooh-pooh this article as being unimportant, shut up. Neither this article, nor slashdot claim to be anything more than they are.
Slashdot's motto is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." It's not "Market analyzation. What drives sales."
This story is geek info, nothing more. It's exactly what slashdot should be posting.
NO ONE said that IPC performace is what consumers are looking for when they purchase a machine. No one said that "a half-decent GUI and a huge set of tools" are unimportant.
The article makes no claims to the effect of: "the high performance of pipes on linux will yield the imminent demise of microsoft". The series is titled "High-performance programming techniques on Linux and Windows." It is covering exactly what it should be.
So, to all those
To accuse "the government" of not using common sense is ridiculous. The actions of the government are the actions of thousands of individuals making decisions (informed or not).
The decisions made by bureaucrats are a influenced heavily by lobbying. The concentrated interests of the RIAA, MPAA... are a significant lobbying force in washington.
We absolutely need actions like those of the EFF. We need to defend our distributed interest by supporting them.
I just donated $100 through the link in the story description. If any of you want to make a difference, and really care about this issue, stop yacking about it and give them some cash. Their opponents have deep pockets and the EFF needs *financial* support!
Many of you posting on the subject of Mac OS X on Intel seem convinced it will never happen. It may happen for the following reasons:
:^)
1.) the traditional argument about why Apple does not release a version of its operating system is that it would kill its hardware sales, and as a result, its revenue sream would dry up and it could not survive long enough to live on software alone. This used to be true. It is not true anymore.
Why? consider the traditional reason to buy a macintosh. the operating system was Apple's crowning jewel and the primary motivator for its sales. This is not the case anymore. Between its technical limitations and various incompatibilities (hardware, software...) and the ease of use of windows (ok, not as easy as the mac, but not too far off) the MacOS is not the driving force behind Apple's sales.
The driving force behind Apple's sales is its innovative hardware designs. Today, people buy a mac because it looks so damn cool. If the iMac (or cube, tower, etc) were running windows, people would buy it. If people can get the Mac OS on a white box PC, there will still be many many people that purchase iMacs and Cubes for style.
2.) The other thing preventing Apple from making a major push on to the PC desktop is the sheer breadth of hardware available on the PC platform and driver support. Delivering the level of compatibility that microsoft does with windows would be a monumental effort.
This is why Darwin exists. Apple hopes that the OSS process will apply to its darwin and individual developers will scratch their respective itches and bring breadth to darwin's hardware support.
This is where we come in. If we want to make OS X on Intel a reality, it is 90% in our hands. If we start scratching some driver itches, OSX/Intel will become technically feasable.
If the day comes when OSX/Intel is feasable, it will be in Apple's hands to actually deliver it. That much is beyond our control. But if you would like to see this, start looking at darwin. Subscribe to the developer mailing list. When the intel installer is available (currently its a real pain in the ass to get it installed on intel) throw it ona spare machine and check it out.
Come on, this is what OSS is all about.
Now, I am really not trying to be a troll when I say this, but:
SHUT UP!
This website is not a news website. Slashdot *is* opinions.
When was the last time Slashdot broke the story on anything? How many reporters work for slashdot?
This website consists of finding news elsewhere and exchanging views on the issue. CmdrTaco should not be exempt from these discussions.
Another thing: to claim that he is somehow abusing his position by throwing his slant into the headlines is nonsense. Microsoft stories have carried the Borg Bill logo as long as I have been a reader, blatantly throwing the Slashdot staff's views into the mix. This is an OPINION website and this exactly the sort of expression I'd like to see here.
It would be nice to only have one input device. It's a pain in the ass to move my hand from my keyboard to my mouse all day. It would be really cool to replace both and be able to do all sorts of 2-d input and text input at the same time.
Additionally, the notion of a frontmost window would go away. You could just define the destination of text entry as the area of the screen that the mouse/pen was in when the text entry began. So I could switch between xterms just by writing on different parts of the wacom.