> Claiming that the waste investigation costs more > than the loss from the waste is meaningless.
Sometimes, but not in this case. The first question should have been "What?!? Space vikings?!? Who paid for this crap?... Oh, not us? OK then." The "investigation" should have been 1 or 2 phone calls.
Rule #1: Verify that your premise and assumptions are correct before proceeding. If you go into something thinking "This seems like a waste of tax dollars!", your first questions MUST be "Was it paid for with tax dollars?" To not do so is... wasteful.
"Call it the TouchPad Strategy: cut the price of Microsoftâ(TM)s struggling tablet to pennies on the dollar, and watch the sales spike."
The point is to make MONEY, not SALES, you fucking idiot. Calling it "the TouchPad strategy" might make it SOUND neat, but it does not actually MAKE it a good thing, any more than someone would want to use "the Napoleon strategy" for fighting the Russians in winter. There are certain times when you do a "loss leader" to gain a little ground, but it's not the answer to everything.
Apple has sold over 100M iPads. (As of October 2012, the first number I could find -- probably closer to 150M by now.) MS could dump those six million Surfaces on the market for FREE and their share in the tablet market would jump from close to zero percent to MAYBE five percent. Woo hoo.
Imagine Microsoft pricing the Surface at a mere pittance, say $50 or $75 â" even in this era of cheaper tablets, the devices would fly off the shelves so fast, the sales rate would make the iPad look like the Zune.
1) And then Apple could sell theirs for $1!:-| 2) MS would be taking a HUGE loss on them. They make OK money at $500. $400 might be break even. I'm pretty sure they don't want to lose $300 or more on each sale. That would lead to... - raising the price 5-10x on the next release to return to profitability -- which no one would like if they were used to them being so cheap. - leave them cheap forever, lose money forever.
There's a historical precedent for such a maneuver.
Yeah, it's called a "fire sale", and it's a final grasp at a few bucks, not part of a long-term strategy.
In 2011, Hewlett-Packard decided to terminate its TouchPad tablet after a few weeks of poor sales. In a bid to clear its inventory, the company dropped the TouchPad's starting price to $99, which sent people rushing into stores in a way they hadn't when the device was priced at $499.
Because they were retarded. They could have dropped to $349 and made a LOT more money and still sold every one, but in a much calmer fashion. Believe it or not, there is a sweet spot between "Sell none at $499" and "Sell thousands in hours at $99." It's called "supply and demand" and it's covered in the first 5 minutes of your first economics class.
Despite that sales spike, HP decided to kill the TouchPad...
No, the decision was already made. They decided to leave it dead because a) the CEO that day wanted out of that business and b) there was at least ONE person in the company who realized the million-percent spike in demand was due to the crazy price.
... the margins on $99 obviously didn't work out to everyone's satisfaction.
NO FUCKING SHIT. But that would be totally different with the Surface because... um...
Why not clear them out by knocking a couple hundred dollars off the price? It's not as if they're going anywhere, anyway.
Sure. We might see that. Though MS would want to save more face than HP would -- HP was leaving the business, period, whereas MS still a) sells the OS and b) needs for their to be hardware for that OS to run it on. Whether that hardware is made my MS or someone else, Windows can't be seen as a daed-end brand, like WebOS.
I'm guessing they'll either do incremental lowerings to clear out stock, or one good (but not ridiculous) price drop, like maybe $349. Possible $329 to directly compete on price with the smaller iPad mini. A lot depends on if MS is going to release another Surface RT. If so, it will be a small lowering, a typical "hey, last year's model is cheaper now." If not, it'll drop a bit more to clear them out in a reasonable time, but don't expect HP-like prices.
Overpriced, overhyped flops are nothing new. Here's a list of FIFTY -- and that's only since 1995. That's almost 3 per year. (And those are just the biggest -- not even ALL the bombs.) So five or six* big flops this year does not mean DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! It didn't kill the industry in 1999, 2001, 2002, or 2005.
(Interestingly, I've only seen 6 films on that list. Shame that K-19 is there -- that was a pretty good flick.)
* Fun fact: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger' is FIVE films, not SIX. Unless "Ranger" sucked so bad you're counting it twice.
In places where they're just used a lot for a bit of text, like a URL, why don't we just agree on a specific shape into which we put plain text to be OCRed? The human can verify it's the information he wants and is expecting before scanning and following a link.
Thanks for the reminder. Here's another -- multipliers aren't just for video games. See if your company does donation matching -- the EFF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
It's completely useless unless you are connected to and can do lookups in a gigantic database. So in other words, it's completely useless. So what if it's easier to remember and say than, say, lat/lon coordinates -- lat/lon has a dozen other advantages. If you need to refer to a place by name to someone, agree on a meaningful name. "Use this prebuilt list of a trillion random names" is pretty dumb.
It takes advantage of Safari's "restore last window" feature, which is optional (though on by default in some versions) and also available in Firefox and Chrome (and possibly also on by default in some versions.)
And the OS X version is limited to a browser, as opposed to the Windows versions (which I've seen) which lock you out of the whole OS and can be VERY hard to get around.
The author's suggestion is to reset Safari (as in, clear cache, remove cookies, etc.) but wouldn't you also just be able to turn off the "restore session" option and then force-quit and relaunch? Also, you could relaunch, and press 'escape' or 'command-period' repeatedly to keep the page from loading.
.... about fucking retarded shitheads like this speaking in public and telling lies?
"Our system works, the database works. What needs to happen is the state's database need to be complete."
WRONG, fuckface. 1) If, according to the evidence, the system isn't working, then the system isn't working. Expected behavior: the correct person gets tickets. Observed behavior: the wrong person gets tickets. How can you say that "works"? 2) If a part of the SYSTEM isn't working (like the database), then the SYSTEM isn't working, because a SYSTEM is "a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole."
> They can have performance envelopes that > won't allow a human inside.
And that will be the death (pardon the term) of manned air combat -- once the enemy has so many great drones that the U.S. pilot survival rate nears 0%, we'll quit sending people out in planes to fight.
Yes, I'm sure that the (more or less) biggest company in the world, currently being run by the operations guy who helped them reach record-setting levels of profit in the last decade, did not do their homework when evaluating manufacturing partners. Thanks, random blogger guy, I'm sure they'll straighten all their shit out post-haste!
Or maybe, just maybe, the guy who runs one of the most successful companies on the planet and earns more in a year than you and your family could earn in ten lifetimes, actually knows what the fuck he is doing. Just a thought.
Slotted FTW! I want to be able to get into my phone with the same tool I use to remove lightswitch covers -- a butter knife.:-)
(This is this reason my mom started keeping a screwdriver w/ interchangeable bits in the silverware drawer -- because that's where my dad always went when he needed to unscrew something.)
You drive it all around, only letting it rest when YOU'RE done with it; you leave it outside, in the heat, cold, and rain; you don't bring it to a mechanic until it's been making "that noise" for months; and in the end, you let some guy to it away to a crusher.
Yeah, I'm getting close to switching. With 3 smartphones on AT&T's old 200MB-per-month-per-line plan (and $15 each time you go over), 550 shared minutes, and unlimited texting, we're at about $155/mo. The T-Mo plan you describe (unlimited everything, 500 MB of 3G data+tethering, followed by EDGE speeds/no tethering when you pass that) is $50 for the first line, $30 for the second, and $10 for each additional. Plus some taxes and fees, and minus a discount for belonging to AAA, we could have all 3 lines for under $100/mo. The only downside: I'm testing them this month with an old iPhone 3G and I'm seeing EDGE as often as not.:-(
> Many of those Apple computers ended up being unused... > they didn't fit into any educational plan...
And whose fault was that? I graduated from 6th grade in 1984 and we had a few Apple IIs at my elementary school. We had a teacher who had a clue and we learned BASIC and LOGO. I'm now a programmer. (And no 'GOTO considered harmful' jokes, please -- I'm no Dennis Ritchie, but it didn't break me.) I learned the basics of logic, data structures, how computers work, and enjoyed being able to make a machine do something neat.
Some people act out of pure malice. There IS such thing as people who not only don't contribute, they have a SUBSTANTIAL net negative effect on a project, and they are doing it on purpose. This is destructive behavior and it should be eliminated. Period.
> Yeah, I got hate mail, but not much, and so > fucking what anyway? 95% of the mail was > YOU ROCK, DUDE!!
Well good for you. What if it was 95% negative? 98%? 99%? 100%? At what point would you decide "fuck this, it isn't worth it."? What if all your mail was "you're wasting your life, how can you waste time on a game when people are starving? go do something useful!"
Also: different people are different. It's not up to you to decide how much crap anyone should accept, because I guaranfuckingtee you, there are some things that piss you off ROYALLY that I don't mind at all, and you wouldn't be very happy if it was up to me to decide how much of that you had to deal with. How would you like to work with a dead, maggot-infested cat on your desk, or in a room with flickering lights, or with loud rap/country/ska/harpsichord/whatever music playing, or surrounded by ugly naked people? What if you sat on a barstool and your boss kicked it out from under you every time he walked by?
Finally: he has facts on his side. Ask any sociologist "do negative people have a negative effect on a group's performance?" and you will hear a "yes" EVERY FUCKING TIME. No argument here -- it's fucking MEASURABLE. It's fucking REPEATABLE. It's fucking SCIENCE. Asking people to put up with bad behavior when they don't have to is STUPID.
Slashdot Mirror
> Claiming that the waste investigation costs more
> than the loss from the waste is meaningless.
Sometimes, but not in this case. The first question should have been "What?!? Space vikings?!? Who paid for this crap? ... Oh, not us? OK then." The "investigation" should have been 1 or 2 phone calls.
Rule #1: Verify that your premise and assumptions are correct before proceeding. If you go into something thinking "This seems like a waste of tax dollars!", your first questions MUST be "Was it paid for with tax dollars?" To not do so is... wasteful.
"Call it the TouchPad Strategy: cut the price of Microsoftâ(TM)s struggling tablet to pennies on the dollar, and watch the sales spike."
The point is to make MONEY, not SALES, you fucking idiot. Calling it "the TouchPad strategy" might make it SOUND neat, but it does not actually MAKE it a good thing, any more than someone would want to use "the Napoleon strategy" for fighting the Russians in winter. There are certain times when you do a "loss leader" to gain a little ground, but it's not the answer to everything.
Apple has sold over 100M iPads. (As of October 2012, the first number I could find -- probably closer to 150M by now.) MS could dump those six million Surfaces on the market for FREE and their share in the tablet market would jump from close to zero percent to MAYBE five percent. Woo hoo.
Imagine Microsoft pricing the Surface at a mere pittance, say $50 or $75 â" even in this era of cheaper tablets, the devices would fly off the shelves so fast, the sales rate would make the iPad look like the Zune.
1) And then Apple could sell theirs for $1! :-|
2) MS would be taking a HUGE loss on them. They make OK money at $500. $400 might be break even. I'm pretty sure they don't want to lose $300 or more on each sale. That would lead to...
- raising the price 5-10x on the next release to return to profitability -- which no one would like if they were used to them being so cheap.
- leave them cheap forever, lose money forever.
There's a historical precedent for such a maneuver.
Yeah, it's called a "fire sale", and it's a final grasp at a few bucks, not part of a long-term strategy.
In 2011, Hewlett-Packard decided to terminate its TouchPad tablet after a few weeks of poor sales. In a bid to clear its inventory, the company dropped the TouchPad's starting price to $99, which sent people rushing into stores in a way they hadn't when the device was priced at $499.
Because they were retarded. They could have dropped to $349 and made a LOT more money and still sold every one, but in a much calmer fashion. Believe it or not, there is a sweet spot between "Sell none at $499" and "Sell thousands in hours at $99." It's called "supply and demand" and it's covered in the first 5 minutes of your first economics class.
Despite that sales spike, HP decided to kill the TouchPad...
No, the decision was already made. They decided to leave it dead because a) the CEO that day wanted out of that business and b) there was at least ONE person in the company who realized the million-percent spike in demand was due to the crazy price.
... the margins on $99 obviously didn't work out to everyone's satisfaction.
NO FUCKING SHIT. But that would be totally different with the Surface because... um...
Why not clear them out by knocking a couple hundred dollars off the price? It's not as if they're going anywhere, anyway.
Sure. We might see that. Though MS would want to save more face than HP would -- HP was leaving the business, period, whereas MS still a) sells the OS and b) needs for their to be hardware for that OS to run it on. Whether that hardware is made my MS or someone else, Windows can't be seen as a daed-end brand, like WebOS.
I'm guessing they'll either do incremental lowerings to clear out stock, or one good (but not ridiculous) price drop, like maybe $349. Possible $329 to directly compete on price with the smaller iPad mini. A lot depends on if MS is going to release another Surface RT. If so, it will be a small lowering, a typical "hey, last year's model is cheaper now." If not, it'll drop a bit more to clear them out in a reasonable time, but don't expect HP-like prices.
Overpriced, overhyped flops are nothing new. Here's a list of FIFTY -- and that's only since 1995. That's almost 3 per year. (And those are just the biggest -- not even ALL the bombs.) So five or six* big flops this year does not mean DOOOOOOOOOOOOM! It didn't kill the industry in 1999, 2001, 2002, or 2005.
(Interestingly, I've only seen 6 films on that list. Shame that K-19 is there -- that was a pretty good flick.)
* Fun fact: 'R.I.P.D.,' 'After Earth,' 'White House Down,' 'Pacific Rim,' and 'The Lone Ranger' is FIVE films, not SIX. Unless "Ranger" sucked so bad you're counting it twice.
He's a multi-quadrillionaire, he doesn't have to be good at math.
One half exists just to supply updates to the other half.
"... all of their servers are all currently down. You can confirm this by visiting [link]."
Very funny, guys. Kick'em while they're down.
In places where they're just used a lot for a bit of text, like a URL, why don't we just agree on a specific shape into which we put plain text to be OCRed? The human can verify it's the information he wants and is expecting before scanning and following a link.
Thanks for the reminder. Here's another -- multipliers aren't just for video games. See if your company does donation matching -- the EFF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
It's completely useless unless you are connected to and can do lookups in a gigantic database. So in other words, it's completely useless. So what if it's easier to remember and say than, say, lat/lon coordinates -- lat/lon has a dozen other advantages. If you need to refer to a place by name to someone, agree on a meaningful name. "Use this prebuilt list of a trillion random names" is pretty dumb.
Ignore that, what about the "The information in all notifications submitted through the Program will be accurate" part?
It takes advantage of Safari's "restore last window" feature, which is optional (though on by default in some versions) and also available in Firefox and Chrome (and possibly also on by default in some versions.)
And the OS X version is limited to a browser, as opposed to the Windows versions (which I've seen) which lock you out of the whole OS and can be VERY hard to get around.
The author's suggestion is to reset Safari (as in, clear cache, remove cookies, etc.) but wouldn't you also just be able to turn off the "restore session" option and then force-quit and relaunch? Also, you could relaunch, and press 'escape' or 'command-period' repeatedly to keep the page from loading.
.... about fucking retarded shitheads like this speaking in public and telling lies?
"Our system works, the database works. What needs to happen is the state's database need to be complete."
WRONG, fuckface. 1) If, according to the evidence, the system isn't working, then the system isn't working. Expected behavior: the correct person gets tickets. Observed behavior: the wrong person gets tickets. How can you say that "works"? 2) If a part of the SYSTEM isn't working (like the database), then the SYSTEM isn't working, because a SYSTEM is "a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole."
> It looks to me more likely the problem was excessive weight at the
> bow and stern rather then midships, the effect is called hogging...
First line of TFA: "On June 17, Mitsui O.S.K. Lines' MOL Comfort began suffering from severe hogging..."
It's actually not that great. It just says 'OMG' and then like 15 emoji.
> They can have performance envelopes that
> won't allow a human inside.
And that will be the death (pardon the term) of manned air combat -- once the enemy has so many great drones that the U.S. pilot survival rate nears 0%, we'll quit sending people out in planes to fight.
And next, I'll make a geotagged database of houses where NO guns are owned. Then you will know where all your like-minded, safe friends are.
Sure, criminals might also like a nice list of defenseless houses, but hey, if it's good for the goose...
Yes, I'm sure that the (more or less) biggest company in the world, currently being run by the operations guy who helped them reach record-setting levels of profit in the last decade, did not do their homework when evaluating manufacturing partners. Thanks, random blogger guy, I'm sure they'll straighten all their shit out post-haste!
Or maybe, just maybe, the guy who runs one of the most successful companies on the planet and earns more in a year than you and your family could earn in ten lifetimes, actually knows what the fuck he is doing. Just a thought.
> Electrifying the vehicle fleet is like modularizing your code.
A computer analogy in a car thread. Nice. :-)
Slotted FTW! I want to be able to get into my phone with the same tool I use to remove lightswitch covers -- a butter knife. :-)
(This is this reason my mom started keeping a screwdriver w/ interchangeable bits in the silverware drawer -- because that's where my dad always went when he needed to unscrew something.)
You drive it all around, only letting it rest when YOU'RE done with it; you leave it outside, in the heat, cold, and rain; you don't bring it to a mechanic until it's been making "that noise" for months; and in the end, you let some guy to it away to a crusher.
Yeah, I'm getting close to switching. With 3 smartphones on AT&T's old 200MB-per-month-per-line plan (and $15 each time you go over), 550 shared minutes, and unlimited texting, we're at about $155/mo. The T-Mo plan you describe (unlimited everything, 500 MB of 3G data+tethering, followed by EDGE speeds/no tethering when you pass that) is $50 for the first line, $30 for the second, and $10 for each additional. Plus some taxes and fees, and minus a discount for belonging to AAA, we could have all 3 lines for under $100/mo. The only downside: I'm testing them this month with an old iPhone 3G and I'm seeing EDGE as often as not. :-(
> Many of those Apple computers ended up being unused...
> they didn't fit into any educational plan...
And whose fault was that? I graduated from 6th grade in 1984 and we had a few Apple IIs at my elementary school. We had a teacher who had a clue and we learned BASIC and LOGO. I'm now a programmer. (And no 'GOTO considered harmful' jokes, please -- I'm no Dennis Ritchie, but it didn't break me.) I learned the basics of logic, data structures, how computers work, and enjoyed being able to make a machine do something neat.
Some people act out of pure malice. There IS such thing as people who not only don't contribute, they have a SUBSTANTIAL net negative effect on a project, and they are doing it on purpose. This is destructive behavior and it should be eliminated. Period.
> Yeah, I got hate mail, but not much, and so
> fucking what anyway? 95% of the mail was
> YOU ROCK, DUDE!!
Well good for you. What if it was 95% negative? 98%? 99%? 100%? At what point would you decide "fuck this, it isn't worth it."? What if all your mail was "you're wasting your life, how can you waste time on a game when people are starving? go do something useful!"
Also: different people are different. It's not up to you to decide how much crap anyone should accept, because I guaranfuckingtee you, there are some things that piss you off ROYALLY that I don't mind at all, and you wouldn't be very happy if it was up to me to decide how much of that you had to deal with. How would you like to work with a dead, maggot-infested cat on your desk, or in a room with flickering lights, or with loud rap/country/ska/harpsichord/whatever music playing, or surrounded by ugly naked people? What if you sat on a barstool and your boss kicked it out from under you every time he walked by?
Finally: he has facts on his side. Ask any sociologist "do negative people have a negative effect on a group's performance?" and you will hear a "yes" EVERY FUCKING TIME. No argument here -- it's fucking MEASURABLE. It's fucking REPEATABLE. It's fucking SCIENCE. Asking people to put up with bad behavior when they don't have to is STUPID.
... we're doing six tuners.