Over the past five years, FedEx and UPS have spent a combined $100 million lobbying Congress. Because neither company has a delivery network nearly as sprawling as [the USPS], they contract with the postal service to deliver the "final mile" of much of their cargo. For instance, more than 21 percent of all FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a postal carrier. Meanwhile, millions of postal-service letters hitch rides on FedEx flights every day, for which the company gets paid $1 billion a year. FedEx and UPS don't want the postal service to go out of business but to remain contained, out of the way...
> Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not > the mail? I'm not sure what magic the USPS possesses that private > industry couldn't do better anyway
Fact: you have it exactly backwards. The system that UPS and FedEx have "perfected" is... TO USE THE USPS! Can you believe that? A fucking FIFTH of all FedEx deliveries are actually done by the USPS. Abolish them and FedEx will DIE.
FedEx and UPS are perfect examples of the 90/10 rule. You can service 90% of the people with 10% of the total effort... and serving those last 10% takes 90%. But you should NEVER look at something like that and come to the conclusion "Why don't we just ignore that last 10%?" I guarantee you, yo or someone you care about is in the lower 10% of something -- schooling needs, medical needs, etc. Everyone subsidizes someone, and everyone benefits from a subsidy at some point.
That said, I wish the USPS wasn't in the junk mail business. It is a disgusting waste of time, energy, and natural resources. Literally 90% of my mail (by weight) goes straight into the recycle bin, unread.
>> Computers long ago reached the point >> where they were fast enough...
> For you, maybe - but not for everyone.
Walt Mossberg: "Do you think the tablet will succeed the laptop?"
Steve Jobs: "When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn't care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars... PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people."
Maybe we're not smelling it because we smell it all the time so we're *used* to smelling it and don't notice?;-)
You're right, it's odorless. I forgot. It was early when I posted. I was thinking of the pollution from car exhaust in general, which was foolish of me because, as the good rep. surely knows, it's only CO2 that we need to worry about. No reason to discuss carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, or anything else.
I haven't read the book but I find that hard to believe for many reasons.
1. You are going to breathe some anyway, so you need to look at how much more CO2 you give off than if you were just sitting. And they need to compare a typical rider, not Lance Armstrong in competition mode. The bicycle is one of the most efficient forms of transportation ever made, in terms of distance traveled per energy put in. I rode a bike pretty much exclusively in college, and in a flat town, it's less work than walking. Pedal, coast. Pedal, coast. Pedal, coast.
2. If you're going to look at all the CO2 it took to make some asparagus, then you need to be fair and look at all the CO2 it took to make every single component of the car, and assemble the car, and all the CO2 it took to gather and refine the petroleum that's in the tank -- not just the CO2 that's coming out the tailpipe. I'd also be curious how he made his measurements -- like the saying goes, it takes a lot to build a factory to make one can of soup, but after you've done that, the next million cans are pretty easy.
3. I'd also like the see the footprints of more foods. There's probably a 10x, if not 100x, difference between the highest and lowest foods, and as you say, we don't all eat just asparagus.
4. And finally, are you talking about the entire bus, or just one rider's worth? The good Rep. Orcutt is talking about biking versus driving a car, and we all know that a bus with 60 people gives off less CO2 than 60 people driving.
If you're familiar with the book, I'd be curious to know the answer to any of those questions.
In any case, the representative is full of shit. When I'm walking my kid to school, and we get to the door, I can smell the exhaust of the dozens of cars sitting there. It does not smell like that from an equal number of people breathing.
... this story makes me want to stay up late pouring a couple extra foundations for my house. I mean seriously: "Earth swallows man while he sleeps"?!?!? FUCK!
Right. Because nothing that has ever happened in a fictional movie has ever happened in real life, and vice-versa. The sets do not overlap. It's Logic 101.
> Update: 02/25 17:24 GMT by U L : The headline/article are misleading...
Change your passwords, everyone! Slashdot has obviously been bitten by the hackers that got into Facebook, Apple, and now Microsoft. Don't worry admins, I'm here to help. Fixing a misleading story? EDITING, fer chrissakes?!? NOT ON MY WATCH, YOU DON'T!
> Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new > programming language. We believe that the only > remaining eco-system is the web and there are more > developers for the web than for any other platform in the world...
Developers aren't lazy slobs who follow the path of least resistance. Developers who want to get paid will go where the money is. That requires many things; chief among them, a way to collect money.iOS delivers this in spades; Android delivers a little bit. Making money with a web app will be exceptionally hard. Yes, there are advantages to web technologies, but not enough to make a web-based OS on a phone take off.
> How can microsoft make good business from consumers, > without risking their revenue stream from business?
A better question: How can Microsoft come to terms with the fact that it should just be a fantastic product for business and quit worrying about the consumer market? Just like the kid who has to accept that he'll be an accountant, not a pop star, MS should just focus on business and accept the fact that it'll never be cool like Apple. Just be like plain old boring profitable IBM.
Step 1: quit doing crap like making the-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro the default. Step 2: Refine, refine, refine. Make the products better each release (note: NOT each year) and don't add new crap just because it's new. Live search in the start menu? Great idea. (Even if Apple did it first.) Doing away with the start menu? Not so much. Smarter window managing? YES. More like this please.
Just focus on making a product that lets people who need to do more than one thing at a time be super-productive. I'm an Apple fan and I love my Mac and my iPhone, and the iPad is nice but I barely use mine. Whenever I want to do anything that's not totally trivial, it's worth the time to wake up my laptop and work on that, rather than slowly poking around from one iPad screen to the next.
> A good product is easy to market, you don't > have to think of how to market it.
Bull. PLENTY of people have ideas that they know deep down inside are good, but they don't know how to communicate that quality to others. If they don't, the idea goes nowhere, like a car with a great engine but no wheels.
Watch the video. Sliced bread was around for a LONG time before it took off. What changed? Marketing. It was the same product, before success and after. Marketing was the only difference.
> If you can't figure out on what basis you will > market the product, you don't have a product. > You have a project.
No, you have a product in need of marketing. I don't mean that anything *can* be made successful with *just* good marketing, but just because you don't have the gift to communicate things well, doesn't mean you don't have a brain capable of creating a desirable, potentially successful product.
Slashdot Mirror
... will they allow other browsers on their new mobile OS?
Read this. Seriously. It answers all your questions.
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-trouble-0213?page=all
Like this little nugget:
Over the past five years, FedEx and UPS have spent a combined $100 million lobbying Congress. Because neither company has a delivery network nearly as sprawling as [the USPS], they contract with the postal service to deliver the "final mile" of much of their cargo. For instance, more than 21 percent of all FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a postal carrier. Meanwhile, millions of postal-service letters hitch rides on FedEx flights every day, for which the company gets paid $1 billion a year. FedEx and UPS don't want the postal service to go out of business but to remain contained, out of the way...
> Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not
> the mail? I'm not sure what magic the USPS possesses that private
> industry couldn't do better anyway
Fact: you have it exactly backwards. The system that UPS and FedEx have "perfected" is... TO USE THE USPS! Can you believe that? A fucking FIFTH of all FedEx deliveries are actually done by the USPS. Abolish them and FedEx will DIE.
FedEx and UPS are perfect examples of the 90/10 rule. You can service 90% of the people with 10% of the total effort... and serving those last 10% takes 90%. But you should NEVER look at something like that and come to the conclusion "Why don't we just ignore that last 10%?" I guarantee you, yo or someone you care about is in the lower 10% of something -- schooling needs, medical needs, etc. Everyone subsidizes someone, and everyone benefits from a subsidy at some point.
That said, I wish the USPS wasn't in the junk mail business. It is a disgusting waste of time, energy, and natural resources. Literally 90% of my mail (by weight) goes straight into the recycle bin, unread.
>> Computers long ago reached the point
>> where they were fast enough...
> For you, maybe - but not for everyone.
Walt Mossberg: "Do you think the tablet will succeed the laptop?"
Steve Jobs: "When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks, because that's what you needed on the farm. But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn't care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars... PCs are going to be like trucks. They're still going to be around, they're still going to have a lot of value, but they're going to be used by one out of X people."
http://allthingsd.com/20100601/steve-jobs-session/
Maybe we're not smelling it because we smell it all the time so we're *used* to smelling it and don't notice? ;-)
You're right, it's odorless. I forgot. It was early when I posted. I was thinking of the pollution from car exhaust in general, which was foolish of me because, as the good rep. surely knows, it's only CO2 that we need to worry about. No reason to discuss carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, or anything else.
I haven't read the book but I find that hard to believe for many reasons.
1. You are going to breathe some anyway, so you need to look at how much more CO2 you give off than if you were just sitting. And they need to compare a typical rider, not Lance Armstrong in competition mode. The bicycle is one of the most efficient forms of transportation ever made, in terms of distance traveled per energy put in. I rode a bike pretty much exclusively in college, and in a flat town, it's less work than walking. Pedal, coast. Pedal, coast. Pedal, coast.
2. If you're going to look at all the CO2 it took to make some asparagus, then you need to be fair and look at all the CO2 it took to make every single component of the car, and assemble the car, and all the CO2 it took to gather and refine the petroleum that's in the tank -- not just the CO2 that's coming out the tailpipe. I'd also be curious how he made his measurements -- like the saying goes, it takes a lot to build a factory to make one can of soup, but after you've done that, the next million cans are pretty easy.
3. I'd also like the see the footprints of more foods. There's probably a 10x, if not 100x, difference between the highest and lowest foods, and as you say, we don't all eat just asparagus.
4. And finally, are you talking about the entire bus, or just one rider's worth? The good Rep. Orcutt is talking about biking versus driving a car, and we all know that a bus with 60 people gives off less CO2 than 60 people driving.
If you're familiar with the book, I'd be curious to know the answer to any of those questions.
In any case, the representative is full of shit. When I'm walking my kid to school, and we get to the door, I can smell the exhaust of the dozens of cars sitting there. It does not smell like that from an equal number of people breathing.
Step 1: Close Slashdot. :-|
Step 2: Not sure what that is, because I've never completed Step 1.
... this story makes me want to stay up late pouring a couple extra foundations for my house. I mean seriously: "Earth swallows man while he sleeps"?!?!? FUCK!
[Invalid] - Markup Validation of ht tp://www.code.org/ - W3C Markup Validator
Errors found while checking this document as -//W3C//DTD HTML+RDFa 1.1//EN!
Result: 222 Errors, 127 warning(s)
(Also funny that the w3 uses a '(s)' after 'warnng' but not for 'error'.)
Come to think of it, it could lead to problems. What if you read a lot of blogs hosted on wordpress.com? Or use many apps on *.google.com?
1.porn.com, 2.porn.com, 3.porn.com...
Actually, that could be handy -- you could store lots of music from song.album.artist.someMP3site.com.
For the story to be posted on Slashdot? Could be a while. :-)
Need help? I can whip up a GUI Interface in Visual Basic to track their IP address.
Kyle Reese: "The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy. But these are new."
Right. Because nothing that has ever happened in a fictional movie has ever happened in real life, and vice-versa. The sets do not overlap. It's Logic 101.
St-ve J-bs
> Update: 02/25 17:24 GMT by U L : The headline/article are misleading...
Change your passwords, everyone! Slashdot has obviously been bitten by the hackers that got into Facebook, Apple, and now Microsoft. Don't worry admins, I'm here to help. Fixing a misleading story? EDITING, fer chrissakes?!? NOT ON MY WATCH, YOU DON'T!
If the headline had ended with a question mark -- "HP Back In Tablet Game With Android-Based 'Slate7'?" -- we could simply answer "no".
> Developers are busy and don't have time to learn a new
> programming language. We believe that the only
> remaining eco-system is the web and there are more
> developers for the web than for any other platform in the world...
Developers aren't lazy slobs who follow the path of least resistance. Developers who want to get paid will go where the money is. That requires many things; chief among them, a way to collect money. iOS delivers this in spades; Android delivers a little bit. Making money with a web app will be exceptionally hard. Yes, there are advantages to web technologies, but not enough to make a web-based OS on a phone take off.
That would require a consistent editorial voice, which in turn implies "editing". :-)
I used to play Time Crisis a lot in college, almost 20 years ago. While drunk. Haven't shot anyone yet.
> How can microsoft make good business from consumers,
> without risking their revenue stream from business?
A better question: How can Microsoft come to terms with the fact that it should just be a fantastic product for business and quit worrying about the consumer market? Just like the kid who has to accept that he'll be an accountant, not a pop star, MS should just focus on business and accept the fact that it'll never be cool like Apple. Just be like plain old boring profitable IBM.
Step 1: quit doing crap like making the-UI-formerly-known-as-Metro the default. Step 2: Refine, refine, refine. Make the products better each release (note: NOT each year) and don't add new crap just because it's new. Live search in the start menu? Great idea. (Even if Apple did it first.) Doing away with the start menu? Not so much. Smarter window managing? YES. More like this please.
Just focus on making a product that lets people who need to do more than one thing at a time be super-productive. I'm an Apple fan and I love my Mac and my iPhone, and the iPad is nice but I barely use mine. Whenever I want to do anything that's not totally trivial, it's worth the time to wake up my laptop and work on that, rather than slowly poking around from one iPad screen to the next.
> A good product is easy to market, you don't
> have to think of how to market it.
Bull. PLENTY of people have ideas that they know deep down inside are good, but they don't know how to communicate that quality to others. If they don't, the idea goes nowhere, like a car with a great engine but no wheels.
Watch the video. Sliced bread was around for a LONG time before it took off. What changed? Marketing. It was the same product, before success and after. Marketing was the only difference.
> If you can't figure out on what basis you will
> market the product, you don't have a product.
> You have a project.
No, you have a product in need of marketing. I don't mean that anything *can* be made successful with *just* good marketing, but just because you don't have the gift to communicate things well, doesn't mean you don't have a brain capable of creating a desirable, potentially successful product.
iOS has a very good 24x7x364 rating -- the only problem is that something always goes wrong at New Year's.
> Multitouch? They had that in the original surface, the
> table not that tablet, before the iPhone existed.
From Wikipedia:
"[Steve] Jobs unveiled the iPhone to the public on January 9, 2007"
"Microsoft Surface... was announced on May 29, 2007 at the D5 Conference."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_PixelSense
No no no, you're supposed to post "Had an SSD in my laptop for just over a year and a half now, no issues wha*($&%*&)#NO CARRIER"