It doesn't seem like an infeasable product - consider the price that all-in-one 8-bit game machines like the C64 DTV go for, add that to the price that the cheap organizers go for, and you get a retail value under $50.
It seems that out of every 10 Ask Slashdots, at least 1 is based on the "features = cost" fallacy. One more time: the cost of something is not based on the number of features it has. It's based on the cost of developing it, marketing it, starting a production line, and distributing it, divided by the number of people who actually buy it. If only a few people are interested in buying a piece of hardware with a particular set of features, individual units are not going to be slightly more expensive than similar standard hardware -- they'll be a lot more expensive or (more likely) not available at all.
And how much does it cost to buy a house in Clay County? The very name suggests you live in a rural area where housing prices are relatively low. If CC ever becomes an urban area where houses are expensive, and people view them as an important investment, you can count on new zoning laws and housing codes designed to protect property values.
Dividends are kind of old hat. Companies founded in the last 20 years mostly don't pay them, arguing that profits are better spent on growing the company and thus raising the stock price. Investers are mostly fine with that, because it's harder to avoid taxes on dividends than on stock you sell at a profit.
Microsoft has worked on this basis until very recently, and only began paying dividends a couple years ago. I forget how they justified the change, but I suspect the big reason is they had more cash lying around than they could hope to invest, and it was losing value on the money market.
Obviously not. But when homes are as expensive as they are, it's not just a place to live, it's a long-term investment. And the current value of a big investment is always a concern, even if you have no plans to sell.
I'll take your word for that. But I suspect that you would have to claim the chickens as pets. I think most places restrict you to a maximum of 6 pets bigger than a goldfish.
Least they seem to tolerant, I have to point out that Palo Alto is notorious for trying to keep non-residents out of city parks...
Code and city regulations are normally for big picture items...
No, code and city regulations are for addressing the fears and loathings of voter/taxpayers who have most of their net worth tied up in an expensive house, and will vote out any politician they see as insufficiently protective of same!
I say these things just to describe the psychology and origins of the anti-tinhouse edict, not to justify it. I actually find this attitude pretty repulsive. Then again, I don't own a house, and will probably never be able to afford one -- so I can afford to be cynical!
It isn't about California
on
Tinfoil Hat House
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Not only are you not a Californian, but you've obviously never owned a house -- or owned one that was worth so little, you didn't obssess over things that might affect the value of your property. In most of urban California, you have to sell your soul in order to afford a house -- which makes people insanely aware of anything that might lower property values. People will hassle you just for parking a rusty car in front of your house.
And of coursethey pass zoning laws that minimize any and all activities affecting same. So forget about raising chickens in your back yard, or painting your house a funny color. And you damn well better take good care of your lawn, if you value your freedom!
In that context, a strong reaction to a house covered with metal foil is most predictable. The only suprise is that the neighbors took the time to call the code enforcement people, instead of rounding up a lynch mob!
If your situation is any better, don't feel too smug. Housing costs are going up everywhere, and the same obsesssion with property values is spreading like a disease.
What does "integrating services" have to do with anything? Time-Warner didn't merge with AOL just to get bigger. They're a media company, and there was an important growing medium that they needed to grow into, quickly: the Internet. One way to do this is to merge with an Internet company.
As it happened the merger was a disaster. But that wasn't because the idea of merging with an Internet company was bad. It was because the Internet company Time Warner chose to merge with was an overvalued and mismanaged turkey.
AOL did indeed buy Time-Warner, but it was really a merger. At the time, nobody realized (that they'll admit) how inflated AOL stock was, so it seemed to make sense to structure the merger as acquisition. That allowed them to pay for the merger simply by giving AOL stock to Time-Warner shareholders and renaming AOL as "AOL-Time-Warner".
"AOL bought Time-Warner", while technically correct, is pretty misleading, since Time-Warner management initially had an equal role in the combined company. And "equal" soon changed to "dominant" as it become more and the AOL part would never lived up to initial expectations, and shareholders granted more and more authority to the Time-Warner part.
How many is "quite a few"? If you're talking "thousands" or "hundreds of thousands", then yeah, that's a lot of people. But not enough to make a new hardware platform economically viable.
...if you can do this, why accept just $250,000 for what could be the biggest invention in human history?
It's only big if you're founding a lunar colony, and I don't see that happening in our lifetimes. That would require regular, safe passenger and freight service into deep space, and nobody's every been serious about funding that. Instead of we've expensive demos like the Apollo and Shuttle programs, which both have significant accomplishments, but neither of which have done jack towards creating a real infrastructure for space travel.
NASA's number 1 priority these days is justifying their continued existence. Which is hard to do when your job is space exploration, and your budget doesn't extend to much in the way of actual exploration of space. The solution? Contests!
Well now. If Moodle is at all comparible with Blackboard (I'm in no position to judge, not being an educator), you've made a very good suggestion. The one compelling argument in favor of OSS proprietary software is that there's less risk of lockin with a single vendor. Moodle seems to have taken that concept and run with it as far as they possibly can. If I were making recomendations to LECOM, I'd give this a very hard look indeed.
I notice that Blackboard is offered both as a software product and a hosted solution. Which is your school considering? If they plan to just buy the software and host it themselves, then you only need to convince them that there's a better OSS product. But if they're looking for a hosted solution, you have to offer not just an alternate software package but an ASP that can host it.
It's pretty easy to tell somebody else to take a "Do it my way or I'm out of here" attitude. Which is why we get comments like this one every time we discuss workplace problems. But when your own job is at stake, the dangers of copping an arrogant attitude become rather more obvious.
In the real world, you have to do a good job of justifying yourself when you want your boss to spend money. And then the boss has to actually find the money. If you can't buy everything you think you need to do your job well, it maybe be your own fault, or it may be management stupidity. Either way, throwing a tantrum tends to be ineffective.
You're one overworked guy, so forget about a proper trouble-tracking system -- you don't have time to take care of it. You just need a set of web pages that you and the people you support can browse and edit without a lot of hassle. In other words, a Wiki
It's a little sad that most people still don't understand the difference between speed and acceleration. When I first read about the Scientific Revolution as a kid, the writer spent a lot of time sneering at medieval scholars who stubornly stuck to Aristotle's physics despite all the experimental evidence showing that it was wrong. But as far as most people are concerned (including the script writers on Star Trek) Aristotle has never been debunked.
If writing spyware is illegal in the country you live in, then it doesn't matter where your victims live. Prosecutors just have to show that your software is designed to invade people's computers.
I downloaded the LUGRadio show where they interviewed Miguel de Icaza. I was less than impressed by the insight of the LUG guys. They seemed to think that any project which might rely on Mono or.NET could just as easily be done in Python!
Slashdot Mirror
Gosh, I'm glad you cleared that up. I was going crazy trying to figure out where I could plug in a device with a 35-inch form factor!
And how much does it cost to buy a house in Clay County? The very name suggests you live in a rural area where housing prices are relatively low. If CC ever becomes an urban area where houses are expensive, and people view them as an important investment, you can count on new zoning laws and housing codes designed to protect property values.
Microsoft has worked on this basis until very recently, and only began paying dividends a couple years ago. I forget how they justified the change, but I suspect the big reason is they had more cash lying around than they could hope to invest, and it was losing value on the money market.
Obviously not. But when homes are as expensive as they are, it's not just a place to live, it's a long-term investment. And the current value of a big investment is always a concern, even if you have no plans to sell.
Least they seem to tolerant, I have to point out that Palo Alto is notorious for trying to keep non-residents out of city parks...
I say these things just to describe the psychology and origins of the anti-tinhouse edict, not to justify it. I actually find this attitude pretty repulsive. Then again, I don't own a house, and will probably never be able to afford one -- so I can afford to be cynical!
In that context, a strong reaction to a house covered with metal foil is most predictable. The only suprise is that the neighbors took the time to call the code enforcement people, instead of rounding up a lynch mob!
If your situation is any better, don't feel too smug. Housing costs are going up everywhere, and the same obsesssion with property values is spreading like a disease.
Actually, Johns tend to be non-local married men.
As it happened the merger was a disaster. But that wasn't because the idea of merging with an Internet company was bad. It was because the Internet company Time Warner chose to merge with was an overvalued and mismanaged turkey.
"AOL bought Time-Warner", while technically correct, is pretty misleading, since Time-Warner management initially had an equal role in the combined company. And "equal" soon changed to "dominant" as it become more and the AOL part would never lived up to initial expectations, and shareholders granted more and more authority to the Time-Warner part.
I don't suppose you have actual sales or profit figures to back up that assertion?
How many is "quite a few"? If you're talking "thousands" or "hundreds of thousands", then yeah, that's a lot of people. But not enough to make a new hardware platform economically viable.
NASA's number 1 priority these days is justifying their continued existence. Which is hard to do when your job is space exploration, and your budget doesn't extend to much in the way of actual exploration of space. The solution? Contests!
Moderation -1: recycling worn out jokes.
Well now. If Moodle is at all comparible with Blackboard (I'm in no position to judge, not being an educator), you've made a very good suggestion. The one compelling argument in favor of OSS proprietary software is that there's less risk of lockin with a single vendor. Moodle seems to have taken that concept and run with it as far as they possibly can. If I were making recomendations to LECOM, I'd give this a very hard look indeed.
I notice that Blackboard is offered both as a software product and a hosted solution. Which is your school considering? If they plan to just buy the software and host it themselves, then you only need to convince them that there's a better OSS product. But if they're looking for a hosted solution, you have to offer not just an alternate software package but an ASP that can host it.
I've never seen the point of these, except to look cute. They're too fragile to put in your wallet, so what does it matter that they're so small?
In the real world, you have to do a good job of justifying yourself when you want your boss to spend money. And then the boss has to actually find the money. If you can't buy everything you think you need to do your job well, it maybe be your own fault, or it may be management stupidity. Either way, throwing a tantrum tends to be ineffective.
You're one overworked guy, so forget about a proper trouble-tracking system -- you don't have time to take care of it. You just need a set of web pages that you and the people you support can browse and edit without a lot of hassle. In other words, a Wiki
Not bad, for a bot. Is your source code available?
It's a little sad that most people still don't understand the difference between speed and acceleration. When I first read about the Scientific Revolution as a kid, the writer spent a lot of time sneering at medieval scholars who stubornly stuck to Aristotle's physics despite all the experimental evidence showing that it was wrong. But as far as most people are concerned (including the script writers on Star Trek) Aristotle has never been debunked.
If writing spyware is illegal in the country you live in, then it doesn't matter where your victims live. Prosecutors just have to show that your software is designed to invade people's computers.
I downloaded the LUGRadio show where they interviewed Miguel de Icaza. I was less than impressed by the insight of the LUG guys. They seemed to think that any project which might rely on Mono or .NET could just as easily be done in Python!