I'm not an economist or financial expert, but it would seem that it would be more difficult to put a price on a service than on a tangible good. It's like comparing (sorry) apples and oranges. Seriously, it's easy to see where the money goes: raw materials, processing equipment, employees, insurance, etc.
Since it sounds like you are asking where the money goes to help understand why it costs what it does, consider this:
There are equipment costs for service delivery (i.e.: routers in the case of an ISP, or trains on the case of Amtrak), and related expenses (i.e.: electricity for routers, fuel for trains). But the more important costs that aren't obvious are intellectual expenses (engineers to design and run networks, enginners to run trains). Not to mention repayment for investors for risking their hard-earned money in the first place.
Think of other services and how difficult it would be to determine where your money goes, and why it costs what it does:
More and more it reminds me of P.D.Q. Bach -- the least of all the Bachs. There's no evidence he existed except from Peter Shickele, who keeps finding more and more works composed by this supposed composer.
...or would everyone have preferred a version without ESR's comments and opinion, so that we could form our own?
If you can form your own opinion, what are you doing on Slashdot (and for that matter, what am I doing here too!)
Although I much prefer/.'s style of telling, up front, in the single paragraph front-page summary of the item that "...this is a good thing." or "...this is a bad thing."
I'm a Canadian on an H1-B visa and I've conducted recent interviews for software developer-style positions. The US talent is embarrassingly bad. I saw no less than five candidates who could not write a simple C routine to traverse a linked list. And this was one of the simpler questions.
Probably because all the good C programmers aren't out looking for jobs. But I do kind of agree. I too have interviewed many horrible Americans (I'm also an american), and find 9 time out of 10 a "programmer" turns out to be someone that put a CGI script on their personal web site once.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads
So in there might be the real reason for this. Maybe Oregon is looking to reduce the burden of maintaining license plates & vehicle registration, and would rather see all of its residents register their cars out of state. Bad move since Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, but instead relies a great deal on it's property tax.:)
"peaceful protest"
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
... of 200 women survivors from Bhopal delivered toxic waste from the abandoned Carbide factory back to Dow's Indian headquarters in Bombay...
From reading between the lines of the article, it appears that they are suing the protesters, and not all the survivors, for what sounds like an irresponsible protest rather than a peaceful one. If someone showed up at my company's door with deadly chemicals, we'd have to shut the place down for security reasons, at a cost to the business.
Dow may be wrong or negligent in compensating the survivors, but protesters causing a business to loose money to gain their attention or try and get them to change their action is about as effective as spanking a child when they don't eat their peas. They're just going to grow up hating those that spank them.
It's worth noting that command-line completion has been there for a while, I think since NT 4.0 or even earlier. Unfortunately it wasn't turned on by default, and required a manual registry entry changed (or import of a properly constructed.reg file).
Another case of life imitating art... or at least catching up with it. To anyone interested in nanotechnology, I suggest reading the Neal Stephenson book "The Diamond Age".
Well put. I couldn't agree with you more. I speak as an ex-goth, ex-punk-rocker, ex-nihilist. I don't see a problem with going through that as a phase as long as the person eventually grows out of it. It makes me sick to see grown people (i.e.: 30 year olds) still anti-establishment. Ugh.
Sorry, I should've been more clear.. I meant the new apple look: shades of grey with a tinge of blue, rounded corners, sans serif fonts, flat LCD-ish gui components, etc.. Intentional or not, if I took a quick glance at those screenshots, I would've sworn it was part of some new OS X application.
How many drivers are there? Will they all fit on a floppy diskette?
No, but why? To boot and run every piece of hardware in the system (video capture cards, usb devices, etc..)? I don't think that's a typical common user desire.
It's proprietary and not well supported hardware as well.. Take my Linux box -- I have a Haupaugue TV capture card that works under linux but under every distro requires a manual kernel config and recompile. My Kodak webcam works, but after finding the obscure USB driver that needed to be added to the kernel. My ESS soundcard that came with the Compaq needed manual module config. My Canon scanner currently has absolutely no open-source driver for it.
Problem is most hardware manufacturers aren't going to hire extra developers to release a driver for an OS with such a small desktop market-share. And releasing proprietary info to the public isn't just a matter of utting a pdf on the web -- there's legal & intellectual property issues that company has to consider (otherwise their stockholders could put management's balls in a vice).
I'd go so far as to say the old piece of shit stuff has a better chance of being supported, since it's been around longer, and most likely the korean company is using generic off-the-shelf chipsets for their products -- it's just a matter of finding out which one and applying the correct driver (which brings us back to the common user not wanting or being able to do it).
Linux has failed to catch on among ordinary users because PC manufacturers have been prevented from offering dual-boot systems.
The reason I've seen a few geek friends try out Linux then walk away disgusted (possibly forever) is hardware support. Sure, with modern distros almost all common hardware available is supported, but in a lot of cases it requires a kernel recompile, some config file changes, sometimes even low-level stuff like probing around to find out an IRQ setting.
Compare this to Windows. Not only does almost every piece of hardware come with a driver, most people are comfortable with the driver install process (and the ones that aren't usually have a family member or friend that is willing to do it).
Too bad Linux kernel & distro developers can't create a kernel standard for common release, and just put a stake in the ground and say "Here's Linux 2003. Any certified standard common pre-compiled driver module dated 2003 or older will work with this years Linux." No recompiling the damn kernel. Then of course there'd have to be a very standard common driver installation program... And the rest of us who want to recompile our kernels can still do it if we want.
Eh, but what do I know. I run BeOS and a driver is typically one file that I drop into a folder and usually begins running immediately.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Oh now look what you did: You woke the swarming team of Apple lawers on a beautiful sunday morning. They're going to be extra pissed.
Since it sounds like you are asking where the money goes to help understand why it costs what it does, consider this:
There are equipment costs for service delivery (i.e.: routers in the case of an ISP, or trains on the case of Amtrak), and related expenses (i.e.: electricity for routers, fuel for trains). But the more important costs that aren't obvious are intellectual expenses (engineers to design and run networks, enginners to run trains). Not to mention repayment for investors for risking their hard-earned money in the first place.
Think of other services and how difficult it would be to determine where your money goes, and why it costs what it does:
More and more it reminds me of P.D.Q. Bach -- the least of all the Bachs. There's no evidence he existed except from Peter Shickele, who keeps finding more and more works composed by this supposed composer.
Yes!!!
...or would everyone have preferred a version without ESR's comments and opinion, so that we could form our own?
/.'s style of telling, up front, in the single paragraph front-page summary of the item that "...this is a good thing." or "...this is a bad thing."
If you can form your own opinion, what are you doing on Slashdot (and for that matter, what am I doing here too!)
Although I much prefer
I'm a Canadian on an H1-B visa and I've conducted recent interviews for software developer-style positions. The US talent is embarrassingly bad. I saw no less than five candidates who could not write a simple C routine to traverse a linked list. And this was one of the simpler questions.
Probably because all the good C programmers aren't out looking for jobs. But I do kind of agree. I too have interviewed many horrible Americans (I'm also an american), and find 9 time out of 10 a "programmer" turns out to be someone that put a CGI script on their personal web site once.
that project wouldn't happen to be iaf, would it? :)
Does the disposible count?
However, Dow is dumping those same chemicals on somebody else's doorstep. They're just being nice enough to return them for analysis...
My mom always taught me that two wrongs don't make a right.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads
:)
So in there might be the real reason for this. Maybe Oregon is looking to reduce the burden of maintaining license plates & vehicle registration, and would rather see all of its residents register their cars out of state. Bad move since Oregon doesn't have a sales tax, but instead relies a great deal on it's property tax.
... of 200 women survivors from Bhopal delivered toxic waste from the abandoned Carbide factory back to Dow's Indian headquarters in Bombay...
From reading between the lines of the article, it appears that they are suing the protesters, and not all the survivors, for what sounds like an irresponsible protest rather than a peaceful one. If someone showed up at my company's door with deadly chemicals, we'd have to shut the place down for security reasons, at a cost to the business.
Dow may be wrong or negligent in compensating the survivors, but protesters causing a business to loose money to gain their attention or try and get them to change their action is about as effective as spanking a child when they don't eat their peas. They're just going to grow up hating those that spank them.
It's worth noting that command-line completion has been there for a while, I think since NT 4.0 or even earlier. Unfortunately it wasn't turned on by default, and required a manual registry entry changed (or import of a properly constructed .reg file).
Oops. I meant to put that smiley-face on it's own line. I should've previewed. :)
And there's another name for people who never outgrew being a hippie or whatever anti-establishmentness: Loser. :)
Another case of life imitating art... or at least catching up with it. To anyone interested in nanotechnology, I suggest reading the Neal Stephenson book "The Diamond Age".
Well put. I couldn't agree with you more. I speak as an ex-goth, ex-punk-rocker, ex-nihilist. I don't see a problem with going through that as a phase as long as the person eventually grows out of it. It makes me sick to see grown people (i.e.: 30 year olds) still anti-establishment. Ugh.
Well put. You sir are my hero.
Now someone will steal my thumb instead of my wallet.
Thanks!
Sorry, I should've been more clear.. I meant the new apple look: shades of grey with a tinge of blue, rounded corners, sans serif fonts, flat LCD-ish gui components, etc.. Intentional or not, if I took a quick glance at those screenshots, I would've sworn it was part of some new OS X application.
I'm sorry, I don't understand. Where's the usual "This is a good thing" or "This is a bad thing" tacked on to the news item that helps me comprehend?
...if Linux interface developers are going to rip anyone off, it should be Apple.
There's someone working on it...
The ghosts of horse-and-buggy inventors must be proud... that car manufacturers keep trying to emulate their mode of transportation.
How many drivers are there? Will they all fit on a floppy diskette?
No, but why? To boot and run every piece of hardware in the system (video capture cards, usb devices, etc..)? I don't think that's a typical common user desire.
...POS hardware...
It's proprietary and not well supported hardware as well.. Take my Linux box -- I have a Haupaugue TV capture card that works under linux but under every distro requires a manual kernel config and recompile. My Kodak webcam works, but after finding the obscure USB driver that needed to be added to the kernel. My ESS soundcard that came with the Compaq needed manual module config. My Canon scanner currently has absolutely no open-source driver for it.
Problem is most hardware manufacturers aren't going to hire extra developers to release a driver for an OS with such a small desktop market-share. And releasing proprietary info to the public isn't just a matter of utting a pdf on the web -- there's legal & intellectual property issues that company has to consider (otherwise their stockholders could put management's balls in a vice).
I'd go so far as to say the old piece of shit stuff has a better chance of being supported, since it's been around longer, and most likely the korean company is using generic off-the-shelf chipsets for their products -- it's just a matter of finding out which one and applying the correct driver (which brings us back to the common user not wanting or being able to do it).
Linux has failed to catch on among ordinary users because PC manufacturers have been prevented from offering dual-boot systems.
:)
The reason I've seen a few geek friends try out Linux then walk away disgusted (possibly forever) is hardware support. Sure, with modern distros almost all common hardware available is supported, but in a lot of cases it requires a kernel recompile, some config file changes, sometimes even low-level stuff like probing around to find out an IRQ setting.
Compare this to Windows. Not only does almost every piece of hardware come with a driver, most people are comfortable with the driver install process (and the ones that aren't usually have a family member or friend that is willing to do it).
Too bad Linux kernel & distro developers can't create a kernel standard for common release, and just put a stake in the ground and say "Here's Linux 2003. Any certified standard common pre-compiled driver module dated 2003 or older will work with this years Linux." No recompiling the damn kernel. Then of course there'd have to be a very standard common driver installation program... And the rest of us who want to recompile our kernels can still do it if we want.
Eh, but what do I know. I run BeOS and a driver is typically one file that I drop into a folder and usually begins running immediately.