When netflix launched in canada they all *lowered* their caps.
While it may be that they are engaging in "anti-competitive bullshit", from a pure economic perspective lowering bandwidth caps is EXACTLY what I would expect the carriers to do IF there is a scarcity of bandwidth. The carrier has built enough infrastructure to carry a finite amount of traffic. Presumably their infrastructure was built to accommodate some number of users times some amount of bandwidth allocated per user. Some will use less and some will use more and the ones who use less basically subsidize those who use more. If the ones who use more use too much, there may not be enough bandwidth to serve the customers who use less. You can prevent this with a data cap that keeps those who use more from using all the bandwidth. It's a stopgap measure but it works and makes sense if there is a scarcity of bandwidth.
Enter netflix and now some new subset of the users are now using a lot more bandwidth while the infrastructure is the same. Unless you go to metered billing, there are only two ways to keep the balance between the heavier users and the lighter users from getting out of whack. You can build more infrastructure or you can lower the data cap. Lowering the data cap keeps the lighter users from getting screwed and has the advantage to the telecom that it doesn't require any capital expenditure. Obviously it makes things more expensive for some percentage of users.
I'm not saying lowering the data caps is a good thing and I'm certainly not defending the carriers. All I'm saying is that with netflix coming on the scene lowering the data caps is actually the economically rational thing to do IF (very big caveat here) there is an actual scarcity of bandwidth. If bandwidth isn't actually scarce, then our anti-trust regulators should be looking at this very closely.
But there is no fixed cost for moving data around.
What you are saying is more or less correct but your terminology is wrong. What you are describing is properly called a variable cost not a fixed cost. The equipment used to build and operate the network is largely comprised of fixed costs. It costs the phone company the same money whether they send one packet or one million packets. The costs associated to a specific packet would be variable costs and as you rightly point out, the direct variable costs are negligible. As equipment is used, the fixed costs get amortized over a large volume of data and in time become negligible on a per packet basis. This doesn't mean they become zero but they start large and become small asymptotically.
That said there IS a cost that you are not considering. IF there is insufficient bandwidth available to serve all requests, then there is an opportunity cost associated with the data packet. If your data can't get through because someone else is hogging the pipe, you as a customer will get pissed and possible switch services (if possible). Since we know that the telecom providers have a large but finite amount of bandwidth available, opportunity costs matter. Hence data caps. They cannot serve all possible requests until their network has the capacity to do so. If they allow unlimited usage and people actually do use it that way (and some do), the telecom incurs an opportunity cost in the form of being unable to serve some of their customers.
In THEORY data caps make economic sense. In REALITY, it's probably more greed by the telecoms than a real problem most of the time.
IT is one of the most thankless tasks in existence. If everything is running well, people forget they exist. If something breaks or has to be taken offline for maintenance, someone is inevitably screaming bloody hell.
You think that is unique? Think anyone ever calls a policeman, a firefighter, or a paramedic because things are going well? How about a sports referee? If they do their job right no one notices them at all. If they screw up, EVERYONE notices them and not in a good way. Ever think about accounting? I promise you the only time you pay them a moment's attention is if your paycheck isn't correct. Bet you don't pay much attention to the bridges you drive over every day - unless of course one collapses underneath you. Then you want the head of the engineer who designed it wrong. You spend much time thinking about the fisherman who risks his life to put that salmon on your dinner plate? And if you want really, truly thankless jobs, consider being a soldier. Not only do most people not think about you, but it's part of the job description that others might try to kill you. Worse, many of the people you protect will call you a murderer for protecting them. I'll take some sniveling VP throwing an unreasoning hissy fit over being shot any day.
I can continue pretty much forever. Virtually every job is like this. People do not notice things running smoothly. IT is nothing special in this regard.
Internal sources of radiation are many orders of magnitude more disruptive for their power level.
That is not the same thing as saying they actually disrupt the electronics of the aircraft itself. Even granting that the radiation is amplified, the logic of your statement is a deductive fallacy. Saying "avionics are susceptible to interference from radiation" and then saying "aircraft bodies amplify radiation from consumer electronics" does not get you to "avionics are disrupted from consumer electronics". A + B does not equal C.
Because.. testing every possible consumer electronics device which might end up on an aircraft, against all the possible aircraft, and all of the possible variations of an aircraft is damned near impossible.
Don't need to. If you are actually worried about this being a problem, you simply either prohibit the device from being brought on board or you *require* it to be put it in a Faraday cage to prevent any transmissions from being problematic. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of consumer electronics fly every day and you can be sure many of them are not shut off no matter how much the flight attendants ask. The general public essentially acts as a flying test bed and there has NEVER ONCE been an accident caused by any cell phone or other piece of consumer electronics on any airline. Everyday use has proven this to be a non-issue.
While the risk may very well be greater than zero, the actual risk has to be extremely low. If it were a real problem, the airlines and the FAA would demand we not fly with our electronics. Actions speak louder than words.
Thats what you need to keep avionics from being disrupted and vice versa according to the DoD, they've done a lot of testing on that stuff over the last 30 years.
You are comparing a weapon of war which *will* be aggressively attacked to a civilian plane which maybe, possibly, *might* experience brief interference from my cell phone? Talk about apples to oranges.
If interruptions from cell phones and other electronics were ACTUALLY a serious problem, they would either prohibit them from being transported, collect them prior to boarding or would take other measures to ensure they could not be used in a manner that could jeopardize the safety of the aircraft. Cell phones and similar items are not believed to be a meaningful threat to the safety of the aircraft or its passengers by the airlines or the FAA. The actions of the airlines and the FAA speak far louder than their words. Real threats would be acted upon. Simply asking us to turn off our phones and computers (they don't even check) means they don't really take the possibility of interference seriously.
Apple doesn't produce tons of products. And they became the industry giant relatively quickly in the past ten years, mainly through App Store purchases.
App Store purchases are a very minor percentage of Apple's business. You only have to look at Apple's financial statements to discover this.
They make a profit on iPhone/iPad/iPod sales, but 30% of the top on all Apps, songs, movies, books, etc. is where it is at.
You might want to consult Apple's financial statements before saying something that is demonstrably wrong. In 2010 Apple's total combined music and software sales (including 3rd party and their own) totaled just 11.5% of Apple's revenue. Even if the margins are ridiculous, it still just just a small portion of their business. By comparison Apple's NET profit over the same period was 21.4% of revenue. So even if 100% of the music and software sales was profit (and it is nowhere near that I assure you), it still would account for just half of Apple's profit for the reporting period. Realistically it probably accounts for between 10-20% of Apple's profit. Good business but hardly the backbone of the company.
Oh, and Apple does not keep all of that 30%. In fact it's fairly widely accepted among analysts that Apple doesn't make much money at all on their music sales. Doesn't matter though because the point is to drive hardware sales. Any profit from the iTunes store and App store is just a bonus.
And they don't need massive staff to collect money on other people's products.
It's efficient to be sure but you can also be sure that there is a LOT more overhead than you probably think. Software development cost, accounting, transaction processing, software review, data center cost, sales, marketing, utilities, and more. Apple may take 30% but their actual profit will be significantly less.
If you give away 40% of revenue in commissions you'll be out of business faster thank you can say "stupid idea". Sales commissions are usually single digit percentages. Even software companies don't earn margins high enough to justify the kinds of margins you are proposing. Manufacturing companies gross margins are normally much less than 40% and that is before any SG&A or interest or taxes.
Since I was born in this country I have never seen so much lawlessness by financial institutions, politicians and law enforcement.
Or so much hyperbole apparently... Just like my grandparents declaring how wonderful things were in the good old days. Everything is always going to hell
I went to an independent school in the UK, and the school fees were less than that, even accounting for inflation.
Being a product of a private school education myself, the tuition does not (usually) pay for all the costs of a school. The $7000 per student per year figure is total cost Tuition is a form of revenue which has nothing to do with cost. At the school I went to, tuition paid for about 2/3 of the school budget and the rest came from alumni donations, fundraisers, the state and various other sources. In public schools, tax revenues typically pays for all the costs.
Actually $7000 per student per year is fairly low by US schooling standards. There are a lot of costs that most people never consider. Administration, maintenance, physical plant, insurance, security, lunches, athletics, supplies, busing, heating, cooling, phone, internet, power, benefits, and more. Schools are very expensive to run and it's not easy to find ways to make them more efficient. (productivity doesn't scale well in schools) Teacher salaries are the biggest cost but there is a HUGE amount of overhead in any school. $7000 doesn't go nearly as far as most people seem to think it does.
No. Stalls occur because of the angle of attack. It's a bit counter intuitive but pulling up and increasing throttle will not help escape a stall in some planes and under some circumstances can worsen it.
They fought having meaningful rankings made public. They fought having outcomes measured.
There are lots of measurements out there but you can be quite certain many if not most of them aren't very meaningful. Let's say two doctors have their mortality rates measured. One has 99% of their patients come out alive and the other has just 95%. Who is the better doctor? There is no way you can tell from that measure alone. It could be that the doctor with the worse mortality rate takes on significantly more challenging patients. Maybe one has to work with a more difficult patient population who can't afford the same level of care. Medicine is VERY complicated and it is difficult if not impossible to concisely measure the performance of a physician.
If someone wanted to measure my performance on the job with a few measures that don't tell the whole story and then advertise my performance to the world, I'd be less than pleased about that as well. Doctors are entitled to fight for reasonable performance measurements the same as you or I.
You would have to go to court and spend thousands of dollars you may not have to fight such a thing.
One or two people might and then our elected officials would bring the wrath of $deity down on any hospital or physician that attempted to silence a patient like that. Personally I would hope someone would try with me. My lawyer and I could buy matching islands with the proceeds from the lawsuit that would follow such a foolish act.
Have these dentists never heard of the Streisand Effect?
My guess would be that they (along with most of the population) have not heard of the Streisand Effect. In fact the only place I see the Streisand Effect routinely mentioned is here on slashdot. That said, chances are they'll become all too familiar with the effects of it even if they haven't heard the term.
I'm mostly indifferent towards Apple but I appreciate you stating your biases up front.
I personally feel like all the major phone makers were playing nicely until Apple joined...
That's sort of a problem don't you think? I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with them not competing with each other including in the court room.
It is my opinion that Apple's design (ornamental?) patents or look and feel patents do disgust me more than other functional oriented patents....
OK, I'll bite. Why? A patent is a patent regardless of who holds the rights to it. Lots of companies hold design patents besides Apple. Is this an argument against Apple or against design patents? There certainly are many problems with the patent system but saying Apple's patents disgust you more than others seems to be letting your biases get ahead of your "facts".
Standalone streaming media players probably are a fad much like PDAs and dedicated MP3 players are/were fads. They'll eventually be integrated into other devices with additional features. Many of the bigger HDTVs already have the ability to tap streaming services (like Netflix) without a separate box. The streaming players will integrate into PCs, Bluray, or Xbox/Playstation/Wii or even into the TV itself. Heck, you may even see it integrate with smartphones. The streaming technology is still pretty young so a standalone box makes sense for now but I just can't see it remaining a standalone technology for more than a few years.
Of course if the ISPs (looking at you Comcast and AT&T) have their way with bandwidth caps, it may be a while before we get to really use streaming technology. Companies like Comcast have a built in conflict of interest when it comes to streaming technology that they don't control.
I can't think of a big budget movie, at least recently, that was worth the budget.
Ahh yes, it's all crap. Why would anyone watch that schlock? Blah blah blah... Of course the fact that millions of people actually enjoyed some of those big budget movies and spent actual money to see them must mean they are all idiots who have no idea what interests them personally. Good thing we have you to tell us what is worth watching.
[/sarcasm]
If this guy wants to be able to recoup his expenses and make a little profit, maybe he should start finding writers who don't need ridiculous budgets for crazy special effects with shitty stories.
Since they are recouping their expenses and making more than a little profit already, maybe they understand their business better than you do. Speaking for myself, I have no problem spending a few dollars to see a movie that interests me. Yes, the representatives from the movie houses may be selfish greedy assholes but they can't be ignored either. We just need to make sure they don't put their interests ahead of the interests of society as a whole.
Yes, that's why this has happened before MS has any operational control of Skype because the merger hasn't finished yet.
Even if it was not a formal part of the deal, Skype is perfectly capable of reading the tea leaves regarding what direction Microsoft intends to go post acquisition. They have been talking to each other after all. It's perfectly plausible that Skype killed the product at the request (possibly implied request) of Microsoft. It's equally plausible it has nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft. However the timing does lead one to wonder. It's not at all unusual for companies to start making changes in advance of a merger, particularly if they expect regulatory approval to be a non-issue.
Frankly there are plenty of other avenues for VOIP so I don't really give a crap either way.
This is exactly like the time when my sister blamed me for turning off her coffee pot while I was still an hour's drive away from her place.
Wow! That's an impressively bad analogy even for slashdot.
This is Skype running as Skype, completely independent from Microsoft.
Unless you work for one of those two companies you cannot possibly know that.
Any interference at this stage and scrutiny would be an infraction even Microsoft wouldn't risk.
Having been involved myself with a few mergers and the negotiations thereof I can definitely say that it is definitely plausible that Microsoft would have requested killing the product. I have no idea if they actually did and no proof either but it is certainly possible and wouldn't be terribly surprising. Such conditions can be explicit parts of the deal or they can be simple verbal requests. It's not at all unusual for companies being acquired to start making changes before the deal is done, particularly if they do not expect regulatory approval to be a problem. Frankly I don't really see any compelling reason for the DOJ or other regulating bodies to interfere with this merger. (not liking Microsoft isn't sufficient grounds) I'm quite certain Microsoft and Skype's lawyers and finance geeks have looked into it pretty carefully.
It's equally plausible it has nothing to do with the merger. I don't know either way but I'm pretty sure no one else reading this knows either.
I heard the same said about 3.5" floppy drives years ago.
It took over a decade for 3.5" floppies to finally "die" after Apple released the iMac in 1998 without a 3.5 inch floppy standard. HP stopped supplying them on business desktops only 2 years ago and there still are a few niche uses for them. Legacy ports and interfaces tend to take a LOOOOONG time to die if they are popular. USB is likely to be with us for another decade and very likely much longer. USB is being actively upgraded and there is a ridiculous amount of USB hardware out there. I don't have any particular affinity towards USB but it's not going to go away soon.
Why does it have to take the world by storm to be successful?
Depends on your definition of success. I don't see a whole lot of point to Thunderbolt unless it replaces some current cable type(s) and thereby reduces the types we need. We already have other data cables available that are plenty fast. I'm sure Thunderbolt will sell plenty with Apple and Intel backing it but if it achieves the same level of "success" as IEEE 1394 (Firewire), I'd consider that a failure. Few of us really need yet another type of data cable unless it does something our current cables do not. Nothing I've read about Thunderbolt is particularly interesting or novel except for its ability to combine what we presently (usually) use USB and video cables for.
All your talk about what the market wants isn't incorrect, you're just incorrect in assuming that Apple actually cares about replacing USB with this technology.
I didn't mention a single thing about Apple or their intentions. Frankly I don't really know or care what Apple does. I'm certain Apple would appreciate the elegance of using a single cable type but who knows what is being planned in the House of Jobs. Whatever happens will take years to achieve and will depend on more companies than Apple.
A lot of people consider Firewire a failure b/c USB is so standard, but Firewire achieved all the goals Apple set out for it.
Unless you work for Apple you cannot possibly know that. Furthermore, Apple was not the only backer of IEEE 1394 - Sony and Texas Instruments also released branded implementations of it and lots of PCs came with IEEE 1394 ports. As a general purpose data cable, Firewire (IEEE 1394) was a modest success and remains useful in niche applications to this day. Nevertheless, few people consider it a very successful interface when compared with the success of USB. A pity because I really like IEEE 1394 better than USB from a technical perspective - just not an economic one. They were too similar for both of them to become ubiquitous and USB turned out to be the one more widely adopted.
TFA says the hardware is ~$90, compared to ~$3 for USB, so I don't think this is correct.
I don't know what the real numbers are but I'd expect Thunderbolt to be more expensive for some time simply due to economies of scale. There is a LOT of USB equipment out there, lots of people who can make it, and the equipment to make USB connections is long since depreciated so the fixed costs (development, capital equipment, etc) have been significantly/fully amortized. It will take a while for Thunderbolt to get to the same point even if it does catch on big. USB isn't about to go away any time soon. It's too cheap and too ubiquitous.
Slashdot Mirror
When netflix launched in canada they all *lowered* their caps.
While it may be that they are engaging in "anti-competitive bullshit", from a pure economic perspective lowering bandwidth caps is EXACTLY what I would expect the carriers to do IF there is a scarcity of bandwidth. The carrier has built enough infrastructure to carry a finite amount of traffic. Presumably their infrastructure was built to accommodate some number of users times some amount of bandwidth allocated per user. Some will use less and some will use more and the ones who use less basically subsidize those who use more. If the ones who use more use too much, there may not be enough bandwidth to serve the customers who use less. You can prevent this with a data cap that keeps those who use more from using all the bandwidth. It's a stopgap measure but it works and makes sense if there is a scarcity of bandwidth.
Enter netflix and now some new subset of the users are now using a lot more bandwidth while the infrastructure is the same. Unless you go to metered billing, there are only two ways to keep the balance between the heavier users and the lighter users from getting out of whack. You can build more infrastructure or you can lower the data cap. Lowering the data cap keeps the lighter users from getting screwed and has the advantage to the telecom that it doesn't require any capital expenditure. Obviously it makes things more expensive for some percentage of users.
I'm not saying lowering the data caps is a good thing and I'm certainly not defending the carriers. All I'm saying is that with netflix coming on the scene lowering the data caps is actually the economically rational thing to do IF (very big caveat here) there is an actual scarcity of bandwidth. If bandwidth isn't actually scarce, then our anti-trust regulators should be looking at this very closely.
But there is no fixed cost for moving data around.
What you are saying is more or less correct but your terminology is wrong. What you are describing is properly called a variable cost not a fixed cost. The equipment used to build and operate the network is largely comprised of fixed costs. It costs the phone company the same money whether they send one packet or one million packets. The costs associated to a specific packet would be variable costs and as you rightly point out, the direct variable costs are negligible. As equipment is used, the fixed costs get amortized over a large volume of data and in time become negligible on a per packet basis. This doesn't mean they become zero but they start large and become small asymptotically.
That said there IS a cost that you are not considering. IF there is insufficient bandwidth available to serve all requests, then there is an opportunity cost associated with the data packet. If your data can't get through because someone else is hogging the pipe, you as a customer will get pissed and possible switch services (if possible). Since we know that the telecom providers have a large but finite amount of bandwidth available, opportunity costs matter. Hence data caps. They cannot serve all possible requests until their network has the capacity to do so. If they allow unlimited usage and people actually do use it that way (and some do), the telecom incurs an opportunity cost in the form of being unable to serve some of their customers.
In THEORY data caps make economic sense. In REALITY, it's probably more greed by the telecoms than a real problem most of the time.
IT is one of the most thankless tasks in existence. If everything is running well, people forget they exist. If something breaks or has to be taken offline for maintenance, someone is inevitably screaming bloody hell.
You think that is unique? Think anyone ever calls a policeman, a firefighter, or a paramedic because things are going well? How about a sports referee? If they do their job right no one notices them at all. If they screw up, EVERYONE notices them and not in a good way. Ever think about accounting? I promise you the only time you pay them a moment's attention is if your paycheck isn't correct. Bet you don't pay much attention to the bridges you drive over every day - unless of course one collapses underneath you. Then you want the head of the engineer who designed it wrong. You spend much time thinking about the fisherman who risks his life to put that salmon on your dinner plate? And if you want really, truly thankless jobs, consider being a soldier. Not only do most people not think about you, but it's part of the job description that others might try to kill you. Worse, many of the people you protect will call you a murderer for protecting them. I'll take some sniveling VP throwing an unreasoning hissy fit over being shot any day.
I can continue pretty much forever. Virtually every job is like this. People do not notice things running smoothly. IT is nothing special in this regard.
Internal sources of radiation are many orders of magnitude more disruptive for their power level.
That is not the same thing as saying they actually disrupt the electronics of the aircraft itself. Even granting that the radiation is amplified, the logic of your statement is a deductive fallacy. Saying "avionics are susceptible to interference from radiation" and then saying "aircraft bodies amplify radiation from consumer electronics" does not get you to "avionics are disrupted from consumer electronics". A + B does not equal C.
Because .. testing every possible consumer electronics device which might end up on an aircraft, against all the possible aircraft, and all of the possible variations of an aircraft is damned near impossible.
Don't need to. If you are actually worried about this being a problem, you simply either prohibit the device from being brought on board or you *require* it to be put it in a Faraday cage to prevent any transmissions from being problematic. Hundreds of thousands of pieces of consumer electronics fly every day and you can be sure many of them are not shut off no matter how much the flight attendants ask. The general public essentially acts as a flying test bed and there has NEVER ONCE been an accident caused by any cell phone or other piece of consumer electronics on any airline. Everyday use has proven this to be a non-issue.
While the risk may very well be greater than zero, the actual risk has to be extremely low. If it were a real problem, the airlines and the FAA would demand we not fly with our electronics. Actions speak louder than words.
Thats what you need to keep avionics from being disrupted and vice versa according to the DoD, they've done a lot of testing on that stuff over the last 30 years.
You are comparing a weapon of war which *will* be aggressively attacked to a civilian plane which maybe, possibly, *might* experience brief interference from my cell phone? Talk about apples to oranges.
If interruptions from cell phones and other electronics were ACTUALLY a serious problem, they would either prohibit them from being transported, collect them prior to boarding or would take other measures to ensure they could not be used in a manner that could jeopardize the safety of the aircraft. Cell phones and similar items are not believed to be a meaningful threat to the safety of the aircraft or its passengers by the airlines or the FAA. The actions of the airlines and the FAA speak far louder than their words. Real threats would be acted upon. Simply asking us to turn off our phones and computers (they don't even check) means they don't really take the possibility of interference seriously.
Apple doesn't produce tons of products. And they became the industry giant relatively quickly in the past ten years, mainly through App Store purchases.
App Store purchases are a very minor percentage of Apple's business. You only have to look at Apple's financial statements to discover this.
They make a profit on iPhone/iPad/iPod sales, but 30% of the top on all Apps, songs, movies, books, etc. is where it is at.
You might want to consult Apple's financial statements before saying something that is demonstrably wrong. In 2010 Apple's total combined music and software sales (including 3rd party and their own) totaled just 11.5% of Apple's revenue. Even if the margins are ridiculous, it still just just a small portion of their business. By comparison Apple's NET profit over the same period was 21.4% of revenue. So even if 100% of the music and software sales was profit (and it is nowhere near that I assure you), it still would account for just half of Apple's profit for the reporting period. Realistically it probably accounts for between 10-20% of Apple's profit. Good business but hardly the backbone of the company.
Oh, and Apple does not keep all of that 30%. In fact it's fairly widely accepted among analysts that Apple doesn't make much money at all on their music sales. Doesn't matter though because the point is to drive hardware sales. Any profit from the iTunes store and App store is just a bonus.
And they don't need massive staff to collect money on other people's products.
It's efficient to be sure but you can also be sure that there is a LOT more overhead than you probably think. Software development cost, accounting, transaction processing, software review, data center cost, sales, marketing, utilities, and more. Apple may take 30% but their actual profit will be significantly less.
Disclosure: I am a certified accountant
If you give away 40% of revenue in commissions you'll be out of business faster thank you can say "stupid idea". Sales commissions are usually single digit percentages. Even software companies don't earn margins high enough to justify the kinds of margins you are proposing. Manufacturing companies gross margins are normally much less than 40% and that is before any SG&A or interest or taxes.
Since I was born in this country I have never seen so much lawlessness by financial institutions, politicians and law enforcement.
Or so much hyperbole apparently... Just like my grandparents declaring how wonderful things were in the good old days. Everything is always going to hell
I went to an independent school in the UK, and the school fees were less than that, even accounting for inflation.
Being a product of a private school education myself, the tuition does not (usually) pay for all the costs of a school. The $7000 per student per year figure is total cost Tuition is a form of revenue which has nothing to do with cost. At the school I went to, tuition paid for about 2/3 of the school budget and the rest came from alumni donations, fundraisers, the state and various other sources. In public schools, tax revenues typically pays for all the costs.
Actually $7000 per student per year is fairly low by US schooling standards. There are a lot of costs that most people never consider. Administration, maintenance, physical plant, insurance, security, lunches, athletics, supplies, busing, heating, cooling, phone, internet, power, benefits, and more. Schools are very expensive to run and it's not easy to find ways to make them more efficient. (productivity doesn't scale well in schools) Teacher salaries are the biggest cost but there is a HUGE amount of overhead in any school. $7000 doesn't go nearly as far as most people seem to think it does.
Disclosure: I'm am a certified accountant
It will kill any kind of transmission in the house but my parent wont replace it as any replacement they had was not as fast as this 2500W monster....
Because heaven forbid they wait an extra 20 seconds...
No. Stalls occur because of the angle of attack. It's a bit counter intuitive but pulling up and increasing throttle will not help escape a stall in some planes and under some circumstances can worsen it.
What do you mean "try" using cash? Southwest Airlines lists it as one of their accepted forms of payment:
Likely to be followed by a nice groping... err, "enhanced" patdown by your friendly neighborhood TSA bouncers. Maybe you like to pay to get felt up?
That's one instance where you'll have to present ID anyway so there is really little point in using cash in a futile attempt to be anonymous.
They fought having meaningful rankings made public. They fought having outcomes measured.
There are lots of measurements out there but you can be quite certain many if not most of them aren't very meaningful. Let's say two doctors have their mortality rates measured. One has 99% of their patients come out alive and the other has just 95%. Who is the better doctor? There is no way you can tell from that measure alone. It could be that the doctor with the worse mortality rate takes on significantly more challenging patients. Maybe one has to work with a more difficult patient population who can't afford the same level of care. Medicine is VERY complicated and it is difficult if not impossible to concisely measure the performance of a physician.
If someone wanted to measure my performance on the job with a few measures that don't tell the whole story and then advertise my performance to the world, I'd be less than pleased about that as well. Doctors are entitled to fight for reasonable performance measurements the same as you or I.
You would have to go to court and spend thousands of dollars you may not have to fight such a thing.
One or two people might and then our elected officials would bring the wrath of $deity down on any hospital or physician that attempted to silence a patient like that. Personally I would hope someone would try with me. My lawyer and I could buy matching islands with the proceeds from the lawsuit that would follow such a foolish act.
Have these dentists never heard of the Streisand Effect?
My guess would be that they (along with most of the population) have not heard of the Streisand Effect. In fact the only place I see the Streisand Effect routinely mentioned is here on slashdot. That said, chances are they'll become all too familiar with the effects of it even if they haven't heard the term.
I am one of the most anti-Apple people out there.
I'm mostly indifferent towards Apple but I appreciate you stating your biases up front.
I personally feel like all the major phone makers were playing nicely until Apple joined...
That's sort of a problem don't you think? I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with them not competing with each other including in the court room.
It is my opinion that Apple's design (ornamental?) patents or look and feel patents do disgust me more than other functional oriented patents ....
OK, I'll bite. Why? A patent is a patent regardless of who holds the rights to it. Lots of companies hold design patents besides Apple. Is this an argument against Apple or against design patents? There certainly are many problems with the patent system but saying Apple's patents disgust you more than others seems to be letting your biases get ahead of your "facts".
Standalone streaming media players probably are a fad much like PDAs and dedicated MP3 players are/were fads. They'll eventually be integrated into other devices with additional features. Many of the bigger HDTVs already have the ability to tap streaming services (like Netflix) without a separate box. The streaming players will integrate into PCs, Bluray, or Xbox/Playstation/Wii or even into the TV itself. Heck, you may even see it integrate with smartphones. The streaming technology is still pretty young so a standalone box makes sense for now but I just can't see it remaining a standalone technology for more than a few years.
Of course if the ISPs (looking at you Comcast and AT&T) have their way with bandwidth caps, it may be a while before we get to really use streaming technology. Companies like Comcast have a built in conflict of interest when it comes to streaming technology that they don't control.
I can't think of a big budget movie, at least recently, that was worth the budget.
Ahh yes, it's all crap. Why would anyone watch that schlock? Blah blah blah... Of course the fact that millions of people actually enjoyed some of those big budget movies and spent actual money to see them must mean they are all idiots who have no idea what interests them personally. Good thing we have you to tell us what is worth watching.
[/sarcasm]
If this guy wants to be able to recoup his expenses and make a little profit, maybe he should start finding writers who don't need ridiculous budgets for crazy special effects with shitty stories.
Since they are recouping their expenses and making more than a little profit already, maybe they understand their business better than you do. Speaking for myself, I have no problem spending a few dollars to see a movie that interests me. Yes, the representatives from the movie houses may be selfish greedy assholes but they can't be ignored either. We just need to make sure they don't put their interests ahead of the interests of society as a whole.
Yes, that's why this has happened before MS has any operational control of Skype because the merger hasn't finished yet.
Even if it was not a formal part of the deal, Skype is perfectly capable of reading the tea leaves regarding what direction Microsoft intends to go post acquisition. They have been talking to each other after all. It's perfectly plausible that Skype killed the product at the request (possibly implied request) of Microsoft. It's equally plausible it has nothing whatsoever to do with Microsoft. However the timing does lead one to wonder. It's not at all unusual for companies to start making changes in advance of a merger, particularly if they expect regulatory approval to be a non-issue.
Frankly there are plenty of other avenues for VOIP so I don't really give a crap either way.
This is exactly like the time when my sister blamed me for turning off her coffee pot while I was still an hour's drive away from her place.
Wow! That's an impressively bad analogy even for slashdot.
This is Skype running as Skype, completely independent from Microsoft.
Unless you work for one of those two companies you cannot possibly know that.
Any interference at this stage and scrutiny would be an infraction even Microsoft wouldn't risk.
Having been involved myself with a few mergers and the negotiations thereof I can definitely say that it is definitely plausible that Microsoft would have requested killing the product. I have no idea if they actually did and no proof either but it is certainly possible and wouldn't be terribly surprising. Such conditions can be explicit parts of the deal or they can be simple verbal requests. It's not at all unusual for companies being acquired to start making changes before the deal is done, particularly if they do not expect regulatory approval to be a problem. Frankly I don't really see any compelling reason for the DOJ or other regulating bodies to interfere with this merger. (not liking Microsoft isn't sufficient grounds) I'm quite certain Microsoft and Skype's lawyers and finance geeks have looked into it pretty carefully.
It's equally plausible it has nothing to do with the merger. I don't know either way but I'm pretty sure no one else reading this knows either.
The "proper" value of a stock is the net present value of its future dividend stream.
If by "future dividend stream" you mean free cash flow then you are quite correct.
I heard the same said about 3.5" floppy drives years ago.
It took over a decade for 3.5" floppies to finally "die" after Apple released the iMac in 1998 without a 3.5 inch floppy standard. HP stopped supplying them on business desktops only 2 years ago and there still are a few niche uses for them. Legacy ports and interfaces tend to take a LOOOOONG time to die if they are popular. USB is likely to be with us for another decade and very likely much longer. USB is being actively upgraded and there is a ridiculous amount of USB hardware out there. I don't have any particular affinity towards USB but it's not going to go away soon.
Why does it have to take the world by storm to be successful?
Depends on your definition of success. I don't see a whole lot of point to Thunderbolt unless it replaces some current cable type(s) and thereby reduces the types we need. We already have other data cables available that are plenty fast. I'm sure Thunderbolt will sell plenty with Apple and Intel backing it but if it achieves the same level of "success" as IEEE 1394 (Firewire), I'd consider that a failure. Few of us really need yet another type of data cable unless it does something our current cables do not. Nothing I've read about Thunderbolt is particularly interesting or novel except for its ability to combine what we presently (usually) use USB and video cables for.
All your talk about what the market wants isn't incorrect, you're just incorrect in assuming that Apple actually cares about replacing USB with this technology.
I didn't mention a single thing about Apple or their intentions. Frankly I don't really know or care what Apple does. I'm certain Apple would appreciate the elegance of using a single cable type but who knows what is being planned in the House of Jobs. Whatever happens will take years to achieve and will depend on more companies than Apple.
A lot of people consider Firewire a failure b/c USB is so standard, but Firewire achieved all the goals Apple set out for it.
Unless you work for Apple you cannot possibly know that. Furthermore, Apple was not the only backer of IEEE 1394 - Sony and Texas Instruments also released branded implementations of it and lots of PCs came with IEEE 1394 ports. As a general purpose data cable, Firewire (IEEE 1394) was a modest success and remains useful in niche applications to this day. Nevertheless, few people consider it a very successful interface when compared with the success of USB. A pity because I really like IEEE 1394 better than USB from a technical perspective - just not an economic one. They were too similar for both of them to become ubiquitous and USB turned out to be the one more widely adopted.
TFA says the hardware is ~$90, compared to ~$3 for USB, so I don't think this is correct.
I don't know what the real numbers are but I'd expect Thunderbolt to be more expensive for some time simply due to economies of scale. There is a LOT of USB equipment out there, lots of people who can make it, and the equipment to make USB connections is long since depreciated so the fixed costs (development, capital equipment, etc) have been significantly/fully amortized. It will take a while for Thunderbolt to get to the same point even if it does catch on big. USB isn't about to go away any time soon. It's too cheap and too ubiquitous.