I understand your point -- but eBay as deliberately created an environment where shady hucksters can thrive, because those scumbags are core to eBay's business.
I've occasionally sold stuff on eBay. Back in 2000 I sold about $15,000 worth of suplussed equipment in one lot. I also sold a CD and a book. Because eBay hides sale details after 6 months or so, its really impossible to vet a sellers history.
Poke around on eBay, especially "hot" items like laptops and iPods. You'll find alot of sellers who establish seemingly legit accounts by trading low-value items back and forth between multiple accounts. Then they move into laptop computers or other high value, easily 'scammable' merchandise.
Its absurd that you can buy or sell a recipie for $0.50, and receive the same seller rating as someone who sells computers, cars or expensive clothing.
There is no "crisis". There are cyclic variations in climate, with or without human influence. Human activity may have some amplifing effect on those cycles, but not to the degree that you are hysterical about.
A+++++++++ Awesam comment! Great point! Asset to Slashdot!! A_++++ super!
Fraudulent sellers spend a couple of weeks trading $0.25 recipies and baseball cards, leave comments like "A+++ great labtop!" wait a few months for the contents of those auctions to be removed by eBay, then ripoff unsuspecting users.
Yes and no. Rabblerousers like Sam Adams and the agrarian populists like Patrick Henry and to a lesser extent Thomas Jefferson were largely excluded from having a real role in forming the government.
The real brain behind the Federal system was Alexander Hamilton, who was still in school during the opening shots of the revolultion.
Microsoft is more similar to Budweiser or Marlboro than Apple.
Budweiser is the #1 beer because they are everywhere. Budweiser is in the most prime areas of every supermarket, drug store, and deli in the US.
Microsoft's "secret" is OEM Licensing. They are the big kahuna of the PC industry, and have OEM licensing agreements with everyone, large and small.
A company like Apple or Sun cannot build that OEM network overnight, because they don't have established relationships with all of the vendors. If you were the Apple salesman trying to get Dell to put OS-X on Dell PCs, you'd have to give the product away to make them do it...
And why would they? Dell has a cozy agreement with Microsoft that makes both parties alot of easy money. Why confuse the customers and hurt the Dell-MS relationship for something that may (or may not) make Dell a dime?
Apple is a premium product, period. You can buy mustard for your sandwich at the grocery store for $0.50, but lots of people pay $2.99 for Grey Poupon dijon. Rustler jeans are $15.99, Levi's are $40.
People will pay a premium for what they percieve as a better or more prestigious product. Since computer specs are settling down and CPU speed doesn't really matter anymore, the Apple strategy of pushing style and usability is in the long run a better approach.
They keep the Apple product premium by treating the consumer PC market as a vertical market. They control the hardware, software and most accessories -- that's a powerful combination that will probaly change the PC industry, which is currently based on adapting business computers to consumer needs.
Sun has a similar business model, but they need to re-establish themselves as a premium product. Sun kept hardware prices way too high for way too long, and need to do alot of work to eliminate the "too expensive" stigma.
IBM/Accenture/etc offers services targetted at large customers who bueracratic ways make it impossible to put competent employees in charge of projects.
IBM allows to pay $300/hr for semi-competent people. In a big company, if you need five people for a project, its easier to get $300*9000hrs*5/yr (minus a $50-125 "discount") people than to poach competent people from other teams or hire new people for $50k/yr.
Throwing hardware at performance problems isn't a viable solution.
Unless your problem is CPU-bound, disks are going to be the big server bottleneck, and disk performance doesn't provide enough improvements to make a huge difference.
Painstakingly engineering an elegant, but slow solution to a business problem only results in that elegant, tested code being ripped out to provide performance benefits later.
The only people who knew everything about US Intelligence during the cold war worked for the KGB. Three-letter agencies succeed at keeping information away from each other, but fail miserably at keeping information away from the enemy, whomever that is.
During Vietnam, secret agents (ie white guys in white seersucker suits and Panama jack hats) were spotted by the Vietcong about 5 minutes after their plane landed.
Today, secret agents (ie white guys with sunglasses and a bunch of equipment) prowl the streets of Iraq, a secret to nobody except the taxpayers footing the bill.
No, I'm saying that the New York papers created those Spanish saboteurs out of thin air to create a crisis. The Spanish-American war was akin to the OJ trial in terms of coverage and scintillating detail.
Do you seriously believe that a declining imperial power that could barely get 1/3 of its ships out of port would challenge the second most powerful navy in the world?
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Never said it was unsinkable. The UK probally will be an ice cube in thirty years, as it was a couple of thousand years ago.
Climates change. 500 years ago, New York Harbor froze solid. 7,000 years ago, it was about twenty miles from the ocean.
I understand your point -- but eBay as deliberately created an environment where shady hucksters can thrive, because those scumbags are core to eBay's business.
I've occasionally sold stuff on eBay. Back in 2000 I sold about $15,000 worth of suplussed equipment in one lot. I also sold a CD and a book. Because eBay hides sale details after 6 months or so, its really impossible to vet a sellers history.
Poke around on eBay, especially "hot" items like laptops and iPods. You'll find alot of sellers who establish seemingly legit accounts by trading low-value items back and forth between multiple accounts. Then they move into laptop computers or other high value, easily 'scammable' merchandise.
Its absurd that you can buy or sell a recipie for $0.50, and receive the same seller rating as someone who sells computers, cars or expensive clothing.
There is no "crisis". There are cyclic variations in climate, with or without human influence. Human activity may have some amplifing effect on those cycles, but not to the degree that you are hysterical about.
Maybe we don't want to find life on Mars?
Millions of people argue passionately that the world was created in seven days by a deity 3,000 years ago. Try arguing with such a person.
Instead of pissing those people off, its easier to just kill the aliens.
It is broken. Ebay's fees and clunky user interfaces are a real drag.
I moved selling of newer electronics, books, cds and dvds to Amazon. Its less expensive, less hassle, and a much better selling experience overall.
A+++++++++ Awesam comment! Great point! Asset to Slashdot!! A_++++ super!
Fraudulent sellers spend a couple of weeks trading $0.25 recipies and baseball cards, leave comments like "A+++ great labtop!" wait a few months for the contents of those auctions to be removed by eBay, then ripoff unsuspecting users.
The whole point is to build a social network, which can be used to target marketing at peer groups or sell to uncle sam.
Does anyone know how those graphics were generated?
They look really nice... I've been looking for a tool to create automated timelines like that.
Real security protects money. When was the last time you heard of someone robbing a Federal Reserve Bank with billions of dollars of currency within?
Physically securing very valuable things is easy.
Put the computer in a secure vault, and put guys with guns at the door and perimeter.
Yes and no. Rabblerousers like Sam Adams and the agrarian populists like Patrick Henry and to a lesser extent Thomas Jefferson were largely excluded from having a real role in forming the government.
The real brain behind the Federal system was Alexander Hamilton, who was still in school during the opening shots of the revolultion.
Microsoft is more similar to Budweiser or Marlboro than Apple.
Budweiser is the #1 beer because they are everywhere. Budweiser is in the most prime areas of every supermarket, drug store, and deli in the US.
Microsoft's "secret" is OEM Licensing. They are the big kahuna of the PC industry, and have OEM licensing agreements with everyone, large and small.
A company like Apple or Sun cannot build that OEM network overnight, because they don't have established relationships with all of the vendors. If you were the Apple salesman trying to get Dell to put OS-X on Dell PCs, you'd have to give the product away to make them do it...
And why would they? Dell has a cozy agreement with Microsoft that makes both parties alot of easy money. Why confuse the customers and hurt the Dell-MS relationship for something that may (or may not) make Dell a dime?
Apple is a premium product, period. You can buy mustard for your sandwich at the grocery store for $0.50, but lots of people pay $2.99 for Grey Poupon dijon. Rustler jeans are $15.99, Levi's are $40.
People will pay a premium for what they percieve as a better or more prestigious product. Since computer specs are settling down and CPU speed doesn't really matter anymore, the Apple strategy of pushing style and usability is in the long run a better approach.
They keep the Apple product premium by treating the consumer PC market as a vertical market. They control the hardware, software and most accessories -- that's a powerful combination that will probaly change the PC industry, which is currently based on adapting business computers to consumer needs.
Sun has a similar business model, but they need to re-establish themselves as a premium product. Sun kept hardware prices way too high for way too long, and need to do alot of work to eliminate the "too expensive" stigma.
I agree... everything works. Kerberos, sudo, etc all out of the box.
Red Hat looks better visually thanks to GNOME, but Suse is a better choice otherwise.
IBM/Accenture/etc offers services targetted at large customers who bueracratic ways make it impossible to put competent employees in charge of projects.
IBM allows to pay $300/hr for semi-competent people. In a big company, if you need five people for a project, its easier to get $300*9000hrs*5/yr (minus a $50-125 "discount") people than to poach competent people from other teams or hire new people for $50k/yr.
The funniest thing is that the mouse would be 399 Euros or pounds too.
Written in mold on the inside of an english muffin.
Surely this is a sign.
The cube was a brilliant design, and people I know that have it love it.
Only problem was that it was too frickin expensive.
Are you aware that breathing causes cancer? Studies show that 100% of cancer patients breathe.
I suggest that you pull a bag over your head and protect yourself.
The punchline is always the same: send us more money.
Catastrophe is always around the corner, only time and more research (ie. grants) will tell.
Hardly anyone saw it during the superbowl -- her breast was flashed for a couple of seconds.
Most children spend their first months or years sucking on their mother's breast. Its no big deal anyway.
Get out of denial. A very few people use IRC for chat... open source developers are among the last legitimate users.
IRC as a chat medium was rendered irrelevant with the advent to the vast majority of internet users by instant messaging years ago.
Throwing hardware at performance problems isn't a viable solution.
Unless your problem is CPU-bound, disks are going to be the big server bottleneck, and disk performance doesn't provide enough improvements to make a huge difference.
Painstakingly engineering an elegant, but slow solution to a business problem only results in that elegant, tested code being ripped out to provide performance benefits later.
The only people who knew everything about US Intelligence during the cold war worked for the KGB. Three-letter agencies succeed at keeping information away from each other, but fail miserably at keeping information away from the enemy, whomever that is.
During Vietnam, secret agents (ie white guys in white seersucker suits and Panama jack hats) were spotted by the Vietcong about 5 minutes after their plane landed.
Today, secret agents (ie white guys with sunglasses and a bunch of equipment) prowl the streets of Iraq, a secret to nobody except the taxpayers footing the bill.
No, I'm saying that the New York papers created those Spanish saboteurs out of thin air to create a crisis. The Spanish-American war was akin to the OJ trial in terms of coverage and scintillating detail.
Do you seriously believe that a declining imperial power that could barely get 1/3 of its ships out of port would challenge the second most powerful navy in the world?