Fine, so point me to an industry, besides the construction industry, which isn't particularly well organized in most states (the national average is that less than 1 in 5 of construction workers is unionized), which is booming despite being heavily unionized. On the other hand, take just about any industry where unions play a factor and you will inevitably find that the businesses that are mostly union free are crushing the businesses that are heavily unionized. The UAW is just one example of how unions make it difficult for companies to compete. The airline business, the retail business (especially grocery stores), and dozens of other examples show the effects of unionization on an industry. There's a reason why unions are bleeding members. They don't work.
You can point to one example where an industry is growing despite the fact that unionization exists. However, you'd be hard pressed to find a statistic that links the growth of the industry to unionization. In fact, union membership has dropped decidedly in the last few years. It is far more credible to link the industry growth to a drop in the level of unionization than to link it to union participation. Of course, realists would link the growth in the housing industry to ridiculously low interest rates and unprecedented levels of available capital for housing development. Construction workers, both union and non-union were just along for the ride.
Go ahead and try and for a Technology Union, if you want, just don't be surprised when the folks that join along with you are the type of workers that you wouldn't care to be associated with.
And when you lose that war, do we get to kill you, or will we have to settle for enslaving you?
Here's the beauty of economics. If the Chinese and the Indians truly do have a comparative advantage at creating software then that means that everyone that uses software will benefit as more software production is moved overseas. Sure, you'll have to find something else to do, but everyone that buys software will benefit. No one is going to go to war to preserve your job because chances are good that they will actually benefit from the shift.
Hooray for economics!
You can try and fight economics if you want, but its not likely to help. Free markets are as old as mankind, and even in places like the former Soviet Union, where the government tried to limit the power of the market, markets still had a very powerful influence on the economy. So declare war on India and China if you wish, just don't be surprised when your army turns out to be pathetically small, and full of deranged lunatics.
Here's a different example. Skilled construction jobs are way up, and they are largely union. Therefore, unions create larger markets.
Sure, until they drive the prices up on new houses so far that people start purchasing more manufactured homes. We are already seeing all sorts of new technologies specifically designed to reduce the amount of skilled labor required in a new home. Skilled construction jobs are way up because the housing market has gone completely bonkers and it is very difficult to "outsource" the construction of homes. However, it's is hard to argue that high costs of labor "created" the market demand. In fact, only an idiot would argue that lower labor costs wouldn't drive higher demand.
Just wait until the bubble pops on the housing market and we see housing starts move closer to historical levels. Then we'll either see how unions really work.
The question then becomes, would a union actually help you? The short stint that I did as a Teamster spoiled the idea of unions irreparably for me. From my own experience Unions are just one more layer above you and the management. Instead of just having an incompetent manager to deal with you also end up with an incompetent union representative that can make decisions that have a huge impact on your life. The primary difference between the management and the union reps is that at least some members of the management team will have taken a basic college course in economics. Layoffs are a way of life in union shops, the only difference between union shops and non-union ones is that in union shops you know who is going to get laid off, the folks with the least seniority. Never mind that the you are a more valuable worker than the folks with higher seniority, if you are the new guy, you are out of work.
Never mind that the union actually charges you for its so-called "services." As far as I was concerned I paid union dues so that the union could guarantee that lazy idiots with more seniority than me were impossible to fire while I could be let go at any time.
Yes, and the only people that are even slightly interested in using Java to create desktop applications are A) those people that are creating Java-related development tools, and B) those folks working on alternative (ie. Linux) desktop applications. However, thanks to Sun's ridiculous Java licensing Mono gets more actual use in the creation of desktop applications than Java does. SWT helps, to some extent, as it is possible today to create SWT applications that run on gcj.
Sun is eventually going to come to the realization that it needs the Free Software community if it is going to survive. These days you would basically have to be some sort of a zealot to create a desktop application in Java. The Free Software community has the market cornered on zealots, and they all think that Java is evil.
That's *precisely* the reason that investors are getting jumpy about MSFT. MSFT is still priced as a growth stock and Microsoft isn't growing. Microsoft keeps promising that its non-Windows non-Office investments are going to pay off, but for the most part they haven't. Many of Microsoft's investors would rather see the money that currently is being routed into black holes routed into their pockets instead.
There's a funny thing about market economies. The market produces what people have shown an interest in paying money for. If Oracle were to buy Red Hat with the intention of shutting Red Hat down, then you can basically guarantee that several other "Enterprise" Linux distributions would spring up as if by magic. This is especially true if Oracle paid current market prices for Red Hat. The source code in question would still be available, and there would be a large community looking for a new home.
In the long run Oracle is likely to have the same problems as Sun. Like Sun, Oracle's real problem is that Red Hat offers a software stack that is competitive with Oracle's software stack while maintaining an R&D budget that is a couple orders of magnitude smaller than Oracle's budget. Oracle's size is precisely the problem. As commodity software becomes more and more widespread the ridiculous profit margins that Oracle needs to survive will get harder and harder to produce. Sure, there are lots of Oracle customers that can't really afford to move to a lower cost but less featureful software stack, but Oracle is going to find that an increasing number of its customers are unwilling to pay for features that they don't really need or use. Lots of technical folks get all excited about "Enterprise" software, but in the long run inexpensive commodity software that actually gets used tends to move up the technology stack and crowd out software that relies on the huge profit margins that can be found at the high end of the spectrum. Red Hat's cost structure is designed around taking advantage of the much lower profit margins associated with commodity Free Software. Oracle's cost structure, on the other hand, is designed around the much higher profit margins that Oracle has historically been able to squeeze out of the market. Oracle can pretend that it can compete with Red Hat, but really it can't, not without shedding a lot of its workforce. If Oracle were to lower its workforce so that it was competitive with Red Hat then customers that are currently paying huge margins for Oracle products and services would undoubtedly take their business elsewhere.
Basically it works like this, there are a limited number of concert tickets available. Madonna can underprice these tickets in an effort to placate fans that don't have a basic grasp of economics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that these fans will actually be able to get into the show. Worse, it basically guarantees that a great deal of the profit that *could* be made on a concert goes not to the artist in question, but to scalpers on Ebay.
Seriously, when was the last time that you actually got your hands on tickets to a show that sold out in a few minutes? You still end up buying the ticket for $250, you just put the extra $200 in the pocket of someone on Ebay.
It's not about loyalty, it's about setting a price that takes a finite commodity (seats in an ampitheater) and distributes them among interested consumers. People with more time than money might wish that artists would charge lower prices and use things like waiting in line for a week (or whatever) to determine who gets in, but that's hardly fair to fans with a life. Besides, Madonna (or whoever) doesn't really benefit from you waiting in line. It's in her self interest to simply charge money.
The good news is that if you have time to wait in line for a week there is a good chance that you could take that free time and easily find a way to turn your free time into cash. Where I live McDonald's is always hiring:). At $5.50 an hour 45 hours should just about cover the price of entry. This time of year it is also possible to mow lawns. $250 is about 10 small lawns where I live.
Well, of course my notions of "good" and "bad" are colored by my values. My beef is the same as many others I've seen in this discussion: that Slashdot could attract and retain a larger, more informed, more intelligent crowd (that's "good") if only the editors ran things a little differently. Don't get me wrong--the last thing I want to see is Slashdot devolving into Digg-style anarchy, and on the contrary, if Slashdot weren't so successful at pissing off its most thoughtful voices, I don't see any reason why there should be any comparison with Digg at all.
You *assume* that Slashdot could retain a "larger, more informed, and more intelligent crowd" if the editors ran things in a way that you would consider "better." I happen to disagree. Lots of sites have tried to copy Slashdot's success. Many even use Slashdot's software, and yet Slashdot is still king. That's not accidental, nor is it entirely due to Slashdot's first mover advantage. It certainly isn't due to Taco's grammatical skill.
Nothing personal, but I don't think that Slashdot is pissing off its most thoughtful voices. I do think that Slashdot has a long history of upsetting some very vocal people, but vocal doesn't necessarily equal thoughtful.
I wonder how many Slashdot users agree with that definition of "good." Certainly if you were the type to want a smaller, more intimate, more personal Slashdot, you'd disagree, and maybe you'd even look kindly on the bitchslapping and perceived editorial hostility towards the readership that serve to drive away potential contributors. That's just as valid a sentiment, but it's one I don't share.
No, I simply disagree that the changes that you are talking about would be improvements. Like I said elsewhere, the only people that care about bitchslapping are the folks being bitchslapped, and being bitchslapped is so easy to avoid that normal posters don't have to worry about it. For the folks that are "on the bubble" if the threat of a potential bitchslapping causes them to rethink even one post then its a net win for everyone. I have yet to see any evidence that the folks that got bitchslapped fit my definition of "contributors."
Yes, you want to define the "good" reasons for bitchslapping, and you want/. to "improve" according to your tastes. That's what a/. "editor" does. It's not like the editors at/. earned their position with their grammatical skills./. is popular largely because Taco and crew have come up with a way where intelligent folks can have interesting conversations about nerdy topics. The rest of us schmoes simply play by the rules (or go elsewhere). Just don't be surprised if when you go elsewhere that the editors do essentially the same thing. That's how the world works. Every site has to have a way to deal with trolls, and the human equation comes into play all of the time. The difference, in many cases, between a good site and a bad one is the quality control that the editors and moderators display. If/. didn't do a good job it wouldn't be so popular.
Believe me, I understand your point, and it is clear that you are not a troll. I would even agree that in a perfect world there wouldn't be a need for bitchslapping overzealous moderators. However, this world is far from perfect and it is my experience that even the worst moderators tend to be better than allowing free access to trolls. What's more, the people that complain about moderation tend to be the sort of folks that post first and think second. That's a large step up from a troll, but it's still not the type of poster that you necessarily want to encourage. If you happen to have an opinion that is likely to make the editors at/. upset enough to bitchslap you, then you might want to consider either A) keeping that opinion to yourself, or B) using some other board to get your message out.
If you want something transparent try USENET. I still do, but only because I use a very capable news reader.
What the "whiners" really want is to be an editor. Everyone with a brain realizes that trolls are a problem, they just want to be the one with their finger on the bitchslap button. Fortunately, in this day and age of cheap bandwidth and free software you *can* be the editor of your own blog. Just don't be surprised if it isn't as popular as/.
What if the editors bitchslap the wrong person? Of course, that could never happen...
Then a whole pile of comments that no one really cares about will become even more obscure. Oh no, the horror! Quite frankly, if it makes even *one* person think before hitting the submit button then the slim chance that I might get bitchslapped is worth the risk.
Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
I am sure that your UNIX scripting comments were great. I am also sure that the only person that cared how highly moderated they were is EdwinBoyd. Consider your lesson the metaphysical equivalent of what would happen if you insulted the largest hairy troglodyte on the beach. The difference is that you don't end up with a massive sand-powered wedgie.
Personally, I've seen expensive solutions get undercut by commodity solutions too many times to get comfortable with that line of reasoning. Heck, we've all seen how Windows and later Linux have thrown the server operating system business on its head. At some point businesses invariably start wondering why they are paying so much for Oracle and Oracle talent when their competitors are getting the same job done with PostgreSQL.
I've lost thirty pounds myself, and I've come to the conclusion that there are a lot of ways to lose weight. I've tried quite a few of them including dieting and low intensity aerobics like jogging. I don't disagree, for example, with anything you've said. Jogging 20 minutes a day will not help you to lose a signficant amount of fat. Heck, jogging 20 minutes 4 times a week was precisely how I started my excercise journey and I didn't really lose any weight at all in nearly a year of workouts (although I did stop gaining weight).
However, there is a huge difference between 20 minutes of jogging and twenty minutes of pushing a car across a parking lot. Not only are you burning a lot more calories pushing the car, but you are forcing your body to create muscle which is metabolically active all day long. For whatever reason when people think of "exercise" they immediately assume that you mean low intensity cardio workouts, but that's not the only game in town. I would submit that 20 minutes a day is *plenty* if you do the right things for twenty minutes. For example, if you want to run try four minutes of Tabata sprints (20 second maximal sprints followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times). Even with a five minute warmup that's a workout that is very effective in well under 20 minutes, and that has been proven to increase your resting metabolic rate well above what you'd get from low intensity cardio. Another good example is Olympic clean and jerks. Moving 150 pounds from the floor to over your head burns a ridiculous amount of calories. Trying to get as many reps in 20 minutes as possible is a great workout that only requires 20 minutes. Of course, the first time you try this you probably won't be able to lift your hands over your head for a few days, but that'll give you plenty of time for sprints.
Do enough of this type of stuff and you'll soon find that the real problem is getting enough food to eat so that you can continue to progress.
Intel sells hardware, but for the hardware to be useful it needs software. Therefore when purchasing Intel solutions purchasers always have to look at the total price of the package including software. Commodity software lowers the overal price of the solution without touching Intel's margins at all. That makes it possible for Intel to sell the total solution at a lower price meaning more sales at the same profitability per sale.
This is basically what Microsoft has been doing to the hardware manufacturers for years. Because there was competition on the hardware side hardware prices have dropped dramatically over the years and Microsoft has ridden that wave to ever increasing sales and profit levels. Well, now Intel is finally wising up and realising that turnabout is fair play.
Long story made short. It is in Intel's best interest to see more competition in the software space as long as the software all runs on its chips.
Don't get too excited. If it wasn't for Governor Mitt Romney (R) ODF in Massachussets would be dead, and it's primary opponent was state senator Marc Pacheco (D).
Twenty minutes a day is fine for getting in shape or improving your level of fitness, but you have to make sure that the intensity is high. Twenty minutes of hamstering on the treadmill isn't enough unless you are really cranking or really out of shape. Try Tabata sprints three times a week for a couple of weeks and you will see what I mean. As an alternative spend 20 minutes pushing a car back and forth across the parking lot or learn how to clean and jerk and do a couple of sets where you lift stuff from the ground to up over your head.
The good news is that if you haven't been doing *anything* spending 20 minutes to jog/walk a mile or so will also get you started. You'll notice a difference in how you feel with just a few weeks.
Sure cleaning up your diet at the same time will help, but its far better to make small manageable changes that become habits than to try and change your entire life from one week to the next and fail miserably. Anyone can exercise for 20 minutes, and it will definitely help. Once that becomes a habit then they can take the next step (assuming that's what they want).
I have a really heavy door that I throw a towel over the top off so that the door doesn't destroy my hands. It's not as nice as a regular pullup bar, but it seems to work. The number of pullups I can do on a regular pullup bar keeps going up, so it's doing something.
What? You leave the house without a towel? Shame on you.
Slashdot Mirror
Fine, so point me to an industry, besides the construction industry, which isn't particularly well organized in most states (the national average is that less than 1 in 5 of construction workers is unionized), which is booming despite being heavily unionized. On the other hand, take just about any industry where unions play a factor and you will inevitably find that the businesses that are mostly union free are crushing the businesses that are heavily unionized. The UAW is just one example of how unions make it difficult for companies to compete. The airline business, the retail business (especially grocery stores), and dozens of other examples show the effects of unionization on an industry. There's a reason why unions are bleeding members. They don't work.
You can point to one example where an industry is growing despite the fact that unionization exists. However, you'd be hard pressed to find a statistic that links the growth of the industry to unionization. In fact, union membership has dropped decidedly in the last few years. It is far more credible to link the industry growth to a drop in the level of unionization than to link it to union participation. Of course, realists would link the growth in the housing industry to ridiculously low interest rates and unprecedented levels of available capital for housing development. Construction workers, both union and non-union were just along for the ride.
Go ahead and try and for a Technology Union, if you want, just don't be surprised when the folks that join along with you are the type of workers that you wouldn't care to be associated with.
And when you lose that war, do we get to kill you, or will we have to settle for enslaving you?
Here's the beauty of economics. If the Chinese and the Indians truly do have a comparative advantage at creating software then that means that everyone that uses software will benefit as more software production is moved overseas. Sure, you'll have to find something else to do, but everyone that buys software will benefit. No one is going to go to war to preserve your job because chances are good that they will actually benefit from the shift.
Hooray for economics!
You can try and fight economics if you want, but its not likely to help. Free markets are as old as mankind, and even in places like the former Soviet Union, where the government tried to limit the power of the market, markets still had a very powerful influence on the economy. So declare war on India and China if you wish, just don't be surprised when your army turns out to be pathetically small, and full of deranged lunatics.
Sure, until they drive the prices up on new houses so far that people start purchasing more manufactured homes. We are already seeing all sorts of new technologies specifically designed to reduce the amount of skilled labor required in a new home. Skilled construction jobs are way up because the housing market has gone completely bonkers and it is very difficult to "outsource" the construction of homes. However, it's is hard to argue that high costs of labor "created" the market demand. In fact, only an idiot would argue that lower labor costs wouldn't drive higher demand.
Just wait until the bubble pops on the housing market and we see housing starts move closer to historical levels. Then we'll either see how unions really work.
The question then becomes, would a union actually help you? The short stint that I did as a Teamster spoiled the idea of unions irreparably for me. From my own experience Unions are just one more layer above you and the management. Instead of just having an incompetent manager to deal with you also end up with an incompetent union representative that can make decisions that have a huge impact on your life. The primary difference between the management and the union reps is that at least some members of the management team will have taken a basic college course in economics. Layoffs are a way of life in union shops, the only difference between union shops and non-union ones is that in union shops you know who is going to get laid off, the folks with the least seniority. Never mind that the you are a more valuable worker than the folks with higher seniority, if you are the new guy, you are out of work.
Never mind that the union actually charges you for its so-called "services." As far as I was concerned I paid union dues so that the union could guarantee that lazy idiots with more seniority than me were impossible to fire while I could be let go at any time.
Yes, and the only people that are even slightly interested in using Java to create desktop applications are A) those people that are creating Java-related development tools, and B) those folks working on alternative (ie. Linux) desktop applications. However, thanks to Sun's ridiculous Java licensing Mono gets more actual use in the creation of desktop applications than Java does. SWT helps, to some extent, as it is possible today to create SWT applications that run on gcj.
Sun is eventually going to come to the realization that it needs the Free Software community if it is going to survive. These days you would basically have to be some sort of a zealot to create a desktop application in Java. The Free Software community has the market cornered on zealots, and they all think that Java is evil.
Your servers are running X? What for?
That's *precisely* the reason that investors are getting jumpy about MSFT. MSFT is still priced as a growth stock and Microsoft isn't growing. Microsoft keeps promising that its non-Windows non-Office investments are going to pay off, but for the most part they haven't. Many of Microsoft's investors would rather see the money that currently is being routed into black holes routed into their pockets instead.
Best Post Ever.
Yes, but if Microsoft didn't *own* IE then the OEMs (like Dell or HP) would be the ones that decided how the browser was configured.
There's a funny thing about market economies. The market produces what people have shown an interest in paying money for. If Oracle were to buy Red Hat with the intention of shutting Red Hat down, then you can basically guarantee that several other "Enterprise" Linux distributions would spring up as if by magic. This is especially true if Oracle paid current market prices for Red Hat. The source code in question would still be available, and there would be a large community looking for a new home.
In the long run Oracle is likely to have the same problems as Sun. Like Sun, Oracle's real problem is that Red Hat offers a software stack that is competitive with Oracle's software stack while maintaining an R&D budget that is a couple orders of magnitude smaller than Oracle's budget. Oracle's size is precisely the problem. As commodity software becomes more and more widespread the ridiculous profit margins that Oracle needs to survive will get harder and harder to produce. Sure, there are lots of Oracle customers that can't really afford to move to a lower cost but less featureful software stack, but Oracle is going to find that an increasing number of its customers are unwilling to pay for features that they don't really need or use. Lots of technical folks get all excited about "Enterprise" software, but in the long run inexpensive commodity software that actually gets used tends to move up the technology stack and crowd out software that relies on the huge profit margins that can be found at the high end of the spectrum. Red Hat's cost structure is designed around taking advantage of the much lower profit margins associated with commodity Free Software. Oracle's cost structure, on the other hand, is designed around the much higher profit margins that Oracle has historically been able to squeeze out of the market. Oracle can pretend that it can compete with Red Hat, but really it can't, not without shedding a lot of its workforce. If Oracle were to lower its workforce so that it was competitive with Red Hat then customers that are currently paying huge margins for Oracle products and services would undoubtedly take their business elsewhere.
Basically it works like this, there are a limited number of concert tickets available. Madonna can underprice these tickets in an effort to placate fans that don't have a basic grasp of economics, but that doesn't necessarily mean that these fans will actually be able to get into the show. Worse, it basically guarantees that a great deal of the profit that *could* be made on a concert goes not to the artist in question, but to scalpers on Ebay.
Seriously, when was the last time that you actually got your hands on tickets to a show that sold out in a few minutes? You still end up buying the ticket for $250, you just put the extra $200 in the pocket of someone on Ebay.
It's not about loyalty, it's about setting a price that takes a finite commodity (seats in an ampitheater) and distributes them among interested consumers. People with more time than money might wish that artists would charge lower prices and use things like waiting in line for a week (or whatever) to determine who gets in, but that's hardly fair to fans with a life. Besides, Madonna (or whoever) doesn't really benefit from you waiting in line. It's in her self interest to simply charge money.
The good news is that if you have time to wait in line for a week there is a good chance that you could take that free time and easily find a way to turn your free time into cash. Where I live McDonald's is always hiring :). At $5.50 an hour 45 hours should just about cover the price of entry. This time of year it is also possible to mow lawns. $250 is about 10 small lawns where I live.
Fah, you have absolutely no chance of being bitchslapped for anything you've said. If you did, I would agree with you :).
You *assume* that Slashdot could retain a "larger, more informed, and more intelligent crowd" if the editors ran things in a way that you would consider "better." I happen to disagree. Lots of sites have tried to copy Slashdot's success. Many even use Slashdot's software, and yet Slashdot is still king. That's not accidental, nor is it entirely due to Slashdot's first mover advantage. It certainly isn't due to Taco's grammatical skill.
Nothing personal, but I don't think that Slashdot is pissing off its most thoughtful voices. I do think that Slashdot has a long history of upsetting some very vocal people, but vocal doesn't necessarily equal thoughtful.
No, I simply disagree that the changes that you are talking about would be improvements. Like I said elsewhere, the only people that care about bitchslapping are the folks being bitchslapped, and being bitchslapped is so easy to avoid that normal posters don't have to worry about it. For the folks that are "on the bubble" if the threat of a potential bitchslapping causes them to rethink even one post then its a net win for everyone. I have yet to see any evidence that the folks that got bitchslapped fit my definition of "contributors."
Yes, you want to define the "good" reasons for bitchslapping, and you want /. to "improve" according to your tastes. That's what a /. "editor" does. It's not like the editors at /. earned their position with their grammatical skills. /. is popular largely because Taco and crew have come up with a way where intelligent folks can have interesting conversations about nerdy topics. The rest of us schmoes simply play by the rules (or go elsewhere). Just don't be surprised if when you go elsewhere that the editors do essentially the same thing. That's how the world works. Every site has to have a way to deal with trolls, and the human equation comes into play all of the time. The difference, in many cases, between a good site and a bad one is the quality control that the editors and moderators display. If /. didn't do a good job it wouldn't be so popular.
Believe me, I understand your point, and it is clear that you are not a troll. I would even agree that in a perfect world there wouldn't be a need for bitchslapping overzealous moderators. However, this world is far from perfect and it is my experience that even the worst moderators tend to be better than allowing free access to trolls. What's more, the people that complain about moderation tend to be the sort of folks that post first and think second. That's a large step up from a troll, but it's still not the type of poster that you necessarily want to encourage. If you happen to have an opinion that is likely to make the editors at /. upset enough to bitchslap you, then you might want to consider either A) keeping that opinion to yourself, or B) using some other board to get your message out.
That's hardly rocket science.
If you want something transparent try USENET. I still do, but only because I use a very capable news reader.
What the "whiners" really want is to be an editor. Everyone with a brain realizes that trolls are a problem, they just want to be the one with their finger on the bitchslap button. Fortunately, in this day and age of cheap bandwidth and free software you *can* be the editor of your own blog. Just don't be surprised if it isn't as popular as /.
Then a whole pile of comments that no one really cares about will become even more obscure. Oh no, the horror! Quite frankly, if it makes even *one* person think before hitting the submit button then the slim chance that I might get bitchslapped is worth the risk.
How does that old saying go? Oh yeah:
I am sure that your UNIX scripting comments were great. I am also sure that the only person that cared how highly moderated they were is EdwinBoyd. Consider your lesson the metaphysical equivalent of what would happen if you insulted the largest hairy troglodyte on the beach. The difference is that you don't end up with a massive sand-powered wedgie.
If there's some sort of conspiracy, I am not involved. I'd *like* to be involved though :).
Some people need to be bitchslapped. Personally, I think that the tiny bit of editorial control that /. editors exert is a plus, not a minus.
Personally, I've seen expensive solutions get undercut by commodity solutions too many times to get comfortable with that line of reasoning. Heck, we've all seen how Windows and later Linux have thrown the server operating system business on its head. At some point businesses invariably start wondering why they are paying so much for Oracle and Oracle talent when their competitors are getting the same job done with PostgreSQL.
I've lost thirty pounds myself, and I've come to the conclusion that there are a lot of ways to lose weight. I've tried quite a few of them including dieting and low intensity aerobics like jogging. I don't disagree, for example, with anything you've said. Jogging 20 minutes a day will not help you to lose a signficant amount of fat. Heck, jogging 20 minutes 4 times a week was precisely how I started my excercise journey and I didn't really lose any weight at all in nearly a year of workouts (although I did stop gaining weight).
However, there is a huge difference between 20 minutes of jogging and twenty minutes of pushing a car across a parking lot. Not only are you burning a lot more calories pushing the car, but you are forcing your body to create muscle which is metabolically active all day long. For whatever reason when people think of "exercise" they immediately assume that you mean low intensity cardio workouts, but that's not the only game in town. I would submit that 20 minutes a day is *plenty* if you do the right things for twenty minutes. For example, if you want to run try four minutes of Tabata sprints (20 second maximal sprints followed by 10 seconds rest repeated 8 times). Even with a five minute warmup that's a workout that is very effective in well under 20 minutes, and that has been proven to increase your resting metabolic rate well above what you'd get from low intensity cardio. Another good example is Olympic clean and jerks. Moving 150 pounds from the floor to over your head burns a ridiculous amount of calories. Trying to get as many reps in 20 minutes as possible is a great workout that only requires 20 minutes. Of course, the first time you try this you probably won't be able to lift your hands over your head for a few days, but that'll give you plenty of time for sprints.
Do enough of this type of stuff and you'll soon find that the real problem is getting enough food to eat so that you can continue to progress.
Intel sells hardware, but for the hardware to be useful it needs software. Therefore when purchasing Intel solutions purchasers always have to look at the total price of the package including software. Commodity software lowers the overal price of the solution without touching Intel's margins at all. That makes it possible for Intel to sell the total solution at a lower price meaning more sales at the same profitability per sale.
This is basically what Microsoft has been doing to the hardware manufacturers for years. Because there was competition on the hardware side hardware prices have dropped dramatically over the years and Microsoft has ridden that wave to ever increasing sales and profit levels. Well, now Intel is finally wising up and realising that turnabout is fair play.
Long story made short. It is in Intel's best interest to see more competition in the software space as long as the software all runs on its chips.
Don't get too excited. If it wasn't for Governor Mitt Romney (R) ODF in Massachussets would be dead, and it's primary opponent was state senator Marc Pacheco (D).
Twenty minutes a day is fine for getting in shape or improving your level of fitness, but you have to make sure that the intensity is high. Twenty minutes of hamstering on the treadmill isn't enough unless you are really cranking or really out of shape. Try Tabata sprints three times a week for a couple of weeks and you will see what I mean. As an alternative spend 20 minutes pushing a car back and forth across the parking lot or learn how to clean and jerk and do a couple of sets where you lift stuff from the ground to up over your head.
The good news is that if you haven't been doing *anything* spending 20 minutes to jog/walk a mile or so will also get you started. You'll notice a difference in how you feel with just a few weeks.
Sure cleaning up your diet at the same time will help, but its far better to make small manageable changes that become habits than to try and change your entire life from one week to the next and fail miserably. Anyone can exercise for 20 minutes, and it will definitely help. Once that becomes a habit then they can take the next step (assuming that's what they want).
I have a really heavy door that I throw a towel over the top off so that the door doesn't destroy my hands. It's not as nice as a regular pullup bar, but it seems to work. The number of pullups I can do on a regular pullup bar keeps going up, so it's doing something.
What? You leave the house without a towel? Shame on you.