It could be that people had unreasonable expectations from the hybrid to begin with
Sounds like you're one of them....just sayin...
new awesome technology is never going to pop up in a $30k consumer product that has a 5 year design cycle and has to meet hundreds (thousands?) of international regulations and liability up the yin yang. It has to be proven first, maybe when you're in the market for a new car it'll be there.
Not 3 stories ago we get a post about how android is not a good buisiness model because apple is making 250x as much on every i-device sold as google does on every android device (http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-earns-2-per-handset-apple-575). Perhaps suggesting that its better for business to have the walled garden approach. Now there's this story about how google is losing out because a competitor is more open. Based on that it seems google is toast because they are too open while also not open enough. Seems rough to be getting attacked from all sides but then again, consistent $billions in profit probably soften the blow.
Do NOT let posts you read on the internet (yes, even slashdot) discourage you. Who knows what the back story is. Maybe they did see fraud or got screwed over or they could just be full of shit. But don't live your life based on other peoples anecdotes. All the people with awesome careers are too busy doing awesome stuff to post on internet forums. Find something you think you might like to do and give it your best shot. If you're doing science outside of the third world you won't starve. You might not have fancy cars and a big house but if your work fulfills your life, that makes you a true 1%er.
I agree this is pretty blatant. But what can we do about it? Slashdot is owned by thinkgeek which trades on nasdaq. That means they eventually have to answer to shareholders who care about one thing. Like it or not, advertising makes the internet go round (although how this is economically sustainable, I have absolutely no idea). Is there some way we can avoid it? There are several million UIDs now. If everyone bought a few shares, slashdot users could dominate think geek's $95mil market capital. Would that even do anything? Is that better than a subscription model? In the end the guys running the servers gotta get their hot pockets from somewhere...
Doesn't just being the deepest point in the ocean make it worth exploring? I mean, its the only one. Explorers typically tend to explore the "most somethings".
Do you need a tablet? Judging by your post, probably not. Do you need a girlfriend? Judging by your post, desperately. But whichever one you get theres bound to be drama when your netbook finds out...
I'm writing a new app that will revolutionize Dan Bricklin's life. It will randomly insert the word "killer" into every sentence he writes, thus cutting his workload in half!
50 years ago you could catch smallpox. Today you can't
50 years ago all production cars required petroleum products to run. Today you can buy electric.
50 years ago the average life expectancy was 70. Today its 78 (enough time for two advanced degrees)
50 years ago you needed an expensive encyclopedia set or journal to research a subject. Today all thats in front of your face, largely free...on that note...
50 years ago random people around the world didn't really care what you thought. Today....well some things never change;)
I wish we had a mars colony as much as the next err...pro mars colony guy, but the point is, its not all bad
So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter.
But not because of anything to do with Apple. More to do with timing and luck. Bill Gates did indeed create the worlds most valuable company...which happened to be named Microsoft. At one point it was worth about $600 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization - year 2000. Its just not the worlds most valuable company anymore. But the answer to the original question is yes.
Has Toyota fallen that far? Remember the biggest "problem" they had (stuck accelerators) turned out to be driver error (just like it did for Audi and Jeep). Ford had even more recalls than Toyota that year. If anything, they aren't the pinnacle of reliability not because they've fallen but because everyone else has risen. That said I agree with your point on brand loyalty.
Sure, there may be less problems over the life of the car, which todays seems to be not anymore than about 10 years.
False. The average age of an operating US car is 10.8 years (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/cars-trucks-age-polk/52613102/1). As a whole, they don't build them like they used to...they build them much much better. Your 1981 accord ran for 20 years because it was so simple. Fixes are cheap and easy and the junkyards are full of cheap components so its worth it. Contrast that with today's depreciation, extra components, and specialty tools. So when a transmission goes bad on your 1999 civic, its not worth a $3k job to save a $2.5k car. Also, how many stuck 4x4's did you actually drive by? All things equal theres no way fwd has better traction than a 4x4. I bet the "something about it" was the driver who was aware of their surroundings. Good on you.
I don't get why Apple is always the one intimately associated with Foxconn when, as the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, Foxconn builds products for Dell, HP, Sony, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, and so on.
I guess thats the price you pay when you have perhaps the greatest electronics brand name recognition in history. It doesn't help when you're always in the news for your record profits either. Of course, one could argue that those things may also have positive aspects for a corporation....
Thankfully, this will NEVER be a ____ killer! For once we don't have to worry about losing development support when X device fails to achieve 25% market share by Q3. Thankfully, the PI is produced by a non-profit so no hedge fund manager can pull the plug when the projected growth rate increase drops below 50% or whatever they do in their volcano fortresses (I kid I kid).
...if you have hopes for Flash and Silverlight based streaming services...
How much widget-ry (advertising sources) do you even need? I have hopes that Raspberry Pi will accomplish their mission of letting whoever wants to program, learn how to program. In my opinion, the smarter the human race, the better./naivedreams. And the best part about all of this is, if you do care enough about Hulu etc, you can just take chromium and adapt it to the PI or wait till it runs android apps, etc. I think the biggest issue is getting these things out to the people that want them.
Since then, they've developed Android and have a good share of the cell phone market.
Who's to say facebook won't come out with something that will dominate some other market? Google IPO'd in 2004 when they focused on search and email and sold advertising. Who would have imagined a google phone back then? The Iphone wasn't even released till 2007! The entire market for one of googles biggest products has been created "since then". Of course...thats not to say facebook will have similar success but thats what betting on the stock market is all about.
Here's the major difference I see.
Facebook focuses on messaging (email), search, and sells advertising just like google did in 2004. I don't see any difference at all...and maybe thats the problem.
What if the chips have different I/O and core voltages? This is true for many processors and FPGA's that come in BGA form. I'd bet the ball pitch is.5 or.4mm so if you're off by a mm you could easily connect 3.3V to the 1.2V core. That would indeed fry the chip. Or 3.3V could go straight to ground which could fry the actual PCB since the traces are 5 mils or less and can't handle 500mA for long. Also, that "magic clamp" exists as a $60k CNC heat column in my lab at work. Once you program the reflow profile, the board layout, and the chip pressure it is indeed dirt simple.
Disclaimer: All board stats listed are pure speculation
I suppose one approach to encourage change is to flatten the landscape and start everything fresh. But in this case I don't think the population is ready to throw all their smart phones and computers in the garbage for something thats likely half a world away. The thing is, Apple is by far the biggest single supplier of flashy tech (see: iphone sales vs the next most popular smartphone and they are the most valuable company in the world) and often have a lock on the supply of certain parts because they can force the manufacturer to sell to them when they promise to buy hundreds of millions of parts. That also puts them in the best position to force improved working conditions. Sure all tech companies use the same cheap labor but Apple would probably have the best chance of doing something about it. Is an apple boycott easier than getting everyone to write their congressperson to get import laws changed? Who knows...
It may be true that all products from China are produced under similar conditions so the people building samsungs and acers have it just as bad as those building iStuff. However, some of Apple's success is attributed to the massive quantities they purchase and how they hold great power over manufacturers to drive their cost down. I'd say this also makes apple the most effective target for a boycott. Their control as the single buyer of vast numbers of parts puts them in the unique position to be able to improve working conditions. Instead of saying "we'll buy 50,000,000 LCD screens if you reduce the cost by 3% or sell to us exclusively" they could say "we'll buy 50,000,000 screens if you stop making workers live in pens and let them have friends/unionize". Of course, the only reason they would do such a crazy thing would be because of a massive boycott. It would seem that if you care about how your stuff is made, your best bet is to go after the biggest fish.
Slashdot Mirror
It could be that people had unreasonable expectations from the hybrid to begin with
Sounds like you're one of them....just sayin...
new awesome technology is never going to pop up in a $30k consumer product that has a 5 year design cycle and has to meet hundreds (thousands?) of international regulations and liability up the yin yang. It has to be proven first, maybe when you're in the market for a new car it'll be there.
No you bold faced the wrong word. It should be a bold blank space in place of "software"....seems you skipped a difficult implementation...
Not 3 stories ago we get a post about how android is not a good buisiness model because apple is making 250x as much on every i-device sold as google does on every android device (http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-earns-2-per-handset-apple-575). Perhaps suggesting that its better for business to have the walled garden approach. Now there's this story about how google is losing out because a competitor is more open. Based on that it seems google is toast because they are too open while also not open enough. Seems rough to be getting attacked from all sides but then again, consistent $billions in profit probably soften the blow.
Do NOT let posts you read on the internet (yes, even slashdot) discourage you. Who knows what the back story is. Maybe they did see fraud or got screwed over or they could just be full of shit. But don't live your life based on other peoples anecdotes. All the people with awesome careers are too busy doing awesome stuff to post on internet forums. Find something you think you might like to do and give it your best shot. If you're doing science outside of the third world you won't starve. You might not have fancy cars and a big house but if your work fulfills your life, that makes you a true 1%er.
It's not like I can't find many many other ways to waste time online.
Forget string theory, that should be the fundamental law of the universe.
I agree this is pretty blatant. But what can we do about it? Slashdot is owned by thinkgeek which trades on nasdaq. That means they eventually have to answer to shareholders who care about one thing. Like it or not, advertising makes the internet go round (although how this is economically sustainable, I have absolutely no idea). Is there some way we can avoid it? There are several million UIDs now. If everyone bought a few shares, slashdot users could dominate think geek's $95mil market capital. Would that even do anything? Is that better than a subscription model? In the end the guys running the servers gotta get their hot pockets from somewhere...
One of my "If I was a billionaire" fantasies was a documentary trip back to the trench.
Noble, but for me its two chicks at the same time (deadpan). It used to only take a million$ to set that up but with inflation and all...
Doesn't just being the deepest point in the ocean make it worth exploring? I mean, its the only one. Explorers typically tend to explore the "most somethings".
Maybe the aristocracy is so rich now they are getting bored with their billions.
Without those shitty movies he wouldn't be able to do things like this...
Do you need a tablet? Judging by your post, probably not. Do you need a girlfriend? Judging by your post, desperately. But whichever one you get theres bound to be drama when your netbook finds out...
I'm writing a new app that will revolutionize Dan Bricklin's life. It will randomly insert the word "killer" into every sentence he writes, thus cutting his workload in half!
50 years ago you could catch smallpox. Today you can't
50 years ago all production cars required petroleum products to run. Today you can buy electric.
50 years ago the average life expectancy was 70. Today its 78 (enough time for two advanced degrees)
50 years ago you needed an expensive encyclopedia set or journal to research a subject. Today all thats in front of your face, largely free...on that note...
50 years ago random people around the world didn't really care what you thought. Today....well some things never change
I wish we had a mars colony as much as the next err...pro mars colony guy, but the point is, its not all bad
Is it that easy to get rich everywhere - just make ridiculous, useless, 6-figure machines?
Almost. You still usually have to already be rich.
...Create the worlds most valuable company?
In the year 2000......in the year Two THOUSAND!
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization -year 2000 (duh)
So, does Gates deserve any credit for helping create the world's most valuable company?
The reality is that he probably had little choice in the matter.
But not because of anything to do with Apple. More to do with timing and luck. Bill Gates did indeed create the worlds most valuable company...which happened to be named Microsoft. At one point it was worth about $600 billion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporations_by_market_capitalization - year 2000. Its just not the worlds most valuable company anymore. But the answer to the original question is yes.
Has Toyota fallen that far? Remember the biggest "problem" they had (stuck accelerators) turned out to be driver error (just like it did for Audi and Jeep). Ford had even more recalls than Toyota that year. If anything, they aren't the pinnacle of reliability not because they've fallen but because everyone else has risen. That said I agree with your point on brand loyalty.
Sure, there may be less problems over the life of the car, which todays seems to be not anymore than about 10 years.
False. The average age of an operating US car is 10.8 years (http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/story/2012-01-17/cars-trucks-age-polk/52613102/1). As a whole, they don't build them like they used to...they build them much much better. Your 1981 accord ran for 20 years because it was so simple. Fixes are cheap and easy and the junkyards are full of cheap components so its worth it. Contrast that with today's depreciation, extra components, and specialty tools. So when a transmission goes bad on your 1999 civic, its not worth a $3k job to save a $2.5k car. Also, how many stuck 4x4's did you actually drive by? All things equal theres no way fwd has better traction than a 4x4. I bet the "something about it" was the driver who was aware of their surroundings. Good on you.
I don't get why Apple is always the one intimately associated with Foxconn when, as the largest electronics manufacturer in the world, Foxconn builds products for Dell, HP, Sony, Motorola, Nintendo, Microsoft, and so on.
I guess thats the price you pay when you have perhaps the greatest electronics brand name recognition in history. It doesn't help when you're always in the news for your record profits either. Of course, one could argue that those things may also have positive aspects for a corporation....
...if you have hopes for Flash and Silverlight based streaming services...
How much widget-ry (advertising sources) do you even need? I have hopes that Raspberry Pi will accomplish their mission of letting whoever wants to program, learn how to program. In my opinion, the smarter the human race, the better. /naivedreams. And the best part about all of this is, if you do care enough about Hulu etc, you can just take chromium and adapt it to the PI or wait till it runs android apps, etc. I think the biggest issue is getting these things out to the people that want them.
Since then, they've developed Android and have a good share of the cell phone market.
Who's to say facebook won't come out with something that will dominate some other market? Google IPO'd in 2004 when they focused on search and email and sold advertising. Who would have imagined a google phone back then? The Iphone wasn't even released till 2007! The entire market for one of googles biggest products has been created "since then". Of course...thats not to say facebook will have similar success but thats what betting on the stock market is all about.
Here's the major difference I see.
Facebook focuses on messaging (email), search, and sells advertising just like google did in 2004. I don't see any difference at all...and maybe thats the problem.
Not if he had Jack Bauer's writers:
Terrorist: Fred, Rewire the CI-Plot Device to blow up the eastern sea board or I'll tell Suzie you cheated on her!
...6 min later...
Fred: Jack! the terrorist just escaped via submarine helicopter!
Jack: Chloe, patch me through to the Deap Sea satellite imaging array!
nothings going to blow up on a digital ckt.
What if the chips have different I/O and core voltages? This is true for many processors and FPGA's that come in BGA form. I'd bet the ball pitch is .5 or .4mm so if you're off by a mm you could easily connect 3.3V to the 1.2V core. That would indeed fry the chip. Or 3.3V could go straight to ground which could fry the actual PCB since the traces are 5 mils or less and can't handle 500mA for long. Also, that "magic clamp" exists as a $60k CNC heat column in my lab at work. Once you program the reflow profile, the board layout, and the chip pressure it is indeed dirt simple.
Disclaimer: All board stats listed are pure speculation
I suppose one approach to encourage change is to flatten the landscape and start everything fresh. But in this case I don't think the population is ready to throw all their smart phones and computers in the garbage for something thats likely half a world away. The thing is, Apple is by far the biggest single supplier of flashy tech (see: iphone sales vs the next most popular smartphone and they are the most valuable company in the world) and often have a lock on the supply of certain parts because they can force the manufacturer to sell to them when they promise to buy hundreds of millions of parts. That also puts them in the best position to force improved working conditions. Sure all tech companies use the same cheap labor but Apple would probably have the best chance of doing something about it. Is an apple boycott easier than getting everyone to write their congressperson to get import laws changed? Who knows...
It may be true that all products from China are produced under similar conditions so the people building samsungs and acers have it just as bad as those building iStuff. However, some of Apple's success is attributed to the massive quantities they purchase and how they hold great power over manufacturers to drive their cost down. I'd say this also makes apple the most effective target for a boycott. Their control as the single buyer of vast numbers of parts puts them in the unique position to be able to improve working conditions. Instead of saying "we'll buy 50,000,000 LCD screens if you reduce the cost by 3% or sell to us exclusively" they could say "we'll buy 50,000,000 screens if you stop making workers live in pens and let them have friends/unionize". Of course, the only reason they would do such a crazy thing would be because of a massive boycott. It would seem that if you care about how your stuff is made, your best bet is to go after the biggest fish.