All the Amazon pad has over this 4-year-old apple product is a bigger screen.
It also has the Amazon ecosystem instead of the Apple ecosystem. I know plenty of people who won't buy anything apple, period. Apple as a company has a reputation of being high-end / overpriced, etc. Amazon has a reputation for driving costs down and offering the lowest prices possible. Whether it is fair assessment or not, that simply is the perspective of every person I know. Offering the same thing with the same quality as a competitor, but cheaper, is the formula to success in business.
how could Groupon possible be losing money unless the founder is pocketing every last nickel?
Funny you should say that... they had a round of outside investment and raised close to a billion dollars. Of which, $100 million went to keep the business running, and ~$800 million went to the founders pockets as a phony stock buyback. So to be fair, the founder and his friends are only pocketing 9 out of every 10 nickels.
With ~40% of the workforce having a degree, it is a pretty standard job requirement at a lot of places that don't really need them. In this case they actually want somebody with a degree in BCIS or Information systems, or any of a half dozen different degree programs that are all different subclasses of the much more generic CS category.
It sounds like you are comparing the difference between a degree focused on systems vs a degree focused on algorithms, as being the same as a GED vs 10+years of post-graduate education.
Are you complaining that education exposes people to different points of view? Don't you find it interesting for example how a lifetime of delving into statistics can shape a persons worldview? Don't you find that relevant into shaping your own?
It seems odd to me that your signature talks about studying philosophy, yet you seem to be angered by professors sharing their own personal philosophies?
For DR-DOS: Of course there was no reason for this. Brad Silverberg, the Microsoft exec who finally left the company last week, but who in an earlier life had been responsible for Windows 95, emailed Allchin on 27 September 1991: "after IBM announces support for dr-dos at comdex, it's a small step for them to also announce they will be selling netware lite, maybe sometime soon thereafter. but count on it. We don't know precisely what ibm is going to announce. my best hunch is that they will offer dr-dos as the preferred solution for 286, os 2 2.0 for 386. they will also probably continue to offer msdos at $165 (drdos for $99). drdos has problems running windows today, and I assume will have more problems in the future." Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future.:-)", which is clear enough, and it should be noted that the pair were both high level Microsoft executives.
And you say a single beta was nothing, but making it non-functional on their system meant they couldn't do testing to ensure compatibility before release. It was specifically singled out as a technical glitch designed to sabotage their competition in trial, and was conclusively ruled anticompetitive and predatory by the judge.
For WordPerfect, MS supplied faulty API's for Wordperfect to use, while keeping their own hidden calls that actually worked. Windows updates actually broke Wordperfect and made it crash. Sure it is easy enough to assume it was just an unintended bug, but their trials revealed that top leadership was encouraging the engineers to break the system intentionally, which makes the "buggy" explanation a little more suspicious doesn't it?
Ami pro had a beta version of a dll. When using the final version of the dll, their program didn't work right. Again, maybe it was just a coincidence and mistake that they supplied yet another Word competitor with incomplete dll's. It sure seems like a pattern to me.
DR-DOS, Wordperfect, Ami pro count as direct sabotage in modifying their code to break competitors products. But it could certainly be argued that the entire "embrace, extend, extinguish" plan is ultimately a form of technical sabotage. Their executives emails have specifically mentioned causing competitors products to crash as a primary goal in defeating them. How can you say it wasn't consequential when it is coming from the very top of the company? I agree the sabotage probably wasn't necessary to gain market dominance, but it does demonstrate the complete lack of business ethics.
Personally I think we should legalize any non-violent consensual behavior, but it is interesting to consider the converse situation and letting people do anything as long as they consent.
What if we let people buy any amount of drugs, prostitutes, etc? What if we let people gamble with any possessions they have? Seems reasonable.
What if we let people gamble their lives away? Legalized versions of Russian Roulette for instance.
What if we allowed gladitorial style death matches if both combatants agreed on it? The winner would be fabulously wealthy because plenty of people would pay to watch.
What if your boss had the legal right to kill you if they weren't happy with your spreadsheets, because you signed a document of consent to get the job?
Obviously I'm stretching things a bit, but it's worth considering that human civilization has been similar to this in the past (Minus the spreadsheets). Violence is entertaining. People pay billions of dollars a year to watch synthetic violence in movies. Without moralists, where would we be?
The original seller, gets to sell at his price point. He makes 19.76, but the HFT makes 20.03*50,000.
The original buyer, decides that 19.76 is too high, but feels forced to buy at 19.78, so pays too much
The "greedy buyers" liquidate at a loss.
The HFT pushes the market up by causing an artificial shortage, and then exploiting the situation it created to make a profit.
In your scenario to describe why HFT's are a good thing, every single party in the scenario loses, except the HFT. What value does the middle man bring, when everyone else loses except him? The middle man manufactured a micro-shortage, and then took everyone else's money as profit. How can this be described as anything but a drain upon businesses that actually create value?
Is it better to wait all day, and retain as asset that hasn't changed in value OR Is it better to only have to wait milliseconds and hope to sell at the right time so your asset doesn't fluctuate too much and cause a loss? With our economy in bad shape, and the stock market having wild fluctuations due to 'uncertainty', are you arguing that adding artificial instability is a good thing?
As far as I understand it, the expiration isn't intended to expire the encrypted documents. After all, if you have the encrypted file, and you have a key to decrypt it, it is generally trivial to make a computer think the time is different.
The expiration is instead on using a persons public key to generate an encrypted document. So I could give you a key that expires in a month, and require that you use a new key to send encrypted documents to me after that time. But I can always decrypt any files you encrypted using the 30 day window. And you could always override the expiration by monkeying with the date/code, so it is merely a security feature that helps people keep keys updated and fresh.
The GPG site says this: "The inconvenience may or may not be worth the extra security. Just as you can, an attacker can still read all documents encrypted to an expired subkey. Changing subkeys only protects future documents."
Sorry but if your business cant afford to hire at least a part time consultant that knows what he is doing, you do not deserve to be in business.
And how exactly can these small businesses quickly and easily tell whether the part time consultant is actually good at his job, or only has the appearance of being competent? If everything is working exactly as requested, and the guy says it is secure, how do you verify what he is saying?
How much money do you expect a small business to pour into something that (at least in their perception) is already working fine?
1) In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US.
And what kind of economic damage does that cause? How difficult would it be for a country to sneak in a few dozen agents and electronic equipment to within US borders? How much damage can they cause if they already have hidden backdoors into multiple infrastructure sites that have been dormant? Cutting off the net from the world for one day would cost millions of dollars. Cutting of the net internally would cost billions. A few cars full of guys out wardriving could remain undetected a long time. The choice is between leaving networks off and costing millions/billions of dollars a day, and turning it back on and having a sleeper agent damage something. Your entire premise is based on geography, which really doesn't apply.
2) It is a war which means that it will be responded to as such, namely with physical force.
Hey look, a bunch of attacks came from China, we better bomb China? Except oh maybe those were re-routed from Iran, or Russia, and set the Chinese up. How can you be certain the country you are about to bomb is running the attacks and isn't a victim themselves? Do you really think the nation initiating the attacks wouldn't do everything in their power to remain undetected and blame somebody else?
It isn't like a hacker could go and turn off NORAD or something.
This isn't a conventional war though, why would they care about NORAD? Shutting down the power grid for 1 day in 1 metropolis would cost billions of dollars to the economy. How many hits like that can this economy take? How much uncertainty about cyber attacks will the market bear before foreign investors seek safer places and send the economy into a complete tailspin? Look at the fall of the USSR for instance. It had nothing to do with losing in battle, and everything to do with money.
What you've described is not a big pharma company with a lot of corrupt legal loopholes, but a big pharma company that has completely divested itself of pharma and turned into a bank.
A bank invest a fixed amount of money (the principle), and then gains the reward over time (the interest). If the bank gained all profits of any business venture they invested in, there would be very little incentive to start a business.
Clearly a hundred little companies is better for the world than one big one.
So a company is free to take bigger risks and reap any rewards, and then walk away from any liability? Sounds great if you a business. Sounds less great if you are anyone else, since many of the risks they take are with people's lives.
You've just described how Firefox started... The next step after that is other people take over the project and start doing random changes for no reason.
Re:Could Someone Help Me Out With This?
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
You talk about "fiscal responsibility", but then admonish people because they are willing to be responsible by taking a loan on a big purchase and repaying over time?
How is a mortgage irresponsible? It is a long term plan to get ahead in life financially.
How is spending money on school irresponsible? It is investing in yourself.
Finally, why is it "smart" to have a low standard of living, and not enjoy any of life's luxuries, to avoid an abstract object called debt? I'm not saying at unsustainable levels, but by paying a mortage payment and car payment, I can also afford to go out to eat, and have a beer, because I'm willing to be responsible on the long-term and pay my debts back.
Is it better to enjoy life, or have a pile of money? It is a lot easier to measure wealth in terms of happiness, experiences, and quality of life than via a random number attached to a bank account.
Do you seriously believe that Al Gore is behind a vast global conspiracy to make you pollute less? All scientists are secretly on his payroll because his corporate profits are tied to the number of trees in the world?
Where is the profit from promoting AGW theories, and why would it be more profitable than petrochemicals? Surely you realize that the oil and petrochemical industry is the most profitable industry in the history of mankind. Do you think Al Gore is some kind of superman trillionaire capable of fighting them singlehanded?
The British backed off primarily because they lost the support of people back home, and the political will to continue. They didn't lose in battle, and weren't going to lose in battle. It simply would have cost too much money to make the fight worthwhile. The British could have slaughtered any resistance, and Gandhi holding them back saved their lives, not British lives.
I'm not sure why you think he was a fan of Germany. He wrote to Hitler asking him to stop the violence, and advocated the Jews respond with a non-violent movement. He very clearly rejected was Hitler was doing once the violence started.
It's actually a quote from Gandhi. I wouldn't call him a coward myself. He repeatedly planned and went to protests where the protesters were beaten and shot. He went unarmed, knowing that he was in mortal danger, and chose nonviolence because he believed it would save the lives of others, even if it cost his own. Most historians agree and feel that he saved hundreds of thousands of lives through his bravery.
You can call him a coward if you like, but you cannot say he yielded to evil and went along with it.
Just doing sales taxes for a small company that does business in 3 or 4 states is a nightmare; for a national company, it would be almost impossible.
This is simply not true. I work for a medium business, with brick and mortar shops in 8 different states. I am the sole manager of the tax status for the products being sold. It is a very tiny part of what I do, because primarily all I have to do is set the tax status as a one time configuration when going into a new state, and it takes all of half an hour. When adding new products, I have to set a flag, and it takes sometimes an additional 5 minutes to look up the status. States, counties, and cities all have very accessible laws to research this. I spend less than 1% of my time per year dealing with taxes.
This is an extremely common situation. Thousands upon thousands of businesses deal with this every single day, and it is highly integrated into every single piece of retail software out of business necessity. If Amazon didn't program in a method to track and collect sales tax, then they are incredibly stupid. Don't buy into Amazons arguments about it being difficult. This is simply them trying to maintain an unfair competitive advantage over brick n mortar stores.
Well shit I guess they *are* banning bulbs.
They are banning inefficient bulbs. There is a difference.
Can you buy a 100 watt bulb that only produces 17 lumens per watt? No
Can you instead buy a bulb that produces the equivalent amount of 1700 lumens that uses less wattage? Yes. You have options of CFL, Halogen, LED. They cost more, but provide a better ROI over their lifetime. Why is this a problem? Would you also prefer super low octane gas? What about reducing the quality of building materials?
The gold plated connectors do make a difference, but only after many years. Gold is the least reactive of all metals, and resistant to corrosion. So, in 20, 30, 40 years from now, that cable will still make a solid connection. But of course the $5 cable can come with gold plated connectors too, and the big box stores overcharge by 1000% either way. I recommend Monoprice.com for cables.
If turning a profit was the most important aspect of the post office, then small town america wouldn't have post offices at all.
- again, not true. If that was the case there wouldn't have been a need for government protection against competition in mail delivery, wouldn't it?
The point is that a market need and a market supply will find a way to meet, but in presence of overwhelming government power they do not.
There are 36,400 post offices in the united states. There are 1,800 fedex offices, and 22 fedex hubs. There are a few hundred UPS distribution centers.
Do you for one second believe that UPS and Fedex would be profitable if they put offices in every small town? Why do they offload their commercial services onto the US Post Office which is operating at a loss, to deliver to small towns? Would mail and package deliver happen at all in small towns if the government didn't step in and mandate it as necessary by paying for the post office?
What is this protection against competition in mail delivery that you are talking about? There are hundreds of companies that exist and are solely dedicated to mail and package delivery. Are you saying they can't exist because of the monopoly the USPS has? Reality disagrees.
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash
The post office ran effectively for hundreds of years breaking even or making a modest profit. Only in the past few years have they faced major financial problems, which isn't surprising considering that the past couple of decades have seen huge social changes shifting snail mail to email, shifting bills to web based payment systems, and shifting package delivery to Fedex and UPS.
It seems unfair that you ignore literally hundreds of years of history to focus on the last few years where 95% of their income has been impacted, and through which they are adapting and changing their strategy to remain viable. If turning a profit was the most important aspect of the post office, then small town america wouldn't have post offices at all.
WinMo was awful. Every iteration was terrible. And every version upgrade was supposed to be "significantly" better. They never were. It was painful to use. Now I hear WinMo 7 is better. I'm not falling for that again!
The only chance MS has to win customers over, is to disguise the product as a different name entirely, and not let consumers know that they are involved.
It isn't a secret conspiracy that Google is in the business of analyzing your personal data, and making advertising revenue on based upon it. They make billions of dollars doing precisely that and are upfront about it. Am I delusional because I believe they will continue to follow their existing, extremely profitable, business model?
They are also upfront about their research and heavy investment into quantum computing, which theoretically has great potential in decryption. Even aside from that, not all encryption was created equal, and many people might choose a weaker standard to get faster speeds.
Gmail is free. How long until Gcloud is free and for the exact same reasons?
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't "boycotting" based on ideological opposition to walled gardens or some other esoteric freedom. They simply think it costs too much.
Have you ever heard someone complaining that everything Apple does is overpriced?
Have you ever heard someone complaining that everything Amazon does is overpriced?
All the Amazon pad has over this 4-year-old apple product is a bigger screen.
It also has the Amazon ecosystem instead of the Apple ecosystem. I know plenty of people who won't buy anything apple, period. Apple as a company has a reputation of being high-end / overpriced, etc. Amazon has a reputation for driving costs down and offering the lowest prices possible. Whether it is fair assessment or not, that simply is the perspective of every person I know. Offering the same thing with the same quality as a competitor, but cheaper, is the formula to success in business.
how could Groupon possible be losing money unless the founder is pocketing every last nickel?
Funny you should say that... they had a round of outside investment and raised close to a billion dollars. Of which, $100 million went to keep the business running, and ~$800 million went to the founders pockets as a phony stock buyback. So to be fair, the founder and his friends are only pocketing 9 out of every 10 nickels.
With ~40% of the workforce having a degree, it is a pretty standard job requirement at a lot of places that don't really need them. In this case they actually want somebody with a degree in BCIS or Information systems, or any of a half dozen different degree programs that are all different subclasses of the much more generic CS category.
It sounds like you are comparing the difference between a degree focused on systems vs a degree focused on algorithms, as being the same as a GED vs 10+years of post-graduate education.
Are you complaining that education exposes people to different points of view? Don't you find it interesting for example how a lifetime of delving into statistics can shape a persons worldview? Don't you find that relevant into shaping your own?
It seems odd to me that your signature talks about studying philosophy, yet you seem to be angered by professors sharing their own personal philosophies?
For DR-DOS: Of course there was no reason for this. Brad Silverberg, the Microsoft exec who finally left the company last week, but who in an earlier life had been responsible for Windows 95, emailed Allchin on 27 September 1991: "after IBM announces support for dr-dos at comdex, it's a small step for them to also announce they will be selling netware lite, maybe sometime soon thereafter. but count on it. We don't know precisely what ibm is going to announce. my best hunch is that they will offer dr-dos as the preferred solution for 286, os 2 2.0 for 386. they will also probably continue to offer msdos at $165 (drdos for $99). drdos has problems running windows today, and I assume will have more problems in the future." Allchin replied: "You should make sure it has problems in the future. :-)", which is clear enough, and it should be noted that the pair were both high level Microsoft executives.
And you say a single beta was nothing, but making it non-functional on their system meant they couldn't do testing to ensure compatibility before release. It was specifically singled out as a technical glitch designed to sabotage their competition in trial, and was conclusively ruled anticompetitive and predatory by the judge.
For WordPerfect, MS supplied faulty API's for Wordperfect to use, while keeping their own hidden calls that actually worked. Windows updates actually broke Wordperfect and made it crash. Sure it is easy enough to assume it was just an unintended bug, but their trials revealed that top leadership was encouraging the engineers to break the system intentionally, which makes the "buggy" explanation a little more suspicious doesn't it?
Ami pro had a beta version of a dll. When using the final version of the dll, their program didn't work right. Again, maybe it was just a coincidence and mistake that they supplied yet another Word competitor with incomplete dll's. It sure seems like a pattern to me.
DR-DOS, Wordperfect, Ami pro count as direct sabotage in modifying their code to break competitors products. But it could certainly be argued that the entire "embrace, extend, extinguish" plan is ultimately a form of technical sabotage. Their executives emails have specifically mentioned causing competitors products to crash as a primary goal in defeating them. How can you say it wasn't consequential when it is coming from the very top of the company? I agree the sabotage probably wasn't necessary to gain market dominance, but it does demonstrate the complete lack of business ethics.
Personally I think we should legalize any non-violent consensual behavior, but it is interesting to consider the converse situation and letting people do anything as long as they consent.
What if we let people buy any amount of drugs, prostitutes, etc? What if we let people gamble with any possessions they have? Seems reasonable.
What if we let people gamble their lives away? Legalized versions of Russian Roulette for instance.
What if we allowed gladitorial style death matches if both combatants agreed on it? The winner would be fabulously wealthy because plenty of people would pay to watch.
What if your boss had the legal right to kill you if they weren't happy with your spreadsheets, because you signed a document of consent to get the job?
Obviously I'm stretching things a bit, but it's worth considering that human civilization has been similar to this in the past (Minus the spreadsheets). Violence is entertaining. People pay billions of dollars a year to watch synthetic violence in movies. Without moralists, where would we be?
Who does this benefit?
The original seller, gets to sell at his price point. He makes 19.76, but the HFT makes 20.03*50,000.
The original buyer, decides that 19.76 is too high, but feels forced to buy at 19.78, so pays too much
The "greedy buyers" liquidate at a loss.
The HFT pushes the market up by causing an artificial shortage, and then exploiting the situation it created to make a profit.
In your scenario to describe why HFT's are a good thing, every single party in the scenario loses, except the HFT. What value does the middle man bring, when everyone else loses except him? The middle man manufactured a micro-shortage, and then took everyone else's money as profit. How can this be described as anything but a drain upon businesses that actually create value?
Is it better to wait all day, and retain as asset that hasn't changed in value OR Is it better to only have to wait milliseconds and hope to sell at the right time so your asset doesn't fluctuate too much and cause a loss? With our economy in bad shape, and the stock market having wild fluctuations due to 'uncertainty', are you arguing that adding artificial instability is a good thing?
As far as I understand it, the expiration isn't intended to expire the encrypted documents. After all, if you have the encrypted file, and you have a key to decrypt it, it is generally trivial to make a computer think the time is different.
The expiration is instead on using a persons public key to generate an encrypted document. So I could give you a key that expires in a month, and require that you use a new key to send encrypted documents to me after that time. But I can always decrypt any files you encrypted using the 30 day window. And you could always override the expiration by monkeying with the date/code, so it is merely a security feature that helps people keep keys updated and fresh.
The GPG site says this: "The inconvenience may or may not be worth the extra security. Just as you can, an attacker can still read all documents encrypted to an expired subkey. Changing subkeys only protects future documents."
Sorry but if your business cant afford to hire at least a part time consultant that knows what he is doing, you do not deserve to be in business.
And how exactly can these small businesses quickly and easily tell whether the part time consultant is actually good at his job, or only has the appearance of being competent? If everything is working exactly as requested, and the guy says it is secure, how do you verify what he is saying?
How much money do you expect a small business to pour into something that (at least in their perception) is already working fine?
1) In such a case, the US would probably take more drastic measures. It would be easier than you think for them to cut off all Internet in and out of the US.
And what kind of economic damage does that cause? How difficult would it be for a country to sneak in a few dozen agents and electronic equipment to within US borders? How much damage can they cause if they already have hidden backdoors into multiple infrastructure sites that have been dormant? Cutting off the net from the world for one day would cost millions of dollars. Cutting of the net internally would cost billions. A few cars full of guys out wardriving could remain undetected a long time. The choice is between leaving networks off and costing millions/billions of dollars a day, and turning it back on and having a sleeper agent damage something. Your entire premise is based on geography, which really doesn't apply.
2) It is a war which means that it will be responded to as such, namely with physical force.
Hey look, a bunch of attacks came from China, we better bomb China? Except oh maybe those were re-routed from Iran, or Russia, and set the Chinese up. How can you be certain the country you are about to bomb is running the attacks and isn't a victim themselves? Do you really think the nation initiating the attacks wouldn't do everything in their power to remain undetected and blame somebody else?
It isn't like a hacker could go and turn off NORAD or something.
This isn't a conventional war though, why would they care about NORAD? Shutting down the power grid for 1 day in 1 metropolis would cost billions of dollars to the economy. How many hits like that can this economy take? How much uncertainty about cyber attacks will the market bear before foreign investors seek safer places and send the economy into a complete tailspin? Look at the fall of the USSR for instance. It had nothing to do with losing in battle, and everything to do with money.
What you've described is not a big pharma company with a lot of corrupt legal loopholes, but a big pharma company that has completely divested itself of pharma and turned into a bank.
A bank invest a fixed amount of money (the principle), and then gains the reward over time (the interest). If the bank gained all profits of any business venture they invested in, there would be very little incentive to start a business.
Clearly a hundred little companies is better for the world than one big one.
So a company is free to take bigger risks and reap any rewards, and then walk away from any liability? Sounds great if you a business. Sounds less great if you are anyone else, since many of the risks they take are with people's lives.
You've just described how Firefox started... The next step after that is other people take over the project and start doing random changes for no reason.
You talk about "fiscal responsibility", but then admonish people because they are willing to be responsible by taking a loan on a big purchase and repaying over time?
How is a mortgage irresponsible? It is a long term plan to get ahead in life financially.
How is spending money on school irresponsible? It is investing in yourself.
Finally, why is it "smart" to have a low standard of living, and not enjoy any of life's luxuries, to avoid an abstract object called debt? I'm not saying at unsustainable levels, but by paying a mortage payment and car payment, I can also afford to go out to eat, and have a beer, because I'm willing to be responsible on the long-term and pay my debts back.
Is it better to enjoy life, or have a pile of money? It is a lot easier to measure wealth in terms of happiness, experiences, and quality of life than via a random number attached to a bank account.
Do you seriously believe that Al Gore is behind a vast global conspiracy to make you pollute less? All scientists are secretly on his payroll because his corporate profits are tied to the number of trees in the world?
Where is the profit from promoting AGW theories, and why would it be more profitable than petrochemicals? Surely you realize that the oil and petrochemical industry is the most profitable industry in the history of mankind. Do you think Al Gore is some kind of superman trillionaire capable of fighting them singlehanded?
The British backed off primarily because they lost the support of people back home, and the political will to continue. They didn't lose in battle, and weren't going to lose in battle. It simply would have cost too much money to make the fight worthwhile. The British could have slaughtered any resistance, and Gandhi holding them back saved their lives, not British lives.
I'm not sure why you think he was a fan of Germany. He wrote to Hitler asking him to stop the violence, and advocated the Jews respond with a non-violent movement. He very clearly rejected was Hitler was doing once the violence started.
It's actually a quote from Gandhi. I wouldn't call him a coward myself. He repeatedly planned and went to protests where the protesters were beaten and shot. He went unarmed, knowing that he was in mortal danger, and chose nonviolence because he believed it would save the lives of others, even if it cost his own. Most historians agree and feel that he saved hundreds of thousands of lives through his bravery.
You can call him a coward if you like, but you cannot say he yielded to evil and went along with it.
Just doing sales taxes for a small company that does business in 3 or 4 states is a nightmare; for a national company, it would be almost impossible.
This is simply not true. I work for a medium business, with brick and mortar shops in 8 different states. I am the sole manager of the tax status for the products being sold. It is a very tiny part of what I do, because primarily all I have to do is set the tax status as a one time configuration when going into a new state, and it takes all of half an hour. When adding new products, I have to set a flag, and it takes sometimes an additional 5 minutes to look up the status. States, counties, and cities all have very accessible laws to research this. I spend less than 1% of my time per year dealing with taxes.
This is an extremely common situation. Thousands upon thousands of businesses deal with this every single day, and it is highly integrated into every single piece of retail software out of business necessity. If Amazon didn't program in a method to track and collect sales tax, then they are incredibly stupid. Don't buy into Amazons arguments about it being difficult. This is simply them trying to maintain an unfair competitive advantage over brick n mortar stores.
Well shit I guess they *are* banning bulbs.
They are banning inefficient bulbs. There is a difference.
Can you buy a 100 watt bulb that only produces 17 lumens per watt? No
Can you instead buy a bulb that produces the equivalent amount of 1700 lumens that uses less wattage? Yes. You have options of CFL, Halogen, LED. They cost more, but provide a better ROI over their lifetime. Why is this a problem? Would you also prefer super low octane gas? What about reducing the quality of building materials?
The gold plated connectors do make a difference, but only after many years. Gold is the least reactive of all metals, and resistant to corrosion. So, in 20, 30, 40 years from now, that cable will still make a solid connection. But of course the $5 cable can come with gold plated connectors too, and the big box stores overcharge by 1000% either way. I recommend Monoprice.com for cables.
If turning a profit was the most important aspect of the post office, then small town america wouldn't have post offices at all.
- again, not true. If that was the case there wouldn't have been a need for government protection against competition in mail delivery, wouldn't it?
The point is that a market need and a market supply will find a way to meet, but in presence of overwhelming government power they do not.
There are 36,400 post offices in the united states. There are 1,800 fedex offices, and 22 fedex hubs. There are a few hundred UPS distribution centers.
Do you for one second believe that UPS and Fedex would be profitable if they put offices in every small town? Why do they offload their commercial services onto the US Post Office which is operating at a loss, to deliver to small towns? Would mail and package deliver happen at all in small towns if the government didn't step in and mandate it as necessary by paying for the post office?
What is this protection against competition in mail delivery that you are talking about? There are hundreds of companies that exist and are solely dedicated to mail and package delivery. Are you saying they can't exist because of the monopoly the USPS has? Reality disagrees.
When somebody says that government can do things efficiently, and they use the postal office as an example, they should really go back to that premise and realize, that the US post office is out of cash
The post office ran effectively for hundreds of years breaking even or making a modest profit. Only in the past few years have they faced major financial problems, which isn't surprising considering that the past couple of decades have seen huge social changes shifting snail mail to email, shifting bills to web based payment systems, and shifting package delivery to Fedex and UPS.
It seems unfair that you ignore literally hundreds of years of history to focus on the last few years where 95% of their income has been impacted, and through which they are adapting and changing their strategy to remain viable. If turning a profit was the most important aspect of the post office, then small town america wouldn't have post offices at all.
WinMo was awful. Every iteration was terrible. And every version upgrade was supposed to be "significantly" better. They never were. It was painful to use. Now I hear WinMo 7 is better. I'm not falling for that again!
The only chance MS has to win customers over, is to disguise the product as a different name entirely, and not let consumers know that they are involved.
It isn't a secret conspiracy that Google is in the business of analyzing your personal data, and making advertising revenue on based upon it. They make billions of dollars doing precisely that and are upfront about it. Am I delusional because I believe they will continue to follow their existing, extremely profitable, business model?
They are also upfront about their research and heavy investment into quantum computing, which theoretically has great potential in decryption. Even aside from that, not all encryption was created equal, and many people might choose a weaker standard to get faster speeds.
Gmail is free. How long until Gcloud is free and for the exact same reasons?