Circuit City was poorly managed and loaded with debt. It is not the internet per say, but rather management losing their focus. BB had its doom when it acquired GeekSquad. Since it was a ripoff and such a high margin they strong armed their managers into making sure it was bundled with every computer since customers would have to use it anyway etc.
Then the warranties could only be serviced at geeksquad. Then components were geeksquad insured. Then the cashiers were required to meet quotas, now BB wont even sell gaming keyboard and mice because they are not wireless which means no geek squad protection. Even their car audio and home entertainment installers are called geeksquad and are pushed. These are not real computer geeks
Now they sell things people do not want because they can bundle geeksquad, customers get hassled as employees need to piss people off just to keep their jobs, their greed makes them sell expensive things so you are more likely to buy a geeksquad protection. Their credit cards are a terrible deal too and they are hitting on those.
They lost what they are known for and that is great products at a reasonable price. Metrics can ruin many companies and CEOs who chose other lucrative markets devalue their assets. They are a retailer and not a computer shop.
I used to work for them. THey are now pushy as they make all their money with their high interest rip off credit cards. At least it is not as bad as BB where you will be hassled 3x about the latest credit cards and geeksquad protection plans.
Sadly all retailers are doing this and it pisses customers off, yet the beancounters do not see this way.
Maybe if they did not obsess over metrics written by some MBA by hounded customers on geeksquad protection plans and credit card sales there would not be any drop. I went to a job fair yesterday to get some extra part time work under my belt and all the retailers are doing this. At JCPenny you can not be a cashier unless you have experience selling credit cards at 25% to poor people and that is the only metric that follows.
With 1 trillion in debt people are no longer consuming because of shady deals like this are strangling their customer base for those who are dumb enough to use them. Geeksquad is a ripoff and it is so annoying when all you want is a job.
The upper management are really clueless and they make sure all mice and keyboards are wireless only because they can then bundle geeksquad protection plans. IT is just an insane customer experience when you want a wired gaming mouse and they can not even carry it.
Without the latest drivers in Windows 8 it hangs or freezes up with no dump. You could have a bad or failing PSU as I had a similar problem with a system with an NVidia card. Look into that. YOu can get last years top of the line GPU for $110. I wonder if your card has bad ram or if the surge in bootup could cause it to BSOD from the PSU?
Run some benchmark to see if it fails. If it doesn't then your issue is not the video card. GOod luck
I love my hardware and still prefer it over Nvidia. But I realize it is not perfect in regards to the drivers. HDMI was a nightmare to setup. Aero is disabled too after sleeping unless I use only 12.3, not 12.1 nor 12.4, but 12.3. Any other combo will either but a black rectangle around my screen as underscan is on while the drivers think my monitor is a TV screen and not a computer screen or aero is disabled after waking from sleep.
But I do not have to worry about it overheating or randomly dying like my last 2 NVidia's so it is the price I pay. Just DO NOT TOUCH IT after I get the drivers at 12.3.
Well now I have to upgrade again as I find this security flaw unacceptable. I also think Linux and Apple suck in their own unique ways and I have been accused of being a MS fanboi. Whatever, I am a realist and refuse to do blindfaith to defend my purchases.
ATI's drivers to me are lower quality but there hardware is higher quality and it is a tradeoff as I have had NVidia cards fail before going all ATI at home. It is part of the product whether you like it or not.
I am an AMD fan too, but I am glad it is brought up as I am irritated at this and need to know this to make sure work pcs do not come with ati products that can raise TCO and increase malware. DEP and ASLR is the main and pretty much only reason why I can justify a Windows 7 migration over XP. If the desktops have this disabled then what is the point?
AMD's latest driver for Windows 8 does not have the issues as I just checked the registry. Maybe the driver can be backported to Windows 7... hopefully.
I am not trying to be a troll here but to me this is serious. I am sick and tired of malware and this erases years of progress at Microsoft.
It is pretty hard to do if you have a 64 bit version of Windows. In 32 bit you can spray until you hit something good as the address space is so much smaller assuming you make it past the sandbox of the non FF browser.
Still I have seen it work with my own eyes cut down malware in any organization that leaves XP behind. YOu can exploit it but then a patch from MS will fix it. It is not an exploit where it is useless forever and simple to get around. IT may not be perfect but it is very effective if you keep your 64 bit system patched and do not run flash. I think the latest flash maybe sandboxed.
I am using an old laptop with Windows 8 to type this with an ati chipset. I noticed Windows 8 kept freezing and having issues until ATI came out with an experimental driver.
I used Regedit and found nothing with EMIT and UnsafeSettings in the registry as Windows 8 enables this by default. Now I know why it had so many issues before.
I do hope this issue is resolved as I always correct XP loyalists trolls on Slashdot saying how secure Win 7 is for these reasons. ASLR and DEP cut malware in half in any enterprise that migrates... well except if they have ATI chipsets or cards. THis really blows for me as I refuse to run Metro garbage on my main work desktop and will not void my warranty by ditching my ATI card.
Open up Chrome/Firefox and IE 9 side by side? Go to Google Images or slashdot.org and hit the up and down arrow?
Notice IE 9 is smooth as butter and the others flicker in comparison? This is because of hardware acceleration and fast scrolll. The latest firefox and Crhome might be equally smooth by default now, but I always put on hardware acceleration and smooth scroll for these reasons and I have an ok 3d card.
For awhile IE 9 was the only one that was that smooth and felt more like an IPAD than a desktop browser.
SF basically means millionaires need not apply. If you make less than that expect 4 hours a day in your car commuting due to the outrageous cost of living. No thank you
If you have a Yahoo email account go to some shady porn sites.?
Notice your email account is now sending out spams? The Yahoo plugin stores your cookie in plain text and iwth an invisible iframe can mimick the Yahoo login. I have seen this with customers first hand as well as my Dad and this only happens in Firefox.
I hated Sandboxie and the little pop up mixed with pop ups from NoScript. Chrome makes my life much easier but that is my own preference. Firefox is greatly improved and I will use it again if it has sand boxing and no add on breakage. It is getting there. But I do banking online and will not risk my system with something liek FF 3.6. The 40 vulnerabilities are documented. No one should be using FF 3.6 anymore. It is a bad browser compared to past versions.
And you haven't either I take it? Advisors who have told me to expect FICA + soc security + other benefits + insurance to double the cost of an employee easily.
This is why part time jobs are becoming so popular in this new economy. Temp workers put the burden on themselves and save you money. It sucks, but compared to competitors with employees in India who do not have to pay these rediculous expenses become so much cheaper. It is not their willingness to work for $9/hr, but the no health insurance, Fica, insurance... etc that add up to 70k a year per employee.
OK I want to do the right thing and help people out.
Lets say you are in my shoes, yet only have $200k in capital and no revenue yet and need $1 million before you own the company back from the investor. How woudl I do that in Silicon Valley versus elsewhere.
Employee in North Dakata/Austin 1. 50k software engineer x 3 2. Help desk person 12/hr 3. rent $2,500 a month
Employee in San Francisco 1. 80k a year x 3 + $35k a year for health insurance x 3 2. Help Desk Person $16/hr + $35k a year for health insurance 3. Rent $15,000 a month
Now you make a little revenue too. Oops California has a high corporate and income tax. They will take that away so you can't buy your company back from the investory. The cost of health insurnace is outrageous! Thanks to laws that promote equality any employee that works more than 29 hours a week has to have it! That alone will kill your startup.
In reality by trying to be fair it costs jobs not because I am a greedy assh*le but because I have limited funds, great risk, and need every penny I have to survive. After 3 years then I will start paying insurance for senior engineers and pay more generously too as now I have demand for greater enterprise level application support than before when I just needed it to work to generate some pennies for rent etc.
The cost of living keeps going up and it is unsustainable. My point proves this as I am part of a market correction and so are the chumps in ND, North Carolina, and Texas. It is not my money, it belongs to the shareholders and they do not appreciate it given to greedy landlords. California can create more jobs if they lower taxes, regulations, and make it more worthwile for someone like me to open. But the high demand for wages and real estate is a huge issue for me as well regardless. That is the argument.
If I were Larry I would stop and think and ask my lawyers what would happen if I went after Google? Could IBM sue me for using SQL if copyright standards are interpretted this way etc? If the answer is yes do not SUE.
Assuming Larry won and IBM went after them for using copyrighted SQL I bet Larry would be crying foul, meanwhile he brought it unto himself by twisitng things to be interpretted that way. That is not a good way to do business or common sense.
But why is there such a high demand. Speculators from China are spiking it now, but I do not see a single reason why it is worth the expensive to live and do business when you cna always go cheaper?
YOu need infrastructure and employees, and less rules and regulations to help your business. Sure you can say there are more programmers in Silicon Valley but they will want a boatload of money before they leave their current gigs to take a risk for you. That is money.
Austin is cheaper the last time I looked several years ago as you could get a house for $150k. Perhaps today it is worth $225k but Portland it would be $400k and 1.2 million in Silicon Valley. You can't get a python programmer to work for a pittance of $50k a year in San Francisco. He can't live. Austin he can get a full house.
Walmart did it right by going cheap in Arkansas and the cost savings increased exponentially in time due to compounding interest of investment from the savings back into the company. I think no one looks at this angle just its soooo coool to live in SF man!
Also it doesn't matter where your investors live. Some who want to run it may prefer San Fransisco, but in reality you provide a better value and cost savings by flying there once a month to talk to them then it is to pay rent for yourself or office. You can use the same investors regardless as the point of business is to make money.
Hypocritical and braindead. Sadly that describes most corporations today. They only support something if they can do it but if someone else does it boo hoo. You can't have it both ways.
Well, unless you are Elison. This guy is nothing but a whinner. He whinned over Bill Gates with Microsoft in the 1990s. He whinned with the IBM PC and how we all needed network computer terminals, he whinned over Andriod using Java and became a patent troll, he now whines because someone else is a patent troll and life is soooo unfair.
How much ram do you have? I have 8 gigs and maybe that is the difference. FF 12 uses less ram than Chrome and IE 9 when I have 30 tabs open. I still use Chrome for other reasons but for me at least it seems Firefox is improving.
There is no reason why its expensive and that is my very point. I scratch my head. Sure there is supply and demand and Chinese speculators buying TONS of places in cash hoping to flip.
But the end result is why? The cost of doing business and living day to day keeps going up when you can be more successful elsewhere. To me I am part of the market correction in economic terms. I just can not see why anyone would want to live there or do a.com startup there. There are expensive cities around the world and Portland and Austin have many of the same ammenities for cheaper. Portland is nice too but to expensive for my tastes.
If you are fine with 40+ security vulnerabilities with it!
Remember Firefox is the only modern browser with no sanboxing still either. Seriously even IE 9 is better than 3.6 as it is old. There is ESR extended support for corporations which is based off of FF 10 and is much slimmer and gets regular security updates. I left Firefox after 4 and use Chrome and IE 9, but I have to say FF 12 is very slim, and very light even compred to FF 3.6.
I love smooth scrolling and to me I go crazy when I see the flickering of images and pictures when I hit up and down. For disclosure I have an ATI 5750 graphics card so maybe it rocks on my computer but sucks if you use an intel GMA 915 or something similiar.
My Andriod phone is smooth when I scroll up and down and it makes it feel more modern than a desktop browser for these reasons. Go to about:config and turn on GFX and hardware acceleration. Together it will make everything look better.
I am still not using it, but I opened FF 12 up and was shocked it used so little memory compared to IE 9 and Chrome. It was smooth, fast, and less buggy than in previous versions.
Before I switch I need to know if the following are fixed 1. Sandbox support 2. Mozilla update breaks permanently after Windows Restore
I fear webmasters will be dealing with Firefox 12, 13, and other obsolete versions many many years from now as anyone who has done a Windows Restore Point will have Mozilla update disabled and wont even know it. Security it scares the crap out of me to run flash unsandoxed with full control over my own computer. I know IE gets bashed a lot here, but Firefox is the weaklink in security for the past year or two as both other browsers are sandboxed and Chrome even has an additional sanbox for flash with its pepper API.
California property taxes and corporate taxes are highest in the nation. Texas it varies by city with yoru bills and taxes. If your sister has a McMansion in Plano and a crappy air conditioner that bill is normal in the hot summers. She should buy an efficient one and her bill will go down to $100.
Property taxes are high because income tax is not there. It is a trade off. No income tax is very business friendly and so are 50,000 college students willing to work for cheap in just Austin alone! Even if you only need 10 employees think about 300% more to rent in San Fransisco + another 50% more salary as no one is willing to work for under $80k a year in San Fransisco, and I have to pay health insurance for anyone working more than 29 hours a week!
I admit the last time I looked at Austin was in 2006 and it was dirt cheap and perhaps rents have went up as.com's have moved there. Still it is more economic sense to move there. California was turning into a 3rd world country when my I left it with schools furlogging teachers, mexicans outside every home depot, and foreclosed signs in one out of every 7 homes.
New York I can see because of the proximity to Wall Street and other bankers but that is it outside that industry.
To start a business you need a business friendly environment, good infrastructure, talented employees, etc. North Dakota is booming right now but it is ugly, very cold, and I do not understand why else?
Austin has great infrastructure with tons of fiber, the largest university in the world, talent, and is in the middle of the country so customers can all call in and be serviced, cheap, and employees are willing to move there.
If I started it in Iowa or North Dakota, I would have a hard time finding senior python, No SQL DBAs, and have people willing to move there. If you are the only industry in town and it doesn't work out you are shit out of luck and that is a high risk. Austin is better as it has culture, warmer, but still cheap. There are other.com's in Austin as well and my prediction is within 10 years will be the next San Fransisco. South by Southwest is the newest tech show.
I do not have to pay health insurance either and that is also a plus that doubles the cost of employees. I would like to offer it but a startup just does not have that kind of capital. Also unless you are a big player outsourcing does not make sense. You can't manage it at all and how do I know they wont steal my IP? Only the big boys with offices in Bangalore with business process people on site can make it happen so that will come in later.
To me this makes sense where I can get a city infrastructure and workforce, but pay close to rual prices. I think it is an image thing to be cool to have your office in the bay area. I call it stupidity.
Not in North Dakato, or Austin Texas. These are where the cheap.com go. I sure as hell do not want to live in North Dakota, but Austin is very nice.
For $30,000 a year, I can live like I make $75,000 a year in the cities you mentioned above. California is so business-unfriendly that I am shocked no one is mentioning it.
Why start a business in San Fransisco? It does not make economic sense. You have liberal tax and regulation happy politicians, you have viscious competitors taking away all the limited talent available, you need to pay your employees 2x as much so they can exist, not to mention if you want to have a home as the CEO or partner, HA forget it! Unless you make it as a very rich.COM and become a mulit million aire you can not ever be middle class.
Who the hell wants that? Portland you can buy a house an hour outside the city that is affordable if you make $70k a year, but no way in hell in San Fraisco or the other cities.
Austin Texas all the way for my.com instead. Cheap and plenty of talent from UT at Austin, Texas Tech, Rice Univeristy etc.
They are Chinese investors who after seeing Bejing get inflated are buying all the property in San Fransisco in cash.
Since China is going into recession with the bubble about to burst I except the trend to reverse in San Fransisco as renters and American buyers not causing the spike in demand. its from speculators.
Slashdot Mirror
Best Buy wasn't always so bad.
Circuit City was poorly managed and loaded with debt. It is not the internet per say, but rather management losing their focus. BB had its doom when it acquired GeekSquad. Since it was a ripoff and such a high margin they strong armed their managers into making sure it was bundled with every computer since customers would have to use it anyway etc.
Then the warranties could only be serviced at geeksquad. Then components were geeksquad insured. Then the cashiers were required to meet quotas, now BB wont even sell gaming keyboard and mice because they are not wireless which means no geek squad protection. Even their car audio and home entertainment installers are called geeksquad and are pushed. These are not real computer geeks
Now they sell things people do not want because they can bundle geeksquad, customers get hassled as employees need to piss people off just to keep their jobs, their greed makes them sell expensive things so you are more likely to buy a geeksquad protection. Their credit cards are a terrible deal too and they are hitting on those.
They lost what they are known for and that is great products at a reasonable price. Metrics can ruin many companies and CEOs who chose other lucrative markets devalue their assets. They are a retailer and not a computer shop.
I used to work for them. THey are now pushy as they make all their money with their high interest rip off credit cards. At least it is not as bad as BB where you will be hassled 3x about the latest credit cards and geeksquad protection plans.
Sadly all retailers are doing this and it pisses customers off, yet the beancounters do not see this way.
Maybe if they did not obsess over metrics written by some MBA by hounded customers on geeksquad protection plans and credit card sales there would not be any drop. I went to a job fair yesterday to get some extra part time work under my belt and all the retailers are doing this. At JCPenny you can not be a cashier unless you have experience selling credit cards at 25% to poor people and that is the only metric that follows.
With 1 trillion in debt people are no longer consuming because of shady deals like this are strangling their customer base for those who are dumb enough to use them. Geeksquad is a ripoff and it is so annoying when all you want is a job.
The upper management are really clueless and they make sure all mice and keyboards are wireless only because they can then bundle geeksquad protection plans. IT is just an insane customer experience when you want a wired gaming mouse and they can not even carry it.
I have never seen a BSOD.
Without the latest drivers in Windows 8 it hangs or freezes up with no dump.
You could have a bad or failing PSU as I had a similar problem with a system with an NVidia card. Look into that. YOu can get last years top of the line GPU for $110. I wonder if your card has bad ram or if the surge in bootup could cause it to BSOD from the PSU?
Run some benchmark to see if it fails. If it doesn't then your issue is not the video card. GOod luck
Agreed.
This is coming from an ATI/AMD person too.
I love my hardware and still prefer it over Nvidia. But I realize it is not perfect in regards to the drivers. HDMI was a nightmare to setup. Aero is disabled too after sleeping unless I use only 12.3, not 12.1 nor 12.4, but 12.3. Any other combo will either but a black rectangle around my screen as underscan is on while the drivers think my monitor is a TV screen and not a computer screen or aero is disabled after waking from sleep.
But I do not have to worry about it overheating or randomly dying like my last 2 NVidia's so it is the price I pay. Just DO NOT TOUCH IT after I get the drivers at 12.3.
Well now I have to upgrade again as I find this security flaw unacceptable. I also think Linux and Apple suck in their own unique ways and I have been accused of being a MS fanboi. Whatever, I am a realist and refuse to do blindfaith to defend my purchases.
Yes it does.
ATI's drivers to me are lower quality but there hardware is higher quality and it is a tradeoff as I have had NVidia cards fail before going all ATI at home. It is part of the product whether you like it or not.
I am an AMD fan too, but I am glad it is brought up as I am irritated at this and need to know this to make sure work pcs do not come with ati products that can raise TCO and increase malware. DEP and ASLR is the main and pretty much only reason why I can justify a Windows 7 migration over XP. If the desktops have this disabled then what is the point?
AMD's latest driver for Windows 8 does not have the issues as I just checked the registry. Maybe the driver can be backported to Windows 7 ... hopefully.
I am not trying to be a troll here but to me this is serious. I am sick and tired of malware and this erases years of progress at Microsoft.
It is pretty hard to do if you have a 64 bit version of Windows. In 32 bit you can spray until you hit something good as the address space is so much smaller assuming you make it past the sandbox of the non FF browser.
Still I have seen it work with my own eyes cut down malware in any organization that leaves XP behind. YOu can exploit it but then a patch from MS will fix it. It is not an exploit where it is useless forever and simple to get around. IT may not be perfect but it is very effective if you keep your 64 bit system patched and do not run flash. I think the latest flash maybe sandboxed.
I am using an old laptop with Windows 8 to type this with an ati chipset. I noticed Windows 8 kept freezing and having issues until ATI came out with an experimental driver.
I used Regedit and found nothing with EMIT and UnsafeSettings in the registry as Windows 8 enables this by default. Now I know why it had so many issues before.
I do hope this issue is resolved as I always correct XP loyalists trolls on Slashdot saying how secure Win 7 is for these reasons. ASLR and DEP cut malware in half in any enterprise that migrates ... well except if they have ATI chipsets or cards. THis really blows for me as I refuse to run Metro garbage on my main work desktop and will not void my warranty by ditching my ATI card.
Open up Chrome/Firefox and IE 9 side by side? Go to Google Images or slashdot.org and hit the up and down arrow?
Notice IE 9 is smooth as butter and the others flicker in comparison? This is because of hardware acceleration and fast scrolll. The latest firefox and Crhome might be equally smooth by default now, but I always put on hardware acceleration and smooth scroll for these reasons and I have an ok 3d card.
For awhile IE 9 was the only one that was that smooth and felt more like an IPAD than a desktop browser.
Don't have to drive anywhere in Silicon Valley??
SF basically means millionaires need not apply. If you make less than that expect 4 hours a day in your car commuting due to the outrageous cost of living. No thank you
If you have a Yahoo email account go to some shady porn sites.?
Notice your email account is now sending out spams? The Yahoo plugin stores your cookie in plain text and iwth an invisible iframe can mimick the Yahoo login. I have seen this with customers first hand as well as my Dad and this only happens in Firefox.
I hated Sandboxie and the little pop up mixed with pop ups from NoScript. Chrome makes my life much easier but that is my own preference. Firefox is greatly improved and I will use it again if it has sand boxing and no add on breakage. It is getting there. But I do banking online and will not risk my system with something liek FF 3.6. The 40 vulnerabilities are documented. No one should be using FF 3.6 anymore. It is a bad browser compared to past versions.
And you haven't either I take it? Advisors who have told me to expect FICA + soc security + other benefits + insurance to double the cost of an employee easily.
This is why part time jobs are becoming so popular in this new economy. Temp workers put the burden on themselves and save you money. It sucks, but compared to competitors with employees in India who do not have to pay these rediculous expenses become so much cheaper. It is not their willingness to work for $9/hr, but the no health insurance, Fica, insurance ... etc that add up to 70k a year per employee.
OK I want to do the right thing and help people out.
Lets say you are in my shoes, yet only have $200k in capital and no revenue yet and need $1 million before you own the company back from the investor. How woudl I do that in Silicon Valley versus elsewhere.
Employee in North Dakata/Austin
1. 50k software engineer x 3
2. Help desk person 12/hr
3. rent $2,500 a month
Employee in San Francisco
1. 80k a year x 3 + $35k a year for health insurance x 3
2. Help Desk Person $16/hr + $35k a year for health insurance
3. Rent $15,000 a month
Now you make a little revenue too. Oops California has a high corporate and income tax. They will take that away so you can't buy your company back from the investory. The cost of health insurnace is outrageous! Thanks to laws that promote equality any employee that works more than 29 hours a week has to have it! That alone will kill your startup.
In reality by trying to be fair it costs jobs not because I am a greedy assh*le but because I have limited funds, great risk, and need every penny I have to survive. After 3 years then I will start paying insurance for senior engineers and pay more generously too as now I have demand for greater enterprise level application support than before when I just needed it to work to generate some pennies for rent etc.
The cost of living keeps going up and it is unsustainable. My point proves this as I am part of a market correction and so are the chumps in ND, North Carolina, and Texas. It is not my money, it belongs to the shareholders and they do not appreciate it given to greedy landlords. California can create more jobs if they lower taxes, regulations, and make it more worthwile for someone like me to open. But the high demand for wages and real estate is a huge issue for me as well regardless. That is the argument.
That is pretty stupid.
If I were Larry I would stop and think and ask my lawyers what would happen if I went after Google? Could IBM sue me for using SQL if copyright standards are interpretted this way etc? If the answer is yes do not SUE.
Assuming Larry won and IBM went after them for using copyrighted SQL I bet Larry would be crying foul, meanwhile he brought it unto himself by twisitng things to be interpretted that way. That is not a good way to do business or common sense.
But why is there such a high demand. Speculators from China are spiking it now, but I do not see a single reason why it is worth the expensive to live and do business when you cna always go cheaper?
YOu need infrastructure and employees, and less rules and regulations to help your business. Sure you can say there are more programmers in Silicon Valley but they will want a boatload of money before they leave their current gigs to take a risk for you. That is money.
Austin is cheaper the last time I looked several years ago as you could get a house for $150k. Perhaps today it is worth $225k but Portland it would be $400k and 1.2 million in Silicon Valley. You can't get a python programmer to work for a pittance of $50k a year in San Francisco. He can't live. Austin he can get a full house.
Walmart did it right by going cheap in Arkansas and the cost savings increased exponentially in time due to compounding interest of investment from the savings back into the company. I think no one looks at this angle just its soooo coool to live in SF man!
Also it doesn't matter where your investors live. Some who want to run it may prefer San Fransisco, but in reality you provide a better value and cost savings by flying there once a month to talk to them then it is to pay rent for yourself or office. You can use the same investors regardless as the point of business is to make money.
Oracle is upset over patent trolling?!
Hypocritical and braindead. Sadly that describes most corporations today. They only support something if they can do it but if someone else does it boo hoo. You can't have it both ways.
Well, unless you are Elison. This guy is nothing but a whinner. He whinned over Bill Gates with Microsoft in the 1990s. He whinned with the IBM PC and how we all needed network computer terminals, he whinned over Andriod using Java and became a patent troll, he now whines because someone else is a patent troll and life is soooo unfair.
Good grief.
It is hell of alot faster to me than FF 3.6.
How much ram do you have? I have 8 gigs and maybe that is the difference. FF 12 uses less ram than Chrome and IE 9 when I have 30 tabs open. I still use Chrome for other reasons but for me at least it seems Firefox is improving.
There is no reason why its expensive and that is my very point. I scratch my head. Sure there is supply and demand and Chinese speculators buying TONS of places in cash hoping to flip.
But the end result is why? The cost of doing business and living day to day keeps going up when you can be more successful elsewhere. To me I am part of the market correction in economic terms. I just can not see why anyone would want to live there or do a .com startup there. There are expensive cities around the world and Portland and Austin have many of the same ammenities for cheaper. Portland is nice too but to expensive for my tastes.
If you are fine with 40+ security vulnerabilities with it!
Remember Firefox is the only modern browser with no sanboxing still either. Seriously even IE 9 is better than 3.6 as it is old. There is ESR extended support for corporations which is based off of FF 10 and is much slimmer and gets regular security updates. I left Firefox after 4 and use Chrome and IE 9, but I have to say FF 12 is very slim, and very light even compred to FF 3.6.
I love smooth scrolling and to me I go crazy when I see the flickering of images and pictures when I hit up and down. For disclosure I have an ATI 5750 graphics card so maybe it rocks on my computer but sucks if you use an intel GMA 915 or something similiar.
My Andriod phone is smooth when I scroll up and down and it makes it feel more modern than a desktop browser for these reasons. Go to about:config and turn on GFX and hardware acceleration. Together it will make everything look better.
Kudos to Mozilla!
I am still not using it, but I opened FF 12 up and was shocked it used so little memory compared to IE 9 and Chrome. It was smooth, fast, and less buggy than in previous versions.
Before I switch I need to know if the following are fixed
1. Sandbox support
2. Mozilla update breaks permanently after Windows Restore
I fear webmasters will be dealing with Firefox 12, 13, and other obsolete versions many many years from now as anyone who has done a Windows Restore Point will have Mozilla update disabled and wont even know it. Security it scares the crap out of me to run flash unsandoxed with full control over my own computer. I know IE gets bashed a lot here, but Firefox is the weaklink in security for the past year or two as both other browsers are sandboxed and Chrome even has an additional sanbox for flash with its pepper API.
Fix those 2 things I and I may use Firefox again.
I lived in both Texas and California.
California property taxes and corporate taxes are highest in the nation. Texas it varies by city with yoru bills and taxes. If your sister has a McMansion in Plano and a crappy air conditioner that bill is normal in the hot summers. She should buy an efficient one and her bill will go down to $100.
Property taxes are high because income tax is not there. It is a trade off. No income tax is very business friendly and so are 50,000 college students willing to work for cheap in just Austin alone! Even if you only need 10 employees think about 300% more to rent in San Fransisco + another 50% more salary as no one is willing to work for under $80k a year in San Fransisco, and I have to pay health insurance for anyone working more than 29 hours a week!
I admit the last time I looked at Austin was in 2006 and it was dirt cheap and perhaps rents have went up as .com's have moved there. Still it is more economic sense to move there. California was turning into a 3rd world country when my I left it with schools furlogging teachers, mexicans outside every home depot, and foreclosed signs in one out of every 7 homes.
New York I can see because of the proximity to Wall Street and other bankers but that is it outside that industry.
To start a business you need a business friendly environment, good infrastructure, talented employees, etc. North Dakota is booming right now but it is ugly, very cold, and I do not understand why else?
Austin has great infrastructure with tons of fiber, the largest university in the world, talent, and is in the middle of the country so customers can all call in and be serviced, cheap, and employees are willing to move there.
If I started it in Iowa or North Dakota, I would have a hard time finding senior python, No SQL DBAs, and have people willing to move there. If you are the only industry in town and it doesn't work out you are shit out of luck and that is a high risk. Austin is better as it has culture, warmer, but still cheap. There are other .com's in Austin as well and my prediction is within 10 years will be the next San Fransisco. South by Southwest is the newest tech show.
I do not have to pay health insurance either and that is also a plus that doubles the cost of employees. I would like to offer it but a startup just does not have that kind of capital. Also unless you are a big player outsourcing does not make sense. You can't manage it at all and how do I know they wont steal my IP? Only the big boys with offices in Bangalore with business process people on site can make it happen so that will come in later.
To me this makes sense where I can get a city infrastructure and workforce, but pay close to rual prices. I think it is an image thing to be cool to have your office in the bay area. I call it stupidity.
Not in North Dakato, or Austin Texas. These are where the cheap .com go. I sure as hell do not want to live in North Dakota, but Austin is very nice.
For $30,000 a year, I can live like I make $75,000 a year in the cities you mentioned above. California is so business-unfriendly that I am shocked no one is mentioning it.
Why start a business in San Fransisco? It does not make economic sense. You have liberal tax and regulation happy politicians, you have viscious competitors taking away all the limited talent available, you need to pay your employees 2x as much so they can exist, not to mention if you want to have a home as the CEO or partner, HA forget it! Unless you make it as a very rich .COM and become a mulit million aire you can not ever be middle class.
Who the hell wants that? Portland you can buy a house an hour outside the city that is affordable if you make $70k a year, but no way in hell in San Fraisco or the other cities.
Austin Texas all the way for my .com instead. Cheap and plenty of talent from UT at Austin, Texas Tech, Rice Univeristy etc.
They are Chinese investors who after seeing Bejing get inflated are buying all the property in San Fransisco in cash.
Since China is going into recession with the bubble about to burst I except the trend to reverse in San Fransisco as renters and American buyers not causing the spike in demand. its from speculators.