The world has a total GDP on currency converted basis of about 70 trillion dollars, australia has a GDP of about 1.4 trillion. 1/40th of 70 trillion dollars would be 1.7 trillion. And not all of the people in the world even have internet access to matter to google.
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) which gives couple of different estimates that are all pretty close given our margin of error here).
Using their monopoly to put someone else out of business is something MS got in trouble for. Specifically bundling a free browser with their operating system. They also got in trouble for other things. But this isn't a legal trial. I suspect they are trying to dodge a legal fight (which they might lose).
Sort of by definition any sort of security trades off some degree of privacy and 'rights' (insofar as you can argue such things exist at all). You can't, as is the latest headline, wiretap without violating the privacy of both the person being wiretapped or anyone else that calls. You can't fingerprint someone without violating some degree of their personal privacy. You can't put a camera on a police cruiser to video tape the police without occasionally videotaping someone else, or even police officers in a private moment.
You can't investigate financial crime without looking at peoples personal financial statements etc.
The government can add on layers of rules about when you can and can't infringe on privacy, but ultimately you infringe on privacy to prevent investigate crime. Running you through an airport metal detector infringes on your medical privacy to have a metal implant replacing a bone in your body that you don't really want to tell people about.
Even someone who simply looks at your name on a piece of paper and verifies that you are that person is an element of privacy. Maybe you have a stalker you're trying to get away from, maybe you're in witness protection, and your privacy is really really important, having to even prove you're you requires you you give up something about yourself. If you get interviewed by El Al security they'll ask you the names of your children if you have any, is it really airport securities business the names of your children (especially if they aren't flying with you)?
Notice you just said DVDFab is, to legally acquire, a 60 dollar purchase. If MS will give you the same basic capability for 10 well then you're 50 dollars better off aren't you? Unless you are pirating the software of course.
And yes, this kills media player as a bundled product. That was my point about anti trust concerns. MS probably still can't get away with giving away for free what other people are demanding money for within the legal framework that exists. I grant you the legal framework is absurd, but that's a separate discussion.
Maybe by windows 9 or 10 they'll bundle back the blu ray player for free (sort of like happened with DVD playback).
Also, do you really want to move and store dozens of 25-50GB files on your hard drive or move them from netflix all the time? Because not everyone has network access or disk space that will support that. Though I agree that the future of video is the same as the future of music, online with local copies, I think we're quite a ways away from that for everyone.
That would be true if they weren't liable for what happens. As long as the TSA does security they are are fault if something goes wrong. If the airport or airlines run security themselves they could be bankrupt from a single event. Not to mention the further damage that would be done from even a single incident of a half successful hijacking or the like.
Right now the airlines can rely on 'we don't like it either, but if you want to fly, those are the rules with everyone so tough it out'. I'd much rather the government trying to figure out to grope my balls without groping them than an insurance company demanding the airline minimize its liability for terrorist acts.
Security is a government problem. That doesn't mean the TSA, the US military or anyone else do a particularly good or bad job. But transferring security responsibility to private companies or individuals would make the problem worse, not better. If you don't want the TSA engaging in security theatre pass laws that prevent the theatre and demand actual security, which is what should have happened in the first place.
That's actually a good plan. Off and on I've worked fairly closely with RIM and they're generally trying to go this sort of odd android but not quite android, and for business route. They would have been much better off being the business arm of windows phones, with nokia taking up the consumer space, and MS would have thrown them a pile of money for the transition. It would have put a lot of windows phone handsets in the hands of people who need to stay with a particular product line too, giving them a guaranteed install base. Right now the question anyone asks is: what does a blackberry get me?
As it is RIM is a good example of the problem with trying to differentiate yourself from android makers but trying to take advantage of their ecosystem.
It depends how you read the tea leaves, but it seems like microsoft has a grand plan. Rather than having a Xbox Portable, or Xbox dual screen or whatever hand held, they have windows phones. Rather than separate OS's for slates and phones and desktops they're merging it all into one big platform. This is a long game, and it might be too late for nokia if they ever manage to pull it off, but it seems like one crazy plan.
Back then it didn't. Legally playing DVD's required (requires?) a licencing arrangement so they didn't do it, windows vista and 7 I think both support dvd playback, but the price for that is baked into the purchase assuming they have to pay at all.
The interesting tidbit here is the blu ray playback. Which right now requires you buy any of a slew of fairly expensive players (software), unless one comes with your drive, but the one with your drive may not play new discs etc. etc. etc. VLC I think has a blu ray player mode, but it doesn't work with all disks. If MS is able to pull this off it's not a bad plan.
Also, they may be decoupling the bundle because of anti trust concerns. The people who sell blu ray software especially would (probably rightly) accuse microsoft of using their monopoly to put them out of business (which would be good for humanity in this case).
Whether they are right or not who knows, but their plan to save the company with Windows phones is still in its early phases. Which is a commentary on their poor execution, but it's still a plan in motion. The guy filing the suit is either a moron, or is in trouble with his own investors and is trying to get himself press for looking like he's doing something.
Honestly, I disagree with your assessment. Unless you intentionally do something unbalanced you don't trivialize the content in skyrim or oblivion. You *can* trivialize it, but that's good, because frankly they are long games and eventually they can get somewhat boring. The video you have is an animation sync problem of course, but really, you know you can stand and fight if you want.
I found the last fight in skyrim boring because the boss doesn't do anything, and doesn't try to. I thought this was a case of me being a little too overzealous blowing all cooldowns etc. So I tried it a second time and basically stood there and let him beat on me for a while. Still nothing. That's not 'the player is overpowered' (when you're wearing full dragon plate you expect to be able to take a few hits), it's that they intentionally don't have any great variety of mechanics. Run up and hit/shoot/nuke it a few times and it dies.
Depends on the job. If you start into project management rather than being a product developer or programmer it's easier to hide that you don't have a CS degree, or even demonstrate that it doesn't. He's also from an agegroup where a lot of people migrated into computer science work from other completely unrelated fields. One of our profs here who is a CS instructor has all of his formal training in business, but that was as close as his school came to CS in the 1980's. Seriously.
A degree doesn't just show you posses basic group skills, nor are those skills necessarily useful in business. In fact, to the contrary, a lot of degrees don't teach you useful skills to business, and that's why they are paid less than college/tradeschool diplomas. A degree makes you an inexperienced professional in your area. If you need to work in a different area (for example of you have a degree in psychology, english or art history, which are the most oversupplied graduates around here) you haven't demonstrated an aptitude in computer science or any of the more technical programmes.
Remember, this is a guy born in 58. That means he probably went to school around 76 -80. Back then a LOT of places didn't have CS degrees, and what they did offer grew out of another department. Technically my MSc which in practice was CS (thesis on GPU ray tracing) is the same degree as people in geology, physics, chemistry, maths, and psychology from my school, because some idiot put them all in the same programme and degree name. In 1980 your degree and your ability to do CS means a lot less than a degree in CS would represent today. It's not that the training is necessarily a whole lot better, just that you simply couldn't supply enough, so someone who took the only 2 CS courses offered would be the most CS trained person available. Which is why we had two decades of clusterfucks in technology of security problems left and right, massively inefficient implementations that hung around long past their lifetimes etc.
It does sort of create this odd incentive to run an unsecured WAP to dodge the potential liability for what you're going to use it for. Which is just bad security practice in general, and can tend to risk problems with everything you mentioned, because people who want to engage in things which are definitely illegal, and should be illegal don't usually want to get caught doing it.
In the case of a household of multiple people, sure, they can't specify which of the 4 members of the household are responsible for it. If that's a married family basically 'one of them, doesn't matter which' is probably good enough for civil on a secured access point, if it's roommates, not so much, but you're still better off with an open access point so that you can say 'well, it might have been some random guy on the street'. Which seems really stupid overall.
There are so many ways that rulings like this is going to clash with technology that aren't going to help the situation. It's a fundamental issue with what should and should not be legal, making it about the specifics of how technology used is only delaying the problem. I would argue prohibition went through the same thing, with 'alcohol is illegal, so you can't drink except where we exempted it to be legal or where the law is unenforcible'. Which is simply not a viable or sustainable system.
Sure they are unbalanced, but that's part of the fun, it's a single player game, so you let people do crazy things if they want. It doesn't hurt anyone else.
In an MMO though you have to do a very tricky economic dance, and shit has to work. I think bethesda is stepping into the wrong market here, there are other people who are very very good at making MMO's and it's a very saturated market. I can play one MMO, and I can play single player games. But I can't play two MMO's, and what is Elder Scrolls online going to bring to the table? Everyone says their game is going to be the greatest, but EA spent what, 300 million dollars on SWTOR and it's not that good. Trying to enter that market and be competitive is enormously expensive and risky, and frankly not worth it. Not when you can make elder scrolls 6 by putting a turd in a box and make 100 million dollars on it. Trying to go after Blizzard, who have WoW and unannounced 'titan' and Diablo 3, and SWTOR, and Guild Wars 2 and all of the other MMO's out there is probably going to lose the fight for available player time. Not a good move on their part.
University is not K-12 - this is the NYC Public School System.
You can't assume that every student in a public school has internet access at home.
Absolutely, I think I differentiated a number of places where my experience would probably not translate to the non university experience. I specifically said "In university" to clarify I wasn't suggesting my experience applies to dealings with people who aren't adults.
Have you never heard of the Alumni Relations and Career Development offices at your college? The world somehow functioned before Facebook, and it will some how get by after Facebook is gone...
I have, have you? Suggesting they're good at building personal relationships doesn't really connect to anything in my experience. I'm sure different countries and schools have different experiences, but around here alumni relations is basically a giant effort to beg for money, and students aren't really interested in spending the next 70 years being harassed for money every quarter because they had the privilege to spend 7k in tuition + 16k in living expenses a year for 4 years at some point in the past. By chance the place I did my undergraduate didn't have my address for about 7 years. Now I get a monthly request for money (which I have never given them), they got my address when I needed transcripts for graduate school. Quite honestly, I'd rather they forgot I exist. Lots of perfectly good people don't want to be bothered their past school.
Career development is useful, and that's how the first student (who worked at amazon for the last 3 years) go that gig I think. I know one of my students works at microsoft after they did a career fare organized by our career services. But it's never the same as having a personal connection to someone you're applying to.
Sure, the world will function without facebook, but we have the tools to connect people, so why shouldn't we? Facebook exists because it lets you connect people together. If I tell my current student 'hey, this guy at X would cool to work with, he was a great guy when he was here' and if I say to the referenced former student 'hey, this student of mine is cool you should hire him' whether I use facebook, myspace, instant messaging or future social connection system I don't think that changes advantages of a personal touch.
Can be - but isn't. that was my point. As an instructor you are certainly under no obligation to even try and use facebook, nor should you if you aren't comfortable doing so. I was merely relaying my single data point of experience.
In university about half my students in classes will tend to befriend me on facebook (it's a bit less than that but close enough). Anytime anything out of the ordinary happens I posted it on facebook, as well as via e-mail.
Students are *far* more likely to get a facebook message than they are an e-mail. Lots of them, and, frankly this baffles me because it's the same device, will check facebook on the bus etc. but not e-mail. I suppose that's in part because the university has a habit of sending out a lot of crap that they don't care about, whereas on facebook the information they don't care about now can be easily skimmed over.
Doing anything 'regular' on facebook, course notes assignments that sort of thing doesn't make a lot of sense. Virtually all universities have some sort of classroom management software (webct/blackboard/sakai etc.) for that stuff, and students need to check that on a daily basis for work stuff. But if class is canceled, or a particular lab is closed, elevator not working, that sort of thing, facebook is much more effective than e-mail. I'm not sure that makes sense in highschool since highschools aren't usually giant tens of thousands of persons campuses with a huge number of people coming and going in dozens of buildings at different times.
The biggest plus I've found to facebook is when the students graduate you get to know what they're doing. And, importantly, you can connect them to the next batch of students looking for work and so on. One of my students from 3 years ago works at amazon, so I sent him a graduate who's super excited about amazon this year sort of thing. Again, I'm not sure that would make as much sense at the highshool level, although it's always nice to know what your former students are up to.
I don't think we (as canadians) should be outraged. That's the wrong approach to this. We should be celebrating the fact that we have better rules than the americans.
Imagine some politicians came out with a report about how awful it is that blacks can vote in this long list of countries, or how abhorrent is is that women could vote in some places, or how some countries *still* haven't enacted prohibition, or how terrible it must be for people living in those countries that have government healthcare. If you on one of those lists you don't get outraged, you can use it as proof positive that your system is working, and those idiots that wrote the report are living in the wrong century. Which, as with this report, they are.
There's no point in trying to complain that some of their metrics are wrong or unfairly target the wrong groups. The whole concept is basically inverted, squabbling about the details gives the false impression that it can somehow be corrected with some tweaking of specifics.
Yes. because *you* know how to set up those things. I have a 10.04 LTS which I'm migrating to 12 shortly myself. But that doesn't mean anyone else knows how to use linux. But then, I'm an expert. My mother however is not. And I wouldn't burden her with linux for fear of being removed from the family.
Also, the one spreading FUD is you. I don't have any windows XP or vista or 7 machines that get slower over time, nor have I had a virus do anything to a personal machine in 17 years, Microsoft security essentials is pretty good at catching stuff that students send me. Most windows machines if they're managed properly are perfectly usable until hardware starts to fail. Which is pretty much the same with any linux distro. My point was that there's a much bigger body of knowledge with the non expert general public about windows than there is about linux. And that isn't about to change any time soon.
The updater on Ubuntu is far from flawless btw. Depends on your hardware but I've had a bugger of a time over the last few years with it fucking up nvidia drivers repeatedly (on an 8800 gtx and a GTX 280, which are, admittedly, quite old). Fixing that isn't all that hard, but it requires some fairly basic command line stuff. The moment you ask a non technical user to open a terminal and type in a series of commands you've lost them. Which was my point. With linux every distro has its own way of solving lots of common problems. That's all well and good but if someone calls me up for help on a fedora, redhat, centos, ubuntu or debian I am unlikely to remember where everything is in each distro.
because everytime we get one of these posts there are a huge string of insightful comments on somethings people don't know how to do on linux, how hard it is to do things, how fractured it is, how incompatible it is with things people know etc. etc. etc. are all right. And will continue to be right. Because linux is intentionally decentralized and open. Which just makes it widely confusing and difficult for non experts.
People know windows. If that adds 100 dollars to the price of 500 dollars of hardware it's irrelevant, because people either can't do what they want on linux or don't want to waste time learning linux when they already know how on windows. For most of us in the relatively well off parts of the world the price of windows isn't going to somehow drive us out of the market. And it's worth it if it means you can sit down and do whatever you wanted with the computer, rather than spend time mucking with the computer to get it to do what you want. MS of course likes to make things difficult (see the ribbon and windows 8) but we'll see how the latter plays out.
You're arguing that the costs for Adobe/Microsoft's Australian operations effctively double to price of the product they sell. Well, as an Australian business customer I fail to see any value-add from Adobe or Microsoft having an Australian presence -
so right off the bat you've started with a false premise, well two actually. First, I didn't say australian operations double the price of the product. I said the nominal (exchange rate) conversion of australian to USD dollars doesn't reflect a change in purchasing parity. 900 AUD in 2003 won't buy 2x as much in 2011. In fact if you look at the PPP rate, you're only marginally better off.
Secondly, you said you don't see any value add from MS. Adobe I can't speak to specifically, but I even linked the MS jobs page. Thanks for reading. I know my 3am post has some gibberish in there that makes it hard to read, but if you want to sue them, or if you get audited for compliance that's all local. All of the rules they have to follow, managed locally, etc. etc. etc.
Since I manage software for a reasonable sized company we get our licences via a reseller, and download the media, so we don't use their software distribution chain, anyway.
You actually just spelled out in your previous paragraph how you connected to their chain. They have to supply the reseller. Hence all the sales gigs at MS australia. The more layers in the chain locally, the more of the sales costs is tied to Australian dollars.
If you manage software for a living you should know more about this process than you do. You can't discount the costs of building licencing systems (automated or otherwise) for australia as somehow free. Even if that development work is done in the US they have to do it in consultation with a legal team in australia.
For support. I'm surprised their business support would be outsourced, especially adobe. Consumer support sure, but business support that's surprising, around here they subcontract a local company to do it (business support only though). Even then, they have to *have* and asia pacific call centre that you can link up to, and the cost of that in AUD hasn't changed. The problem is that the US dollar has fallen relative to everything, not that the AUD has risen with nothing else having a similar effect.
I'll reiterate: You have a false premise, that the price has doubled. It hasn't. Unless your pay has been cut in half to compensate for the change in dollar value what you're seeing is that every step of the chain people who were paid 100 AUD were still paid 100 AUD, and so the US specific cost, which was maybe 100 or 200 dollars (of a 500 USD purchase, or in 2003 900 AUD purchase) may have gone down a bit, accounting for the drop from 900 to 850 AUD. But everywhere else on the chain is still people being paid in AUD.
I would estimate, as a professional software developer, that about half the costs of the software are point of sale/local currency. Which means the fixed cost cost was about 250 USD. (Which was 500 AUD, and is now 250), and the remainder is made up for with local currency. At that point you're into problems like currency volatility, when contracts are written, etc. etc. I'm not saying you aren't getting a bad deal, but is no where near as bad as you presented it, and that's normal for anyone not doing business in the US.
I specifically linked the microsoft jobs page for australia. Have a look, sales and legal. Thanks not reading my self admittedly horribly written 3am post.
Of course lawmakers are made up of people who are largely rich, or soon to be rich when they get turfed out of office. They want all of these tax havens to be legal (luxembourg, switzerland, the cayman islands etc.) because they can stow their own money there.
When corporations get into the tax rules it becomes a fairly complex calculation of what it would cost to lobby a particular provision out of (or into) existence versus just paying it.
Ah, but tips in cash would be hush hush. I tip you 4 dollars in cash, or 5 dollars on the credit card. Your pick. Which is exactly what happens now. Or if I tip 4 dollars in cash it's all pocketed, but if I pay 4 dollars on CC it has to be taxed.
There's no real incentive for either party to not conspire (in fact, in many places, e.g. india, the conspiracy is institutionalized, and everyone knows it's happening, it is even on signs occasionally) unless they work for a business or are selling you a good. Any sort of service that can be paid in cash can be done without reporting.
except all of the point of sale costs are paid in Australian dollars, to Australians. The fact that the Australian dollar has doubled in nominal value compared to the USD is mostly irrelevant.
As was said, the legal arrangements are made by hiring Australians, the distributors are paid in Australian dollars. Even if you're talking minimum wage employees the minimum wage in Australia is 15.51 an hour, it's 7.25 in the US. That's your phone support, delivery, even local web hosting type stuff.
Need local phone support? Local servers? Local.. well, anything? You're starting from a different footing than in the US.
Have a look at http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=as&v=67 and http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=67&c=us&l=en. That's the per capita PPP for Australia and the US. In 2003: 30k to 37k. In 2011 41k to 47k. Notice the problem with the currency argument yet? It means nothing. Just because the Australian dollar has relatively doubled in 8 years doesn't mean it has doubled its relative buying power. With nominal GDP on a per capita exchange rate basis for both 2003 and 2011, but I can't find that data very well. The same articles I linked give australia a 2003 nominal GDP of 542 billion, 2011 1.24 trillion, and the US 10.x to 14.x, but without population numbers and it's too late for me to hunt for more data. So yes, while australias currency converted GDP has almost tripled compare to the us 40% increase), their per capita buying power hasn't done that. The price of any given item is both a symptom of that, and of the cause of it, at the same time. Software development isn't worth dramatically more in 2011 than it was in 2003 the way say.. mining has been.
When you talk about microsoft products specifically, they audit your compliance with their licences. If you're using a home and student product on a business machine that doesn't tend to go over well. Who do you think does the auditing? They're paying Australians. In fact, if you look at the microsoft australia jobs page (https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&page=1) most of the positions are services of various sorts and sales, including a licencing executive position. I somehow doubt the average microsoft Australia employee has seen his (in aud) pay increase by a factor of 2.5 since 2003. Possible. But I doubt it.
In europe everything 'costs more' because taxation is loaded into purchases, and because local point of sale cost employees are paid a lot more than they are in the US. And on some things the tax rates are just different. With Australia you do have compliance costs for a small market, which have to be done locally. It sounds stupid, but I doubt microsoft can add in support for 'english, australian' for nothing, they probably have to have specialists who determine what goes in that version, and, again, small market. They have sales costs (because the box copy in store is the same price as the one you order online basically), if you want to download it they need to have the network infrastructure to support that. If you need support (i.e. phone support) they need someone working your timezone, which is either pay someone night shift in the US and hook up the call centre, or pay locals (and given how big australia is you may need two call centres for each time zone and so they can be connected reasonably well).
When it comes to paying corporate executives Australia, Canada and the EU are a bargain compared to the US. When it comes to paying everyone else the US is dirt cheap and only out competed by china and poorer economies.
lets put this another way. Since the AUD has doubled since 2003 has your pay been halved to compensate? Right.
Now adobe CS6 is a whole other problem. Since well, you're buying a lot more than a box of software usually. It's the same basic problem as office, support etc. but at a whole other level, since it's a much smaller market and much more specialized knowledge to provide support and licencing.
France's economy is big enough it influences the euro both directly and indirectly. What happens to greece is about the same as what happens to north carolina, sure, it can be bad there, but over all it's not that much of a problem. France on the other hand is about 1/5th of the eurozone (compared to germany 1/4), what happens there will significantly alter the value of the euro. Italy is about the same with spain a distant 4th. The 'big 3' of France, Germany and Italy should reasonably define the euro on world markets, but italy politically has been largely out of it.
So sure, I agree, German banks have more influence than france, and in terms of both total trade and out of Eurozone trade germany dwarfs france and italy combined. But politically and from the market perspective it's hard to discount France. Politically you can discount Italy, but the way things are going the italy economy is going to drag down the euro, whether they are politically involved or not.
Except that it's banks making the decisions, and governments writing rules that allow them to do various things, and create environments that cause problems.
Human greed always contributes. It is both what drives our economy forward, and causes it to run into a wall occasionally. We always want something just out of reach. It gives us something to work for, but it also means that if you overestimate, even by a few percent you can cause a 'bust'. When the people doing this are controlling (not necessarily owning, just controlling) 80% of the countries wealth with a relatively small handful of people you can see where this goes badly.
To use the example given, if there's a 10% chance of loans not being paid back, but for the last 5 years I've only had a 3% default rate rather than 10, either
1.The 10% chance of failure estimate is wrong, 2. this is an effect that's longer than 5 years or 3. I should be allowed to change how I count the difference. (the lag effect is long enough I should be able to do something else with the money rather than just sit on it for another 5 years sort of thing)
Enter the government, who, by the way, is largely run by people who have money, and as an institution cares very much about investment returns and interest rates, and they look at your problem. The government probably set the 5 year threshold, it may not have any connection to anything that matters, but it seemed like a good number when someone thought it up. It's possible my estimate is wrong, or worse, the government approved estimation technique is wrong, which means everyones estimate is wrong. Lastly, the government will change how that money can be counted, and what I can do with it. This last point is really the most insidious. Politicians will want to write rules that advantage them when they leave government, and that will advantage their investment portfolios. That means going along with changing how risks are counted, or how to handle the difference between calculated and actual risk in a way that will most benefit themselves personally when they leave. Whatever looks like it will help the bottom line the most right now. And that is very bad policy.
After that, the whole situation is exacerbated by other government policies which aren't directly applicable to what we just talked about. Wealth distribution that has become less equal pushes more money into a smaller number of hands, meaning when they make mistakes they take a larger chunk of the economy with them. The government has written rules (about unions, trade, taxes etc.) that significantly impact wealth distribution.
The government also controls the currency supply, and acts as the insurer of last resort, if it feels like it. Currency supply isn't as much of an issue in this recession compared to the great depression (where the gold standard exacerbated the problem for those still on it). The government has mostly managed to avoid a deflationary spiral, although that's about the only good thing you can say, and it's not even that strong a statement. But the insurer of last resort, if it feels like it is a serious problem. When a company (bank or otherwise) starts to spiral out of control, especially with the CDS situation where there was essentially a bank run, how quickly the government moves to insure banks, how much it's willing to insure etc all can determine how bad the crash is.
If this sounds a lot like the great depression, it's because it is. Other than the gold standard issue* basically all of the same principles and problems and theories apply. There are substantial differences in specific, but: massive overburdening debt on consumers and banks, check. Significant wealth inequality, check. "Austrians" (the economic school of thought) claiming too much money supply previously, check. The same group claiming government policies to help were counter productive, check. Excess production capacity, (now largely driven by production in china rather than electrification and motorization) chec
Slashdot Mirror
The world has a total GDP on currency converted basis of about 70 trillion dollars, australia has a GDP of about 1.4 trillion. 1/40th of 70 trillion dollars would be 1.7 trillion. And not all of the people in the world even have internet access to matter to google.
(source: wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) which gives couple of different estimates that are all pretty close given our margin of error here).
Using their monopoly to put someone else out of business is something MS got in trouble for. Specifically bundling a free browser with their operating system. They also got in trouble for other things. But this isn't a legal trial. I suspect they are trying to dodge a legal fight (which they might lose).
Sort of by definition any sort of security trades off some degree of privacy and 'rights' (insofar as you can argue such things exist at all). You can't, as is the latest headline, wiretap without violating the privacy of both the person being wiretapped or anyone else that calls. You can't fingerprint someone without violating some degree of their personal privacy. You can't put a camera on a police cruiser to video tape the police without occasionally videotaping someone else, or even police officers in a private moment.
You can't investigate financial crime without looking at peoples personal financial statements etc.
The government can add on layers of rules about when you can and can't infringe on privacy, but ultimately you infringe on privacy to prevent investigate crime. Running you through an airport metal detector infringes on your medical privacy to have a metal implant replacing a bone in your body that you don't really want to tell people about.
Even someone who simply looks at your name on a piece of paper and verifies that you are that person is an element of privacy. Maybe you have a stalker you're trying to get away from, maybe you're in witness protection, and your privacy is really really important, having to even prove you're you requires you you give up something about yourself. If you get interviewed by El Al security they'll ask you the names of your children if you have any, is it really airport securities business the names of your children (especially if they aren't flying with you)?
Notice you just said DVDFab is, to legally acquire, a 60 dollar purchase. If MS will give you the same basic capability for 10 well then you're 50 dollars better off aren't you? Unless you are pirating the software of course.
And yes, this kills media player as a bundled product. That was my point about anti trust concerns. MS probably still can't get away with giving away for free what other people are demanding money for within the legal framework that exists. I grant you the legal framework is absurd, but that's a separate discussion.
Maybe by windows 9 or 10 they'll bundle back the blu ray player for free (sort of like happened with DVD playback).
Also, do you really want to move and store dozens of 25-50GB files on your hard drive or move them from netflix all the time? Because not everyone has network access or disk space that will support that. Though I agree that the future of video is the same as the future of music, online with local copies, I think we're quite a ways away from that for everyone.
That would be true if they weren't liable for what happens. As long as the TSA does security they are are fault if something goes wrong. If the airport or airlines run security themselves they could be bankrupt from a single event. Not to mention the further damage that would be done from even a single incident of a half successful hijacking or the like.
Right now the airlines can rely on 'we don't like it either, but if you want to fly, those are the rules with everyone so tough it out'. I'd much rather the government trying to figure out to grope my balls without groping them than an insurance company demanding the airline minimize its liability for terrorist acts.
Security is a government problem. That doesn't mean the TSA, the US military or anyone else do a particularly good or bad job. But transferring security responsibility to private companies or individuals would make the problem worse, not better. If you don't want the TSA engaging in security theatre pass laws that prevent the theatre and demand actual security, which is what should have happened in the first place.
That's actually a good plan. Off and on I've worked fairly closely with RIM and they're generally trying to go this sort of odd android but not quite android, and for business route. They would have been much better off being the business arm of windows phones, with nokia taking up the consumer space, and MS would have thrown them a pile of money for the transition. It would have put a lot of windows phone handsets in the hands of people who need to stay with a particular product line too, giving them a guaranteed install base. Right now the question anyone asks is: what does a blackberry get me?
As it is RIM is a good example of the problem with trying to differentiate yourself from android makers but trying to take advantage of their ecosystem.
It depends how you read the tea leaves, but it seems like microsoft has a grand plan. Rather than having a Xbox Portable, or Xbox dual screen or whatever hand held, they have windows phones. Rather than separate OS's for slates and phones and desktops they're merging it all into one big platform. This is a long game, and it might be too late for nokia if they ever manage to pull it off, but it seems like one crazy plan.
Back then it didn't. Legally playing DVD's required (requires?) a licencing arrangement so they didn't do it, windows vista and 7 I think both support dvd playback, but the price for that is baked into the purchase assuming they have to pay at all.
The interesting tidbit here is the blu ray playback. Which right now requires you buy any of a slew of fairly expensive players (software), unless one comes with your drive, but the one with your drive may not play new discs etc. etc. etc. VLC I think has a blu ray player mode, but it doesn't work with all disks. If MS is able to pull this off it's not a bad plan.
Also, they may be decoupling the bundle because of anti trust concerns. The people who sell blu ray software especially would (probably rightly) accuse microsoft of using their monopoly to put them out of business (which would be good for humanity in this case).
It didn't.
Nokia's entire argument in 1 word: Yet.
Whether they are right or not who knows, but their plan to save the company with Windows phones is still in its early phases. Which is a commentary on their poor execution, but it's still a plan in motion. The guy filing the suit is either a moron, or is in trouble with his own investors and is trying to get himself press for looking like he's doing something.
Honestly, I disagree with your assessment. Unless you intentionally do something unbalanced you don't trivialize the content in skyrim or oblivion. You *can* trivialize it, but that's good, because frankly they are long games and eventually they can get somewhat boring. The video you have is an animation sync problem of course, but really, you know you can stand and fight if you want.
I found the last fight in skyrim boring because the boss doesn't do anything, and doesn't try to. I thought this was a case of me being a little too overzealous blowing all cooldowns etc. So I tried it a second time and basically stood there and let him beat on me for a while. Still nothing. That's not 'the player is overpowered' (when you're wearing full dragon plate you expect to be able to take a few hits), it's that they intentionally don't have any great variety of mechanics. Run up and hit/shoot/nuke it a few times and it dies.
Depends on the job. If you start into project management rather than being a product developer or programmer it's easier to hide that you don't have a CS degree, or even demonstrate that it doesn't. He's also from an agegroup where a lot of people migrated into computer science work from other completely unrelated fields. One of our profs here who is a CS instructor has all of his formal training in business, but that was as close as his school came to CS in the 1980's. Seriously.
A degree doesn't just show you posses basic group skills, nor are those skills necessarily useful in business. In fact, to the contrary, a lot of degrees don't teach you useful skills to business, and that's why they are paid less than college/tradeschool diplomas. A degree makes you an inexperienced professional in your area. If you need to work in a different area (for example of you have a degree in psychology, english or art history, which are the most oversupplied graduates around here) you haven't demonstrated an aptitude in computer science or any of the more technical programmes.
Remember, this is a guy born in 58. That means he probably went to school around 76 -80. Back then a LOT of places didn't have CS degrees, and what they did offer grew out of another department. Technically my MSc which in practice was CS (thesis on GPU ray tracing) is the same degree as people in geology, physics, chemistry, maths, and psychology from my school, because some idiot put them all in the same programme and degree name. In 1980 your degree and your ability to do CS means a lot less than a degree in CS would represent today. It's not that the training is necessarily a whole lot better, just that you simply couldn't supply enough, so someone who took the only 2 CS courses offered would be the most CS trained person available. Which is why we had two decades of clusterfucks in technology of security problems left and right, massively inefficient implementations that hung around long past their lifetimes etc.
It does sort of create this odd incentive to run an unsecured WAP to dodge the potential liability for what you're going to use it for. Which is just bad security practice in general, and can tend to risk problems with everything you mentioned, because people who want to engage in things which are definitely illegal, and should be illegal don't usually want to get caught doing it.
In the case of a household of multiple people, sure, they can't specify which of the 4 members of the household are responsible for it. If that's a married family basically 'one of them, doesn't matter which' is probably good enough for civil on a secured access point, if it's roommates, not so much, but you're still better off with an open access point so that you can say 'well, it might have been some random guy on the street'. Which seems really stupid overall.
There are so many ways that rulings like this is going to clash with technology that aren't going to help the situation. It's a fundamental issue with what should and should not be legal, making it about the specifics of how technology used is only delaying the problem. I would argue prohibition went through the same thing, with 'alcohol is illegal, so you can't drink except where we exempted it to be legal or where the law is unenforcible'. Which is simply not a viable or sustainable system.
Sure they are unbalanced, but that's part of the fun, it's a single player game, so you let people do crazy things if they want. It doesn't hurt anyone else.
In an MMO though you have to do a very tricky economic dance, and shit has to work. I think bethesda is stepping into the wrong market here, there are other people who are very very good at making MMO's and it's a very saturated market. I can play one MMO, and I can play single player games. But I can't play two MMO's, and what is Elder Scrolls online going to bring to the table? Everyone says their game is going to be the greatest, but EA spent what, 300 million dollars on SWTOR and it's not that good. Trying to enter that market and be competitive is enormously expensive and risky, and frankly not worth it. Not when you can make elder scrolls 6 by putting a turd in a box and make 100 million dollars on it. Trying to go after Blizzard, who have WoW and unannounced 'titan' and Diablo 3, and SWTOR, and Guild Wars 2 and all of the other MMO's out there is probably going to lose the fight for available player time. Not a good move on their part.
University is not K-12 - this is the NYC Public School System.
You can't assume that every student in a public school has internet access at home.
Absolutely, I think I differentiated a number of places where my experience would probably not translate to the non university experience. I specifically said "In university" to clarify I wasn't suggesting my experience applies to dealings with people who aren't adults.
Have you never heard of the Alumni Relations and Career Development offices at your college? The world somehow functioned before Facebook, and it will some how get by after Facebook is gone...
I have, have you? Suggesting they're good at building personal relationships doesn't really connect to anything in my experience. I'm sure different countries and schools have different experiences, but around here alumni relations is basically a giant effort to beg for money, and students aren't really interested in spending the next 70 years being harassed for money every quarter because they had the privilege to spend 7k in tuition + 16k in living expenses a year for 4 years at some point in the past. By chance the place I did my undergraduate didn't have my address for about 7 years. Now I get a monthly request for money (which I have never given them), they got my address when I needed transcripts for graduate school. Quite honestly, I'd rather they forgot I exist. Lots of perfectly good people don't want to be bothered their past school.
Career development is useful, and that's how the first student (who worked at amazon for the last 3 years) go that gig I think. I know one of my students works at microsoft after they did a career fare organized by our career services. But it's never the same as having a personal connection to someone you're applying to.
Sure, the world will function without facebook, but we have the tools to connect people, so why shouldn't we? Facebook exists because it lets you connect people together. If I tell my current student 'hey, this guy at X would cool to work with, he was a great guy when he was here' and if I say to the referenced former student 'hey, this student of mine is cool you should hire him' whether I use facebook, myspace, instant messaging or future social connection system I don't think that changes advantages of a personal touch.
Can be - but isn't. that was my point. As an instructor you are certainly under no obligation to even try and use facebook, nor should you if you aren't comfortable doing so. I was merely relaying my single data point of experience.
In university about half my students in classes will tend to befriend me on facebook (it's a bit less than that but close enough). Anytime anything out of the ordinary happens I posted it on facebook, as well as via e-mail.
Students are *far* more likely to get a facebook message than they are an e-mail. Lots of them, and, frankly this baffles me because it's the same device, will check facebook on the bus etc. but not e-mail. I suppose that's in part because the university has a habit of sending out a lot of crap that they don't care about, whereas on facebook the information they don't care about now can be easily skimmed over.
Doing anything 'regular' on facebook, course notes assignments that sort of thing doesn't make a lot of sense. Virtually all universities have some sort of classroom management software (webct/blackboard/sakai etc.) for that stuff, and students need to check that on a daily basis for work stuff. But if class is canceled, or a particular lab is closed, elevator not working, that sort of thing, facebook is much more effective than e-mail. I'm not sure that makes sense in highschool since highschools aren't usually giant tens of thousands of persons campuses with a huge number of people coming and going in dozens of buildings at different times.
The biggest plus I've found to facebook is when the students graduate you get to know what they're doing. And, importantly, you can connect them to the next batch of students looking for work and so on. One of my students from 3 years ago works at amazon, so I sent him a graduate who's super excited about amazon this year sort of thing. Again, I'm not sure that would make as much sense at the highshool level, although it's always nice to know what your former students are up to.
I don't think we (as canadians) should be outraged. That's the wrong approach to this. We should be celebrating the fact that we have better rules than the americans.
Imagine some politicians came out with a report about how awful it is that blacks can vote in this long list of countries, or how abhorrent is is that women could vote in some places, or how some countries *still* haven't enacted prohibition, or how terrible it must be for people living in those countries that have government healthcare. If you on one of those lists you don't get outraged, you can use it as proof positive that your system is working, and those idiots that wrote the report are living in the wrong century. Which, as with this report, they are.
There's no point in trying to complain that some of their metrics are wrong or unfairly target the wrong groups. The whole concept is basically inverted, squabbling about the details gives the false impression that it can somehow be corrected with some tweaking of specifics.
Yes. because *you* know how to set up those things. I have a 10.04 LTS which I'm migrating to 12 shortly myself. But that doesn't mean anyone else knows how to use linux. But then, I'm an expert. My mother however is not. And I wouldn't burden her with linux for fear of being removed from the family.
Also, the one spreading FUD is you. I don't have any windows XP or vista or 7 machines that get slower over time, nor have I had a virus do anything to a personal machine in 17 years, Microsoft security essentials is pretty good at catching stuff that students send me. Most windows machines if they're managed properly are perfectly usable until hardware starts to fail. Which is pretty much the same with any linux distro. My point was that there's a much bigger body of knowledge with the non expert general public about windows than there is about linux. And that isn't about to change any time soon.
The updater on Ubuntu is far from flawless btw. Depends on your hardware but I've had a bugger of a time over the last few years with it fucking up nvidia drivers repeatedly (on an 8800 gtx and a GTX 280, which are, admittedly, quite old). Fixing that isn't all that hard, but it requires some fairly basic command line stuff. The moment you ask a non technical user to open a terminal and type in a series of commands you've lost them. Which was my point. With linux every distro has its own way of solving lots of common problems. That's all well and good but if someone calls me up for help on a fedora, redhat, centos, ubuntu or debian I am unlikely to remember where everything is in each distro.
because everytime we get one of these posts there are a huge string of insightful comments on somethings people don't know how to do on linux, how hard it is to do things, how fractured it is, how incompatible it is with things people know etc. etc. etc. are all right. And will continue to be right. Because linux is intentionally decentralized and open. Which just makes it widely confusing and difficult for non experts.
People know windows. If that adds 100 dollars to the price of 500 dollars of hardware it's irrelevant, because people either can't do what they want on linux or don't want to waste time learning linux when they already know how on windows. For most of us in the relatively well off parts of the world the price of windows isn't going to somehow drive us out of the market. And it's worth it if it means you can sit down and do whatever you wanted with the computer, rather than spend time mucking with the computer to get it to do what you want. MS of course likes to make things difficult (see the ribbon and windows 8) but we'll see how the latter plays out.
You're arguing that the costs for Adobe/Microsoft's Australian operations effctively double to price of the product they sell. Well, as an Australian business customer I fail to see any value-add from Adobe or Microsoft having an Australian presence -
so right off the bat you've started with a false premise, well two actually. First, I didn't say australian operations double the price of the product. I said the nominal (exchange rate) conversion of australian to USD dollars doesn't reflect a change in purchasing parity. 900 AUD in 2003 won't buy 2x as much in 2011. In fact if you look at the PPP rate, you're only marginally better off.
Secondly, you said you don't see any value add from MS. Adobe I can't speak to specifically, but I even linked the MS jobs page. Thanks for reading. I know my 3am post has some gibberish in there that makes it hard to read, but if you want to sue them, or if you get audited for compliance that's all local. All of the rules they have to follow, managed locally, etc. etc. etc.
Since I manage software for a reasonable sized company we get our licences via a reseller, and download the media, so we don't use their software distribution chain, anyway.
You actually just spelled out in your previous paragraph how you connected to their chain. They have to supply the reseller. Hence all the sales gigs at MS australia. The more layers in the chain locally, the more of the sales costs is tied to Australian dollars.
If you manage software for a living you should know more about this process than you do. You can't discount the costs of building licencing systems (automated or otherwise) for australia as somehow free. Even if that development work is done in the US they have to do it in consultation with a legal team in australia.
For support. I'm surprised their business support would be outsourced, especially adobe. Consumer support sure, but business support that's surprising, around here they subcontract a local company to do it (business support only though). Even then, they have to *have* and asia pacific call centre that you can link up to, and the cost of that in AUD hasn't changed. The problem is that the US dollar has fallen relative to everything, not that the AUD has risen with nothing else having a similar effect.
I'll reiterate: You have a false premise, that the price has doubled. It hasn't. Unless your pay has been cut in half to compensate for the change in dollar value what you're seeing is that every step of the chain people who were paid 100 AUD were still paid 100 AUD, and so the US specific cost, which was maybe 100 or 200 dollars (of a 500 USD purchase, or in 2003 900 AUD purchase) may have gone down a bit, accounting for the drop from 900 to 850 AUD. But everywhere else on the chain is still people being paid in AUD.
I would estimate, as a professional software developer, that about half the costs of the software are point of sale/local currency. Which means the fixed cost cost was about 250 USD. (Which was 500 AUD, and is now 250), and the remainder is made up for with local currency. At that point you're into problems like currency volatility, when contracts are written, etc. etc. I'm not saying you aren't getting a bad deal, but is no where near as bad as you presented it, and that's normal for anyone not doing business in the US.
I specifically linked the microsoft jobs page for australia. Have a look, sales and legal. Thanks not reading my self admittedly horribly written 3am post.
Of course lawmakers are made up of people who are largely rich, or soon to be rich when they get turfed out of office. They want all of these tax havens to be legal (luxembourg, switzerland, the cayman islands etc.) because they can stow their own money there.
When corporations get into the tax rules it becomes a fairly complex calculation of what it would cost to lobby a particular provision out of (or into) existence versus just paying it.
Ah, but tips in cash would be hush hush. I tip you 4 dollars in cash, or 5 dollars on the credit card. Your pick. Which is exactly what happens now. Or if I tip 4 dollars in cash it's all pocketed, but if I pay 4 dollars on CC it has to be taxed.
There's no real incentive for either party to not conspire (in fact, in many places, e.g. india, the conspiracy is institutionalized, and everyone knows it's happening, it is even on signs occasionally) unless they work for a business or are selling you a good. Any sort of service that can be paid in cash can be done without reporting.
except all of the point of sale costs are paid in Australian dollars, to Australians. The fact that the Australian dollar has doubled in nominal value compared to the USD is mostly irrelevant.
As was said, the legal arrangements are made by hiring Australians, the distributors are paid in Australian dollars. Even if you're talking minimum wage employees the minimum wage in Australia is 15.51 an hour, it's 7.25 in the US. That's your phone support, delivery, even local web hosting type stuff.
Need local phone support? Local servers? Local.. well, anything? You're starting from a different footing than in the US.
Have a look at http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=as&v=67 and http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?v=67&c=us&l=en. That's the per capita PPP for Australia and the US. In 2003: 30k to 37k. In 2011 41k to 47k. Notice the problem with the currency argument yet? It means nothing. Just because the Australian dollar has relatively doubled in 8 years doesn't mean it has doubled its relative buying power. With nominal GDP on a per capita exchange rate basis for both 2003 and 2011, but I can't find that data very well. The same articles I linked give australia a 2003 nominal GDP of 542 billion, 2011 1.24 trillion, and the US 10.x to 14.x, but without population numbers and it's too late for me to hunt for more data. So yes, while australias currency converted GDP has almost tripled compare to the us 40% increase), their per capita buying power hasn't done that. The price of any given item is both a symptom of that, and of the cause of it, at the same time. Software development isn't worth dramatically more in 2011 than it was in 2003 the way say.. mining has been.
When you talk about microsoft products specifically, they audit your compliance with their licences. If you're using a home and student product on a business machine that doesn't tend to go over well. Who do you think does the auditing? They're paying Australians. In fact, if you look at the microsoft australia jobs page (https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&page=1) most of the positions are services of various sorts and sales, including a licencing executive position. I somehow doubt the average microsoft Australia employee has seen his (in aud) pay increase by a factor of 2.5 since 2003. Possible. But I doubt it.
In europe everything 'costs more' because taxation is loaded into purchases, and because local point of sale cost employees are paid a lot more than they are in the US. And on some things the tax rates are just different. With Australia you do have compliance costs for a small market, which have to be done locally. It sounds stupid, but I doubt microsoft can add in support for 'english, australian' for nothing, they probably have to have specialists who determine what goes in that version, and, again, small market. They have sales costs (because the box copy in store is the same price as the one you order online basically), if you want to download it they need to have the network infrastructure to support that. If you need support (i.e. phone support) they need someone working your timezone, which is either pay someone night shift in the US and hook up the call centre, or pay locals (and given how big australia is you may need two call centres for each time zone and so they can be connected reasonably well).
When it comes to paying corporate executives Australia, Canada and the EU are a bargain compared to the US. When it comes to paying everyone else the US is dirt cheap and only out competed by china and poorer economies.
lets put this another way. Since the AUD has doubled since 2003 has your pay been halved to compensate? Right.
Now adobe CS6 is a whole other problem. Since well, you're buying a lot more than a box of software usually. It's the same basic problem as office, support etc. but at a whole other level, since it's a much smaller market and much more specialized knowledge to provide support and licencing.
France's economy is big enough it influences the euro both directly and indirectly. What happens to greece is about the same as what happens to north carolina, sure, it can be bad there, but over all it's not that much of a problem. France on the other hand is about 1/5th of the eurozone (compared to germany 1/4), what happens there will significantly alter the value of the euro. Italy is about the same with spain a distant 4th. The 'big 3' of France, Germany and Italy should reasonably define the euro on world markets, but italy politically has been largely out of it.
So sure, I agree, German banks have more influence than france, and in terms of both total trade and out of Eurozone trade germany dwarfs france and italy combined. But politically and from the market perspective it's hard to discount France. Politically you can discount Italy, but the way things are going the italy economy is going to drag down the euro, whether they are politically involved or not.
Except that it's banks making the decisions, and governments writing rules that allow them to do various things, and create environments that cause problems.
Human greed always contributes. It is both what drives our economy forward, and causes it to run into a wall occasionally. We always want something just out of reach. It gives us something to work for, but it also means that if you overestimate, even by a few percent you can cause a 'bust'. When the people doing this are controlling (not necessarily owning, just controlling) 80% of the countries wealth with a relatively small handful of people you can see where this goes badly.
To use the example given, if there's a 10% chance of loans not being paid back, but for the last 5 years I've only had a 3% default rate rather than 10, either
1.The 10% chance of failure estimate is wrong,
2. this is an effect that's longer than 5 years or
3. I should be allowed to change how I count the difference. (the lag effect is long enough I should be able to do something else with the money rather than just sit on it for another 5 years sort of thing)
Enter the government, who, by the way, is largely run by people who have money, and as an institution cares very much about investment returns and interest rates, and they look at your problem. The government probably set the 5 year threshold, it may not have any connection to anything that matters, but it seemed like a good number when someone thought it up. It's possible my estimate is wrong, or worse, the government approved estimation technique is wrong, which means everyones estimate is wrong. Lastly, the government will change how that money can be counted, and what I can do with it. This last point is really the most insidious. Politicians will want to write rules that advantage them when they leave government, and that will advantage their investment portfolios. That means going along with changing how risks are counted, or how to handle the difference between calculated and actual risk in a way that will most benefit themselves personally when they leave. Whatever looks like it will help the bottom line the most right now. And that is very bad policy.
After that, the whole situation is exacerbated by other government policies which aren't directly applicable to what we just talked about. Wealth distribution that has become less equal pushes more money into a smaller number of hands, meaning when they make mistakes they take a larger chunk of the economy with them. The government has written rules (about unions, trade, taxes etc.) that significantly impact wealth distribution.
The government also controls the currency supply, and acts as the insurer of last resort, if it feels like it. Currency supply isn't as much of an issue in this recession compared to the great depression (where the gold standard exacerbated the problem for those still on it). The government has mostly managed to avoid a deflationary spiral, although that's about the only good thing you can say, and it's not even that strong a statement. But the insurer of last resort, if it feels like it is a serious problem. When a company (bank or otherwise) starts to spiral out of control, especially with the CDS situation where there was essentially a bank run, how quickly the government moves to insure banks, how much it's willing to insure etc all can determine how bad the crash is.
If this sounds a lot like the great depression, it's because it is. Other than the gold standard issue* basically all of the same principles and problems and theories apply. There are substantial differences in specific, but: massive overburdening debt on consumers and banks, check. Significant wealth inequality, check. "Austrians" (the economic school of thought) claiming too much money supply previously, check. The same group claiming government policies to help were counter productive, check. Excess production capacity, (now largely driven by production in china rather than electrification and motorization) chec