If Amazon's entire business model is dependent on avoiding sales tax, then they need to get a new business model. States in general voluntarily declined to tax Internet purchases in the early days specifically to help foster the growth of commerce on the network, but it was always generally understood to be a temporary condition. Anyone who was paying attention knew states would eventually come looking for sales tax on all these online purchases, and any company who failed to account for that eventuality deserves to go out of business.
Google itself used to have a nice simple interface, but they've been slowly shoehorning more and more cruft into it as time goes on. So, they're not immune either.
The primary reason is the profit motive. Corporations, especially corporations with lots of shareholders such as public companies, need constant profit growth to satisfy those shareholders. So, they have to constantly be looking for new ways to monetize their brand. For free web services, this usually means becoming steadily more insufferable to users in attempts to squeeze more money out of advertisers.
The real problem is centralized social networking itself. As long as all social networking is centralized on just a few sites, those sites will either have to keep doing this crap to make money or go out of business. Remember, you're not the customer, the advertisers are. You're the product.
It may not be Facebook, but it's still Google, and Google is still a company whose entire business model revolves around mining user data and using it to sell advertising. Google also shares Facebook's general disdain for privacy.
As long as we depend on single monolithic sites run by for-profit entities for social networking, we'll continue to have the same problems we do with Facebook. The whole social networking model is based around providing the service for free while making money from targeted advertising. As long as that's the case, the companies running the social networks will do whatever they can to try and entice people to reveal more information about themselves. Switching from Facebook to Google isn't going to change that.
There was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about MySpace and how it all went wrong. It's really interesting how quickly MySpace went from the planned jewel in the crown of News Corp. to Murdoch's abandoned stepchild.
Even at the time of the News Corp acquisition, cracks were showing in MySpace's dominance of the social network scene, but the infusion of cash and media expertise from News Corp could potentially have helped it. Unfortunately, once Murdoch shifted his focus to acquiring the Wall Street Journal, he no longer cared about what happened to MySpace and any hope (however small) of saving it was lost.
You're right, they aren't quick to update, and that's exactly why this move by Firefox could be such a boon for Microsoft. Corporations like to test the hell out of software and then deploy it, after which they'll keep that version for months or years, updating only for security reasons.
So, a company currently on Firefox 3 may have been testing Firefox 4 for the past couple of months, with an eye toward deploying at some point a quarter or two down the line. Suddenly they get news that they won't even be able to get security updates for it. This means whatever work they've done on Firefox 4 is wasted, and they're skittish about starting work on Firefox 5 because that might get de-supported in a matter of months as well.
Enter Microsoft, who tells them they can move to IE and whatever version they go with (8 or 9) will be supported for a predictable length of time, and that length of time is measured in years. Since Firefox has suddenly become schizophrenic about their support cycles, it's in the business's best interest to work on moving toward migrating to Microsoft as soon as possible.
Firefox already barely has a foothold in corporate America, as you pointed out, and shenanigans like this will effectively kill that market for them.
You'd think the reason this took so long was because they had to fabricate a thermometer large enough, but in fact the real hold up was convincing a grad student to stick that thermometer up the dinosaur's ass.
At the executive level, "fired", "resigned", and "laid off" all mean the same thing. At any rate, even if they didn't have golden parachutes as part of their employment contracts (and they're idiots if they didn't), I'm sure they have plenty of stock and stock options to dry their tears with.
Lots of government workers need cell phones for their jobs. As with any other job, if it's required for the job, the employer should pay for it. Now, the government really ought to do something like what my employer does: they'll provide a model good enough for your basic needs for free, but if you want a fancy smart phone, you pay for the actual hardware out of your own pocket. They still pay for the plan, though.
So, I can totally understand why government is paying for (at least part of) this. There's no excuse for buying a Zune, though.
It seems interesting, but functionally it could be a nightmare. A single building with only 4 floors in a giant circle big enough to fit 12,000 people is somewhat reminiscent of the Pentagon (which houses a little less than twice that number). I'd be concerned that it would end up being a maze inside, especially over time as interior space gets constantly reconfigured to meet the changing needs of the company.
Of course, if the idea is just to build something that will take Jobs back to his home planet in style, none of that is really relevant.
China's middle class is exploding, so there are markets there that didn't exist only a few years ago. Ironically, one of the hurdles for Chinese companies to overcome is that many middle class Chinese seek out American (or otherwise foreign) products because they believe Chinese products are largely shoddy knockoffs. This means that, at least for now, most Chinese manufacturers are only able to successfully sell to the wealthier parts of the Chinese market by doing outsourced manufacturing work for an American brand.
Of course, as Chinese companies absorb more knowledge of how to market their own brands (they're already learning about quality control from the demands of the American brands outsourcing manufacturing to them), those brands will gain strength. At that point, they won't need American brands to sell to their own country, and can cut out the middleman. Eventually, those strong Chinese brands will make their way here and compete directly with American brands on our own shores. This is a matter of when, not if.
This has always been a major problem with outsourcing. It's basically impossible to outsource any significant work without at the same time training your outsourcing partner in the skills they would need to directly compete with you if they so desired. With the Chinese domestic market exploding, there are huge opportunities for Chinese companies who are willing and able to step out from the shadow of their American outsourcing partners.
Airlines want to pull their listings from sites like these because the sites take a percentage of each sale. The airlines can charge lower fares and still maintain their profit margins by only offering tickets on their own sites. Southwest Airlines doesn't offer fares through these sites for exactly that reason.
No, I said sometimes people who are crushed by the despair of the poverty cycle make poor life decisions. Sometimes these poor decisions involve turning to drugs and/or crime. Any interpretation of what I said beyond that is a product of your own biases.
And then the news media gets a hold of it, creates a Streisand effect, and your twitter account is more popular than it's ever been. Meanwhile, instead of the 4500 followers this guy has knowing about these allegations he made, now millions of people all over the world know about them. When will people ever learn?
Most kids in the worst-performing schools DON'T get that stuff at home. The worst performing schools are almost always in the poorest areas, and it's not because poor people are naturally stupid or because teachers in those schools are naturally incompetent.
Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success. Parental involvement also decreases as income decreases. Sometimes it's because parents have to work multiple jobs. Sometimes it's because the cycle of poverty creates despair which leads people to make bad decisions like turning to drugs and crime, which often lead them into our well-funded prison system. Schools have gotten worse as the gap between rich and poor has widened. This is not a coincidence.
It's wrong to say all schools are failing. In wealthier districts, schools are by and large doing very well, even the public schools. The ultimate solution to repairing schools is reducing that gap between rich and poor back to a more reasonable level. Unfortunately, since any attempt to help the poor is seen as socialism and there's a pervasive feeling in this country that poor people are poor for a reason and don't deserve any help, we debate endlessly over symptoms rather than fighting the root cause.
Not to interrupt the "I was online before you" dick waving that inevitably results from stories like this (and is in abundance in replies to your post), but the article is referring to the first time the general public experienced the social aspects of the Internet. Sure, nerds like us were using IRC and the talk command before that for real-time communication, but that was back in the era when the Internet was either completely unknown to the general public or was seen as something "those computer people" used.
AIM was the first messenger that was used by a significant number of "normal" people. It's like talking about the iPod as revolutionizing MP3 players: It wasn't the first by a long shot, but it was the first to be used by a large enough segment of the population to be relevant to the general public.
Slashdot Mirror
Socialist!
If Amazon's entire business model is dependent on avoiding sales tax, then they need to get a new business model. States in general voluntarily declined to tax Internet purchases in the early days specifically to help foster the growth of commerce on the network, but it was always generally understood to be a temporary condition. Anyone who was paying attention knew states would eventually come looking for sales tax on all these online purchases, and any company who failed to account for that eventuality deserves to go out of business.
Google itself used to have a nice simple interface, but they've been slowly shoehorning more and more cruft into it as time goes on. So, they're not immune either.
The primary reason is the profit motive. Corporations, especially corporations with lots of shareholders such as public companies, need constant profit growth to satisfy those shareholders. So, they have to constantly be looking for new ways to monetize their brand. For free web services, this usually means becoming steadily more insufferable to users in attempts to squeeze more money out of advertisers.
The real problem is centralized social networking itself. As long as all social networking is centralized on just a few sites, those sites will either have to keep doing this crap to make money or go out of business. Remember, you're not the customer, the advertisers are. You're the product.
It may not be Facebook, but it's still Google, and Google is still a company whose entire business model revolves around mining user data and using it to sell advertising. Google also shares Facebook's general disdain for privacy.
As long as we depend on single monolithic sites run by for-profit entities for social networking, we'll continue to have the same problems we do with Facebook. The whole social networking model is based around providing the service for free while making money from targeted advertising. As long as that's the case, the companies running the social networks will do whatever they can to try and entice people to reveal more information about themselves. Switching from Facebook to Google isn't going to change that.
There was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek last week about MySpace and how it all went wrong. It's really interesting how quickly MySpace went from the planned jewel in the crown of News Corp. to Murdoch's abandoned stepchild.
Even at the time of the News Corp acquisition, cracks were showing in MySpace's dominance of the social network scene, but the infusion of cash and media expertise from News Corp could potentially have helped it. Unfortunately, once Murdoch shifted his focus to acquiring the Wall Street Journal, he no longer cared about what happened to MySpace and any hope (however small) of saving it was lost.
Bah, didn't even notice the troll link. Too late on a Friday, I guess.
You're right, they aren't quick to update, and that's exactly why this move by Firefox could be such a boon for Microsoft. Corporations like to test the hell out of software and then deploy it, after which they'll keep that version for months or years, updating only for security reasons.
So, a company currently on Firefox 3 may have been testing Firefox 4 for the past couple of months, with an eye toward deploying at some point a quarter or two down the line. Suddenly they get news that they won't even be able to get security updates for it. This means whatever work they've done on Firefox 4 is wasted, and they're skittish about starting work on Firefox 5 because that might get de-supported in a matter of months as well.
Enter Microsoft, who tells them they can move to IE and whatever version they go with (8 or 9) will be supported for a predictable length of time, and that length of time is measured in years. Since Firefox has suddenly become schizophrenic about their support cycles, it's in the business's best interest to work on moving toward migrating to Microsoft as soon as possible.
Firefox already barely has a foothold in corporate America, as you pointed out, and shenanigans like this will effectively kill that market for them.
You'd think the reason this took so long was because they had to fabricate a thermometer large enough, but in fact the real hold up was convincing a grad student to stick that thermometer up the dinosaur's ass.
At the executive level, "fired", "resigned", and "laid off" all mean the same thing. At any rate, even if they didn't have golden parachutes as part of their employment contracts (and they're idiots if they didn't), I'm sure they have plenty of stock and stock options to dry their tears with.
Just like they all live happily as subdomains of apple.com now, right?
Lots of government workers need cell phones for their jobs. As with any other job, if it's required for the job, the employer should pay for it. Now, the government really ought to do something like what my employer does: they'll provide a model good enough for your basic needs for free, but if you want a fancy smart phone, you pay for the actual hardware out of your own pocket. They still pay for the plan, though.
So, I can totally understand why government is paying for (at least part of) this. There's no excuse for buying a Zune, though.
At those prices, I can't afford to NOT spam!
This is much ado about nothing. If history is any guide, the Doctor will come to the rescue of our British cousins in the event of any shenanigans.
all the extra land required to build these alternatives.
No worries, nothing bad has ever happened because Germany decided they needed more land.
It seems interesting, but functionally it could be a nightmare. A single building with only 4 floors in a giant circle big enough to fit 12,000 people is somewhat reminiscent of the Pentagon (which houses a little less than twice that number). I'd be concerned that it would end up being a maze inside, especially over time as interior space gets constantly reconfigured to meet the changing needs of the company.
Of course, if the idea is just to build something that will take Jobs back to his home planet in style, none of that is really relevant.
We're all still mentally 15, so targeting us with boobs and explosions is still cool.
China's middle class is exploding, so there are markets there that didn't exist only a few years ago. Ironically, one of the hurdles for Chinese companies to overcome is that many middle class Chinese seek out American (or otherwise foreign) products because they believe Chinese products are largely shoddy knockoffs. This means that, at least for now, most Chinese manufacturers are only able to successfully sell to the wealthier parts of the Chinese market by doing outsourced manufacturing work for an American brand.
Of course, as Chinese companies absorb more knowledge of how to market their own brands (they're already learning about quality control from the demands of the American brands outsourcing manufacturing to them), those brands will gain strength. At that point, they won't need American brands to sell to their own country, and can cut out the middleman. Eventually, those strong Chinese brands will make their way here and compete directly with American brands on our own shores. This is a matter of when, not if.
This has always been a major problem with outsourcing. It's basically impossible to outsource any significant work without at the same time training your outsourcing partner in the skills they would need to directly compete with you if they so desired. With the Chinese domestic market exploding, there are huge opportunities for Chinese companies who are willing and able to step out from the shadow of their American outsourcing partners.
Airlines want to pull their listings from sites like these because the sites take a percentage of each sale. The airlines can charge lower fares and still maintain their profit margins by only offering tickets on their own sites. Southwest Airlines doesn't offer fares through these sites for exactly that reason.
No, I said sometimes people who are crushed by the despair of the poverty cycle make poor life decisions. Sometimes these poor decisions involve turning to drugs and/or crime. Any interpretation of what I said beyond that is a product of your own biases.
And then the news media gets a hold of it, creates a Streisand effect, and your twitter account is more popular than it's ever been. Meanwhile, instead of the 4500 followers this guy has knowing about these allegations he made, now millions of people all over the world know about them. When will people ever learn?
Most kids in the worst-performing schools DON'T get that stuff at home. The worst performing schools are almost always in the poorest areas, and it's not because poor people are naturally stupid or because teachers in those schools are naturally incompetent.
Parental involvement is the most significant single indicator of student success. Parental involvement also decreases as income decreases. Sometimes it's because parents have to work multiple jobs. Sometimes it's because the cycle of poverty creates despair which leads people to make bad decisions like turning to drugs and crime, which often lead them into our well-funded prison system. Schools have gotten worse as the gap between rich and poor has widened. This is not a coincidence.
It's wrong to say all schools are failing. In wealthier districts, schools are by and large doing very well, even the public schools. The ultimate solution to repairing schools is reducing that gap between rich and poor back to a more reasonable level. Unfortunately, since any attempt to help the poor is seen as socialism and there's a pervasive feeling in this country that poor people are poor for a reason and don't deserve any help, we debate endlessly over symptoms rather than fighting the root cause.
It's too late for that. The egos in both organizations are entrenched now, merging would be very difficult.
1991
Okay, let's be honest here: The entire Camel project was started specifically so they could call some part of it "Camel Toe", wasn't it?
Not to interrupt the "I was online before you" dick waving that inevitably results from stories like this (and is in abundance in replies to your post), but the article is referring to the first time the general public experienced the social aspects of the Internet. Sure, nerds like us were using IRC and the talk command before that for real-time communication, but that was back in the era when the Internet was either completely unknown to the general public or was seen as something "those computer people" used.
AIM was the first messenger that was used by a significant number of "normal" people. It's like talking about the iPod as revolutionizing MP3 players: It wasn't the first by a long shot, but it was the first to be used by a large enough segment of the population to be relevant to the general public.