An automated system that gathers "Report Spam" reports for a certain message and uses that information to mark that message as spam in other accounts is quick for users, requires minimal ongoing effort from Google, and would work fairly well.
Your idea is expensive for both users(time) and Google(time) and is still playing spammer wack-a-mole, so it won't work a whole lot better than simple filtering.
I don't have an MBA and I can see where getting rid of people that slack off all the time or bring a corrosive attitude to work with them would make others more productive, as they would no longer be pissed off that Phil was getting paid more than they were or about whatever it was that Phil said or did last week.
That doesn't mean that cuts are always a good thing, but sometimes people just gotta go.
Sure. I'm not trying to make a value judgment about whether it was good for the company, I'm just pointing out that cutting executive salaries would not have come close to matching the layoffs. I can't find a source for it, but I remember hearing an estimate of $250 million in annual savings on CNBC this morning. If that is correct, the executives could go entirely without pay and still not come close to the same cost savings.
None of that addresses your point about destroying their ability to do business, but since I have no idea how they are going about the cuts or the state of their workforce, I can't really address your point. If they have a lot of fat, they could be doing exactly the right thing; if not, you are probably correct.
I am not a fan of the emphasis that the stock market ends up placing on short term performance, it enables executives to profit from shenanigans, but I don't really have any ideas about how to fix it. Figuring out a better way to evaluate potential executives might help, if it ended up increasing the candidate pool(who knows, maybe the good ones really are so spectacular that they deserve $100 million a year; I doubt it, but who knows) beyond the current pool of people who have managed not to screw up hugely(or have done a good job of blaming their mistakes on others) while being in the right places.
It absolutely is a trade off in the metabolic sense, given enough time, traits that are energy expensive and do not confer some advantage will at least become a minority in a population.
I would imagine that someone will also write some code to sit between your app and database, pretending to be the data backend that Google is providing, simplifying migration away from teh Goog.
So it would take them approximately 18-20 months to completely write down the $45 billion that they offered Yahoo. That would be a disaster, but it would be a disaster they could survive, and they aren't going to have to write down the whole thing.
2007 earnings per share were up 27% since 2005, which is about 12% a year. That's pretty good, but it isn't really growth stock territory(Google eps went up ~70% a year over the same period).
Google added about $2.5 billion in income, and about $10 billion in revenue. Microsoft added about $1.8 billion in income and about $12 billion in revenue.
What it amounts to is that Microsoft is doing a reasonable job of finding new revenue, but they have so much revenue to begin with that it doesn't grow the company all that much, so investors are less and less willing to pay a premium for the stock, and the price per share ends up staying the same, even as earnings grow. I would guess that Microsoft will hit $50 per share by 2012, unless they royally screw up several more times.
Of course, somewhere more than half of Americans don't have any unsecured debt, and something like 80% of mortgage holders are doing just fine.
The current financial crisis in the United States is not an epidemic, it is happening at the margins. Since the margin is where most financial profits get made, it is having a big effect on Wall St., and the news is braying about it constantly, but the proper description of the US economy is that it is really good, just not as really good as it was 4 years ago. That means things are sucking for a lot of people, but even for those people, things aren't terrible(I certainly wouldn't want to walk away from a mortgage, but it is entirely survivable).
And if you are really pissed about the dollar, go back to 1995 and make the Chinese float the yuan.
I mean, you(probably) wouldn't simply ignore someone that you didn't want to talk to if you were sitting in a bar drinking a beer and they walked up to you jabbering about something unimportant.
A gun probably isn't enough to defend against the US military, but it at least makes person a more credible threat. As an American, I'm not real sure we have a gun problem. There is certainly an unfortunate level of violence involving guns, so it is a good discussion to be having, but a lot of that violence is simply exacerbated by the presence of the gun, not caused by it, which suggests that a lot of that violence can be dealt with by doing things other than taking away everybody's guns. Things like liberalizing drug laws to make it much less profitable to deal them, and trying to address the economic roots of a lot of violent crime.
And the Constitution would need to modified to enact a gun ban at the federal level, not in the 'justification' sense you are talking about, but in the sense that a government that inconsistently interprets laws isn't really a government. So even if the second amendment didn't make sense to a majority of Americans, the first step would be to remove it from force, not rounding up the guns. And that would be quite a task, there are tens of millions of guns in private possession in the US, many of them are collectible or of other sentimental value.
That's not correct. Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sucrose/glucose/etc, so a smaller amount tastes similarly sweet, even though equal masses of sugar and aspartame contain the same amount of energy:
So while there is ~40 grams of sweetener in a can of regular Coke, there is much less than 1 gram of aspartame in a can of Diet Coke, and they are allowed to pretend that it doesn't carry any Calories, even though it has 1 or 2.
Sorry, I should have qualified it, I meant manufacturing jobs.
Also, popular usage would suggest that you aren't a citizen of the state of Texas, you are a resident of Texas and (probably) a citizen of the United States.
The point of linking the Wikipedia article was that you probably shouldn't expect people to understand exactly what you mean when you say "restrictive DRM", because it isn't a common usage(A quick reading doesn't even hint at that usage/distinction in the article). Another half example; I get 28 million results from Google for drm:
See, I think it is at least possible to cast the DRM you are talking about as something that entices a distributor to offer their content at a lower price(for example, a movie rental that expires after a certain time period or certain number of viewings). No one is doing that right now, but that doesn't mean that it is a poor use of the technology, or that the DRM can only be used to restrict the capabilities of a purchaser(because there is a scenario where the technology brings the asking price of the content within reach of the purchaser, thereby increasing their options).
I would love $0.50 downloadable movie rentals that are tied to a specific screen and available for a relatively short period of time. The idea of purchasing something like a CD with restrictions on what I can do with it is not one I like. So I'm not really advocating DRM, but I can see where it might make some content more available to me, or at least make me more willing to pay to view it; I don't have terribly high hopes for cheap, highly restricted movie downloads, but I have even lower expectations for cheap unrestricted movie downloads.
My point is that in that framework, the presence of the technology in the kernel doesn't restrict anything, it just respects the terms of distribution, the distributor is the one doing the restriction, so calling the stuff in the kernel "restrictive DRM" is going to cause confusion. Anyway, it appears that you are the one veering off from the vernacular:
Not really. I'm arguing that it isn't particularly restrictive. We more or less agree on the definition.
The reauthorization stuff is certainly restrictive compared to it not being there, and it is certainly DRM in its essence, so I am fine with setting that aside(because it boils down to opinion about where restrictive begins).
The support in the kernel for DRM media doesn't stop playback of files without DRM, and in that sense, it simply isn't restrictive. It enables the use of managed files within the framework intended by the distributor without impacting the use of unmanaged files. That isn't restriction.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a $40 coupon. The probably spent less than $1 printing it. What's the problem?
(If $1 is correct, all the coupon has to do is prevent fraud 3% of the time and it is a net win).
An automated system that gathers "Report Spam" reports for a certain message and uses that information to mark that message as spam in other accounts is quick for users, requires minimal ongoing effort from Google, and would work fairly well.
Your idea is expensive for both users(time) and Google(time) and is still playing spammer wack-a-mole, so it won't work a whole lot better than simple filtering.
Damn it, I wanted to crack wise about digital cables.
I was going to go for something like "If a good cable costs $300, how much does a good DIGITAL cable cost?".
I don't have an MBA and I can see where getting rid of people that slack off all the time or bring a corrosive attitude to work with them would make others more productive, as they would no longer be pissed off that Phil was getting paid more than they were or about whatever it was that Phil said or did last week.
That doesn't mean that cuts are always a good thing, but sometimes people just gotta go.
Sure. I'm not trying to make a value judgment about whether it was good for the company, I'm just pointing out that cutting executive salaries would not have come close to matching the layoffs. I can't find a source for it, but I remember hearing an estimate of $250 million in annual savings on CNBC this morning. If that is correct, the executives could go entirely without pay and still not come close to the same cost savings.
None of that addresses your point about destroying their ability to do business, but since I have no idea how they are going about the cuts or the state of their workforce, I can't really address your point. If they have a lot of fat, they could be doing exactly the right thing; if not, you are probably correct.
I am not a fan of the emphasis that the stock market ends up placing on short term performance, it enables executives to profit from shenanigans, but I don't really have any ideas about how to fix it. Figuring out a better way to evaluate potential executives might help, if it ended up increasing the candidate pool(who knows, maybe the good ones really are so spectacular that they deserve $100 million a year; I doubt it, but who knows) beyond the current pool of people who have managed not to screw up hugely(or have done a good job of blaming their mistakes on others) while being in the right places.
Working link.
No need to speculate, as a public company, executive compensation is public information:
http://amd.edgarpro.com/redirect_frames.asp?filename=0001193125-08-057479.txt&filepath=\2008\03\14\&cols=7%2C0%2C4&SortBy=receivedate&AD=D&startrec=1&res=25&pdf=0
It looks like the executives made ~ $20 million in 2007(including option and stock grants, not just salary, also, the totals are lower than 2006).
I think cutting 1,600 jobs is going to save a bit more than $20 million, probably more than $100 million.
Forever?
If you doubt me, I would start by pointing to those other highly successful friends of man, cows and dogs.
It absolutely is a trade off in the metabolic sense, given enough time, traits that are energy expensive and do not confer some advantage will at least become a minority in a population.
Sort of. Apparently, you can stay pretty close to Django:
http://simonwillison.net/2008/Apr/8/forms/
I would imagine that someone will also write some code to sit between your app and database, pretending to be the data backend that Google is providing, simplifying migration away from teh Goog.
They have $19 billion in cash and are making $16 billion a year:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=MSFT
So it would take them approximately 18-20 months to completely write down the $45 billion that they offered Yahoo. That would be a disaster, but it would be a disaster they could survive, and they aren't going to have to write down the whole thing.
2007 earnings per share were up 27% since 2005, which is about 12% a year. That's pretty good, but it isn't really growth stock territory(Google eps went up ~70% a year over the same period).
Google added about $2.5 billion in income, and about $10 billion in revenue. Microsoft added about $1.8 billion in income and about $12 billion in revenue.
What it amounts to is that Microsoft is doing a reasonable job of finding new revenue, but they have so much revenue to begin with that it doesn't grow the company all that much, so investors are less and less willing to pay a premium for the stock, and the price per share ends up staying the same, even as earnings grow. I would guess that Microsoft will hit $50 per share by 2012, unless they royally screw up several more times.
My lawnmower challenges you to a duel.
Of course, somewhere more than half of Americans don't have any unsecured debt, and something like 80% of mortgage holders are doing just fine.
The current financial crisis in the United States is not an epidemic, it is happening at the margins. Since the margin is where most financial profits get made, it is having a big effect on Wall St., and the news is braying about it constantly, but the proper description of the US economy is that it is really good, just not as really good as it was 4 years ago. That means things are sucking for a lot of people, but even for those people, things aren't terrible(I certainly wouldn't want to walk away from a mortgage, but it is entirely survivable).
And if you are really pissed about the dollar, go back to 1995 and make the Chinese float the yuan.
You mean avoided without confrontation.
I mean, you(probably) wouldn't simply ignore someone that you didn't want to talk to if you were sitting in a bar drinking a beer and they walked up to you jabbering about something unimportant.
A gun probably isn't enough to defend against the US military, but it at least makes person a more credible threat. As an American, I'm not real sure we have a gun problem. There is certainly an unfortunate level of violence involving guns, so it is a good discussion to be having, but a lot of that violence is simply exacerbated by the presence of the gun, not caused by it, which suggests that a lot of that violence can be dealt with by doing things other than taking away everybody's guns. Things like liberalizing drug laws to make it much less profitable to deal them, and trying to address the economic roots of a lot of violent crime.
And the Constitution would need to modified to enact a gun ban at the federal level, not in the 'justification' sense you are talking about, but in the sense that a government that inconsistently interprets laws isn't really a government. So even if the second amendment didn't make sense to a majority of Americans, the first step would be to remove it from force, not rounding up the guns. And that would be quite a task, there are tens of millions of guns in private possession in the US, many of them are collectible or of other sentimental value.
40% sounds low to me. I wonder why they are understating the results?
That's not correct. Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sucrose/glucose/etc, so a smaller amount tastes similarly sweet, even though equal masses of sugar and aspartame contain the same amount of energy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Properties_and_use
So while there is ~40 grams of sweetener in a can of regular Coke, there is much less than 1 gram of aspartame in a can of Diet Coke, and they are allowed to pretend that it doesn't carry any Calories, even though it has 1 or 2.
I love to hear your reasoning(you're right, but I don't really understand why you are making what seems like a snide remark).
Sorry, I should have qualified it, I meant manufacturing jobs.
Also, popular usage would suggest that you aren't a citizen of the state of Texas, you are a resident of Texas and (probably) a citizen of the United States.
I'm attempting to convince you that changing your usage might be easier than putting up a page and pointing people at it.
Jobs are disappearing due to automation, not outsourcing:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/02/AR2007090201189.html?hpid=topnews
The point of linking the Wikipedia article was that you probably shouldn't expect people to understand exactly what you mean when you say "restrictive DRM", because it isn't a common usage(A quick reading doesn't even hint at that usage/distinction in the article). Another half example; I get 28 million results from Google for drm:
http://www.google.com/search?q=drm
95 thousand results for restrictive drm:
http://www.google.com/search?q=restrictive+drm
and 12 thousand results for "restrictive drm":
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22restrictive%20drm%22
See, I think it is at least possible to cast the DRM you are talking about as something that entices a distributor to offer their content at a lower price(for example, a movie rental that expires after a certain time period or certain number of viewings). No one is doing that right now, but that doesn't mean that it is a poor use of the technology, or that the DRM can only be used to restrict the capabilities of a purchaser(because there is a scenario where the technology brings the asking price of the content within reach of the purchaser, thereby increasing their options).
I would love $0.50 downloadable movie rentals that are tied to a specific screen and available for a relatively short period of time. The idea of purchasing something like a CD with restrictions on what I can do with it is not one I like. So I'm not really advocating DRM, but I can see where it might make some content more available to me, or at least make me more willing to pay to view it; I don't have terribly high hopes for cheap, highly restricted movie downloads, but I have even lower expectations for cheap unrestricted movie downloads.
And yes, I gave up on the activation side:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=512206&cid=22974644
but do note how this article begins:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copy_protection
So even though it is broadly similar, there are apparently people who believe there is a distinction.
My point is that in that framework, the presence of the technology in the kernel doesn't restrict anything, it just respects the terms of distribution, the distributor is the one doing the restriction, so calling the stuff in the kernel "restrictive DRM" is going to cause confusion. Anyway, it appears that you are the one veering off from the vernacular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management
(I'm not claiming that article is correct or authoritative, just that it likely reflects popular usage)
Not really. I'm arguing that it isn't particularly restrictive. We more or less agree on the definition.
The reauthorization stuff is certainly restrictive compared to it not being there, and it is certainly DRM in its essence, so I am fine with setting that aside(because it boils down to opinion about where restrictive begins).
The support in the kernel for DRM media doesn't stop playback of files without DRM, and in that sense, it simply isn't restrictive. It enables the use of managed files within the framework intended by the distributor without impacting the use of unmanaged files. That isn't restriction.