It seems obscene, I know. But if you ever try to pick a drug company stock to invest in you find your head spinning trying to figure out who to buy because none of them have any earnings visibility beyond the next couple of years. Just throwing money at R&D is no guarantee you'll still be profitable--or even in business--in fifteen years because luck is a factor.
Excuse the hyperbole, but complaining about the money the big pharmaceutical manufacturers make is a little bit like going to a casino and crying foul because the winners are making thousands of dollars when they only risked a few bucks. It ignores all the losers walking around talking to themselves, trying to figure out what they're going to tell their wives.
There's a significant survivor bias when you look at drug company profits. If you can find a Value Line from 20 years ago, look at the Pharmaceutical and Medical Equipment sections and notice how many of those names are no longer around. Even if they got bought out instead of going under, it's not because business was great that they accepted the buyout offer.
Ah, but you did get stuck reading and commenting on his complaint. And now, you might waste more time reading this reply (sorry about that). So there's still a good chance that Slashdot qualifies as a waste of time.
Yours seems like an honest comment, so I'll point out an honest error in your evaluation. You strip out the most profitable part of the PC when you look only at the hardware makers.
Apple Computer had net income of just under $2000 million last year. I haven't even bothered to subtract out their iPod business from that number. Microsoft, on the other hand, netted just under $12000 million, including all the money-losing operations they subsidize with Windows and Office. Six times as much, just for the software.
Don't get me wrong, Apple is hitting the ball very hard. But don't underestimate the profitability of the PC business just because MS manages to take their share off the top and leaves little for Dell, et al.
I wasn't really going back to 1963. It was another 16 years and four U.S. presidents before Saddam consilidated his power, so it would have been beyond the ability of the CIA or anyone else to have foreseen what would eventually come of Qassim's murder. Perhaps that's what the OP was referring to--if so, I was misleading in my response. Still, from what I understand, the Baathists were going to have their coup with or without help. The British journalist Robert Fisk says that Saddam was
"...among the first Baathists to try to kill Qassim; his subsequent flight across Iraq...was to become an official Saddam legend." (The Great War for Civilization, p. 149) I don't think you can say that U.S. intelligence played a pivotal role in Iraq as, eg. when they foisted the Shah on Iran.
No one with any knowledge of history alleges that the U.S. installed Saddam or facilitated his rise to power. That's not to say that Reagan didn't support Saddam after the invasion of Iran, or that we did anything to help the people the Baath Party so brutally oppressed within Iraq, but there's no need to make things up. There are plenty of things the U.S. can be criticized for, but it's not the sole source of banality, stupidity or malfeasance in the world.
Well, it's a bit late to stop the smarmy comments, especially since TFA indicates that past periods of low sun spot activity have coincided with lower terrestrial temperatures. I don't pretend to know anything about this, but you do, and you seem to be out of step with more than just the Slashdot trolls.
Excellent story, but a sad ending. Fixing the dates was the way to go, as demonstrated by the fact that January -6 can't be December 24. It could be construed as December 25 or December 26, depending on whether or not there's a zero day, but not the 24th. It's too error prone a "system" to keep.
The best part of my argument is that if I turn out have miscalculated, it just reinforces my point.
Yes, it's all perfectly reasonable if spelled out in advance, but I don't think they should be able to call the thing "Linux ready" and then force you to reinstall Windows to get your warranty honored.
Sir or Madam, I commend you. Apparently you are able to use and enjoy your Macintosh without feeling the need to become a shill for this for-profit, publicly-held, multi-billion dollar corporation. Their product is not you; you are not identified or completed by your use of their product. This is a radical new concept which should receive wide dissemination.
I think this "doubly-linked list" thing is a great idea. Perhaps since their invention depends on yours, you could negotiate some sort of cross-license agreement with them. If you think so, please get back to me soonest so we can work out a license for you to use my patented business process, "A Method to Avoid Getting Reamed in Court by Agreeing to Refrain from Counter-Reaming."
This is an interesting case. Naturally, your first response to OP's allegation that some people in the government would intentionally risk causing the end of humanity is: Nobody is crazy enough to do that. But then it hits you: Obviously this bozo is.
I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, since the public schools can't/won't help kids, it all comes down (again) to picking your parents carefully. Many people grow up to be at least moderately successful despite wasting their school years, because they simply grew up with the assumption that they would do alright in the working world. Self-image and expectations drive (belated) hard work and they almost catch up to where they might have been. On the other hand, without the example of successful parents, and with crappy, unchallenging schools, disadvantaged children grow into disadvantaged adults.
You raise an excellent question. The reviewer probably made the "wade through" comment unconsciously, but it's a very important point for a lot of us. The content issue relates directly to the reason I (and a lot of other people) no longer get involved in the big online games. The games are too competitive--in the sense that there always seem to be a thousand people on the server with more time and skills than you have, so that your character is always a small fry--and I am too competitive--in the sense that I can't stand to be a second class citizen forever. When you're trying to catch up to the leaders, the content you're supposed to be enjoying can indeed become something you have to wade through to achieve your goal.
I still miss WOW over a year after I stopped playing. I can still see hundreds of in-game locations in my mind's eye and remember the people I met and played with. But I'll never play again because I don't want to make it my whole life, and it's not worth playing (to me) part time.
My WAG (Wild Ass Guess) response to your WAG hypothesis is that in most cases incandescent bulbs heat so inefficiently and so locally that you're better off losing this side effect and letting the purpose-built heating system work a bit harder. Sadly, the experiments to check all this are probably too involved and too boring for a Myth Busters episode, so we should probably learn to live with our uncertainty.
You've never had either service, have you? I don't know a single person who has tried satellite radio who has stopped subscribing. If it ever goes away, I will miss it forever.
I don't usually say this any more unless I'm tired of carrying around so much karma, but you got me started, so here I go.
It's not popular to point out that Steve Jobs is quite possibly a bigger asshole than Bill Gates, and that the company he runs is quite possibly even more arrogant than Microsoft. Jobs has admitted in videotaped interviews that he went to PARC in the '70s and was shown more things than he could even absorb at the time. He understood (and copied for his own benefit) the GUI and the mouse. He didn't quite get the networking and the object-oriented programming techniques. Fine. Everybody "borrows" ideas--to admit it out loud is just a more cynical way of mouthing the old "standing on the shoulders of giants" cliche. But why now the endless smug self-congratulations? Why all the putting down of a company that has crushed you in market share and profitability for two decades? Because they used marketing and bullying to overcome the shortcomings of their products? Please. This is pretty rich coming from an outfit that used another company's ideas for their breakthrough product, then failed to advance that product for almost 20 years before they hit on the idea of building their next generation of software on a somebody else's freely-available OS.
I don't defend Microsoft's business practices (or their business acumen for that matter; they've had a lot of good luck along the way). I do on occassion defend their software, because most Slashdotters have no idea how useful and stable it is these days. I laugh like everybody else when they start talking about innovation. But none of that makes me like Apple any better, any more than hating the Republicans makes me want to shill for the Dems.
Slashdot Mirror
Excuse the hyperbole, but complaining about the money the big pharmaceutical manufacturers make is a little bit like going to a casino and crying foul because the winners are making thousands of dollars when they only risked a few bucks. It ignores all the losers walking around talking to themselves, trying to figure out what they're going to tell their wives.
There's a significant survivor bias when you look at drug company profits. If you can find a Value Line from 20 years ago, look at the Pharmaceutical and Medical Equipment sections and notice how many of those names are no longer around. Even if they got bought out instead of going under, it's not because business was great that they accepted the buyout offer.
My wife and I might be in the market in about a year and a half. How's the weather there? And is English the native tongue?
Ah, but you did get stuck reading and commenting on his complaint. And now, you might waste more time reading this reply (sorry about that). So there's still a good chance that Slashdot qualifies as a waste of time.
True, for some definitions of "we" and "won." Somehow I don't feel like celebrating just now.
Citation, please.
Individuals have to take responsibility for what they do
Again, citation?
Bad things happen sometimes in life. Sometimes we can't control all of them.
Jesus, what planet are you from? I'm getting sick and tired of people using Slashdot as their personal soapbox for spreading their crackpot delusions.
Apple Computer had net income of just under $2000 million last year. I haven't even bothered to subtract out their iPod business from that number. Microsoft, on the other hand, netted just under $12000 million, including all the money-losing operations they subsidize with Windows and Office. Six times as much, just for the software.
Don't get me wrong, Apple is hitting the ball very hard. But don't underestimate the profitability of the PC business just because MS manages to take their share off the top and leaves little for Dell, et al.
No one with any knowledge of history alleges that the U.S. installed Saddam or facilitated his rise to power. That's not to say that Reagan didn't support Saddam after the invasion of Iran, or that we did anything to help the people the Baath Party so brutally oppressed within Iraq, but there's no need to make things up. There are plenty of things the U.S. can be criticized for, but it's not the sole source of banality, stupidity or malfeasance in the world.
Well, it's a bit late to stop the smarmy comments, especially since TFA indicates that past periods of low sun spot activity have coincided with lower terrestrial temperatures. I don't pretend to know anything about this, but you do, and you seem to be out of step with more than just the Slashdot trolls.
The best part of my argument is that if I turn out have miscalculated, it just reinforces my point.
Yes, it's all perfectly reasonable if spelled out in advance, but I don't think they should be able to call the thing "Linux ready" and then force you to reinstall Windows to get your warranty honored.
The ass first, though, definitely.
Huh? What do you mean, that's not what this is about? She said "NFL."
I heard her.
Sir or Madam, I commend you. Apparently you are able to use and enjoy your Macintosh without feeling the need to become a shill for this for-profit, publicly-held, multi-billion dollar corporation. Their product is not you; you are not identified or completed by your use of their product. This is a radical new concept which should receive wide dissemination.
I think this "doubly-linked list" thing is a great idea. Perhaps since their invention depends on yours, you could negotiate some sort of cross-license agreement with them. If you think so, please get back to me soonest so we can work out a license for you to use my patented business process, "A Method to Avoid Getting Reamed in Court by Agreeing to Refrain from Counter-Reaming."
So now I don't know exactly what to think.
I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, since the public schools can't/won't help kids, it all comes down (again) to picking your parents carefully. Many people grow up to be at least moderately successful despite wasting their school years, because they simply grew up with the assumption that they would do alright in the working world. Self-image and expectations drive (belated) hard work and they almost catch up to where they might have been. On the other hand, without the example of successful parents, and with crappy, unchallenging schools, disadvantaged children grow into disadvantaged adults.
It appears the lack of periods is intentional. We only thought US meant United States and Corp meant Corporation. So stealthy.
Is a meme still a meme if it evolves camouflage?
I still miss WOW over a year after I stopped playing. I can still see hundreds of in-game locations in my mind's eye and remember the people I met and played with. But I'll never play again because I don't want to make it my whole life, and it's not worth playing (to me) part time.
To think I let 5 mod points expire this morning...
My WAG (Wild Ass Guess) response to your WAG hypothesis is that in most cases incandescent bulbs heat so inefficiently and so locally that you're better off losing this side effect and letting the purpose-built heating system work a bit harder. Sadly, the experiments to check all this are probably too involved and too boring for a Myth Busters episode, so we should probably learn to live with our uncertainty.
You've never had either service, have you? I don't know a single person who has tried satellite radio who has stopped subscribing. If it ever goes away, I will miss it forever.
It's not popular to point out that Steve Jobs is quite possibly a bigger asshole than Bill Gates, and that the company he runs is quite possibly even more arrogant than Microsoft. Jobs has admitted in videotaped interviews that he went to PARC in the '70s and was shown more things than he could even absorb at the time. He understood (and copied for his own benefit) the GUI and the mouse. He didn't quite get the networking and the object-oriented programming techniques. Fine. Everybody "borrows" ideas--to admit it out loud is just a more cynical way of mouthing the old "standing on the shoulders of giants" cliche. But why now the endless smug self-congratulations? Why all the putting down of a company that has crushed you in market share and profitability for two decades? Because they used marketing and bullying to overcome the shortcomings of their products? Please. This is pretty rich coming from an outfit that used another company's ideas for their breakthrough product, then failed to advance that product for almost 20 years before they hit on the idea of building their next generation of software on a somebody else's freely-available OS.
I don't defend Microsoft's business practices (or their business acumen for that matter; they've had a lot of good luck along the way). I do on occassion defend their software, because most Slashdotters have no idea how useful and stable it is these days. I laugh like everybody else when they start talking about innovation. But none of that makes me like Apple any better, any more than hating the Republicans makes me want to shill for the Dems.
Perhaps in the near future I'll decide that I've had enough of Slashdot.