Please go reread the chapter on what capitalism is and how it works. If Drug Fair could afford to cut its prices, it would -- the day that CVS beats them by a penny and people start moving their business to CVS.
The reason this doesn't work for taxes is that the government is effectively a monopoly. You *could* move to a different country and change your citizenship, but the psychological cost alone is enormous and most people wouldn't even think of it as a remedy for high taxes.
Well, it gets even more complicated. Because once insurance is on the table, there's an arms race between insureds buying higher and higher coverage to avoid being wiped out, and their injured customers asking higher and higher judgments to overcome the insurance and actually punish the ones who injured them. (It's a lot like criminal sentencing: as parole is perceived to become more and more lenient, and time served shorter and shorter, victims push for laws to prescribe longer and longer sentences and place more and more restrictions on judges in an effort to bring about what they consider appropriate punishment. In both cases I think the deeper problem is the lack of agreement, or even the will to agree, on just what is appropriate.)
MS had so much cash that they had to get rid of some of it by declaring dividends for the first time ever, not so long ago. I don't think they have a cash problem now or in the foreseeable future.
This is the reason I'm just about to roll out Sun JRE 1.4 to several hundred workstations, replacing the old EOLed MS JVM. For a wonder, Sun is one of the few companies to have figured out the advantages of making ADS-driven mass installs somewhat easy, so this should be one of the less painful rollouts I've done in some time.
OTOH, I can't recall a website critically dependent on applets which interests me. (It's *possible* that I've missed all of the sites that really, really *need* active content, as opposed to the ones infested with those irritating jump-out menus and cutesy "effects".) One sensible response to the millions of backlevel Java instances out there is not to use them at all.
Think of all the guys'n'gals slaving away at payroll programs designed for one company. Not exactly a wide audience, but OTOH the one company gets an exact fit to its needs.
Thing is, most payroll programs are pretty much alike, so there's opportunity for some vendor to offer a somewhat poorer fit for much less money than custom-tailored software. Some customers will be happy enough with off-the-rack software, but some will have needs or desires that still prompt them to pay the price for a one-off system.
I believe there'll always be a market for custom-tailored systems, but it will shrink. The off-the-rack software jobs are the ones going overseas, just as was done in the garment industry. It's still hard to do tailoring over the phone, so those who need it will still patronize local talent.
Moral of the story? If you want a long career making good money in software, one way is to seek out the work that has no mass market, and the single-use projects. It's hard work, but that's what makes it worth more.
The bit about not using their own tools is just one more datum pointing to the notion that Microsoft has grown so quickly that, in many respects, nobody is in charge. Like, Microsoft Installer came out in 1999 or so, and five years later look at all the Microsoft products that still don't use it, or which use it in ways which negate its advantages. (Honorable mention: the Office team understands and uses MSI very well.)
For an outfit that's so much into domination and control, you'd think it would be a foregone conclusion that all publications would go through a formal release process that includes cleaning out all the leftovers which are not normally visible. But either no one is in charge of designing such processes, or whoever is really really goofed.
I suppose it could be an extension of the whole reactionary movement that grew up in PC-land: formal processes are the sort of thing IBM would do, so they're obviously wrong -- after all, look at how quickly IBM lost all their money and went out of business. (Oh, waitaminute....)
There are people who are environmentalists because they're sincerely concerned about our descendants having a nice place to live and they see a way to do something about that.
There are people who are environmentalists because they were going to be scared to death about *something* and environmental damage is as good as anything else.
There are people who are environmentalists because they hate big business and this is a way to hurt big businesses.
There are people who are environmentalists because they're confused by technology and want a weapon to keep it away.
There are people who are environmentalists because some other political party is vulnerable to environmental scandals.
There are apparently even people who are environmentalists because they despise their own species and see a good way to make us all suffer.
I have a great deal of respect for the first group. As for the rest, the best I can say is that I find *some* of them pitiable rather than contemptible.
Orbital mechanics is a bit more reliable than crossing our fingers and hoping that the shuttle never hits anything with its wings. Given a few radar fixes after the reactor core's acceleration quit, its fate is predictable to within quite reasonable limits. Or, more succinctly, we have a darned good notion of when this thing will come back to haunt us.
But it probably doesn't matter anyway, because we're going to have to pick up all of our junk sometime in the next hundred years if we want to make significant use of near space -- and there are plenty of people who do and who are arranging the wherewithal to use it. Time wasted on worrying that, "OMG, there's *RADIOACTIVE STUFF* in the universe!" would be better spent starting up the debate at the U.N. *now* over who is going to pay for the cleanup.
Fly? Here in the U.S. Midwest I could *walk* to a medical facility where I have a good chance of finding an Indian or Pakistani physician. Half the pharmacy staff at the local drugstore is from Iran. (Nice, competent people too.)
One word: encryption. I realize this is a somewhat advanced concept for an industry that still thinks SSNs are a reasonable way to identify patient records, but try it.
(Don't feel *too* badly; the financial services industry is apparently unable to read the notice "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" printed on every SS card. More and more I wonder why we trust such people with our money.)
...is an instantaneous measure. 500 trillion Watt-*seconds* would be a whole lotta energy, but the actual pulses are quite a bit shorter than a second. The amount of energy used to ignite the fuel isn't exactly negligible, but stating instantaneous power makes it seem much larger than it is. That 500,000,000,000,000 is just there to wow people who are impressed by moderately large numbers.
What's a popup, again? It's been so long since I saw one that I don't remember what they look like.
Honestly. Wouldn't they get more exposure for their money by printing their ad.s on the inside of automobile tires, or stitching them into pocketing, or some other equally (in)visible medium?
Then again, most political parties could save huge wads of money by not buying any advertising until they have something significant to say.
"...what if a TV manufacturer couldn't sell remotes?"
That would be great. Then they'd have to settle on ONE standard code instead of a thousand mysteries, you wouldn't have to tell your aftermarket remote which particular flavor of Magnavox you want it to talk to, and it's more likely there'd be competition among remote manufacturers for the end of the market which would like access to *all* functions, not just the least common denominator. I could just buy one deluxe remote, it would continue to work as I replace the gear it controls, and I wouldn't have a basket of other remotes each of which doesn't control most of my stuff.
Microsoft is not forced to raise prices to offset this trifling fine. They could cut their dividend by a penny per share. They could delay the next round of raises for the top brass by a couple of weeks.
"I though the DOJ was a bunch of pansies when they backed down on Microsquash's penalties, now I see they must be stockholders."
Hey, I hold some MS stock and I'm not amused either by some of the actions of the people there who work for me. I dislike some of the ways in which they treat my customers, and my voting reflects that.
Slashdot Mirror
Please go reread the chapter on what capitalism is and how it works. If Drug Fair could afford to cut its prices, it would -- the day that CVS beats them by a penny and people start moving their business to CVS.
The reason this doesn't work for taxes is that the government is effectively a monopoly. You *could* move to a different country and change your citizenship, but the psychological cost alone is enormous and most people wouldn't even think of it as a remedy for high taxes.
Showing that the two major U.S. parties are now really the Liberal Party and the Other Liberal Party.
Well, it gets even more complicated. Because once insurance is on the table, there's an arms race between insureds buying higher and higher coverage to avoid being wiped out, and their injured customers asking higher and higher judgments to overcome the insurance and actually punish the ones who injured them. (It's a lot like criminal sentencing: as parole is perceived to become more and more lenient, and time served shorter and shorter, victims push for laws to prescribe longer and longer sentences and place more and more restrictions on judges in an effort to bring about what they consider appropriate punishment. In both cases I think the deeper problem is the lack of agreement, or even the will to agree, on just what is appropriate.)
MS had so much cash that they had to get rid of some of it by declaring dividends for the first time ever, not so long ago. I don't think they have a cash problem now or in the foreseeable future.
An open-source Java -- you mean, like gcj/gij?
Two comments on your first point.
This is the reason I'm just about to roll out Sun JRE 1.4 to several hundred workstations, replacing the old EOLed MS JVM. For a wonder, Sun is one of the few companies to have figured out the advantages of making ADS-driven mass installs somewhat easy, so this should be one of the less painful rollouts I've done in some time.
OTOH, I can't recall a website critically dependent on applets which interests me. (It's *possible* that I've missed all of the sites that really, really *need* active content, as opposed to the ones infested with those irritating jump-out menus and cutesy "effects".) One sensible response to the millions of backlevel Java instances out there is not to use them at all.
I think that "disturbed or damaged" means "dug up or pried open." I don't think the chickens are strong enough to do either one.
Lordy, now you've set me thinking about those soda-can-sized nuclear demolition charges at the end of _Silent Running_.
Funny, it's *never* tomorrow *here*!
Forgot to say that the work is always new, so it's more fun too!
Think of all the guys'n'gals slaving away at payroll programs designed for one company. Not exactly a wide audience, but OTOH the one company gets an exact fit to its needs.
Thing is, most payroll programs are pretty much alike, so there's opportunity for some vendor to offer a somewhat poorer fit for much less money than custom-tailored software. Some customers will be happy enough with off-the-rack software, but some will have needs or desires that still prompt them to pay the price for a one-off system.
I believe there'll always be a market for custom-tailored systems, but it will shrink. The off-the-rack software jobs are the ones going overseas, just as was done in the garment industry. It's still hard to do tailoring over the phone, so those who need it will still patronize local talent.
Moral of the story? If you want a long career making good money in software, one way is to seek out the work that has no mass market, and the single-use projects. It's hard work, but that's what makes it worth more.
The bit about not using their own tools is just one more datum pointing to the notion that Microsoft has grown so quickly that, in many respects, nobody is in charge. Like, Microsoft Installer came out in 1999 or so, and five years later look at all the Microsoft products that still don't use it, or which use it in ways which negate its advantages. (Honorable mention: the Office team understands and uses MSI very well.)
For an outfit that's so much into domination and control, you'd think it would be a foregone conclusion that all publications would go through a formal release process that includes cleaning out all the leftovers which are not normally visible. But either no one is in charge of designing such processes, or whoever is really really goofed.
I suppose it could be an extension of the whole reactionary movement that grew up in PC-land: formal processes are the sort of thing IBM would do, so they're obviously wrong -- after all, look at how quickly IBM lost all their money and went out of business. (Oh, waitaminute....)
So, am I the only one here old enough to remember _Salvage One_?
Indeed.
There are people who are environmentalists because they're sincerely concerned about our descendants having a nice place to live and they see a way to do something about that.
There are people who are environmentalists because they were going to be scared to death about *something* and environmental damage is as good as anything else.
There are people who are environmentalists because they hate big business and this is a way to hurt big businesses.
There are people who are environmentalists because they're confused by technology and want a weapon to keep it away.
There are people who are environmentalists because some other political party is vulnerable to environmental scandals.
There are apparently even people who are environmentalists because they despise their own species and see a good way to make us all suffer.
I have a great deal of respect for the first group. As for the rest, the best I can say is that I find *some* of them pitiable rather than contemptible.
Reuse? Recycle?
I keep telling my kids to remember where the landfills and waste dumps are, because *their* kids will want to mine them.
Orbital mechanics is a bit more reliable than crossing our fingers and hoping that the shuttle never hits anything with its wings. Given a few radar fixes after the reactor core's acceleration quit, its fate is predictable to within quite reasonable limits. Or, more succinctly, we have a darned good notion of when this thing will come back to haunt us.
But it probably doesn't matter anyway, because we're going to have to pick up all of our junk sometime in the next hundred years if we want to make significant use of near space -- and there are plenty of people who do and who are arranging the wherewithal to use it. Time wasted on worrying that, "OMG, there's *RADIOACTIVE STUFF* in the universe!" would be better spent starting up the debate at the U.N. *now* over who is going to pay for the cleanup.
Fly? Here in the U.S. Midwest I could *walk* to a medical facility where I have a good chance of finding an Indian or Pakistani physician. Half the pharmacy staff at the local drugstore is from Iran. (Nice, competent people too.)
One word: encryption. I realize this is a somewhat advanced concept for an industry that still thinks SSNs are a reasonable way to identify patient records, but try it.
(Don't feel *too* badly; the financial services industry is apparently unable to read the notice "NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION" printed on every SS card. More and more I wonder why we trust such people with our money.)
...is an instantaneous measure. 500 trillion Watt-*seconds* would be a whole lotta energy, but the actual pulses are quite a bit shorter than a second. The amount of energy used to ignite the fuel isn't exactly negligible, but stating instantaneous power makes it seem much larger than it is. That 500,000,000,000,000 is just there to wow people who are impressed by moderately large numbers.
They can call copyright violation "piracy" when they can show me the murdered crews and the scuttled ships.
What's a popup, again? It's been so long since I saw one that I don't remember what they look like.
Honestly. Wouldn't they get more exposure for their money by printing their ad.s on the inside of automobile tires, or stitching them into pocketing, or some other equally (in)visible medium?
Then again, most political parties could save huge wads of money by not buying any advertising until they have something significant to say.
Did I sleep through this one? I haven't seen it, nor received any breathless warnings of it from our anti-malware specialists. What happened?
"...what if a TV manufacturer couldn't sell remotes?"
That would be great. Then they'd have to settle on ONE standard code instead of a thousand mysteries, you wouldn't have to tell your aftermarket remote which particular flavor of Magnavox you want it to talk to, and it's more likely there'd be competition among remote manufacturers for the end of the market which would like access to *all* functions, not just the least common denominator. I could just buy one deluxe remote, it would continue to work as I replace the gear it controls, and I wouldn't have a basket of other remotes each of which doesn't control most of my stuff.
Microsoft is not forced to raise prices to offset this trifling fine. They could cut their dividend by a penny per share. They could delay the next round of raises for the top brass by a couple of weeks.
"I though the DOJ was a bunch of pansies when they backed down on Microsquash's penalties, now I see they must be stockholders."
Hey, I hold some MS stock and I'm not amused either by some of the actions of the people there who work for me. I dislike some of the ways in which they treat my customers, and my voting reflects that.