So do many of my colleagues in cubes and offices. So does the janitor who comes in and cleans the bathrooms. Yet, none of us get billion-dollar compensation packages.
"He worked hard, he deserved it," is a BS argument, unless you think that everyone else who works hard deserves to be paid equally.
Note that I'm not arguing for equal pay (though I often think that might be better than the current situation). Some people do deserve to be paid more than others, but not thousands of times more.
Ah, but was the success due to Gerstner's talent, or just luck? Could someone else have done it? I don't know --- we'd have to look in detail at Gerstner's track record at other companies to see --- but it is possible for companies (especially big companies) to be successful despite the CEO, not because of him.
And even if you don't drive a car, you're still much more likely to be killed by one than by a terrorist. Or by a murderer (other than the driver of the car, of course).
Like many tech companies, Microsoft is about maximizing its own short-term stock price. To a manager with millions in stock optons, this is more important than anything, even profit.
A lot of people will stay with AOL, either because of inertia or because, once you turn off the popups and spam, it's actually an okay ISP. (Not the best, but not terrible.)
The company is still ****ed, because it's trying to grow at the same rate it was early in its life. It probably won't go bankrupt, but it's bascially the leader in a low-margin business without much room for growth.
Interestingly, AOL realized this three years ago, and cashed in its own inflated stock for TW. For some insane reason, TW stock-holders took the deal.
One of the nice things about a computer is that you can install apps on its massive hard drive, and carry around a whole library's worth of books/music/software on your laptop.
Imagine if Microsoft made people insert an original Office CD every time they wanted to open a Word document.
It depends a lot on your long-term plans. Buying a house usually only makes sense if you want to stay in the same place for many years. A lot of people who currently live in in big cities (myself included) don't want to stay there forever, especially given the extremely high house (or more likely, apartment) prices compared to more rural areas.
Blame foreign governments for the high prices here. They don't allow drug companies to charge for R&D costs.
R&D accounts for very little of a drug's cost. Most drug companies spend more on TV commercials than on R&D. And coincidentally, the only country that allows TV commercials for prescription drugs iis also the one with the highest drug prices.
But if airline companies started charging less for first class and distributing the cost to coach, then fewer people are inclined to pay for coach. There are much fewer people on the plane. The plane never leaves the ground.
That's odd. I could have sworn I just took a flight on Southwest. Funny how the airlines pursuing this "never leave the ground" strategy are the only ones that make a profit.
The slack server timed out. Here's a Google cache of the original Guide, which does appear to contain some obvious trademarks of the "for Dummies" dummies, but would probably fall under fair use (parody).
Google doesn't seem to have cached the actual thread, unfortunately.
Dual-mode cards are already available, and soon they'll come down to the same cost as current Wi-Fi cards. Eventually, almost everyone will have both, and they'll use a (faster, clearner) most of the time, but they'll keep b for compatability. (Just like 720K floppies gave way to 1.4M, and CD-ROM is giving way to DVD-ROM).
One word: Macrovision. I know it's possible to circumvent, but it'll still stop most recording. All that Hollywood has to do is buy a law that says all manufacturers must add macrovision (or a similar scheme) to their external tuners. Then people decide to "upgrade" their existing TV get the worst of all worlds: the same low-quality analog TV as now, but with added "protection".
The corporate officer also has a duty to obey the law.
In additon, certain legal but unethical behaviour does not maximize profits in the long term, because they give the company a bad reputation. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer kinds of behaviour have been having this effect over the last few years, because people have started to believe that all kinds of amoral acts have been deemed acceptable if they make a short-term profit.
Corporatons do sometimes act in an ethical way, if only for publicity/PR purposes --- donations to charity are one, yielding to protesters over animal rights or sweatshops is another.
Others will avoid certain ways to make profit, increase shareholder value, etc. because it's simply not part of their "mission". For example, Pets.com's mission was to sell cat-litter, etc. over the Web. Even though this wasn't the most profitable business, the company didn't turn round and start selling cigarettes to kids or napalm to the Taliban. Stock holders who wanted this could sell their stock and buy into other companies instead.
Pet portals may not be a particularly ethical mission, but other companies' (most of the Linux industry) are. In the long term, really evil behaviour is likely to decrease stock price, because it will lead to law-suits and fall foul of regulatons. Bill might have bribed some of the politicians currently in power, but politicians don't stay in power forever. MS might be under more pressure in a couple of years.
And don't forget the Klez virus, which picks a random address from Outlook's address book to forge the "from" as well as the "to" field. So even if you don't use Outlook or have the virus, people can still think that you're infected and spamming them.
Though I did laugh when I heard about this attack, it's probably a bad idea. Yes, educated computer-literate citizens can argue that a short, focused DoS attack is a kind of protest, the digital equivalent of a picket line or a sit in. That's an interesting debate, but it's not one that most people will understand.
To most of the population, this kind of thing will simply confirm the view that hackers are criminals or terrorists. Non-violent direct action is one of the best way to get things done in a democracy. (Just behind, say, voting.) But confine this to simple things that ordinary people can understand.
Call your congressman. (Forget about writing: anthrax has doen to snail mail what spam did to email.) Hold a protest. (The "Free Sklyrarov" demos got covered favorably in the media, and most importantly, they worked.) Or propose a ballot-measure in your district that guarantees fair use.
Yep. The company that produced it, Sunbow, was actually owned by an advertising agency.
But to be fair to the Transformers, it did at least have another rationale for basing the TV show around the toys rather than the other way round. (They wanted the on-screen transformations to reflect something physically possible in a small toy.) The first major toy/TV series in the US was He-Man, which didn't.
Or green, independent, etc. They'll dismiss you as a nutball, and assume that your vote won't count anyway. Say "I have not decided whether to vote Democrat or Republican."
Not law yet. The new bill (CSEA) still has to pass the Senate and the White House. But given that only three congressdroids in the House opposed it and hundreds on both sides voted in favor, I don't hold much hope that it will be defeated.
There's an irony here: Most of the scams advertised in spam prey on the gullible, but spammers are themselves being tricked into thinking that spam is an effective advertising tool.
They'll use a sandbox, kind of like Java. This means people who want (and who are willing to pay for the development tools --- notice how Basic is no longer included with Windows) will be able to experiment with simple programs, but not do anything too useful (or "dangerous").
I agree with most of what you say, but I'd still have voted for a large settlement. Why? To punish McDonald's. Regardless of what temperature they serve coffee at, they're still an evil corporation, and in this case they probably were a bit negligent. A few thousand means nothing to a big corporation, so the damages have to be in the millions, even if that's way beyond what any reasonable person would consider fair compensation.
I suppose some people might suggest using this patent against a certain other big, Borg-like corporation that ships millions of JPG-enabled browsers and photo editors, but the patent is so silly that MS's lawyers would (rightly) crush it.
We can beat this with a zoom function. This is already standard on almost all widescreen TVs, so that regular (3:4 format) pictures can either be viewed complete or cut so that they fill the screen.
It's also fairly common on regualr TVs, VCRs and DVD players, for people who are watching a widescreen-format movie and would rather crop some bits off at the sides than see the bars along the top and bottom. Sure, zooming loses a bit of resolution, but that's preferable to seeing continuous banners.
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Pickering (R, Mass.): $82,050
Bush (R, Exxon): $41,601
Hollings (D, Disney): $32,166
"He worked hard, he deserved it," is a BS argument, unless you think that everyone else who works hard deserves to be paid equally.
Note that I'm not arguing for equal pay (though I often think that might be better than the current situation). Some people do deserve to be paid more than others, but not thousands of times more.
Ah, but was the success due to Gerstner's talent, or just luck? Could someone else have done it? I don't know --- we'd have to look in detail at Gerstner's track record at other companies to see --- but it is possible for companies (especially big companies) to be successful despite the CEO, not because of him.
Could be a virus. I remember being infected with Form many years ago, and it sounded similar. (Alright, more of a CLICK CLICK CLICK.)
The relative vulnerbaility of MS software to viruses is a valid point for Apple (or anyone) to make.
And even if you don't drive a car, you're still much more likely to be killed by one than by a terrorist. Or by a murderer (other than the driver of the car, of course).
Like many tech companies, Microsoft is about maximizing its own short-term stock price. To a manager with millions in stock optons, this is more important than anything, even profit.
A lot of people will stay with AOL, either because of inertia or because, once you turn off the popups and spam, it's actually an okay ISP. (Not the best, but not terrible.)
The company is still ****ed, because it's trying to grow at the same rate it was early in its life. It probably won't go bankrupt, but it's bascially the leader in a low-margin business without much room for growth.
Interestingly, AOL realized this three years ago, and cashed in its own inflated stock for TW. For some insane reason, TW stock-holders took the deal.
Imagine if Microsoft made people insert an original Office CD every time they wanted to open a Word document.
It depends a lot on your long-term plans. Buying a house usually only makes sense if you want to stay in the same place for many years. A lot of people who currently live in in big cities (myself included) don't want to stay there forever, especially given the extremely high house (or more likely, apartment) prices compared to more rural areas.
Blame foreign governments for the high prices here. They don't allow drug companies to charge for R&D costs.
R&D accounts for very little of a drug's cost. Most drug companies spend more on TV commercials than on R&D. And coincidentally, the only country that allows TV commercials for prescription drugs iis also the one with the highest drug prices.
But if airline companies started charging less for first class and distributing the cost to coach, then fewer people are inclined to pay for coach. There are much fewer people on the plane. The plane never leaves the ground.
That's odd. I could have sworn I just took a flight on Southwest. Funny how the airlines pursuing this "never leave the ground" strategy are the only ones that make a profit.
Google doesn't seem to have cached the actual thread, unfortunately.
Dual-mode cards are already available, and soon they'll come down to the same cost as current Wi-Fi cards. Eventually, almost everyone will have both, and they'll use a (faster, clearner) most of the time, but they'll keep b for compatability. (Just like 720K floppies gave way to 1.4M, and CD-ROM is giving way to DVD-ROM).
One word: Macrovision. I know it's possible to circumvent, but it'll still stop most recording. All that Hollywood has to do is buy a law that says all manufacturers must add macrovision (or a similar scheme) to their external tuners. Then people decide to "upgrade" their existing TV get the worst of all worlds: the same low-quality analog TV as now, but with added "protection".
In additon, certain legal but unethical behaviour does not maximize profits in the long term, because they give the company a bad reputation. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer kinds of behaviour have been having this effect over the last few years, because people have started to believe that all kinds of amoral acts have been deemed acceptable if they make a short-term profit.
Others will avoid certain ways to make profit, increase shareholder value, etc. because it's simply not part of their "mission". For example, Pets.com's mission was to sell cat-litter, etc. over the Web. Even though this wasn't the most profitable business, the company didn't turn round and start selling cigarettes to kids or napalm to the Taliban. Stock holders who wanted this could sell their stock and buy into other companies instead.
Pet portals may not be a particularly ethical mission, but other companies' (most of the Linux industry) are. In the long term, really evil behaviour is likely to decrease stock price, because it will lead to law-suits and fall foul of regulatons. Bill might have bribed some of the politicians currently in power, but politicians don't stay in power forever. MS might be under more pressure in a couple of years.
And don't forget the Klez virus, which picks a random address from Outlook's address book to forge the "from" as well as the "to" field. So even if you don't use Outlook or have the virus, people can still think that you're infected and spamming them.
To most of the population, this kind of thing will simply confirm the view that hackers are criminals or terrorists. Non-violent direct action is one of the best way to get things done in a democracy. (Just behind, say, voting.) But confine this to simple things that ordinary people can understand.
Call your congressman. (Forget about writing: anthrax has doen to snail mail what spam did to email.) Hold a protest. (The "Free Sklyrarov" demos got covered favorably in the media, and most importantly, they worked.) Or propose a ballot-measure in your district that guarantees fair use.
But to be fair to the Transformers, it did at least have another rationale for basing the TV show around the toys rather than the other way round. (They wanted the on-screen transformations to reflect something physically possible in a small toy.) The first major toy/TV series in the US was He-Man, which didn't.
Microsoft brings in many more tax $$$
Microsoft doesn't pay any income taxes, thanks to its (legal, but still dishonest) share-option acccounting scams.
Or green, independent, etc. They'll dismiss you as a nutball, and assume that your vote won't count anyway. Say "I have not decided whether to vote Democrat or Republican."
Not law yet. The new bill (CSEA) still has to pass the Senate and the White House. But given that only three congressdroids in the House opposed it and hundreds on both sides voted in favor, I don't hold much hope that it will be defeated.
There's an irony here: Most of the scams advertised in spam prey on the gullible, but spammers are themselves being tricked into thinking that spam is an effective advertising tool.
They'll use a sandbox, kind of like Java. This means people who want (and who are willing to pay for the development tools --- notice how Basic is no longer included with Windows) will be able to experiment with simple programs, but not do anything too useful (or "dangerous").
I suppose some people might suggest using this patent against a certain other big, Borg-like corporation that ships millions of JPG-enabled browsers and photo editors, but the patent is so silly that MS's lawyers would (rightly) crush it.
It's also fairly common on regualr TVs, VCRs and DVD players, for people who are watching a widescreen-format movie and would rather crop some bits off at the sides than see the bars along the top and bottom. Sure, zooming loses a bit of resolution, but that's preferable to seeing continuous banners.