They need far more network resources and if anything network-related goes down, the employee is left twiddling their thumbs.
In case you hadn't noticed that's pretty much what happens in most modern thick client systems anyway. Files are stored on a file server and many of the apps are client-server apps. anyway so many/most people are dead in the water when the network goes down. Unless you're suggesting we all go back to storing copies of everything on each individual PC I really don't see much of a difference in terms of service level requirements.
You also mention that the bandwidth requirements are higher for thin clients but even that depends on what sort of apps your users need and what sort of thin client solution your talking about. Certainly it's cheaper to have gigabit or better connections between an app server and file server both located in the same room than to have a similar level of performance throughout an entire building.
There are also the power/size/noise issues. Thin clients can easily be book sized fanless bricks sucking maybe 20W but there arn't many corporate PCs that even come close (except maybe laptops).
It's a perfectly valid and legal business model, as long as you don't have monopoly power in the market.
Close but I think the bar is set a bit below "monopoly power". I'm sure someone here can supply the correct term. I know of at least one major retailer who does NOT have a monopoly but is still very careful not to sell anything at a loss for this reason (or so they claim).
If there isn't a Free driver available I won't buy it. That excludes some of the hardware but I can still manage.
Agreed, even as a purely practical matter having free drivers available tends to improve your odds of being able to use it with some future/different OS/kernel. Most geeks (at least the kind that build their own systems) tend to have more than one computer and often pass systems/components down to others and try out different OSs. In general hardware with Free drivers tends to use standard interfaces that are likely supported by almost any OS.
I'm not discounting the value in sending the message to hardware makers that open drivers/specs are important but just saying that there are real world practical advantages as well.
Thinking about the possible future upgrades is, from my past experience, not worth the money.
I mostly agree however it depends a bit on where on the price/performance curve you are. At the higher end of the curve future upgrades means "stuff that's not available now at any price" and in that case you're 100% correct. At the lower end future upgrades may just mean "stuff that's available now but too expensive". In that case it might make sense to buy, for example, the cheapest socket 939 cpu you can get and plan to upgrade to much faster one in a year or so.
When it's warm we usually are in the 50's on average. In really hot weather with an ideal traffic pattern, and a driver interested in maximizing battery usage, it's pretty easy to hit 60 MPG
Something I've been meaning to ask a Prius owner, how much does the AC factor into your efficiency?
This is why it is not cost effective to heat your house with electric -- barring isolated scenarios such as having access to cheap hydroelectric power.
I'm not even sure that's true anymore. When I first moved into my current house I considered replacing the electric water heater with a Propane fuled unit. With Propane at around $1 per gallon it would have saved me around 50% in energy costs but now with Propane at $2.65/gallon and electric costing nearly the same as it did back then electric is starting to look like a better deal.
Transmitting DC over long distances doesn't work very well
I've heard this before, but I haven't heard a terribly good explanation for why.
It's related to the other issue the poster mentioned, that AC can be converted easily and effeciently between low and high voltages. Being able to transmit the power at effecient high voltage and then step it down to a much lower voltage for use without losing much in the conversion is what makes AC more effecient.
Re:I liken this lichen is alien
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hey could also survive on a rusty hull of a space ship,
Why would there be rust on the hull of a space ship?
Re:Feasibility of Panspermia
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Space Lichens
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I was watching "Naked Science" the other night and one of the scientists mentioned that asteroids only spend a very short time in the atmosphere before hitting the ground and as a result only the outside few mm gets very hot.
But wouldn't a company earning large profits from the patents expand, grow, create jobs, pay more taxes, and get the wheels of the economy going?
Sure but most likely having multiple companies competing would produce the same results more effeciently, at least that's the idea behind the free market.
Ultimately an economy only grows by becoming more effecient and patents hurt effeciency in the long run. IMHO a patent system is like a credit card. Initially they both encourage growth but later as the number of existing patents (the ballance) goes up the cost of dealing with the system (interest) starts to outweigh the advantages. Remember that you not only have to pay the cost of filing your legitimate patent but also for defensive patents, patent searches, licenses for tech. you know you infringe, and litigation for tech. you end up infringing accidentally. Every dollar you have to spend on lawyers dealing with this mess is a dollar that you arn't spending making your product better and cheaper. Now consider that you are not only spending that money directly but also indirectly in the cost of every single product you buy.
The logical end game is that we all end up spending all available capital simply dealing with the patent system and none at all actually creating anything new. That just can't be a good thing.
Until they have a way of guaranteeing an impression every time you view (i.e., making it available only by live stream), there won't be an option for free viewing with commercials.
There are few guarantees in life but one of them is that if they leave the download market to the P2P community then noone will see their commercials.
What makes them think we're going to have that much warning? A few years ago we had a fairly near miss and only had a few days warning. There wasn't a whole lot of warning about the comet that hit Jupiter either. Remember asteroids don't emit any light of their own, they are small compared to a planet or even our moon, and they are are coming in from quite far away from the Sun so they aren't exactly the easiest things to see.
3. NBC still believes there "aren't enough protections" to put their content on the internet.
These guys don't realize that their shows are mediocre at best and placing any higher threshold on watching them will actually DECREASE viewers, not increase it. I'm not going to pay extra to watch a show with commercials (which you probably can't skip).
More importantly they don't realize that their shows are already on the internet (without commercials) and seem likely to stay there. The only way to compete with that is to offer a better product (faster downloads, better organization, a variety of format options, higher quality etc) for a similar price. They could probably leave the commercials in if they provided the above.
Another option would be a scheme where the customer agrees to watch say 5 commercials out of a selection of 20 or so and in exchange you get 1 month of free downloads. The advantage is that people would be watching only commercials for products that they were actually interested in and that data would itself be valuable.
A 150 decibel noise seems like a pretty minor convenience compared to blowing yourself up.
So does putting them in jail but it's still effective if you can manage it. Just because someone is willing to die doesn't mean that they are willing or able to endure pain.
I guess you didn't notice that the story was also run by CBS News and Yahoo News, among other mainstream organs.
They're all just regurgitating the same story/press release that originated at the Jackson Hole Star Tribune and was passed along to the AP. All this is is an advertisement for venture capital, the same as the last couple you submitted. Both you and Slashdot should be ashamed at running these adds. as if they were news.
What's the goal here? To stop the people who buy CDs and rip copies for a few friends... by driving everybody to rely on safer online distribution exclusively?
Agreed, they arn't stopping their music from appearing online, if anything it'll probably become more popular on the P2P networks. All they've done is to make their product less valuable than the pirated versions. That somehow seems backwards.
Well, this is the same argument SCO made about, was it errnos.h or some such?
Except of course that SCO had full access to the Linux source code so they could see for themselves if it was just the header files that were similar or if that was just the "tip of the iceberg".
Now... I'm happy with SuSE/Linux and I cannot ever seeing myself turning back, but I'm a nerd that enjoys the occasional hw/sw challenge (something I've not had on a windows box in probably 3+ years). But for Joe Sixpack? We (as in the all of us, or the royal... take your pick) need to bring Linux's usability up past Win95, because in my opinion, that is exactly where (SuSE 9.3) Linux is currently at.
The thing is that the issues you mention have basically nothing to do with Linux and are really only solvable by increasing the number of Linux users. It's not like Microsoft actually writes the drivers for most hardware, the manufacturers do that and (in theory at least) test the results and maybe even jump through the hoops to get them included in Windows. The only reason they bother is due to marketshare. Things are changing though, just in the last year or two I've seen quite a few companies with at least some nominal support for Linux. Ususally the Linux support is pretty sparce, poorly tested, and generally assumes that the user knows a lot more than would be expected of a Windows user but it's a lot better than it was just a few years ago.
SOooooooo, what I wonder is this: if the Original IP belonged to Caldera (and now, through aquisition, DR-DOS inc) aren't they free to do with it -and with derived products as they see fit?
Not necessarily. Despite popular understanding/opinion, if you create a copyrighted work and someone else creates a derivitive based on it you do NOT automatically get the copyright on that derivitive work. Each of you still owns their own contributions and neither of you can do anything with the derivitive without some sort of an agreement with the other party. If the derivitive was done without a proper license (doesn't seem to be the case here) then the simple creation of the derivitive would be a copyright violation and I'd expect that would give you enough leverage to convince them to hand over copyright on their contribution or at license it in a very reasonable way.
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They need far more network resources and if anything network-related goes down, the employee is left twiddling their thumbs.
In case you hadn't noticed that's pretty much what happens in most modern thick client systems anyway. Files are stored on a file server and many of the apps are client-server apps. anyway so many/most people are dead in the water when the network goes down. Unless you're suggesting we all go back to storing copies of everything on each individual PC I really don't see much of a difference in terms of service level requirements.
You also mention that the bandwidth requirements are higher for thin clients but even that depends on what sort of apps your users need and what sort of thin client solution your talking about. Certainly it's cheaper to have gigabit or better connections between an app server and file server both located in the same room than to have a similar level of performance throughout an entire building.
There are also the power/size/noise issues. Thin clients can easily be book sized fanless bricks sucking maybe 20W but there arn't many corporate PCs that even come close (except maybe laptops).
It's a perfectly valid and legal business model, as long as you don't have monopoly power in the market.
Close but I think the bar is set a bit below "monopoly power". I'm sure someone here can supply the correct term. I know of at least one major retailer who does NOT have a monopoly but is still very careful not to sell anything at a loss for this reason (or so they claim).
Why would the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp be interested in such things?
If there isn't a Free driver available I won't buy it. That excludes some of the hardware but I can still manage.
Agreed, even as a purely practical matter having free drivers available tends to improve your odds of being able to use it with some future/different OS/kernel. Most geeks (at least the kind that build their own systems) tend to have more than one computer and often pass systems/components down to others and try out different OSs. In general hardware with Free drivers tends to use standard interfaces that are likely supported by almost any OS.
I'm not discounting the value in sending the message to hardware makers that open drivers/specs are important but just saying that there are real world practical advantages as well.
Thinking about the possible future upgrades is, from my past experience, not worth the money.
I mostly agree however it depends a bit on where on the price/performance curve you are. At the higher end of the curve future upgrades means "stuff that's not available now at any price" and in that case you're 100% correct. At the lower end future upgrades may just mean "stuff that's available now but too expensive". In that case it might make sense to buy, for example, the cheapest socket 939 cpu you can get and plan to upgrade to much faster one in a year or so.
JAWS 7 in fact works with Firefox 1.5.
Out of the box or do we need to download/install anything else for Jaws?
How about we just tax the hell out of SUVs?
Unfortunately even small to mid sized cars seem to have gotten worse over the past 20 years or so.
When it's warm we usually are in the 50's on average. In really hot weather with an ideal traffic pattern, and a driver interested in maximizing battery usage, it's pretty easy to hit 60 MPG
Something I've been meaning to ask a Prius owner, how much does the AC factor into your efficiency?
This is why it is not cost effective to heat your house with electric -- barring isolated scenarios such as having access to cheap hydroelectric power.
I'm not even sure that's true anymore. When I first moved into my current house I considered replacing the electric water heater with a Propane fuled unit. With Propane at around $1 per gallon it would have saved me around 50% in energy costs but now with Propane at $2.65/gallon and electric costing nearly the same as it did back then electric is starting to look like a better deal.
It's related to the other issue the poster mentioned, that AC can be converted easily and effeciently between low and high voltages. Being able to transmit the power at effecient high voltage and then step it down to a much lower voltage for use without losing much in the conversion is what makes AC more effecient.
hey could also survive on a rusty hull of a space ship,
Why would there be rust on the hull of a space ship?
I was watching "Naked Science" the other night and one of the scientists mentioned that asteroids only spend a very short time in the atmosphere before hitting the ground and as a result only the outside few mm gets very hot.
But wouldn't a company earning large profits from the patents expand, grow, create jobs, pay more taxes, and get the wheels of the economy going?
Sure but most likely having multiple companies competing would produce the same results more effeciently, at least that's the idea behind the free market.
Ultimately an economy only grows by becoming more effecient and patents hurt effeciency in the long run. IMHO a patent system is like a credit card. Initially they both encourage growth but later as the number of existing patents (the ballance) goes up the cost of dealing with the system (interest) starts to outweigh the advantages. Remember that you not only have to pay the cost of filing your legitimate patent but also for defensive patents, patent searches, licenses for tech. you know you infringe, and litigation for tech. you end up infringing accidentally. Every dollar you have to spend on lawyers dealing with this mess is a dollar that you arn't spending making your product better and cheaper. Now consider that you are not only spending that money directly but also indirectly in the cost of every single product you buy.
The logical end game is that we all end up spending all available capital simply dealing with the patent system and none at all actually creating anything new. That just can't be a good thing.
Until they have a way of guaranteeing an impression every time you view (i.e., making it available only by live stream), there won't be an option for free viewing with commercials.
There are few guarantees in life but one of them is that if they leave the download market to the P2P community then noone will see their commercials.
What makes them think we're going to have that much warning? A few years ago we had a fairly near miss and only had a few days warning. There wasn't a whole lot of warning about the comet that hit Jupiter either. Remember asteroids don't emit any light of their own, they are small compared to a planet or even our moon, and they are are coming in from quite far away from the Sun so they aren't exactly the easiest things to see.
3. NBC still believes there "aren't enough protections" to put their content on the internet.
These guys don't realize that their shows are mediocre at best and placing any higher threshold on watching them will actually DECREASE viewers, not increase it. I'm not going to pay extra to watch a show with commercials (which you probably can't skip).
More importantly they don't realize that their shows are already on the internet (without commercials) and seem likely to stay there. The only way to compete with that is to offer a better product (faster downloads, better organization, a variety of format options, higher quality etc) for a similar price. They could probably leave the commercials in if they provided the above.
Another option would be a scheme where the customer agrees to watch say 5 commercials out of a selection of 20 or so and in exchange you get 1 month of free downloads. The advantage is that people would be watching only commercials for products that they were actually interested in and that data would itself be valuable.
A 150 decibel noise seems like a pretty minor convenience compared to blowing yourself up.
So does putting them in jail but it's still effective if you can manage it. Just because someone is willing to die doesn't mean that they are willing or able to endure pain.
Have you read these articles? They all read like those penny stock adds that we all get via email and I don't think it's a coincidence.
I guess you didn't notice that the story was also run by CBS News and Yahoo News, among other mainstream organs.
They're all just regurgitating the same story/press release that originated at the Jackson Hole Star Tribune and was passed along to the AP. All this is is an advertisement for venture capital, the same as the last couple you submitted. Both you and Slashdot should be ashamed at running these adds. as if they were news.
What's the goal here? To stop the people who buy CDs and rip copies for a few friends... by driving everybody to rely on safer online distribution exclusively?
Agreed, they arn't stopping their music from appearing online, if anything it'll probably become more popular on the P2P networks. All they've done is to make their product less valuable than the pirated versions. That somehow seems backwards.
Well, this is the same argument SCO made about, was it errnos.h or some such?
Except of course that SCO had full access to the Linux source code so they could see for themselves if it was just the header files that were similar or if that was just the "tip of the iceberg".
$10 says there's a midget with a chess set inside that box.
Q: What's the chess set for?
A: To keep the midget from getting board.
Now... I'm happy with SuSE/Linux and I cannot ever seeing myself turning back, but I'm a nerd that enjoys the occasional hw/sw challenge (something I've not had on a windows box in probably 3+ years). But for Joe Sixpack? We (as in the all of us, or the royal... take your pick) need to bring Linux's usability up past Win95, because in my opinion, that is exactly where (SuSE 9.3) Linux is currently at.
The thing is that the issues you mention have basically nothing to do with Linux and are really only solvable by increasing the number of Linux users. It's not like Microsoft actually writes the drivers for most hardware, the manufacturers do that and (in theory at least) test the results and maybe even jump through the hoops to get them included in Windows. The only reason they bother is due to marketshare. Things are changing though, just in the last year or two I've seen quite a few companies with at least some nominal support for Linux. Ususally the Linux support is pretty sparce, poorly tested, and generally assumes that the user knows a lot more than would be expected of a Windows user but it's a lot better than it was just a few years ago.
Since when did not having a physical presence in a place exempt you from from their laws?
Er... physical presence is just about the FIRST thing I think about when wondering if I'm subject to the laws of any given place.
SOooooooo, what I wonder is this: if the Original IP belonged to Caldera (and now, through aquisition, DR-DOS inc) aren't they free to do with it -and with derived products as
they see fit?
Not necessarily. Despite popular understanding/opinion, if you create a copyrighted work and someone else creates a derivitive based on it you do NOT automatically get the copyright on that derivitive work. Each of you still owns their own contributions and neither of you can do anything with the derivitive without some sort of an agreement with the other party. If the derivitive was done without a proper license (doesn't seem to be the case here) then the simple creation of the derivitive would be a copyright violation and I'd expect that would give you enough leverage to convince them to hand over copyright on their contribution or at license it in a very reasonable way.