So they are making less money ? Wow. No longer outrageous profits ?
Here is a very nice idea. I think I'll even patent it: try cutting your costs.
Start with the salaries and bonuses of those big executives.
How about trying to promote real musicians instead of teenager "fake-virgin" girls with crappy songs and nothing inside their heads ? I'll tell you another secret: real, good music is easier to sell than crappy songs. It is cheaper for you. Less costs = more profits.
I wonder it this was too much for them, and their brains is coming out of their noses with all these revolutionary theories I presented here. Well, at least I hope thats their brains. Hard to tell, really.
I'm not sure if are joking or not, but this is a real issue.
In politics, what you describe is called "bullring tactics". It is a very well known and effective way to keep the population under control, by diverting their attention toward an outside "enemy". An enemy that threatens the very thing that makes us human, perhaps (Nazi). Or someone that threatens our way of life (Terrorists). Or someone who corrupts our children (Commies).
This happened and still happens on many countries, not just USA. The USA is just the more obvious one. Maybe because they have such much presence on the media. Actually, you can see it happening everywhere if you study the history of any country. Sometimes the enemy is fabricated. Sometimes the enemy is real (ie: the politics got lucky and didn't have to create one). The tactics is always the same.
This is so widely known and used that you can even read about it on books (1984, Chapterhouse Dune etc). You can see it in your own country (doesn't matter where you live). You can see it in your church (in case you belong to one).
The saddest thing of all, even if you and everybody else can see plainly what these leaders are doing, 99% of the population accept it. I don't know why. Maybe people just don't want the responsibility. Maybe they like to be tricked. Maybe it is because a leader is that makes us a people (don't laugh, it is a verifiable historical truth). Maybe they just don't care. It usually takes things getting pretty serious on a personal level (something like the great depression or even worst) for they to do something.
Enters Caesar. Bullrings tactics, add some breads and circus, and you have a very simple recipe for keeping the population under control. How simple ? Take a look at the presidents of countries like Venezuela and Brazil. I'm mentioning those just to take a bit of the "anti-Bush" flavor out of this post.
Let the USA government continue to waste the country's money on all these wars for a decade or two more, and suddenly Iran and North Korea are no longer the real problem anymore.
Even if you agree with what your government is doing, don't simply accept it. Ask yourself also WHY they are doing it. Do actions and words agree ?
This EFF court case is a very good way to find out real motivations. I, for one, praise them, and hope they can manage to get the information. If the government tries to hide it, thats ok too. That by itself is enough of a message, telling us, again, what the real motivations are.
From what I understand, those ssh brute force attacks are highly effective.
Maybe because the administrators of so many servers are morons. They either set stupid passwords for root, or allow their users to pick easy passwords.
Disabling plain-text auth is also a very good idea. Disabling direct root login via ssh, even better.
I would even go an extra mile here. Knowing how to TEACH is much more difficult than knowing the subject.
I have very poor teacher that knew a lot about the subject. I learned nothing from them. I had great teacher that knew the subject well, but not lots. I learned a lot from them.
Anyone can know about any subject. All it takes is a book and some practice (to understand it). However, try and teach a bunch of teenager kids, and your views of teaching will change very fast.
Good teacher are a rarity. If you take a class of 100 CS students, you will probably end up with 50 or 60 good programmers, 2 or 3 exceptional programmers. If you can get 1 good teacher from those 100, you are in luck. In most cases, you don't get a single one.
I do science and I am religious. Is there something wrong in that?
I studied for many years on a catholic school. We had our religion classes. We had our masses. And we would have hour biology classes. The teacher, btw, was a priest. He would even say "science is the tool god gave us to understand his creation". I find that a very enlightened way to look at things.
A scientist who is also religious is something very natural for me.
Yes, thank you. One of the interesting things about sarcasm is that is doesn't need to make sense by itself. Actually, much of the time is should not make sense. That way you try to illustrate who a previous assumption ("The Internet is killing the Music business") also doesn't make sense.
Isn't it more reasonable to suppose all those music stores are closing because they can't compete with the kind of pricing practices implemented by places like Walmart ? (Do they sell CD/DVDs ?)
I mean, if you can enter a store that has all the music you want (for most people that is the 20 newest releases), for a small price, why would you go to mom-and-pop store ?
Don't we see that happening is almost all other kinds of business ? At least were I live, all mom-and-pop ISPs eventually closed their doors too. I think I'll blame the music stores to destroying the ISP business model. Why would you want Internet if you can just go to a store and buy your music ?
I think trouble is...we all overestimated the intelligence and abilities of the Iraqi people. Most people, I guess, figured once they were rid of Saddam, that they'd jump at the chance to unite, and form a rational, somewhat freedom enbracing government. I mean, considering the dictatorship they'd endured, you'd think, eh?
Yeah because, obviously, democracy (as defined by the USA) is the only viable option for intelligent people, and should be forced down their troths. God help anyone who even consider something different than having a president elected by direct voting. They are all stupid people.
Wake up, please. Your (USA) concept is democracy is only one between several valid ones. And democracy itself (if we can call what you have on the USA, and actually most countries) that is just one among several VALID forms of government.
If you freedom ? Than you better give them freedom to choose whatever form of government (or even anarchy) they want. What gives you the right to choose for them ? What kind of freedom is it when you force it on them ?
Are you so deluded that you think you freed Iraq ? That the USA invaded them for their own good ? The USA invaded Iraq for their (USA's) own reasons. I don't care at this point if they were valid or not. Just stop pretending you did it for Iraq's sake. That is just too much to take.
Unlike many other countries, when the US fed. government signs a treaty, it really does NOT become the law of the land, superseding other laws. This is especially true if parts of the treaty could be translated as violating the Constitution. Nothing, no treaty can supersede that.
Which is another reason why many countries don't like the USA.
I'm not saying that treaties should supersede the USA Constitution. I'm saying that if it does, the President (or whoever) should not be allowed to sign it. Signing a treaty that you know you won't follow ? C'mon. That is plain and single cheating and bullshit.
I wonder what the USA does to other countries that violates signed treaties.
Actually, you will notice that the phrase "and a market share" doesn't make sense. It was a typo. I intended to write "as a market share", meaning that the relative demand has decreased.
I do understand your post, and I agree it is true for most things. Not (as TFA states) for hard disks. And neither (as I stated) for video cards.
So yes, the concept you are presenting is valid. My point was not against TFA, but against the post using video cards as a valid example. It is not, and I showed.
The "average" video card today is an IGP. So the cost for an average video card is much lower.
Back in 2000 (and before), onboard video was not the rule. These days, most people use it. So the demand for off-board video cards has (and a market share) decreased. Today (guessing here), 1 out of 30 computers uses an off board card (consider business computers here, because you cry foul). Back in 2000, it was 1 in 4, if not more.
Even if you think about offboard cards, the "average" card costs about US$ 90. I'm not talking about "gaming" cards, since the computer games area changed a lot in the past years. For reference, a GForce 7600GS card can be found for $74.99 ($64.99 after rebate). A GForce 8600GT, for $93.99 ($78.99 after rebate). Even thou (as stated on the previous paragraph) the market share of offboard cards has decreased, the absolute number of cards sold has increased. There were several advances on manufacturing processes too to take into account.
So in both scenarios (onboard and offboard), an average card is much cheaper than $160.
Mass production is only viable with high demand. I'm not sure if you ever tried to negotiate shipment from a Taiwanese company. When they say 100, they are talking about 100 thousand units. 10K units is what they call a "small shipment". But I digress.
Anyway, a good part of the cost of a product is related to development. Creating new technologies is expensive. Several other costs don't scale directly with the number of items. So the greater the production, the smaller the cost per unit.
Add to that 5 other companies doing the same math, competing for the same market, and the prices will drop the higher the demand.
Ever since Henry Ford, the simple law of "supply and demand" is not so simple anymore. More often than not, the higher the demand, the lower the prices.
Except that Cisco did nothing immoral in this. While Cisco may have been in technical violation of a law, that is not the same as being immoral. If this was their equipment, then why should they not be able to use it in Brazil? If this was their company equipment, to be used by the company, never to be resold in Brazil, then Cisco has cheated nobody.
Except there is a provision in Brazilian law for stuff like that. IBM makes use of it. It is called "Temporary Importation". It gives you 2 years (IIRC, might be more) to keep the equipment here paying little to no taxes. When that time ends, you have the option to ship it back, destroy or pay the taxes.
Again citing IBM: they use this provision a lot, and then destroy the equipment. It is the cheaper option. Interesting enough, you can't even donate the equipment to the government, schools, NGOs etc without paying taxes, which I find particularly stupid. Donating the equipment would be cheaper than destroying it for those companies.
This is how things usually go: 1) All the exec that got jailed will be out in less than 24 hours. They will be prosecuted, but will stay out of jail. This kind of stuff usually take about 10 years, by which time they will be quietly found "not guilty"
2) Cisco will have a nice meeting with the Brasilian government, and it will be decided they will pay only $150mi, in 10 to 15 years, with no interests (or very little). They might even get the option to pay in equipment (part or the total of the debt).
That is the best case scenario. It is also possible Cisco lawyer will make a case for illegal search and stuff like that, and have the case dropped.
Did that just completely go over your head? The point is that cisco probably made every router and switch in their networks, and they could theoretically destroy the brazilian economy with the flick of a switch (if Cisco put backdoors in the hardware), so brazil is crazy for taking such extreme action.
I agree a good part of the internet infrastructure here is based on Cisco equipments, but there is a lot of Motorola and Nortel routers as well, not to mention Huawei. Actually, those companies would like nothing better than getting Cisco's business around here.
Slashdot Mirror
Humm, oranges and apples ?
You are comparing a person to a group.
Again I'm (mis)quoting someone I can't recall the name: One person is intelligent, the people is dumb.
Humm, who are you holding down, and who should we medicate ? The parent poster, or Bush ?
As jokes go, that is a nice one. But on the upside, not always true.
I have met some VERY competent executives. Great team leaders, which, before anything else, would not get on the way.
Who usually screws things up is middle management.
And I really mean it.
So they are making less money ? Wow. No longer outrageous profits ?
Here is a very nice idea. I think I'll even patent it: try cutting your costs.
Start with the salaries and bonuses of those big executives.
How about trying to promote real musicians instead of teenager "fake-virgin" girls with crappy songs and nothing inside their heads ? I'll tell you another secret: real, good music is easier to sell than crappy songs. It is cheaper for you. Less costs = more profits.
I wonder it this was too much for them, and their brains is coming out of their noses with all these revolutionary theories I presented here. Well, at least I hope thats their brains. Hard to tell, really.
I'm not sure if are joking or not, but this is a real issue.
In politics, what you describe is called "bullring tactics". It is a very well known and effective way to keep the population under control, by diverting their attention toward an outside "enemy". An enemy that threatens the very thing that makes us human, perhaps (Nazi). Or someone that threatens our way of life (Terrorists). Or someone who corrupts our children (Commies).
This happened and still happens on many countries, not just USA. The USA is just the more obvious one. Maybe because they have such much presence on the media. Actually, you can see it happening everywhere if you study the history of any country. Sometimes the enemy is fabricated. Sometimes the enemy is real (ie: the politics got lucky and didn't have to create one). The tactics is always the same.
This is so widely known and used that you can even read about it on books (1984, Chapterhouse Dune etc). You can see it in your own country (doesn't matter where you live). You can see it in your church (in case you belong to one).
The saddest thing of all, even if you and everybody else can see plainly what these leaders are doing, 99% of the population accept it. I don't know why. Maybe people just don't want the responsibility. Maybe they like to be tricked. Maybe it is because a leader is that makes us a people (don't laugh, it is a verifiable historical truth). Maybe they just don't care. It usually takes things getting pretty serious on a personal level (something like the great depression or even worst) for they to do something.
Enters Caesar. Bullrings tactics, add some breads and circus, and you have a very simple recipe for keeping the population under control. How simple ? Take a look at the presidents of countries like Venezuela and Brazil. I'm mentioning those just to take a bit of the "anti-Bush" flavor out of this post.
Let the USA government continue to waste the country's money on all these wars for a decade or two more, and suddenly Iran and North Korea are no longer the real problem anymore.
Even if you agree with what your government is doing, don't simply accept it. Ask yourself also WHY they are doing it. Do actions and words agree ?
This EFF court case is a very good way to find out real motivations. I, for one, praise them, and hope they can manage to get the information. If the government tries to hide it, thats ok too. That by itself is enough of a message, telling us, again, what the real motivations are.
My mother-in-law ? :)
Maybe because the administrators of so many servers are morons. They either set stupid passwords for root, or allow their users to pick easy passwords.
Disabling plain-text auth is also a very good idea. Disabling direct root login via ssh, even better.
> "It wasn't that long ago that we had a future."
An optimist thinks we live in the better world possible.
A pessimist fears that is indeed true.
I would even go an extra mile here.
Knowing how to TEACH is much more difficult than knowing the subject.
I have very poor teacher that knew a lot about the subject. I learned nothing from them.
I had great teacher that knew the subject well, but not lots. I learned a lot from them.
Anyone can know about any subject. All it takes is a book and some practice (to understand it). However, try and teach a bunch of teenager kids, and your views of teaching will change very fast.
Good teacher are a rarity. If you take a class of 100 CS students, you will probably end up with 50 or 60 good programmers, 2 or 3 exceptional programmers. If you can get 1 good teacher from those 100, you are in luck. In most cases, you don't get a single one.
I don't know, but I'm game for any religion where you can eat your idols, as long as you can have a nice Chianti with it.
I studied for many years on a catholic school. We had our religion classes. We had our masses. And we would have hour biology classes. The teacher, btw, was a priest. He would even say "science is the tool god gave us to understand his creation". I find that a very enlightened way to look at things.
A scientist who is also religious is something very natural for me.
Yes, thank you. One of the interesting things about sarcasm is that is doesn't need to make sense by itself. Actually, much of the time is should not make sense. That way you try to illustrate who a previous assumption ("The Internet is killing the Music business") also doesn't make sense.
Humm, ok, this might sound stupid but ...
Isn't it more reasonable to suppose all those music stores are closing because they can't compete with the kind of pricing practices implemented by places like Walmart ? (Do they sell CD/DVDs ?)
I mean, if you can enter a store that has all the music you want (for most people that is the 20 newest releases), for a small price, why would you go to mom-and-pop store ?
Don't we see that happening is almost all other kinds of business ? At least were I live, all mom-and-pop ISPs eventually closed their doors too. I think I'll blame the music stores to destroying the ISP business model. Why would you want Internet if you can just go to a store and buy your music ?
The it would tagged as slashvertasing, people would complain about the editor etc etc.
Yeah because, obviously, democracy (as defined by the USA) is the only viable option for intelligent people, and should be forced down their troths. God help anyone who even consider something different than having a president elected by direct voting. They are all stupid people.
Wake up, please. Your (USA) concept is democracy is only one between several valid ones. And democracy itself (if we can call what you have on the USA, and actually most countries) that is just one among several VALID forms of government.
If you freedom ? Than you better give them freedom to choose whatever form of government (or even anarchy) they want. What gives you the right to choose for them ? What kind of freedom is it when you force it on them ?
Are you so deluded that you think you freed Iraq ? That the USA invaded them for their own good ? The USA invaded Iraq for their (USA's) own reasons. I don't care at this point if they were valid or not. Just stop pretending you did it for Iraq's sake. That is just too much to take.
Maybe you are naive, or maybe I'm cynical. But my bet would be a tax related reason.
Which is another reason why many countries don't like the USA.
I'm not saying that treaties should supersede the USA Constitution. I'm saying that if it does, the President (or whoever) should not be allowed to sign it. Signing a treaty that you know you won't follow ? C'mon. That is plain and single cheating and bullshit.
I wonder what the USA does to other countries that violates signed treaties.
Don't tell it to me. Tell it to the guy who said it was the "average" video card of those days.
Actually, you will notice that the phrase "and a market share" doesn't make sense. It was a typo. I intended to write "as a market share", meaning that the relative demand has decreased.
I do understand your post, and I agree it is true for most things. Not (as TFA states) for hard disks. And neither (as I stated) for video cards.
So yes, the concept you are presenting is valid. My point was not against TFA, but against the post using video cards as a valid example. It is not, and I showed.
His premises are totally wrong.
The "average" video card today is an IGP. So the cost for an average video card is much lower.
Back in 2000 (and before), onboard video was not the rule. These days, most people use it. So the demand for off-board video cards has (and a market share) decreased. Today (guessing here), 1 out of 30 computers uses an off board card (consider business computers here, because you cry foul). Back in 2000, it was 1 in 4, if not more.
Even if you think about offboard cards, the "average" card costs about US$ 90. I'm not talking about "gaming" cards, since the computer games area changed a lot in the past years. For reference, a GForce 7600GS card can be found for $74.99 ($64.99 after rebate). A GForce 8600GT, for $93.99 ($78.99 after rebate). Even thou (as stated on the previous paragraph) the market share of offboard cards has decreased, the absolute number of cards sold has increased. There were several advances on manufacturing processes too to take into account.
So in both scenarios (onboard and offboard), an average card is much cheaper than $160.
That is not "unpossible".
Mass production is only viable with high demand. I'm not sure if you ever tried to negotiate shipment from a Taiwanese company. When they say 100, they are talking about 100 thousand units. 10K units is what they call a "small shipment". But I digress.
Anyway, a good part of the cost of a product is related to development. Creating new technologies is expensive. Several other costs don't scale directly with the number of items. So the greater the production, the smaller the cost per unit.
Add to that 5 other companies doing the same math, competing for the same market, and the prices will drop the higher the demand.
Ever since Henry Ford, the simple law of "supply and demand" is not so simple anymore. More often than not, the higher the demand, the lower the prices.
Except there is a provision in Brazilian law for stuff like that. IBM makes use of it. It is called "Temporary Importation". It gives you 2 years (IIRC, might be more) to keep the equipment here paying little to no taxes. When that time ends, you have the option to ship it back, destroy or pay the taxes.
Again citing IBM: they use this provision a lot, and then destroy the equipment. It is the cheaper option. Interesting enough, you can't even donate the equipment to the government, schools, NGOs etc without paying taxes, which I find particularly stupid. Donating the equipment would be cheaper than destroying it for those companies.
You have no idea how many employees Cisco has in Brazil, right ?
As far as I know, they didn't even arrest a large portion of their execs.
You are kidding, right ? Or else very uninformed.
This is how things usually go:
1) All the exec that got jailed will be out in less than 24 hours. They will be prosecuted, but will stay out of jail. This kind of stuff usually take about 10 years, by which time they will be quietly found "not guilty"
2) Cisco will have a nice meeting with the Brasilian government, and it will be decided they will pay only $150mi, in 10 to 15 years, with no interests (or very little). They might even get the option to pay in equipment (part or the total of the debt).
That is the best case scenario. It is also possible Cisco lawyer will make a case for illegal search and stuff like that, and have the case dropped.
I agree a good part of the internet infrastructure here is based on Cisco equipments, but there is a lot of Motorola and Nortel routers as well, not to mention Huawei. Actually, those companies would like nothing better than getting Cisco's business around here.