Capitalsm isn't a "failed experiment." If anything, it's led to the tech sector thriving for the past 30 years while much of the US economy stagnated or atrophied.
What is going on here is simple: Oracle is pursuing their strategy to create profits. Weather they succeed or fail is yet to be determined. In the short run, it appears Oracle is doing everything they can to shoot themselves in the foot, but mergers like this aren't short term propositions, and they aren't judged on how they feel.
Ok, so some very smart people are leaving, and are going to do one of three things:
* Work for someone else creating new products and services * Start their own companies... one or two of which could hit it big. * Retire (make room for younger people). * A few will be bitter and go make cheeseburgers.
Any way you go, it's a net win for the economy, as a whole, except the transition period is filled with uncertainty and sucks for the people caught up in it. If you don't like transitions, then find some partners and start your own company. If not, learn to deal with the fact that jobs are not forever.
Second, your suggestion that they need to retain the money they paid plus make more for the deal to be profitable misses how value is created in mergers like this:
* I pay out X Billion in assets to buy assets worth Y Billion that come with a proportional cash flow. * I only need to create value beyond the gap between X-Y for the deal to be a financial success, assuming that the assets I bought maintain their value. It's not that tough to get a merger like Sun to work, even if Sun loses a significant amount or revenue and Oracle stays on track. Where mergers blow up is when both the buyer and bought loose revenue or shed assets.
No one is looking at Oracle+Sun over a quarter and expecting miracle profits. Investors are looking carefully at assets, liabilities and revenues added up. The market will adjust what Oracle's stock is worth after seeing what the whole thing is worth. For Oracle's management, it's crunch time because their financials will be scrutinized by investors who are looking to see if they got a good deal on Sun or not.
The problem here is supporting developer communities is about making money, or at the least preventing competitors from making money and leaving you behind in the marketplace.
Running code on a coprocessor is not novel in any way. It's what graphics coprocessors are for. This is like patenting a lemonade stand because it is located on the corner rather than in the middle of the block.
This whole thing is a waste of Apple's money. First, a projector and a personal media player are not likely to be confused in the market, even if they have the exact same name. Second, the word "Pod" is a common word, and you simply can't trademark those.
Third, this litigation is FANTASTIC marketing for the little guy, which can put out press release after press release to get free earned media until it looks like they are going to lose. Then they simply change names, sign a "we won't do it again" agreement with Apple, and enjoy more free press.
Why haven't any apps emerged that are a reason for buying an iPhone or Android in and of themselves? What really caused empires to rise and fall has been software. For example:
Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect simply drubbed every other spreadsheet and word processor in the 8/16 bit era. They were simply the reasons that people bought PCs. (Apple survived on a niche market diet powered by HyperCard, PageMaker and Quark)
MS Office and QuickBooks were the reasons people bought Wintel PCs in the 32 bit era. (Apple survived on a niche market diet powered by PageMaker and Quark)
The difference between platforms is smaller in the 64 bit era... but Windows enjoys a great
What are the mobile apps that are so compelling that they drive sales of devices? The closest thing to a killer app I've seen is Google Maps + Navigation for Android... but it's still not at the level that say 1-2-3 was against it's peers...
Users do give a damn when they can't do things that they want to do. I was an early adopter of Android - and it was amazing how many people were smart enough to understand that having GPS that worked while you were on the phone or listening to music mattered. Or that I could download media while checking email and talking on the phone at the same time. Or search on Google maps while talking on the phone and being reminded that someone just posted the couch you were looking for on Craig's List. People talk with each other a lot, and are not nearly as stupid shoppers as you think they are... Thats why Android is outselling iPhone.
Oh, and sales number prove that you are completely wrong on consumer preference - Android devices are outselling iPhone by a substantial margin, despite Apple being given a six month headstart in the market. Of course, Apple's already lost the war because of manufacturing capacity and distribution, and as time goes on the gap will extend because given similar products the one with the lower profitable price and better distribution eventually wins.
Also, from the conversations and research I've done in preparing a new business start up, I've learned from several friends that own development shops that iPhone users spend more money on iTunes content. The problem is that iTunes content is not all applications... That said, I'm not sold on what the truth is concerning each software market. Right now both markets are in land rush mode, and there's little profit in either - unless you count project money for writing apps for someone else.
It's not surprise that IE users are quick to try IE9 - IE7 and IE8 suck.
IE7 and 8 are too slow, don't work right with many websites (it's amazing how many sites look different with a browser that support CSS round corners), are difficult to use (Internet Options, security zones, and the functionality blocker ribbon works anyone) and offer only the advantage of being able to access sites built exclusively for Internet Explorer (that number is dwindling and will continue to as people continue to run to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and other alternatives).
I was very disappointed in Danica Patrick for selling out to them. She completely lost all respect she had earned as the best or most prominent female Indy/Nascar driver (for the most part, I don't watch Car racing).
Turns out Danica was overrated. My daughters (who live in Indianapolis, and therefore are constantly exposed to motor sports) all seem to like Sarah Fisher more than Danica because Sarah just drives. And owns her own team.
After looking at all the companies that Righthaven has sued and the fact that they are suing a person who will likely replace Harry Reid in their own state, you've got to wonder what they are thinking.
Not likely. If Angle wins, and that is highly likely, Righthaven can look forward to subtle changes in the law. Politicians do not see being trolled as a "favor" and tend to be very good at using power to punish their enemies.
Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets
Dell was always an "assembler" and not a "manufacturer" of computers. Today's products need a manufacturer as they are not a chassis with plug in components.
I don't think Dell is dead, or has no chance in the future, because they have money and market share. That's not a forever thing, though. Dell needs to change how they approach creating new products. Dell needs to focus on creating products that haven't crossed the chasm yet. Dell keeps trying to launch products after the product has become mainstream, instead of getting a position in a growth market. Dell could also focus on creating disruptive products, like iPad has been for Fujitsu and Motion's tablet business. Dell's got to get some creativity. They can't just continue to be a knockoff maker forever... you've got to have the guts to just do something completely different.
Dell always was a low cost knock-off product. They were never innovators, and never developed a real R&D function in their company. They basically sold the same thing as the other guy, except for less money. The difference is that HP, IBM, and for a while, Compaq would create products that Dell did no have at all (there was a time where you could get servers from IBM, Compaq and HP, but not from Dell). Dell would wait until the component manufacturers would have the commodity parts (depending on market size that would be weeks, months or a year or so) , and then would bring a less expensive machine to market. For desktops, since Intel provided chipsets and reference boards, there was no lag, and often Dell was quicker than others to put the latest CPU in a desktop. HP, IBM and Compaq had to finance building machines in advance and shipping them to resellers. Dell would take orders this week, and make and ship the PCs next week. This practice worked in Dell's favor as components would drop in price, allowing them to lower prices faster than their "channel bound" competitors.
Ironically, the last of the big 80s and 90s PC makers is Apple, who has continued to invest in R&D, still has a big channel (even though they have retail stores) and is using their ability to create new products (iStuff) and/or superior products (Mac) to extract very healthy profit margins from a recession market. Dell wants some profit, but is stuck being the low cost leader and doesn't have the internal resources to fix the problem, and their friends in Redmond aren't exactly producing the electrifying new software that makes people want a new PC.
1. Caldera sells OpenLinux. 2. Caldera sells company to a group of stupid, evil or evil & stupid investors. 3. SCO seeing Linux eating up their microcomputer Unix biz sells it to Caldera. 4 Caldera rebrands as SCO and the real SCO changes in to Tarantella. 6. SCO tries to get everyone who has linux to give them some money for a promise not to sue or something because they own Unix. 7. SCO decides that IBM and AutoZone are good targets for a bizarre lawsuit, despite both firms having at least as much money as God. 8. Somewhere along the line someone points out that SCO does not actually own the copyrights to Unix, and they distributed Linux under the GPL for a long time. And bragged to the public about it. 9. SCO sues Novel hoping that the judge will have a bad day and just give the copyrights to Unix to them and break a contract that they accidentally bought from SCO. 10 SCO sees that the judge is not going to have a bad day, and files for bankruptcy to get another judge, who may have a bad day and make SCO's fantasy reality. 11. Bankruptcy judge does not have a bad day. 12. SCO tries to appeal, but appears to have ran out of gas.
Brother is making some great printers these days, and have Linux support for almost all of them. Linux Support = support for CUPS, LPD and SANE. Many of the drivers are GPL, so you can get code from Brother's website. Many of the drivers are in Ubuntu's repos, so most of the time you can just apt-get.
Most print features are implemented. Also, Brother's ink is not chipped, and you can buy genuine Brother ink for about $9/cartridge or get third party ink for about $3 per cartridge (you can probably refill, too, but for $3 per, why mess with it). The cleaning cycles don't tap the ink on Brother printers the way they do on Lexmark either. I had a Lexmark years ago that would get about 40 pages out over one month and need $60 worth of ink.
The only thing with Brother is that their printers are $10-$20 more than the comparable Lexmark or Brother, but you'll get you $20 back on the first round of ink.
We have a draft, but have not used it since Viet Nam. The reason? People volunteer to do the job. By volunteer, I mean volunteer to serve with the same rights, chance of death, and poor working conditions a conscript would have (follow orders or else). Without the volunteers, there would certainly be a draft... And so it goes that the young people who server do so on behalf of others who do not forced to do so.
If you think we fight wars only with people who don't look like us, you are ignoring history and blind to economics. "Supporting the troops" is simply a way to voice that you understand that they are in harm's way on your behalf, despite your opposition to the fact they've been put in harm's way for reasons you disagree with. Those that say you can't support the troops while opposing the war have issues with simple logic.
Slashdot Mirror
Capitalsm isn't a "failed experiment." If anything, it's led to the tech sector thriving for the past 30 years while much of the US economy stagnated or atrophied.
What is going on here is simple: Oracle is pursuing their strategy to create profits. Weather they succeed or fail is yet to be determined. In the short run, it appears Oracle is doing everything they can to shoot themselves in the foot, but mergers like this aren't short term propositions, and they aren't judged on how they feel.
Ok, so some very smart people are leaving, and are going to do one of three things:
* Work for someone else creating new products and services
* Start their own companies... one or two of which could hit it big.
* Retire (make room for younger people).
* A few will be bitter and go make cheeseburgers.
Any way you go, it's a net win for the economy, as a whole, except the transition period is filled with uncertainty and sucks for the people caught up in it. If you don't like transitions, then find some partners and start your own company. If not, learn to deal with the fact that jobs are not forever.
Second, your suggestion that they need to retain the money they paid plus make more for the deal to be profitable misses how value is created in mergers like this:
* I pay out X Billion in assets to buy assets worth Y Billion that come with a proportional cash flow.
* I only need to create value beyond the gap between X-Y for the deal to be a financial success, assuming that the assets I bought maintain their value. It's not that tough to get a merger like Sun to work, even if Sun loses a significant amount or revenue and Oracle stays on track. Where mergers blow up is when both the buyer and bought loose revenue or shed assets.
No one is looking at Oracle+Sun over a quarter and expecting miracle profits. Investors are looking carefully at assets, liabilities and revenues added up. The market will adjust what Oracle's stock is worth after seeing what the whole thing is worth. For Oracle's management, it's crunch time because their financials will be scrutinized by investors who are looking to see if they got a good deal on Sun or not.
The problem here is supporting developer communities is about making money, or at the least preventing competitors from making money and leaving you behind in the marketplace.
Running code on a coprocessor is not novel in any way. It's what graphics coprocessors are for. This is like patenting a lemonade stand because it is located on the corner rather than in the middle of the block.
This whole thing is a waste of Apple's money. First, a projector and a personal media player are not likely to be confused in the market, even if they have the exact same name. Second, the word "Pod" is a common word, and you simply can't trademark those.
Third, this litigation is FANTASTIC marketing for the little guy, which can put out press release after press release to get free earned media until it looks like they are going to lose. Then they simply change names, sign a "we won't do it again" agreement with Apple, and enjoy more free press.
Sir, you are offending drunken sailors everywhere with this.
Here's a question for everyone:
Why haven't any apps emerged that are a reason for buying an iPhone or Android in and of themselves? What really caused empires to rise and fall has been software. For example:
Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect simply drubbed every other spreadsheet and word processor in the 8/16 bit era. They were simply the reasons that people bought PCs. (Apple survived on a niche market diet powered by HyperCard, PageMaker and Quark)
MS Office and QuickBooks were the reasons people bought Wintel PCs in the 32 bit era. (Apple survived on a niche market diet powered by PageMaker and Quark)
The difference between platforms is smaller in the 64 bit era... but Windows enjoys a great
What are the mobile apps that are so compelling that they drive sales of devices? The closest thing to a killer app I've seen is Google Maps + Navigation for Android... but it's still not at the level that say 1-2-3 was against it's peers...
Users do give a damn when they can't do things that they want to do. I was an early adopter of Android - and it was amazing how many people were smart enough to understand that having GPS that worked while you were on the phone or listening to music mattered. Or that I could download media while checking email and talking on the phone at the same time. Or search on Google maps while talking on the phone and being reminded that someone just posted the couch you were looking for on Craig's List. People talk with each other a lot, and are not nearly as stupid shoppers as you think they are... Thats why Android is outselling iPhone.
Oh, and sales number prove that you are completely wrong on consumer preference - Android devices are outselling iPhone by a substantial margin, despite Apple being given a six month headstart in the market. Of course, Apple's already lost the war because of manufacturing capacity and distribution, and as time goes on the gap will extend because given similar products the one with the lower profitable price and better distribution eventually wins.
Also, from the conversations and research I've done in preparing a new business start up, I've learned from several friends that own development shops that iPhone users spend more money on iTunes content. The problem is that iTunes content is not all applications... That said, I'm not sold on what the truth is concerning each software market. Right now both markets are in land rush mode, and there's little profit in either - unless you count project money for writing apps for someone else.
It's not surprise that IE users are quick to try IE9 - IE7 and IE8 suck.
IE7 and 8 are too slow, don't work right with many websites (it's amazing how many sites look different with a browser that support CSS round corners), are difficult to use (Internet Options, security zones, and the functionality blocker ribbon works anyone) and offer only the advantage of being able to access sites built exclusively for Internet Explorer (that number is dwindling and will continue to as people continue to run to Firefox, Chrome, Safari and other alternatives).
If defining a cloud requires four pages, typed double spaced, you are doing it wrong.
-- Tech Marketing Guy.
It looks like a Ning site without the ads.
I was very disappointed in Danica Patrick for selling out to them. She completely lost all respect she had earned as the best or most prominent female Indy/Nascar driver (for the most part, I don't watch Car racing).
Turns out Danica was overrated. My daughters (who live in Indianapolis, and therefore are constantly exposed to motor sports) all seem to like Sarah Fisher more than Danica because Sarah just drives. And owns her own team.
Apple is really worried about with Flash developed apps coming out is that a ton a crappy stuff
That explains all the fart applications.
I wasn't talking about the lawsuit, I was talking about the election.
After looking at all the companies that Righthaven has sued and the fact that they are suing a person who will likely replace Harry Reid in their own state, you've got to wonder what they are thinking.
The people who originally wrote the articles don't even benefit from it.
This is why copyright reform is necessary. It sums up the problem in the most concise way possible.
Not likely. If Angle wins, and that is highly likely, Righthaven can look forward to subtle changes in the law. Politicians do not see being trolled as a "favor" and tend to be very good at using power to punish their enemies.
Dell's problem is its founding business model - mass-assemble PCs using standardization and volume to bring costs down - doesn't work on any of the new electronics markets
Dell was always an "assembler" and not a "manufacturer" of computers. Today's products need a manufacturer as they are not a chassis with plug in components.
I don't think Dell is dead, or has no chance in the future, because they have money and market share. That's not a forever thing, though. Dell needs to change how they approach creating new products. Dell needs to focus on creating products that haven't crossed the chasm yet. Dell keeps trying to launch products after the product has become mainstream, instead of getting a position in a growth market. Dell could also focus on creating disruptive products, like iPad has been for Fujitsu and Motion's tablet business. Dell's got to get some creativity. They can't just continue to be a knockoff maker forever... you've got to have the guts to just do something completely different.
Dell always was a low cost knock-off product. They were never innovators, and never developed a real R&D function in their company. They basically sold the same thing as the other guy, except for less money. The difference is that HP, IBM, and for a while, Compaq would create products that Dell did no have at all (there was a time where you could get servers from IBM, Compaq and HP, but not from Dell). Dell would wait until the component manufacturers would have the commodity parts (depending on market size that would be weeks, months or a year or so) , and then would bring a less expensive machine to market. For desktops, since Intel provided chipsets and reference boards, there was no lag, and often Dell was quicker than others to put the latest CPU in a desktop. HP, IBM and Compaq had to finance building machines in advance and shipping them to resellers. Dell would take orders this week, and make and ship the PCs next week. This practice worked in Dell's favor as components would drop in price, allowing them to lower prices faster than their "channel bound" competitors.
Ironically, the last of the big 80s and 90s PC makers is Apple, who has continued to invest in R&D, still has a big channel (even though they have retail stores) and is using their ability to create new products (iStuff) and/or superior products (Mac) to extract very healthy profit margins from a recession market. Dell wants some profit, but is stuck being the low cost leader and doesn't have the internal resources to fix the problem, and their friends in Redmond aren't exactly producing the electrifying new software that makes people want a new PC.
Step 13 is step 1 in the sequel.
Ancient nubians used moldy grain when making beer.
(Yes, streptomyces is a bacteria, but colonies look like and are often confused with mold.)
Sometimes a duck is just a duck. Sometimes, a duck is a cornish game hen in an inflatable suit.
Ok, let's see if I have the story right:
1. Caldera sells OpenLinux.
2. Caldera sells company to a group of stupid, evil or evil & stupid investors.
3. SCO seeing Linux eating up their microcomputer Unix biz sells it to Caldera.
4 Caldera rebrands as SCO and the real SCO changes in to Tarantella.
6. SCO tries to get everyone who has linux to give them some money for a promise not to sue or something because they own Unix.
7. SCO decides that IBM and AutoZone are good targets for a bizarre lawsuit, despite both firms having at least as much money as God.
8. Somewhere along the line someone points out that SCO does not actually own the copyrights to Unix, and they distributed Linux under the GPL for a long time. And bragged to the public about it.
9. SCO sues Novel hoping that the judge will have a bad day and just give the copyrights to Unix to them and break a contract that they accidentally bought from SCO.
10 SCO sees that the judge is not going to have a bad day, and files for bankruptcy to get another judge, who may have a bad day and make SCO's fantasy reality.
11. Bankruptcy judge does not have a bad day.
12. SCO tries to appeal, but appears to have ran out of gas.
Brother is making some great printers these days, and have Linux support for almost all of them. Linux Support = support for CUPS, LPD and SANE. Many of the drivers are GPL, so you can get code from Brother's website. Many of the drivers are in Ubuntu's repos, so most of the time you can just apt-get.
Most print features are implemented. Also, Brother's ink is not chipped, and you can buy genuine Brother ink for about $9/cartridge or get third party ink for about $3 per cartridge (you can probably refill, too, but for $3 per, why mess with it). The cleaning cycles don't tap the ink on Brother printers the way they do on Lexmark either. I had a Lexmark years ago that would get about 40 pages out over one month and need $60 worth of ink.
The only thing with Brother is that their printers are $10-$20 more than the comparable Lexmark or Brother, but you'll get you $20 back on the first round of ink.
We have a draft, but have not used it since Viet Nam. The reason? People volunteer to do the job. By volunteer, I mean volunteer to serve with the same rights, chance of death, and poor working conditions a conscript would have (follow orders or else). Without the volunteers, there would certainly be a draft... And so it goes that the young people who server do so on behalf of others who do not forced to do so.
Obama asked for the sack of shit. I believe he campaigned on his ability to handle sacks of shit better than the other guy.
If you think we fight wars only with people who don't look like us, you are ignoring history and blind to economics. "Supporting the troops" is simply a way to voice that you understand that they are in harm's way on your behalf, despite your opposition to the fact they've been put in harm's way for reasons you disagree with. Those that say you can't support the troops while opposing the war have issues with simple logic.