'Profits' in the economic sense are not what the real world thinks of as profits. Things CAN be sold at a 'real world profit' but not for an 'economic profit'.
'Cost' includes opportunity costs, which are never on a balance sheet. They work like this:
Say you are a programmer making $30/hr. You go work for McDonald's instead at $6/hr. You are making a real world profit of $6/hr, but you have an economic loss of $24/hr.
Now, look at the flip side: you work at McDonald's for $6/hr, and begin to work as a programmer for $30/hr. You are making a real world profit of $30/hr, but an economic profit of only $24/hr, because you gave up the next thing you could have done (working at McDonald's).
That's horribly incomplete, and I'd hate for my econ profs to see it, but please don't confuse real-world profit with economic profit. Similar to the/. monkeys offering legal opinions based on a line in someone's sig, the 'no sales at a profit' means of economic and business analysis is not totally correct, due to a difference in terminology between 'experts' and laymen.
You've been around long enough to know that much of the editorial additions are offtopic and petty. I don't like it anymore than you, but complaining about that or Katz is as likely to achieve results as pounding sand.
Had an econ prof who loved international stuff. Now, if you look at the books that the gov't keeps on money/goods/services going into and out of the country, we are talking billions and billions of dollars. But there is a small amount (.1%) that is unaccounted. And there is all sorts of esoteric stuff. How many feather pillows were imported.
Now, my econ prof wanted to do his doctoral thesis on this.1% of international trade (this is based on US. I suspect higher in some countries). His advisor strongly urged him not to. We all assumed because it was too much of a PITA. Our prof assured us no. His prof wouldn't have a problem with that. No, his prof didn't want him to dig too deeply into the underbelly of international trade.
Turns out that a few people have looked into this, and the results are that 90% of the miscellaneous stuff is due to trade by guys from a little island near Italy. Who are particularly private about certain things.
You start a war with the Cosa Nostra if you want. As for me, I'm keeping my guns ready to defend my rights.
(Although I guess comments like that can get you modded out of existence on/. these days)
Re:How about a new Slashdot feature.
on
Linux 2.4.18 Released
·
· Score: 5, Informative
There is a slashbox available with this information. Granted, it won't be in the top right, but it will be on a logged-in user's home page.
Bike is at my father's house right now, or I would check....
I wasn't saying that *A* heated vest would cause problems. I was saying that two heated suits (pants, vest/jacket, and gloves) plus heated grips, ABS, CD Player, cruise, fuel injection, running lights, radar detector, and GPS together might cause a problem.
Also, check out what's going on with cars. No longer are those 12v systems enough. Many are trying to move towards a 42v (?) system that can handle all of the toys on modern cars.
Maybe you need to buy a better bike, one without crap electrics (I know, you really fly the Union Jack, and won't have a bike that doesn't have 'Lucas' proudly embossed on every electric component:)
I've got heated grips, heated seat (came with bike, not by choice) and wife wears a heated vest. And we also have decent riding gear otherwise. But some people have different abilities to generate heat and cope with the loss of it. So some people need active heating.
Here's a joke older than I:
Why do the British like warm beer? Lucas also makes refrigerators.
Not so easy on a touring bike (BMW K12LT) with CD Player, cruise, ABS, fuel injection, and two riders, both with full body heating, heated seats, and heated grips.
I haven't tried it, but I imagine that a full load like that would seriously tax the charging system:)
Slasdot users don't offer constructive criticism too often. I have an "Ask/." that really didn't help, because it asked real world questions
as the polls say, you'd be a fool to use them for any real world data. Too easy to rig. This is why marketing firms get paid money.
The/. cabal does not like airing their laundry in public, or taking comments from the peanut gallery. Check out 'the thread', or any of a number of sources to see what the editors think of the users here.
sorta meta:/. has access to some good computer/technical minds, but has shunned MBA's, marketers, etc. It is kinda like why are so many questions about legal issues, when there are few lawyers here?
Also, what is an acceptable profit? Are the ads sufficient to pay for the bandwidth? How much of MY ISP fee is already paying for that? How much do they need?
I would also like to ask: how much time does running the place take? I've tried before, but can't get an answer. There are a few features added periodically, but that certainly can't take a half dozen people 40+ hours per week. Going through the submission queue can't take too long, considering how many screwups come through it.
So, they need to pay for bandwidth, a few servers and routers, and what else?
Come on guys. Nothing is ever free. There is always a cost. Whether it's a financial cost, opportunity cost, or others, in the end, someone has to pay for it. We have to realize that the last couple of years has been a fluke in the whole economic cycle. There is no possible way that that cycle could have continued.
So close, yet so far.
No, there is not a cost in everything. But there is a payment to be received for everything. The problem is that you applied sound economic principles, but forgot that economics does not deal with dollars. It deals with utility. In most instances, this is sufficient, but not in this case.
For example: I work on brewnix, a Free software program. Nobody pays for it. But I do receive admiration and notice for producing it.
Ad blocking programs are not a bad thing. All ads can do is funnel people into one or more sites. In meatspace, this can be necessary, as finding those places is somewhat difficult. Given the fact that there are essentially zero costs to navigate the net, I can go to sites based on personal recommendations and word of mouth. It takes me, 30 seconds to check out a claim. If I don't like it, so what?
Use this comment as an example. Cost me nothing to check out the place he refers to. And within minutes, there were several people who had already looked at it. Explain how advertising would have helped/hurt, or provided anything that word of mouth couldn't.
Think about it this way, would advertisers pay millions of dollars to advertise during the Super Bowl if they found out that there was a technology that a good population of TV watchers are using to block the super bowl ads?
Yes. Advertising, particularly on TV is not about finding new customers. It is about:
maintaining customers
making those customers feel good about themselves
showing off (particularly to their competitors
Gaining new customers is a bit farther down the list.
So, you get a B- for being able to regurgitate from the book (nothing is free), but a D (at best) for applying it (and especially for forgetting that utility, not money, is the economic factor of import).
Re:GNOME vs KDE for the newbie
on
GNOME 2.0 Beta
·
· Score: 2
On Debian, I think it is tar -jxvf foo.tar.bz2 and on RH, I think it is tar -Ixvf foo.tar.bz2.
Given the behaviour at Fox, NO show should be scheduled for 7 pm Sunday. Like others have said: if it's not football, it's baseball. If it's not baseball, it's...
Always pre-empted. Of course the show never got ratings: it's never on!!!
It kinda makes sense. Seeing as how the 4:00 NFL games are never over until ~7:15, it's easier to let the talking idiots run their collective mouth for another 15 minutes, instead of screwing up the entire evening lineup.
So pull 'that 80's' show garbage, pull the live action Tick, pull Family Guy, but give Futurama a real time slot.
I'd love to have a mod point to erase that 'offtopic' mod. Hopefully I'll see it in M2. Not sure how it could be more ontopic.
But I would like to know in what capacity you observed the actions of this guy. Reader of the paper, staffer, editor, delivered sandwiches? Not that I doubt your characterizations. Having read the piece, I don't doubt a one of them.
'Child' is a very appropriate term; doubly so if half of what you say is the truth.
Agreed. How in the heck can I be sure that they picked the right programs out of about 9000+ available for Debian? I'm sure RH and others have similar numbers. How do I know how it is set up?
If you are running a Linux box, at home, or anywhere, knowing what is there is very important. That much power can be a good thing, or it can be very, very bad.
Look at some of the specialty race cars of the late 60's that were sold as 'street cars' for homologation purposes. I know that the Boss Mustangs and many of the Hemi powered Chryslers had stickers saying "no warranty, you break it, you bought it" etc, etc. Even though these were the highest performance vehicles available at the time (for their intended purpose. No comments from the Porsche/Jaguar crowd). But they were also really dangerous in the hands of the untrained. The person buying this better damned site know what is going on.
Same thing with a Linux box.
Of course, perhaps M$ is best compared to Porsche 911's. Lot's of performance, but they pretend it is safe for the average slob. If you go from your Toyota/Honda FWD into a 911 with a 40/60 weight ratio... Guess you'll be learning mighty quick what oversteer means:) (Yes, I know this is largely corrected on the latest 911. I only hope M$ has fixed this on the latest XP:)
Sounds like my local white box shop. They are a ten minute drive (or less) from my work (and in the same parking lot as my wife's job:). If a machine goes down at work, I drop it off. If I need it back quick, I can get it DELIVERED by the end of the business day. No extra charge. They go the extra mile.
They were hassled about license problems once, but I don't know why. My company has bought over 100 machines from them, and every one has the hologram thingy. (If memory serves, they got some bogus '95 licenses from their supplier, so they wound up with only a few grand in legal bills).
But besides the convenience, there is one big factor in their favor: something breaks, a part is available to fix it. Everything is off the shelf, no custom BS. And by the time you figure S&H, the sales tax is a wash. Not to mention that I get certain perks available only to large HP, Dell, etc. customers: I can custom configure OS settings and so forth prior to delivery. Makes it much easier to install our apps and the latest service packs on a single machine before the drive is ghosted (and then the legit serial number is put in. Relax, I've got a massive box of WinNT CD's).
First thing: did you request a different software package when you bought it? Probably not.
Anyway, did you assign agency to the HP tech? Almost definately not. They SOLD you a device. They did not license it. If the HP tech agreed to the license, that is their problem, not yours.
As far as MD goes, fuck 'em in the ass. Quite honestly, I'm so freakin' bored, I wouldn't mind testing out the legality of the UCITA. Goddamn assholes. We're getting ripped like this with that prick Glendenning in Annapolis, I can't even imagine how bad things would be with the Republicans there.
Anyway, I doubt that the license is binding on you. Just the tech.
Well, then I get them from someone else, and relicense them. See, it is a GPL product. And I don't really have the rights to the code, as I took them from somewhere else online. So, they can't take what I don't have.
Still, for an original production, I can see your point. Although I'm not sure that there is a snowball's chance of that holding up in court.
No, no, no, no. You got it all backwards. You made the assumption that I, a/. reader, read the story before posting blindly. I was going from memory. Seems I got it wrong. My bad.
Don't be so certain. During the Lewinsky-Clinton thing, a bookstore in DC (Politics and Prose??) was asked what books Ms. Lewinsky bought (can't remember the probative value) and they promptly rolled over and let them know.
If the profit margin at bookstores is anything like that of grocery stores, they can't afford the litigation to say no to the gendarme.
I've got a better idea: don't read that book because it sucks.
"Boo, hoo. Everybody is so phony, while I'm so misunderstood. Let me act like a total freak and wonder why nobody likes me. Boo hoo."
Get over it Holden. I thought you were a loser when I was 16, and I still think you are a loser now that I am 29 (and this coming from a stereotypical geek).
Slashdot Mirror
No, no, no, no.
/. monkeys offering legal opinions based on a line in someone's sig, the 'no sales at a profit' means of economic and business analysis is not totally correct, due to a difference in terminology between 'experts' and laymen.
'Profits' in the economic sense are not what the real world thinks of as profits. Things CAN be sold at a 'real world profit' but not for an 'economic profit'.
'Cost' includes opportunity costs, which are never on a balance sheet. They work like this:
Say you are a programmer making $30/hr. You go work for McDonald's instead at $6/hr. You are making a real world profit of $6/hr, but you have an economic loss of $24/hr.
Now, look at the flip side: you work at McDonald's for $6/hr, and begin to work as a programmer for $30/hr. You are making a real world profit of $30/hr, but an economic profit of only $24/hr, because you gave up the next thing you could have done (working at McDonald's).
That's horribly incomplete, and I'd hate for my econ profs to see it, but please don't confuse real-world profit with economic profit. Similar to the
Both:)
I forgot that slashboxes are movable.
You've been around long enough to know that much of the editorial additions are offtopic and petty. I don't like it anymore than you, but complaining about that or Katz is as likely to achieve results as pounding sand.
Sounds funny, but too damned dangerous.
.1% of international trade (this is based on US. I suspect higher in some countries). His advisor strongly urged him not to. We all assumed because it was too much of a PITA. Our prof assured us no. His prof wouldn't have a problem with that. No, his prof didn't want him to dig too deeply into the underbelly of international trade.
/. these days)
Had an econ prof who loved international stuff. Now, if you look at the books that the gov't keeps on money/goods/services going into and out of the country, we are talking billions and billions of dollars. But there is a small amount (.1%) that is unaccounted. And there is all sorts of esoteric stuff. How many feather pillows were imported.
Now, my econ prof wanted to do his doctoral thesis on this
Turns out that a few people have looked into this, and the results are that 90% of the miscellaneous stuff is due to trade by guys from a little island near Italy. Who are particularly private about certain things.
You start a war with the Cosa Nostra if you want. As for me, I'm keeping my guns ready to defend my rights.
(Although I guess comments like that can get you modded out of existence on
There is a slashbox available with this information. Granted, it won't be in the top right, but it will be on a logged-in user's home page.
Bike is at my father's house right now, or I would check....
I wasn't saying that *A* heated vest would cause problems. I was saying that two heated suits (pants, vest/jacket, and gloves) plus heated grips, ABS, CD Player, cruise, fuel injection, running lights, radar detector, and GPS together might cause a problem.
Also, check out what's going on with cars. No longer are those 12v systems enough. Many are trying to move towards a 42v (?) system that can handle all of the toys on modern cars.
Maybe you need to buy a better bike, one without crap electrics (I know, you really fly the Union Jack, and won't have a bike that doesn't have 'Lucas' proudly embossed on every electric component:)
I've got heated grips, heated seat (came with bike, not by choice) and wife wears a heated vest. And we also have decent riding gear otherwise. But some people have different abilities to generate heat and cope with the loss of it. So some people need active heating.
Here's a joke older than I:
Why do the British like warm beer?
Lucas also makes refrigerators.
Keep the shiny side up.
Not so easy on a touring bike (BMW K12LT) with CD Player, cruise, ABS, fuel injection, and two riders, both with full body heating, heated seats, and heated grips.
I haven't tried it, but I imagine that a full load like that would seriously tax the charging system:)
Also, what is an acceptable profit? Are the ads sufficient to pay for the bandwidth? How much of MY ISP fee is already paying for that? How much do they need?
I would also like to ask: how much time does running the place take? I've tried before, but can't get an answer. There are a few features added periodically, but that certainly can't take a half dozen people 40+ hours per week. Going through the submission queue can't take too long, considering how many screwups come through it.
So, they need to pay for bandwidth, a few servers and routers, and what else?
So close, yet so far.
No, there is not a cost in everything. But there is a payment to be received for everything. The problem is that you applied sound economic principles, but forgot that economics does not deal with dollars. It deals with utility. In most instances, this is sufficient, but not in this case.
Go and read cathedral and the bazaar for a good study of this difference.
For example: I work on brewnix, a Free software program. Nobody pays for it. But I do receive admiration and notice for producing it.
Ad blocking programs are not a bad thing. All ads can do is funnel people into one or more sites. In meatspace, this can be necessary, as finding those places is somewhat difficult. Given the fact that there are essentially zero costs to navigate the net, I can go to sites based on personal recommendations and word of mouth. It takes me, 30 seconds to check out a claim. If I don't like it, so what?
Use this comment as an example. Cost me nothing to check out the place he refers to. And within minutes, there were several people who had already looked at it. Explain how advertising would have helped/hurt, or provided anything that word of mouth couldn't.
Yes. Advertising, particularly on TV is not about finding new customers. It is about:
Gaining new customers is a bit farther down the list.
So, you get a B- for being able to regurgitate from the book (nothing is free), but a D (at best) for applying it (and especially for forgetting that utility, not money, is the economic factor of import).
On Debian, I think it is tar -jxvf foo.tar.bz2 and on RH, I think it is tar -Ixvf foo.tar.bz2.
Try it out.
Of course I love my job. Where else could I spend so much time on Slashdot?
Given the behaviour at Fox, NO show should be scheduled for 7 pm Sunday. Like others have said: if it's not football, it's baseball. If it's not baseball, it's...
Always pre-empted. Of course the show never got ratings: it's never on!!!
It kinda makes sense. Seeing as how the 4:00 NFL games are never over until ~7:15, it's easier to let the talking idiots run their collective mouth for another 15 minutes, instead of screwing up the entire evening lineup.
So pull 'that 80's' show garbage, pull the live action Tick, pull Family Guy, but give Futurama a real time slot.
I'd love to have a mod point to erase that 'offtopic' mod. Hopefully I'll see it in M2. Not sure how it could be more ontopic.
But I would like to know in what capacity you observed the actions of this guy. Reader of the paper, staffer, editor, delivered sandwiches? Not that I doubt your characterizations. Having read the piece, I don't doubt a one of them.
'Child' is a very appropriate term; doubly so if half of what you say is the truth.
Good point. Do you get the CD's if you buy Linux pre-installed?
And if so, did they scratch out the 'CheapBytes' logo on them?
Agreed. How in the heck can I be sure that they picked the right programs out of about 9000+ available for Debian? I'm sure RH and others have similar numbers. How do I know how it is set up?
If you are running a Linux box, at home, or anywhere, knowing what is there is very important. That much power can be a good thing, or it can be very, very bad.
Look at some of the specialty race cars of the late 60's that were sold as 'street cars' for homologation purposes. I know that the Boss Mustangs and many of the Hemi powered Chryslers had stickers saying "no warranty, you break it, you bought it" etc, etc. Even though these were the highest performance vehicles available at the time (for their intended purpose. No comments from the Porsche/Jaguar crowd). But they were also really dangerous in the hands of the untrained. The person buying this better damned site know what is going on.
Same thing with a Linux box.
Of course, perhaps M$ is best compared to Porsche 911's. Lot's of performance, but they pretend it is safe for the average slob. If you go from your Toyota/Honda FWD into a 911 with a 40/60 weight ratio... Guess you'll be learning mighty quick what oversteer means:) (Yes, I know this is largely corrected on the latest 911. I only hope M$ has fixed this on the latest XP:)
which makes the comment about being forced into accepting it by an HP tech a bit moot. Thanks for verifying that. I wasn't sure, so didn't mention it.
I yank woody almost every day. I bet most
Sounds like my local white box shop. They are a ten minute drive (or less) from my work (and in the same parking lot as my wife's job:). If a machine goes down at work, I drop it off. If I need it back quick, I can get it DELIVERED by the end of the business day. No extra charge. They go the extra mile.
They were hassled about license problems once, but I don't know why. My company has bought over 100 machines from them, and every one has the hologram thingy. (If memory serves, they got some bogus '95 licenses from their supplier, so they wound up with only a few grand in legal bills).
But besides the convenience, there is one big factor in their favor: something breaks, a part is available to fix it. Everything is off the shelf, no custom BS. And by the time you figure S&H, the sales tax is a wash. Not to mention that I get certain perks available only to large HP, Dell, etc. customers: I can custom configure OS settings and so forth prior to delivery. Makes it much easier to install our apps and the latest service packs on a single machine before the drive is ghosted (and then the legit serial number is put in. Relax, I've got a massive box of WinNT CD's).
First thing: did you request a different software package when you bought it? Probably not.
Anyway, did you assign agency to the HP tech? Almost definately not. They SOLD you a device. They did not license it. If the HP tech agreed to the license, that is their problem, not yours.
As far as MD goes, fuck 'em in the ass. Quite honestly, I'm so freakin' bored, I wouldn't mind testing out the legality of the UCITA. Goddamn assholes. We're getting ripped like this with that prick Glendenning in Annapolis, I can't even imagine how bad things would be with the Republicans there.
Anyway, I doubt that the license is binding on you. Just the tech.
Well, then I get them from someone else, and relicense them. See, it is a GPL product. And I don't really have the rights to the code, as I took them from somewhere else online. So, they can't take what I don't have.
Still, for an original production, I can see your point. Although I'm not sure that there is a snowball's chance of that holding up in court.
No, no, no, no. You got it all backwards. You made the assumption that I, a /. reader, read the story before posting blindly. I was going from memory. Seems I got it wrong. My bad.
I'd rather drive (or ride). Half the fun *is* getting there. Except for Kansas and the Texas panhandle, the 'flyover states' are kinda interesting.
Don't be so certain. During the Lewinsky-Clinton thing, a bookstore in DC (Politics and Prose??) was asked what books Ms. Lewinsky bought (can't remember the probative value) and they promptly rolled over and let them know.
If the profit margin at bookstores is anything like that of grocery stores, they can't afford the litigation to say no to the gendarme.
I've got a better idea: don't read that book because it sucks.
"Boo, hoo. Everybody is so phony, while I'm so misunderstood. Let me act like a total freak and wonder why nobody likes me. Boo hoo."
Get over it Holden. I thought you were a loser when I was 16, and I still think you are a loser now that I am 29 (and this coming from a stereotypical geek).