That's the whole reason US money is worth something, because the government guarantees they will accept it in payment of taxes. Um. Nope. The US dollar is worth something because it has a limited supply.
Money works in the same way as any other commodity. It's like coffee or oil. High demand and low supply increases the value of the currency compared to other commodities, everything appears to become cheaper (deflation). High supply of the currency or reduced demand for it reduces the value of the money with respect to other commodities and everything appears to get more expensive (inflation). You have inflation at the moment because the US government is paying for Iraq by printing (sorry, "borrowing") money.
Now that's been explained, go look up "fractional reserve banking" and "debt based monetary system" on wikipedia.
We are slowly drowning in debt. Today they are all based on debt, every dollar, euro or pound is a unit of somebody else's debt. You literally can't have money without debt, the more debt the more money.
The symptoms you describe are features of such a system. I call it "the winnowing". The inevitable sorting of people into debtors and creditors.
Read up on debt based monetary system and fractional reserve banking.
You can thank Richard Nixon BTW. 15th August 1971 the financial world altered completely. The USA declared bankruptcy and haha, nobody cared or noticed.
The advice you get from parents and grandparents about money is probably wrong, they grew up in a fundamentally different monetary system.
Human nature in the western culture, you mean. IIRC American Indians, many African cultures, and even our old agricultural society were much respectful of the environment. Current myopic stance started with the industrial revolution, which i suspect was carried off by few powerful people. You're dreaming. Life is and always has been a brutal affair, all the way back to the goo we came from.
What do you think happened to the sabre tooth tigers, the mammoths? We ate them, thousands of years ago we drove them to extinction with nothing more than spears.
It's the nature of all life to expand until it reaches the limit of the carrying capacity of it's environment. This is the only equilibrium. It isn't respect or philosophy. Starvation is what keeps all life "in tune" with it's environment.
That you have N hundred thousand (million?) dollars worth of developer, administrator, user skill, experience, time, training invested in he current (working) solution and any change would have to take account of requirement to re-spend that N hundred thousand (million?) dollars worth of money. This being over and above the capital cost of the new standard and the cost of the implementation project.
Then, as a shareholder (you are a shareholder as well, aren't you?) you ask if that's the best way to spend the IT budget by replacing a system which seems to be doing the job with already sunk costs.
Spending on this kind of standardisation effort is rarely worth it. Basically, for a 10% profitable company, the savings would have to be 10 * more than simply not spending the money in the first place.
But every ton of CO2 released into the atmoshere has a devastating effect on our lives. Really? It does? What exactly? Other than a lot of handwaving, media hysterics and politicians threatening to bring the economy to a halt in various ways I'm at a loss to see any significant effect (never mind a devastating one) on my life.
Capitalism in action. Fuck the environment unless it makes you money. This is human nature ((Actually, it's more than human nature, it's the nature of all life), nothing to do with capitalism. Socialist states are as bad or worse environmentally.
maybe they should carry out tests in more real conditions- it may not be an issue if you are ina sterile room with a printer, but lets face it, thats not gonna happen. That'd be a problem for your employer rather than HP. Course, figures for emissions would be helpful for employers to decide where to site printers or how many might cause a problem.
The same thing that's their incentive to maintain all the other things local government provides The reason the politicians want to provide you with WiFI is because it will buy your vote. In 5 years when the technology is outdated and expensive to maintain, it will be an entirely different matter where it's simply another cost to the taxpayer whether they want it or not.
Fire departments are a bad analogy, they are required by law to maintain a certain level of service because fire spreads.
representing the people they serve? The one that won't be profit seeking (other than providing nominal tax dollars to fund other services)? The one whose pricing, serving level, and whatnot would be controlled by the citizenry at the city council level? You must be new.
If you don't enjoy that kind of work, WHY FOR FUCK'S SAKE would you ENLIST IN THE ARMY? Patriotism. It's a way of extending the natural instinct for loyalty to your genetic group to the oil interests of US multinationals.
Why else do you think they have you waving flags and singing anthems?
When I was in high school ("Gymnasium" as we call it over here in Europe) In Austria or Germany. In Scotland, England and Wales it's "Secondary or High School". In France, "Lycée". etc etc.
This is the exact logic I disagree with. Web browsing, email and word processing are easy to say but they all take substantial amounts of ram and cpu power. Then throw in the essential virus/malware scanner and firewall and you'll burn that one gig of ram in no time. You could stick Ubuntu on it and it'll be fine for the next 5 years.
For big business, it's down to either RedHat or SuSE because they graciously allow you pay huge amounts of money for support, training and so on. Debian is fine but the lack of "The Debian Company" means it's more limited to non critical roles or small businesses/non profit organisations. Ubuntu is more for home users.
People do not understand quality because they refuse to become educated enough to make a decision based on quality. so they look at price. High price = quality right! that Sony Viao is a far better laptop than that lenovo, it's more expensive! That Ferrari is far better than that ford,GM,toyota... it's way more expensive. This is why brands exist in the first place. It allows people to attach reputation to a particular product.
However. Different brands have different reputations. Ferraris, Ducatis have the reputation for being red, very fast and with temperamental reliability. In terms of quality, these are the things that define high quality, where the "very fast" is far more important to the buyer than the temperamental reliability.
If you want reliability, buy a Honda. They have a reputation for sacrificing "very fast" in favour of reliable. A quality Honda is a reliable machine that will "just work". A quality Ferrari is a machine which will take you 0-60 in 4 seconds flat, go round corners like it's on rails and wear through a set of tyres in less than 10,000 miles.
Problem is it takes education, LOTS of education to buy smart and for quality. Education is not what the consumer wants to hear, they want to buy their new "ooh shiney!" right now. Actually the problem is inappropriate quality information, not education. Person A is a gamer, for them the video FPS value is absolutely crucial. Person B wants a new computer to write letters to his maiden aunt. He asks person A for help because they "know computers". Person A looks through the market and picks the fastest machine on the market, big heatsinks, liquid cooling, 21" monitor and it costs a fortune. The different measures of needs, qualities and assumptions lead to inappropriate purchases.
Of course, salespeople, marketing and advertising exists to muddy the waters further, if everyone found it easy to find the qualities they want then they wouldn't overspend.
There's a second force in play. The need to show off. And it is a basic human desire though I have no particular sympathy for people who overspend inappropriately in order to show off. Basically, look at me, I can afford a Ferrari. Look at me I can afford a Sony. People who do so are attempting to advertise to the opposite sex that they have the requisite resources to bring up offspring.
You don't understand people. Make something cheap, it simply gets used more. If gas dropped in price tomorrow to half it's current value, in a few years you'd be lucky if cars were getting 15mpg. People literally consume until it hurts.
Ok, imagine a new power source appears. Very cheap, very efficient. GM and Ford switch their engines to use it. What happens to the price of gas? It drops until it's as cheap or cheaper than the new source and as i said, car engines will get bigger, more powerful and thirstier to compensate. No conspiracy necessary, just producers giving people what they want.
Also. Hydrogen fuel cells are a red herring. Ask someone where the hydrogen is coming from, and how efficient the production is. Never mind the problems of distribution and storage.
Slashdot Mirror
Money works in the same way as any other commodity. It's like coffee or oil. High demand and low supply increases the value of the currency compared to other commodities, everything appears to become cheaper (deflation). High supply of the currency or reduced demand for it reduces the value of the money with respect to other commodities and everything appears to get more expensive (inflation). You have inflation at the moment because the US government is paying for Iraq by printing (sorry, "borrowing") money.
Now that's been explained, go look up "fractional reserve banking" and "debt based monetary system" on wikipedia.
Easyjet is restoring the diversity.
The symptoms you describe are features of such a system. I call it "the winnowing". The inevitable sorting of people into debtors and creditors.
Read up on debt based monetary system and fractional reserve banking.
You can thank Richard Nixon BTW. 15th August 1971 the financial world altered completely. The USA declared bankruptcy and haha, nobody cared or noticed.
The advice you get from parents and grandparents about money is probably wrong, they grew up in a fundamentally different monetary system.
Supposed to be infinitely small and all that.
Our solar system isn't native to the milky way.
http://www.viewzone.com/milkyway.html
What do you think happened to the sabre tooth tigers, the mammoths? We ate them, thousands of years ago we drove them to extinction with nothing more than spears.
It's the nature of all life to expand until it reaches the limit of the carrying capacity of it's environment. This is the only equilibrium. It isn't respect or philosophy. Starvation is what keeps all life "in tune" with it's environment.
Or rather...
That you have N hundred thousand (million?) dollars worth of developer, administrator, user skill, experience, time, training invested in he current (working) solution and any change would have to take account of requirement to re-spend that N hundred thousand (million?) dollars worth of money. This being over and above the capital cost of the new standard and the cost of the implementation project.
Then, as a shareholder (you are a shareholder as well, aren't you?) you ask if that's the best way to spend the IT budget by replacing a system which seems to be doing the job with already sunk costs.
Spending on this kind of standardisation effort is rarely worth it. Basically, for a 10% profitable company, the savings would have to be 10 * more than simply not spending the money in the first place.
HTH.
Hope This Helps.
Fire departments are a bad analogy, they are required by law to maintain a certain level of service because fire spreads.
Reminds me of geocentrism. Works for a while but the exceptions and problems build until it's over complex and unwieldy.
http://www.personaltours.ca/niagara-info.html
Why else do you think they have you waving flags and singing anthems?
IBM? I don't recall that distribution.
For big business, it's down to either RedHat or SuSE because they graciously allow you pay huge amounts of money for support, training and so on. Debian is fine but the lack of "The Debian Company" means it's more limited to non critical roles or small businesses/non profit organisations. Ubuntu is more for home users.
However. Different brands have different reputations. Ferraris, Ducatis have the reputation for being red, very fast and with temperamental reliability. In terms of quality, these are the things that define high quality, where the "very fast" is far more important to the buyer than the temperamental reliability.
If you want reliability, buy a Honda. They have a reputation for sacrificing "very fast" in favour of reliable. A quality Honda is a reliable machine that will "just work". A quality Ferrari is a machine which will take you 0-60 in 4 seconds flat, go round corners like it's on rails and wear through a set of tyres in less than 10,000 miles. Problem is it takes education, LOTS of education to buy smart and for quality. Education is not what the consumer wants to hear, they want to buy their new "ooh shiney!" right now. Actually the problem is inappropriate quality information, not education. Person A is a gamer, for them the video FPS value is absolutely crucial. Person B wants a new computer to write letters to his maiden aunt. He asks person A for help because they "know computers". Person A looks through the market and picks the fastest machine on the market, big heatsinks, liquid cooling, 21" monitor and it costs a fortune. The different measures of needs, qualities and assumptions lead to inappropriate purchases.
Of course, salespeople, marketing and advertising exists to muddy the waters further, if everyone found it easy to find the qualities they want then they wouldn't overspend.
There's a second force in play. The need to show off. And it is a basic human desire though I have no particular sympathy for people who overspend inappropriately in order to show off. Basically, look at me, I can afford a Ferrari. Look at me I can afford a Sony. People who do so are attempting to advertise to the opposite sex that they have the requisite resources to bring up offspring.
You don't understand people. Make something cheap, it simply gets used more. If gas dropped in price tomorrow to half it's current value, in a few years you'd be lucky if cars were getting 15mpg. People literally consume until it hurts.
Ok, imagine a new power source appears. Very cheap, very efficient. GM and Ford switch their engines to use it. What happens to the price of gas? It drops until it's as cheap or cheaper than the new source and as i said, car engines will get bigger, more powerful and thirstier to compensate. No conspiracy necessary, just producers giving people what they want.
Also. Hydrogen fuel cells are a red herring. Ask someone where the hydrogen is coming from, and how efficient the production is. Never mind the problems of distribution and storage.
Ooh. All rss feeds in the one place.
Hmm. I must patent that.
I suspect that if they charged less, fewer people would buy it.