Just like with Digital Rights Management / Defective by Design, you see a lot of silly bullish attitude from geeks on this site: "Ever heard of the Streisand Effect? All DRM will eventually be beaten!"
This is a serious attack on people's rights. What people are forgetting is that while this Welsh footballers privacy is being protected, the big brother's star Imogen Thomas' right to publish accounts about her own private life is impeded. In this particular case, this may seem irrelevant, after all, she's just a gold digger looking to make some money selling her story, right? But what if some famous actor / sports star slept with your wife and when you wanted to expose the wanker, he slaps down a super-injunction on you. How humiliated would you feel? And what if this was actually about something that had serious public interest?
Just like with DRM, bullishly stating that "we'll always beat them" is besides the point. Just because YOU [tm] may have the means and no qualms about breaking this stupidity imposed on you by law, that doesn't mean everyone are willing to break the law and open themselves up to the legal consequences.
AND: the fact that Twitter is American is more or less meaningless. Since they operate in Britain, they have to abide by British law and may well have to give up the names of the people involved. And you know what? Chances are they live in Britain.
This is serious stuff, people's rights are under threat, and arrogance doesn't help anyone.
What is now to stop all water companies in the US from putting the same clause in their contracts and stop giving a shit about water safety because the worst that can happen is toothless arbitration? If you don't like it, you don't have to have water, right? Or power or health insurance for that matter.
" Is the Gnome 3 desktop just for displaying wallpaper now?"
Bingo. The new paradigm is that windows will always obstruct the wallpaper and so icons on the desktop are pointless. I personally agree with that notion, but it may not suit everyone.
"well... no, it's not: the universe is plenty of examples of how it is not scale-invariant. take this: a mosquito is capable of walking over a small water patch: can we walk over the ocean?"
I'm not sure you know what you are talking about. Mosquitos can walk on water due to surface tension (force per unit length or energy per unit area). As long as surface tension is part of your calculations, there should be no problem using non-dimensional maths. If you fail using non-dimensional maths it is because you have not scaled all the necessary parameters.
True. But since the kelvin unit is directly derived from celsius, using the same unit increment, centigrades are trivial to use with SI-units. Celsius are thus "SI-conforming" for all intents and purposes.
"Last I checked, computers used base 2, not SI units."
Internally yes and it is certainly something you have to be aware of as a programmer, but apart from some specialised cases (i.e. bitsets) you would be insane to develop your application using base 2 units. Your program uses normal units (which really, really should be SI), your compiler takes care of the binary part.
"I don't know that this really does much you can't do fairly easily already."
That is true for most things. It is easy to commit most crimes and get away with it if you know how. The lucky break we have is that most criminals are absolute idiots or at least so drugged out of their skull that they only go for the easiest of options and often fail even at that. If they weren't idiots, they'd realise that if you are clever enough to make a real mint out of crime without getting caught, you are probably clever enough to make a real mint out of legitimate activities.
This is why I'm nervous whenever someone creates tools that makes crimes easy for idiots and I don't buy the "I'm only providing a tool" or "people can already do this if they want to". Yes, clever crackers can find security holes into many computer systems and take control of them without easy-to-use software, but these people are few and far between. Certainly FAR, FAR fewer than the potential victims, thus most people have safety in numbers on their side. It is unlikely that these clever people will target you.
But the idiots require the easy-to-use tools. This kind of software makes it easier for idiots to stalk people and that is not a good thing. We don't need script kiddies (is that still a common term?) to have more power available to them that they already do.
It seems to me that Seigo could do with minding his own business in this situation. Instead his post reads like he is attempting to portray himself as more edible to Canonical than GNOME in an attempt to win them over to KDE instead. This is somewhat distasteful, although nevertheless completely legitimate. It would be a boon to KDE if Canonical decided to focus on it.
I'm personally very disappointed with Canonical recently. The mess with regards to the Banshee referral fees was bad enough. Developing Unity behind closed doors and then expecting everyone else to adopt it afterwards was worse. The worst, however, is the insistence on copyright assignment for contributing to Ubuntu, which I sincerely hope nobody is foolish enough to fall for. Assigning copyright to a company for your own voluntary contributions is a very bad idea and this alone should suffice to explain why libappindicator has received a lukewarm reaction from GNOME developers.
"The thing is, nobody is making those kinds of games any more. Fallout 3 was the last one as far as I'm concerned"
It is only a little more than two years since Fallout 3 came out and much shorter since Fallout: New Vegas, which was pretty much along the same lines.
You're not the first to complain about everything being better in the "good ole' days", but it seems somewhat desperate to complain about such a recent end of days.While I haven't had all that much time for gaming over the last two years, I doubt it has all gone tits up in such a short space of time.
In an otherwise good argument, I think you forgot a few continents when making this statement. But don't let me derail you by "well, actually"-ing you. In nature, casual sex is a mixed blessing. For a man, in good times it is the best way of increasing your chances of having surviving offspring, something which is less relevant in bad times when single mothers and their child are unlikely to survive. For women, having to carry the child for 9 months and being left with it afterwards, this is clearly not such a good deal. So "unwanted pregnancies" has often been more of a problem for the woman than the man. For both, I fully agree with you on the threat of VDs, which is still a massive issue across the world, even in the West.
However, it is a fair while since the best way of stopping VDs was to tell people to abstain. That was never all that successful anyway.
"The additional hour will have a direct, negative impact on my net income, as it will either require me to participate less in these transatlantic ventures (for example, it would probably mean no more freelance assignments for US editors, all of which generate UK taxes) or hire expensive babysitters to fetch the kid from day-care (something I also would rather not do for sentimental reasons having nothing to do with the economy)."
Hardly. It means going home earlier and doing your conference call from home rather than at work. Hardly the end of the world.
It seems I misunderstood the article anyway. My argument is based on winter time rather than summer time, which the article suggests they change. Changing summer time sounds rather stupid. People already have plenty of sunlight during their spare time in the summer but none during the winter.
"If they go through with the most extreme change being discussed (that is, moving to match CET year-round) parts of N. Ireland and Scotland won't see sunrise until well after 9am in winter, which is going to be very unpleasant for a lot of people."
Just like it being quite unpleasant to have it be pitch black by the time you come home in the evening. Which is the current situation for large parts of the year, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is a tradeoff regardless of what you do. But this isn't an "English" thing.
It is simply based on the fact that most people don't really consider the time between when they get up in the morning and the time they get into work as part of their "spare time". It is simply too short and rushed for that. Thus the change would provide more sunlight during your spare time regardless of where you live in the country. I'm personally all for. I fully respect other opinions, but I think it is a red herring to talk about this as an England vs. Scotland/NI thing.
Disclaimer: While I live in England, I'm actually from the far north of Norway (70 degrees north), where we have no direct sunlight between November and late January, but rather a short period of dawn/dusk in the middle of the day. Most people suck it up.
Profit per employee is a ridiculous measure to go by anyway. Consider two otherwise identical companies, where one of them decides to outsource their manufacturing and retail arms to third parties. This company now may now have a massively larger profit per employee than the other company, but they may well have missed out on a lot of profit (which are now swallowed up by the retailers and manufacturers).
Also, only trying to increase your profit per employee would be ridiculous. Consider a 500 employee company making £100k profit per employee. They have an opportunity to expand into a somewhat less profitable area by hiring 100 employees making £50k profit per employee. Should they avoid doing this, just so that they can keep their profit/employee ratio up? By this measure a 2 man company making £100k profit per year is more successful than a 500 employee company making £20M profit per year. Surely what really matters is profit per shareholder, because a 2 share holder company making £100k profit is definitely on average more successful for their shareholders than a 500 shareholder company making £20M profit.
Note: I'm not trying to make a judgement on the merits of outsourcing here. It may well make sense.
"Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival."
It does not explicitly forbid it. But the church quite often brings up the saying of it being easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful to buy unnecessary expensive items when you could have given the money to the poor. If you pressed a senior church member on the issue, they would probably say it IS sinful, however.
Disclaimer: I am not writing this because I'm any good at following this principle myself.
The "evil son of a bitch who craves power, and when he gets it, turns it to spiteful and vindictive purpose" will seek out whatever route will take him/her into this position. Historically the government has been the easiest way of achieving this sort of power. As multi-national corporations continue to grow, this may well change.
Also, the behaviour of corporative executives are much less scrutinised by the media than the behaviour of the government. If Google did things you disapprove of, it is quite possible you wouldn't know about it.
"Seriously? Who, under the age of 80, actually reads newspapers anymore?"
I do, when I have the time to do so. It is quite enjoyable and you should try it some time. Reading a book, play a game or even have a nap seems like a very suitable thing to do rather than drive.
I honestly don't care that you disagree. You're free to ignore this innovation.
Your suggestion isn't right for everyone. I find audio books quite distracting when driving and besides, I'd rather have a full choice about what to do while commuting rather than always be forced to listen to audio books.
"I leave at 6am. No traffic jams."
Not an option for everyone. I'm required to start my work between 08:30 and 09:00. In order to minimise time wastage this means I have to leave my house around 7:30.
"You think the KKK and slavery way back in the mid 1800s is somehow much more notable than exterminating 6 million people in gas chambers because they're the wrong race/religion/sexual orientation/etc.?"
I think this has to be the clearest example of Godwin's law I have seen in years. You, sir, have lost the argument and in your FIRST post in the thread. Well done, Sir.
"You don't regulate shit because you can, or because it saves a few million consumers $10 a month. "
I disagree. Regulation to save a few million consumers $10 a month sounds like it may well be worthwhile. Obviously it depends on the actual case and what the consequences may be, but saving a few million consumers $10 a month may well be worth it.
"Okay. Then, instead, we can start with the premise that you have a right to exist."
Quite honestly, whether he agrees or not is completely irrelevant for this argument. Science and moral standpoints are simply not the same thing and it is completely possible to decline to act on scientific research because the act would be immoral.
I.e. say a scientific study concluded that the world would be a better place if we executed all unemployed people. In this case I hope most people would conclude that the unemployed people's right to exist is more important than improving the world.
"Unless the company loses them, gets sued, goes bankrupt, spend it on a foolish merger with a company that has lots of debt, is involved in fraud, bad accounting, and lots of other risks I can't think of right now (see also: Enron & anyone who invested in all those bad mortgages but didn't get a bailout)."
I hate to break it to you, but future dividend payouts are also dependent on those things. In fact, you have no more a guarantee of future dividend payouts than you do of stock rises (if the company does badly, they will reduce the dividend). So following your argument, if you buy stock for the dividend, you are also a chump. The only real difference is that if you're buy on expectation of stock rises you are betting on company growth while if you buy based on dividend you buy on expectation of stable operation. Neither are guaranteed but I grant you that dividend is more dependent on actual value which is more stable than perceived value.
Paying dividends actually takes money out of the business, reducing the money on the books and makes the company worth less than they would otherwise. Thus, companies which expect to grow massively will not pay much dividend, if anything at all, because they need that dividend money to invest in their expansion. Stock holders remain happy if that investment turns out to be prudent, resulting in higher profits and thus stock rises.
On the other hand, companies which don't expect to expand massively may pay large dividends because they don't need the money on the books.
Microsoft AFAIK didn't use to pay out dividend when it was in its massive expansion phase. Now that it is a large and mature company with limited expansion potential it may well pay out dividend. I don't really know (or care) if they do.
"Don't you think that it's a shortcoming of a broken system if people can no longer do what they enjoy without attempting to harm people who have done nothing to them or harmed them in any way?"
What?? "Do what they enjoy". Is that what you think is what drives the big game releases?
As a software developer, I can say I enjoy some parts of the development process, but I would never, ever spend 8 hours per day on it if I didn't get paid for it. Since even us developer geeks tend to have families and responsibilities, I believe I can say with pretty good certainty that this attitude is matched by most software developers. A couple of hours a week on hobby projects is the most you'd get out of the bulk of developers without payment.
I used to think a bit like you (although not as extremely) but I've come to realise that proposing to tear down a system for which you have no alternative is both immature and irresponsible.
Disclaimer: I'm a happy iPhone owner without insurance.
"Square Trade loses money for every screen break."
I'm sure this is not how they look at it. As an insurance company (in other words a bookmaker) they make or lose money based on whether they have set the right or wrong odds on screen breaks and other problems. They would certainly not count single screen breaks and go "damn, we lost money on this one".
Instead they would simply raise their premiums if screen breaks occurred more regularly than they had initially thought. As someone with what I would call a healthy distrust in insurance companies, I don't think they'd release this information unless they had something to gain by releasing it.
My guess is that it is one of the following two options: 1. They are getting stick for increasing insurance premiums and they feel the need to justify themselves so as not to lose customers. 2. They want to convince people that they really should get insurance, since the iPhone screen is so very likely to break.
Either way, I'm sceptical.
Oh.. btw, why do you think the parent makes a difference for Apple over heart attacks? Strawman?
Sometimes I get sick of the Slashdot knee-jerk mentality about anything that is remotely connected to free speech or censorship.
First, many, many people surf the net with safe search OFF. This does not mean that you want porn showing up on every search, it doesn't even mean you want to get porn at all. You may simply want to make your own mind up about your search results. This works completely fine when you have to press enter to get your search results, because you can make a reasonably sound judgement about whether your search is safe before you press enter.
When Google introduced instant, however, it suddenly wasn't so clear-cut. It would be ridiculously annoying if I had to make that judgement before every single letter I typed. It would also completely ruin the point of Google Instant, which is to make life easier for me.
Google clearly decided that the most convenient thing for the vast majority of their users would be that they filter out naughty searches until you press enter. Perhaps they should have advertised this a bit more clearly, and perhaps they should allow you to turn it off, but overall this is a sensible solution and they can, in good conscience, claim that they still allow you to get all the naughty searches you want. You just have to press bloody enter.
I actually hope Google doesn't give a toss about the tiny minority that gets worked up about this.
Slashdot Mirror
Just like with Digital Rights Management / Defective by Design, you see a lot of silly bullish attitude from geeks on this site: "Ever heard of the Streisand Effect? All DRM will eventually be beaten!"
This is a serious attack on people's rights. What people are forgetting is that while this Welsh footballers privacy is being protected, the big brother's star Imogen Thomas' right to publish accounts about her own private life is impeded. In this particular case, this may seem irrelevant, after all, she's just a gold digger looking to make some money selling her story, right? But what if some famous actor / sports star slept with your wife and when you wanted to expose the wanker, he slaps down a super-injunction on you. How humiliated would you feel? And what if this was actually about something that had serious public interest?
Just like with DRM, bullishly stating that "we'll always beat them" is besides the point. Just because YOU [tm] may have the means and no qualms about breaking this stupidity imposed on you by law, that doesn't mean everyone are willing to break the law and open themselves up to the legal consequences.
AND: the fact that Twitter is American is more or less meaningless. Since they operate in Britain, they have to abide by British law and may well have to give up the names of the people involved. And you know what? Chances are they live in Britain.
This is serious stuff, people's rights are under threat, and arrogance doesn't help anyone.
What is now to stop all water companies in the US from putting the same clause in their contracts and stop giving a shit about water safety because the worst that can happen is toothless arbitration? If you don't like it, you don't have to have water, right? Or power or health insurance for that matter.
" Is the Gnome 3 desktop just for displaying wallpaper now?"
Bingo. The new paradigm is that windows will always obstruct the wallpaper and so icons on the desktop are pointless. I personally agree with that notion, but it may not suit everyone.
"well... no, it's not: the universe is plenty of examples of how it is not scale-invariant.
take this: a mosquito is capable of walking over a small water patch: can we walk over the ocean?"
I'm not sure you know what you are talking about. Mosquitos can walk on water due to surface tension (force per unit length or energy per unit area). As long as surface tension is part of your calculations, there should be no problem using non-dimensional maths. If you fail using non-dimensional maths it is because you have not scaled all the necessary parameters.
"Celsius is not SI."
True. But since the kelvin unit is directly derived from celsius, using the same unit increment, centigrades are trivial to use with SI-units. Celsius are thus "SI-conforming" for all intents and purposes.
"Last I checked, computers used base 2, not SI units."
Internally yes and it is certainly something you have to be aware of as a programmer, but apart from some specialised cases (i.e. bitsets) you would be insane to develop your application using base 2 units. Your program uses normal units (which really, really should be SI), your compiler takes care of the binary part.
"I don't know that this really does much you can't do fairly easily already."
That is true for most things. It is easy to commit most crimes and get away with it if you know how. The lucky break we have is that most criminals are absolute idiots or at least so drugged out of their skull that they only go for the easiest of options and often fail even at that. If they weren't idiots, they'd realise that if you are clever enough to make a real mint out of crime without getting caught, you are probably clever enough to make a real mint out of legitimate activities.
This is why I'm nervous whenever someone creates tools that makes crimes easy for idiots and I don't buy the "I'm only providing a tool" or "people can already do this if they want to". Yes, clever crackers can find security holes into many computer systems and take control of them without easy-to-use software, but these people are few and far between. Certainly FAR, FAR fewer than the potential victims, thus most people have safety in numbers on their side. It is unlikely that these clever people will target you.
But the idiots require the easy-to-use tools. This kind of software makes it easier for idiots to stalk people and that is not a good thing. We don't need script kiddies (is that still a common term?) to have more power available to them that they already do.
It seems to me that Seigo could do with minding his own business in this situation. Instead his post reads like he is attempting to portray himself as more edible to Canonical than GNOME in an attempt to win them over to KDE instead. This is somewhat distasteful, although nevertheless completely legitimate. It would be a boon to KDE if Canonical decided to focus on it.
I'm personally very disappointed with Canonical recently. The mess with regards to the Banshee referral fees was bad enough. Developing Unity behind closed doors and then expecting everyone else to adopt it afterwards was worse. The worst, however, is the insistence on copyright assignment for contributing to Ubuntu, which I sincerely hope nobody is foolish enough to fall for. Assigning copyright to a company for your own voluntary contributions is a very bad idea and this alone should suffice to explain why libappindicator has received a lukewarm reaction from GNOME developers.
"The thing is, nobody is making those kinds of games any more. Fallout 3 was the last one as far as I'm concerned"
It is only a little more than two years since Fallout 3 came out and much shorter since Fallout: New Vegas, which was pretty much along the same lines.
You're not the first to complain about everything being better in the "good ole' days", but it seems somewhat desperate to complain about such a recent end of days.While I haven't had all that much time for gaming over the last two years, I doubt it has all gone tits up in such a short space of time.
"Of course that's not really a problem anymore"
In an otherwise good argument, I think you forgot a few continents when making this statement. But don't let me derail you by "well, actually"-ing you. In nature, casual sex is a mixed blessing. For a man, in good times it is the best way of increasing your chances of having surviving offspring, something which is less relevant in bad times when single mothers and their child are unlikely to survive. For women, having to carry the child for 9 months and being left with it afterwards, this is clearly not such a good deal. So "unwanted pregnancies" has often been more of a problem for the woman than the man. For both, I fully agree with you on the threat of VDs, which is still a massive issue across the world, even in the West.
However, it is a fair while since the best way of stopping VDs was to tell people to abstain. That was never all that successful anyway.
"The additional hour will have a direct, negative impact on my net income, as it will either require me to participate less in these transatlantic ventures (for example, it would probably mean no more freelance assignments for US editors, all of which generate UK taxes) or hire expensive babysitters to fetch the kid from day-care (something I also would rather not do for sentimental reasons having nothing to do with the economy)."
Hardly. It means going home earlier and doing your conference call from home rather than at work. Hardly the end of the world.
It seems I misunderstood the article anyway. My argument is based on winter time rather than summer time, which the article suggests they change. Changing summer time sounds rather stupid. People already have plenty of sunlight during their spare time in the summer but none during the winter.
"If they go through with the most extreme change being discussed (that is, moving to match CET year-round) parts of N. Ireland and Scotland won't see sunrise until well after 9am in winter, which is going to be very unpleasant for a lot of people."
Just like it being quite unpleasant to have it be pitch black by the time you come home in the evening. Which is the current situation for large parts of the year, especially in Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is a tradeoff regardless of what you do. But this isn't an "English" thing.
It is simply based on the fact that most people don't really consider the time between when they get up in the morning and the time they get into work as part of their "spare time". It is simply too short and rushed for that. Thus the change would provide more sunlight during your spare time regardless of where you live in the country. I'm personally all for. I fully respect other opinions, but I think it is a red herring to talk about this as an England vs. Scotland/NI thing.
Disclaimer: While I live in England, I'm actually from the far north of Norway (70 degrees north), where we have no direct sunlight between November and late January, but rather a short period of dawn/dusk in the middle of the day. Most people suck it up.
Profit per employee is a ridiculous measure to go by anyway. Consider two otherwise identical companies, where one of them decides to outsource their manufacturing and retail arms to third parties. This company now may now have a massively larger profit per employee than the other company, but they may well have missed out on a lot of profit (which are now swallowed up by the retailers and manufacturers).
Also, only trying to increase your profit per employee would be ridiculous. Consider a 500 employee company making £100k profit per employee. They have an opportunity to expand into a somewhat less profitable area by hiring 100 employees making £50k profit per employee. Should they avoid doing this, just so that they can keep their profit/employee ratio up? By this measure a 2 man company making £100k profit per year is more successful than a 500 employee company making £20M profit per year. Surely what really matters is profit per shareholder, because a 2 share holder company making £100k profit is definitely on average more successful for their shareholders than a 500 shareholder company making £20M profit.
Note: I'm not trying to make a judgement on the merits of outsourcing here. It may well make sense.
"Catholic teaching does not prohibit purchasing expensive items which are not essential to survival."
It does not explicitly forbid it. But the church quite often brings up the saying of it being easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. Because the issue is so controversial (and probably frowned upon by many rich backers, never mind the public at large), the church is fairly silent on the issue and leaves it up to the individual to decide whether it is sinful to buy unnecessary expensive items when you could have given the money to the poor. If you pressed a senior church member on the issue, they would probably say it IS sinful, however.
Disclaimer: I am not writing this because I'm any good at following this principle myself.
The "evil son of a bitch who craves power, and when he gets it, turns it to spiteful and vindictive purpose" will seek out whatever route will take him/her into this position. Historically the government has been the easiest way of achieving this sort of power. As multi-national corporations continue to grow, this may well change.
Also, the behaviour of corporative executives are much less scrutinised by the media than the behaviour of the government. If Google did things you disapprove of, it is quite possible you wouldn't know about it.
"Seriously? Who, under the age of 80, actually reads newspapers anymore?"
I do, when I have the time to do so. It is quite enjoyable and you should try it some time. Reading a book, play a game or even have a nap seems like a very suitable thing to do rather than drive.
I honestly don't care that you disagree. You're free to ignore this innovation.
"Listen to books on tape/ipod."
Your suggestion isn't right for everyone. I find audio books quite distracting when driving and besides, I'd rather have a full choice about what to do while commuting rather than always be forced to listen to audio books.
"I leave at 6am. No traffic jams."
Not an option for everyone. I'm required to start my work between 08:30 and 09:00. In order to minimise time wastage this means I have to leave my house around 7:30.
"You think the KKK and slavery way back in the mid 1800s is somehow much more notable than exterminating 6 million people in gas chambers because they're the wrong race/religion/sexual orientation/etc.?"
I think this has to be the clearest example of Godwin's law I have seen in years. You, sir, have lost the argument and in your FIRST post in the thread. Well done, Sir.
"You don't regulate shit because you can, or because it saves a few million consumers $10 a month. "
I disagree. Regulation to save a few million consumers $10 a month sounds like it may well be worthwhile. Obviously it depends on the actual case and what the consequences may be, but saving a few million consumers $10 a month may well be worth it.
"Okay. Then, instead, we can start with the premise that you have a right to exist."
Quite honestly, whether he agrees or not is completely irrelevant for this argument. Science and moral standpoints are simply not the same thing and it is completely possible to decline to act on scientific research because the act would be immoral.
I.e. say a scientific study concluded that the world would be a better place if we executed all unemployed people. In this case I hope most people would conclude that the unemployed people's right to exist is more important than improving the world.
"Unless the company loses them, gets sued, goes bankrupt, spend it on a foolish merger with a company that has lots of debt, is involved in fraud, bad accounting, and lots of other risks I can't think of right now (see also: Enron & anyone who invested in all those bad mortgages but didn't get a bailout)."
I hate to break it to you, but future dividend payouts are also dependent on those things. In fact, you have no more a guarantee of future dividend payouts than you do of stock rises (if the company does badly, they will reduce the dividend). So following your argument, if you buy stock for the dividend, you are also a chump. The only real difference is that if you're buy on expectation of stock rises you are betting on company growth while if you buy based on dividend you buy on expectation of stable operation. Neither are guaranteed but I grant you that dividend is more dependent on actual value which is more stable than perceived value.
Paying dividends actually takes money out of the business, reducing the money on the books and makes the company worth less than they would otherwise. Thus, companies which expect to grow massively will not pay much dividend, if anything at all, because they need that dividend money to invest in their expansion. Stock holders remain happy if that investment turns out to be prudent, resulting in higher profits and thus stock rises.
On the other hand, companies which don't expect to expand massively may pay large dividends because they don't need the money on the books.
Microsoft AFAIK didn't use to pay out dividend when it was in its massive expansion phase. Now that it is a large and mature company with limited expansion potential it may well pay out dividend. I don't really know (or care) if they do.
"Don't you think that it's a shortcoming of a broken system if people can no longer do what they enjoy without attempting to harm people who have done nothing to them or harmed them in any way?"
What?? "Do what they enjoy". Is that what you think is what drives the big game releases?
As a software developer, I can say I enjoy some parts of the development process, but I would never, ever spend 8 hours per day on it if I didn't get paid for it. Since even us developer geeks tend to have families and responsibilities, I believe I can say with pretty good certainty that this attitude is matched by most software developers. A couple of hours a week on hobby projects is the most you'd get out of the bulk of developers without payment.
I used to think a bit like you (although not as extremely) but I've come to realise that proposing to tear down a system for which you have no alternative is both immature and irresponsible.
Disclaimer: I'm a happy iPhone owner without insurance.
"Square Trade loses money for every screen break."
I'm sure this is not how they look at it. As an insurance company (in other words a bookmaker) they make or lose money based on whether they have set the right or wrong odds on screen breaks and other problems. They would certainly not count single screen breaks and go "damn, we lost money on this one".
Instead they would simply raise their premiums if screen breaks occurred more regularly than they had initially thought. As someone with what I would call a healthy distrust in insurance companies, I don't think they'd release this information unless they had something to gain by releasing it.
My guess is that it is one of the following two options:
1. They are getting stick for increasing insurance premiums and they feel the need to justify themselves so as not to lose customers.
2. They want to convince people that they really should get insurance, since the iPhone screen is so very likely to break.
Either way, I'm sceptical.
Oh.. btw, why do you think the parent makes a difference for Apple over heart attacks? Strawman?
Sometimes I get sick of the Slashdot knee-jerk mentality about anything that is remotely connected to free speech or censorship.
First, many, many people surf the net with safe search OFF. This does not mean that you want porn showing up on every search, it doesn't even mean you want to get porn at all. You may simply want to make your own mind up about your search results. This works completely fine when you have to press enter to get your search results, because you can make a reasonably sound judgement about whether your search is safe before you press enter.
When Google introduced instant, however, it suddenly wasn't so clear-cut. It would be ridiculously annoying if I had to make that judgement before every single letter I typed. It would also completely ruin the point of Google Instant, which is to make life easier for me.
Google clearly decided that the most convenient thing for the vast majority of their users would be that they filter out naughty searches until you press enter. Perhaps they should have advertised this a bit more clearly, and perhaps they should allow you to turn it off, but overall this is a sensible solution and they can, in good conscience, claim that they still allow you to get all the naughty searches you want. You just have to press bloody enter.
I actually hope Google doesn't give a toss about the tiny minority that gets worked up about this.