Why on earth do they need that many people. Aren't these electronics lines automated? (On another note: When was the last time a U.S. or EU company announced hiring 36,000 people.)
Only assembly lines in the western world are automated because labor's expensive enough that having a few robot technicians to maintain/program the robots is far cheaper than hiring people to manually do it. In China, labor's so cheap that the initial capital costs of robots and robot technicians aren't recouped by the time the robots get obsolete.
The average American worker is roughly 10 times as productive as a Chinese worker. And given the extreme automation possible with electronics (especially when you need to build millions a month) the productivity of a robot would be even higher if the factory was in the US.
It's one aspect the "move the jobs back to the US" folk ignore - those 300,000+ Chinese workers are out of a job, and you're not hiring that many Americans in their place. Of course, the few you do hire are well-paid high-skilled workers so there's a net benefit that way. But it's not going to make a huge dent in the unemployment rate. And possibly negative if it distorts local hiring that companies lose their skilled workers and have to shut down. (Apple needs enough workers to man the factories, and the demand will be so strong that there's a very real chance local companies cannot compete for the sudden lack of skilled employees...).
Hell, people can't walk and use a cellphone (phone, or text).
I just watched some pedestrian blindly cross the road against the light. The only thing that saved his life was that the driver was paying attention. Guy didn't even notice as he finished crossing the road.
And people still walk into street furniture regularly, plus into the street in front of cars.
And walking requires very little brainpower - all one needs to do is be somewhat aware of traffic. And the general public can't even do THAT. And driving's way more complex.
And yet parcel (package) mail volume is increasing. The funny thing is that UPS makes more money than everyone else in the package business combined, but for rural deliveries, they (and FedEx) farm out the packages to USPS because it would cost to much to deliver it themselves.
That said, the United States Postal Service isn't really in financial trouble. Their problem mostly has to do with a bad law that forces them to devote enormous amounts of cash to prefund pension plans
Even worse, they're prepaying health benefits for people who haven't joined USPS yet. Imagine paying for employee pensions for those who aren't even employees yet.
If you're not a business, the only way to take payments is Paypal, pretty much (no merchant account required). Though you have al lthe headaches of a merchant account.
If you're a business, you can do Google Checkout/Amazon Payments.
Then there's the handling of the download - either have to do a login system so people can redownload (hello lulzsec - just because you can write a game doesn't mean you can write a secure web app - I'd say it probably disqualifies you).
Server's the cheapest part of the whole thing. It's the payments and website downloads that are the hardest parts.
It's partly why the Apple App Store is very popular - Apple handles all the tricky stuff, you provide the binaries. (Of course, you pay 30% for that privilege).
Dude, what planet are you on? Let me guess, one with a bite taken out of it?
Depends how you compare. If you're trying to compare say, a Macbook Pro with a netbook, then yeah, Macs are more expensive. Or even a Macbook Air against a netbook. Ignoring stuff like an Atom is no way competitive to a Core2Duo, nevermind the i5, the SSD, memory, etc.
OTOH, if you try to compare like with like (as much as possible), they're quite competitive. The usual explainations for deviations is use of cheaper bigger heavier laptops in place of svelte ones (e.g., trying to compare a MBP against some much heavier, much larger Dell model instead of using Dell's more expensive smaller and more portable ones).
And displays as well - some fail to account for upgrading a 15" laptop from a 1366x768 display to I think the 1440x900+ that Apple puts in the 15" (nevermind the 1920x1200 on the 17")
Heck, even the Air is standing on its own compared to the Ultrabooks Intel's trying to bring out (hint: they're all a joke. First pass - no manufacturer wanted to make an ultrabook because they couldn't be competitive. Second pass - with Intel subsidies, they got the price to be the same as the Air, but with specs that were iffier (i3 vs. i5, slower, heavier, etc). Third pass (current) - intel relaxed the specs even more to be far more generous - so you can find 14" ultrabooks that are 1" thick or so - basically "small laptop').
Of course, this holds true pretty much for the first couple of months of Apple's refresh cycle. After that, it's not competitive anymore. Given the current Macbooks are all needing refresh, they are uncompetitive. Once Apple releases their Ivy Bridge laptops (WWDC?) they'll be competitive again. It's because Apple doesn't drop their price as time goes on nor do they have sales.
PEBKAC isn't really relevant in this context. In any case if you for whatever reason want your phone to be as open as your computer then you need to take those extra precautions of a non-locked down system, if you choose a walled-garden approach instead you don't have to concern yourself with such things nearly as much...but that's the great thing about the choice of mobile platforms in today's market.
Problem is, people want phones - something they can pick up and play with immediately. Not think about it nor have antivirus/antispyware software installed and running as well like their PCs.
Plus, with all the coolness surrounding apps, you have the Dancing Pigs problem - people just want to go to the app store or market, click download and get going on that cool app. It's why sites all have direct links to the stores, or QR codes to scan - to get that app in the user's hands ASAP. As a result, they're not going to look at stuff like permission lists and such because that's just getting in the way of running the app.
Hell, ICS made it even easier to install apps without seeing the permission list - tap install and it takes you to the permission screen, but the install button is near the top and the permissions at the bottom. Users are more likely to just tap "download" rather than pull their eyes down and over the permission list.
Of course, the other thing is, Android makes it easy to sideload apps, so people love searching Bittorrent for new apps...
The study says they could only look at public posts. I rarely post publicly and instead use circles to limit who can see what I post. While many of the people I follow on G+ are silent (or at least they don't publish to me), so are most of the people on Facebook. I follow a comparable number of people on G+ and Facebook and my G+ feed is just as busy. I don't see how a study like this can draw any meaningful conclusions from their methodology.
It means the data Google collects is, however, more valuable. Private posts reveal a lot - and encouraging circles means Google gets to trace relationships between people a lot better than Facebook can.
Public posts are worthless - they're read by everyone and very little marketing can come from it. But knowing who knows who through a directed graph (i.e., G+ circles) is a lot more valuable. If Google knows that one person seems to be read a lot by people, anything that person does may be of interest - effectively not just targeting ads at the person, but at their followers as well.
Effectively, a targeted ad can reach many more people (== more $$$) even if those people fall outside the general demographic the advertiser wants, purely because the viewer has shown keen interest.
Using information like how many people post back and forth privately also can generate metrics on how strong a relationship is and how likely one person's targeted ad may be relevant to their followers.
Add in the ability to distinguish how good circles are (close friends will have stronger links, and most people will have a circle of friends (strong links) and a circle of acquaintances (weak links)), which can feed back into the ad-targeting process.
For facebook, the data's just more jumbled, but Google's data is far more valuable adverising dollar wise than facebook's. Add in Google's automated content scanners and advertisers get a very powerful option of "include people outside demographic who would be interested" in ad campaigns. Where interest is determined by relationship (strength of link from previous messaging) and content of said messaging.
So yes, this story is bogus. But for Google, G+ is very powerful indeed at showing how a person relates to other people - something you can't do with public posts. Simply put - G+ gives higher quality metrics and data so Google can charge higher rates for advertising throughout their business (AdWords, Double Click, AdMob, etc).
How would they have "judged" that without offering an ad-free service to see how well it's accepted?
They do provide ad-free TV though. One, you can buy them through DVD or Blu-Ray box sets. Two, you can often buy same through Amazon or Apple.
That's the price they're offering ad-free TV for - $2-3 per episode. I think Steve Jobs wanted to make it 99 cents/episode, but the networks balked. $5 if you want it in HD.
What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
I'm just surprised they aren't ramming it and other pet legislation through via the budget bill. That thing's already got more than the budget in it - it rewrites several laws as well. Given it's at least 5 separate pieces of legislation (1 of which is the budget), why not toss in a few more?
As a future shareholder of facebook, I wil lbe encouraging it - I want access to all that sweet sweet data since I effectively own a part of it!
On a more serious note, there is no privacy on Facebook to begin with. The only reason for "privacy controls" is purely one of marketing - it's used to encourage people to spew their guts onto the site, under the guise of "privacy". Otherwise no site will be able to get much in the way of user data - unless you pretend there's some "privacy", people will be cautious.
And why "privacy"? It's easy. First, there's the adage "don't post online what you don't want the world to know". Second, these sites are "social" - you're supposed to share. And sharing with friends is the same as sharing to the world. (Try keeping news like a new bably, marriage, or divorce amongst "friends only" - you'll find a lot of non-friends would've spread the news). Third, if you're not sharing, for what reason are you telling facebook for? "Only me" is a stupid security setting because if it's only for you, don't post it online!
It's like keeping secrets. The best way is to not tell anyone.
I've heard before that the higher the range of frequency, the harder it is for signals to penetrate things like walls. If we keep advancing along these lines, could this potentially ease our troubles with wifi-over-saturation because we won't be picking up our neighbors' signals?
Well, 300GHz+ is considered "light" rather than "radio", so it won't penetrate far through the walls. In fact, it may be a bit inconvenient since the only signal is coming through the open door unless you put in a repeater in the same room.
But yeah, if you switch to 5GHz, it's a lot more open but you'll find range is quite a bit shorter. I'm fairly certain the higher frequencies still are pretty much just-a-bit-more-than-a-room penetration.
by AngryDeuce (2205124) Alter Relationship on Wednesday May 16, @07:01AM (#40016265)
Exactly. Most people buying SSDs are using them to store OS and regularly opened programs, but have standard HDDs to store the stuff that doesn't "need" the added performance. Media is a perfect example of something that is silly to put on a SSD (unless you're actually editing said media, not merely consuming it).
Even editing media doesn't require SSDs - media is huge and even buffering a "small" amount like 1MB the seek time advantage of an SSD is minimal. Sure the transfer rate is impressive (under 200MB/sec reads if you go "conservative" instead of "cutting edge" and thus avoid most of the firmware issues), but RAID0 is actually plenty fast for it (and "good enough" considering you need terabytes of storage more than a single drive feeding the entire chain).
An SSD's benefit is zero seek time - with hard drives basically stuck at 100-200 seeks/second but an SSD can easily increase that by 2 orders of magnitude (10-20,000 IOPS is common). It makes little seeks so much faster (like when the OS is paging or loading executable images/resources from disk where you're doing little 4K reads more than massive 1MB reads).
Hell, IT upgraded my laptop with a spare SSD (it was destined for someone else, but their laptop had a 1.8" drive), and even though it's 2007-era "Vista Ready", the darn thing flies.
I've always loved the older technologies for their ability to just keep going. In fact, just a few days ago, I finished cleaning up an old 1950's Remington typewriter. It hasn't been touched in decades in my parents' damp, cold basement, was covered with more dust and grime than I thought was physically possible, but a lot of hours of cleaning later, and every key still works absolutely perfectly. Found a place online that still sells ribbons, so I've got it typing again. And odds are, unless it's dropped from something high up (and it even has a good chance of surviving that, since it's over 30 pounds of stainless steel), it'll probably last well until after I'm gone.
The new technology may be awesome for what it can do, but the old technology is awesome for what it can survive and keep going through.
Well, the old technology is like that because it's overdesigned to be like that. It survives because all the parts are stronger than they need to be (material science being what it was then, and quality variance between batches was probably a lot higher) because they had to - unlike modern manufacturing processes where we can get remarkably consistent raw materials due to smeltters carefully controlling the alloys. When your inputs are of varying quality, you compensate by overdesigning. And yes, it happens today in the semiconductor industry - it's remarkably hard to produce a consistent product so transistors and such are overdesigned to compensate (we can spec chips to run slower, we avoid use of passive components (it's difficult to get resistors/capacitors to come out with less than a 20% tolerance in silicon - there are many "equivalent" circuits done using transistors which are easier to match), etc.
Plus, we also have survivor bias - the "old stuff" survives because we threw out the crap that failed long ago. Heck, your typewriter may be a victim of that - it's just you got one of the few good ones. When things were cranked out by the thousands, it happens.
Wanna know where that movie or music money goes? Well sometimes it goes to the star (McCartney is worth almost $800 mil, Cruise around $250 mil). But a huge wedge goes to the publishers and distributors.
Actually a large chunk of it goes to executives.
For most bands, the advance is the entire amount they'll be paid for an album. Let's say it's $10,000. After retailer's cut, the wholesale price of a CD is around $15 or so. The artist may get maybe $1 of that, but before that happens, the $10,000 has to be paid off first (i.e., they need to sell 10,000 CDs).
Of course, if you realize the label is pocketing $14, the lael only needs to sell about 715 CDs to break even. If we factor in production costs (really about $1), so they only get $13, that's still only 770 CDs. If they sell 1,000 of them, the 230 extra are pure profit for them (and the band would've paid off only $1,000 of their $10,000 advance) - or $2,990. The band "lost money" (didn't recover the advance), but the label made money ($2,990, after paying for production and "royalty").
And I'm actually "off". Technically for the first part, the band is getting nothing (they're paying off the royalty) so the label is pocketing $14/CD, which has a breakeven of 720 CDs. Of 1,000 CD run, the extra 280 CDs would bring in another $3,920. And the band pays for the manager, the road trips, the studio time, etc.
And that's all the label needs - just a bunch of bands able to sell 1,000 CDs for a $10,000 advance. After costs, that band made $14,000 for the label, or $4,000 after the advance. The band is "in the hole", but the label is happy because all costs were recouped. And that's where the trick is - the label only needed to sell 720-ish CDs to profit, whereas the band needed to sell 10,000 CDs to see any further revenue from the album. Given most albums will sell more than 720 and less than 10,000, anything above 720 is profit profit profit.
They bought some cheap pre-paid cards (probably with cash), re-encoded the mag stripes with valid stolen debit card numbers, and used those to buy more higher-value prepaid cards (via a signature-based transaction so no PIN needed), which they then used to buy expensive stuff. I'm just curious why you would be able to buy a pre-paid card with another pre-paid card in the first place.
Depends on the pre-paid card. After all, if you buy a store gift card (prepaid card), you can often buy anything sold in that store with that card. So if you went into Safeway, bought a $10 gift card from them, re-encoded the stripe to be a debit card, you can then use that Safeway card to purchase a more expensive item. Safeway and other stores often sell a bunch of other prepaid cards, for stuff like cellphones, iTunes, Xbox/PSN/Wii, other online services, etc.
The thing is - store prepaid cards cost the store some money (the money they earn in interest basically keeps the system afloat - making the cards, administration, permanent liability (many places outlaw expiring gift cards)). However, a gift card to something like iTunes makes profit. Given the amount of 20% off iTunes card deals that happen regularly (e.g., $20 for $25 iTunes card), I'd really believe the store was getting them for a 25% discount (and Apple's 5% of the remainder (remember Apple takes 30%?) pays for the card and iTunes maintenance). I would think other cards have similar deals.
And most likely they bought those Visa prepaid cards they sell in stores - given it costs like $8 to buy 'em plus whatever you put in, I'm guessing the store gets a chunk of that $8 and maybe a percent of the preload value.
Did these guys have any significant technology? (Just askin, I really don't know. Even the Lightsquared Faq is fairly useless at explaining what they have that hasn't been done before)
And if they did, why not move it somewhere else to some radio spectrum where it will not interfere, such as, but not limited to some of the bandwidth Verizon is finding un-useful in the 700mhz band that they can't pawn off on anybody.
It seems to me that the only problem they had was a dependence on the wrong block of spectrum. On the other hand, any company that wants to push ahead with a spectrum usage with total disregard for existing spectrum use and the safety concerns of the entire GPS community probably isn't a company you want setting up this type of service in the first place.
Their business was to sell broadband internet. Now, they purchased their bands with the intent of launching satellites up in space (I think they actually have one or two) to provide service. Of course, as anyone knows, latency sucks because the speed of light is just too slow.
So to compensate, they wanted to do the same thing, except without expensive satellites. Instead, they wanted to hook ground stations using the same band (licensed and bought as satellite-to-terrestrial band). Besides being significantly cheaper (it costs $1B to launch a satellite these days) they also cut down on latency.
However, everyone else using the band complained (especially since well, GPS was right beside what LightSquared purchased). So the FCC said no.
Satellite-ground bandwidth is significantly cheaper than ground-ground bandwidth (because only so many people can afford the $1B to launch), and cellphone carriers are always purchasing more bandwidth at billions apiece.
Had the FCC said yes, you can bet AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. would be eyeing vairous bits and pieces of the satellite band to purchase - it's that much cheaper.
In general, a "regulatory recovery fee" is intended to recover the cost of complying with specific unfunded mandates imposed by telecom regulators. These mandates include location service for the emergency number as well as local number portability among wireless, POTS, and VoIP carriers. One fee that is government-mandated is a contribution to a Universal Service Fund (or foreign counterparts), which ensures that essential telecom service in remote areas remains affordable. Your carrier may or may not itemize USF separately from other regulatory recovery fees. Prepaid carriers tend to itemize very little because it's harder to sneak in itemized fees when someone is paying cash for top-up cards.
True, however one has to wonder why it's not rolled into the cost of basic service.
And given that the "goverment regulatory fee" is $6.50+ a month, and even the same carrier doesn't charge it on all plans, it's really a "profit fee". Yes, all the carriers have plans that DO NOT charge it!
It's like Bell Canada charging everyone $3 "touch-tone fee" in order ot use well, DTMF signalling. (and no, you can't call 'em up and say you want to go back to pulse dialling to avoid the fee).
Most of the fees are bogus and are meant to deflect attention elsewhere, since it's really a "profit fee" - just some random extra amount of money they charge you that goes into their balance sheet as profit.
Unfortunately, the real meaning cannot be legally enforced, so unscrupulous vendors (like Apple) are trying to redefine it to include 3G variants.
Yep. Like Apple, HTC, Samsung, LG are also selling "4G" phones. That are not 4G. You might known them as selling "4G" Android phones. In fact, it was the considered the "Android is superior! It has 4G!" arguments.
In fact, it's so bad that phones are calling themselves "4G LTE" to separate themselves from HSPA-DC/HSPA+ that call themselves 4G phones.
And yes, I looked up 4G Android phones. Most only advertised HSPA+ support.
There are no clean hands - I think T-Mobile has a pile of 4G phones, but no LTE network at all (coming with the spectrum swap). Sprint and Verizon are probably the most honest - because their old technology ended at 3G, so they need WiMax/LTE to do 4G (they don't have HSPA+ to offer "4G").
And yes, there's the official ITU definition of 4G, and the marketing definition. Alas, the marketing definition took over in 2010-2011. Android users loved calling Apple out for not having "4G"...
No it doesn't. It doesn't raise any question at all. The answer is obvious - anyone gathering for anything that Harper disapproves of will be considered unlawful. Period.
The sad thing is I really am not joking...
Given the way the National Energy Board is doing their consulting, there's a lot more at play. They cancelled a meeting because members of a native band gathered at the airport to protest the Enbridge pipeline "scared" them (they were holding signs).
Given that once pipeline construction starts (they had to put a law in saying they can override all NEB recommendations, and even if the answer is "do not build", you can bet it's going to be built regardless), you can bet there will be lots of protests by the native bands and they will wear masks. On their land, of course. Given Harper's "oil all the way" mentality, we can't let this stop construction, so arrest them all because they're illegally blocking construction!
It's just putting in place all the pieces necessary to ramrod a pipeline through, consultations and recommendations be damned.
As long as our currency is on, near, or above par with the US dollar, most sensible canadians will order stuff from the US and use USPS to deliver it, since UPS and the like are really just crooked extortionists. How their extortionist techniques are legal, I just don't know.
Yeah, USPS is probably one of the best shippers around - it's trackable through Canada (USPS stops at the border, but Canada Post tracks it through). It's also cheap. It will cost more to ship via USPS, but you don't pay UPS' extortionate fees to receive the package.
DHL is probably another good one - their fees are pretty reasonable (similar to Canada Post's), but very few American companies support DHL as a shipping option (probably because it sucked inside the US - despite being close or is the #1 worldwide carrier).
After that comes FedEx, because they do flat rate $25+taxes.
UPS - it's probably their cash cow - total bill can be anywhere from 30-200% of the item value. It's so bad that many US stores stopped shipping to Canada because people were refusing packages ($50 for a $40 item?) over the extortionate and gouging fees.
Now, there is ONE saving grace - there's something called "UPS Mail Innovations" that uses UPS within the US, who then hands it off to the local post office or USPS to carry across the border. Costs more than USPS and few know about it, but it's an option.
And it looks to be an ICAO rule, which means every country is affected (but only internationally - local laws can override ICAO if it stays in-country). Though, I suppose USPS just has to innovate and use ground crossings - fly it to the border gateway city, drive it across, and have Canada post continue with it. After all, the only time ICAO really applies is across countries (it's a set of de-facto rules). Though, nothing stops the US and Canada from forming an agreement to allow air transport across the border of batteries.
Even the metals aren't worth much. PCBs aren't made with gold any more.
It's actually cheaper to mine recycled electronics for minerals than dig it out of the ground - the amount of stuff you have to sift through is far less, so there's value there.
It's not just gold - but copper, tantalum, aluminum, etc. All valuable metals and all far cheaper to extract from ground up electronics than digging it out.
Native apps will always work better and be less resource intensive than HTML5 based apps. You will never be able to match native code or get even close. Even Google understands this on mobiles, even though they still use the crappy Java. This is especially important on mobile phones not only for limited CPU and memory and the lack of good GPU, but because battery life is really important and already not that great.
RIM just wants to do this because they don't have the vibrant app economy than Apple and even Microsoft has. They want others to do the work for them.
Honestly, the web app "economy" failed. The iPhone tried it (it's the reason why Safari for Windows was produced) as the only apps available on it were web apps. Developers cried out, jailbreaks happened and some rather good apps were developed for jailbroken devices.
All this while Apple was pushing web apps, adding HTML5 support for sensors and location information, local storage etc so web apps could get access to a whole range of APIs. Eventually Apple relented and created the App Store. Web apps are still supported in iOS - and Apple promotes them as a way to get around the approval process.
Moves like this will only introduce more subtle advertising, using psychological ways like those 0.1s flashes of products in between and product placement. Is that better then? Now you at least know when you are being advertised something. Then you won't, but your mind will, subliminally.
Well, TV shows have started countering the DVR trend of skipping ads by doing more and more product placement. Where there was once a generic computer, there's a Dell or Apple. A cellphone, a Sprint Android or an iPhone. Generic canned drink? Now cola.
Hell, networks have even gone to the point of editing the TV episodes and adding their own product placements where the first time, there was none. It will also only be a matte rof time when you'll have audio ads interspersed with the TV show. Or we'll have scroller ads that take the bottom 10% of the screen (the TV networks are getting particularly obnoxious about this).
Hell, I'm betting once stuff like this gets common, the studios will figure out how they work and do the necessary distortions to mess up the programming - have the DVR on ad-skip mode? It'll automatically randomly skip through the programming for you, courtesy faked distortions the machine interprets as ads.
Especially being how Anonymous only do extremely inefficient ICMP flood attack, the least they could do is learn to pull off a DDoS properly.
That's so... ancient information. Anonymous and LOIC do NOT do ICMP Echo floods by default anymore. They do HTTP requests. The latest version of LOIC even makes the HTTP requests non-cachable (using various tricks that force a caching service to pass the request upstream so you'd need a really good CDN).
I've never understood why people think that just because something is newer makes it better. We may mostly be on high speed internet connections running through cable, or xDSL, wireless, or other technologies, but that doesn't mean the forerunner to those technologies are without purpose anymore. Modems are still used in ATMs because landlines are incredibly cheap to install and not a lot of data needs to be exchanged.
SOmetimes you have to. I mean, I have a bunch of stuff I love to use, like my Palm T|X. Problem is, accessories are REALLY hard to find. I had to replace the LCD, and it cost a few bucks. I'm thinking of picking up a few spares to keep it alive, but then you have to wonder if just switching completely is better.
It's just like PATA hard drives. I have lots of stuff that use it, but just try finding PATA hard drives. They're *expensive* - like $100/500GB expensive. ($100 can buy 2TB on sale, if SATA).
The old gear may work, but keeping it working can cost a lot more than migrating to newer technology.Even just to keep functionality the same.
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Only assembly lines in the western world are automated because labor's expensive enough that having a few robot technicians to maintain/program the robots is far cheaper than hiring people to manually do it. In China, labor's so cheap that the initial capital costs of robots and robot technicians aren't recouped by the time the robots get obsolete.
The average American worker is roughly 10 times as productive as a Chinese worker. And given the extreme automation possible with electronics (especially when you need to build millions a month) the productivity of a robot would be even higher if the factory was in the US.
It's one aspect the "move the jobs back to the US" folk ignore - those 300,000+ Chinese workers are out of a job, and you're not hiring that many Americans in their place. Of course, the few you do hire are well-paid high-skilled workers so there's a net benefit that way. But it's not going to make a huge dent in the unemployment rate. And possibly negative if it distorts local hiring that companies lose their skilled workers and have to shut down. (Apple needs enough workers to man the factories, and the demand will be so strong that there's a very real chance local companies cannot compete for the sudden lack of skilled employees...).
Hell, people can't walk and use a cellphone (phone, or text).
I just watched some pedestrian blindly cross the road against the light. The only thing that saved his life was that the driver was paying attention. Guy didn't even notice as he finished crossing the road.
And people still walk into street furniture regularly, plus into the street in front of cars.
And walking requires very little brainpower - all one needs to do is be somewhat aware of traffic. And the general public can't even do THAT. And driving's way more complex.
Actually, they are forced to prepay 75 years of health pension benefit in the next 10 years. Look at the pretty charts and you'll see the massive losses only started happening after the law was passed - before that they were doing fairly well - no big profits, no big losses, basically self-sufficient.
Even worse, they're prepaying health benefits for people who haven't joined USPS yet. Imagine paying for employee pensions for those who aren't even employees yet.
Payment side isn't so easy.
If you're not a business, the only way to take payments is Paypal, pretty much (no merchant account required). Though you have al lthe headaches of a merchant account.
If you're a business, you can do Google Checkout/Amazon Payments.
Then there's the handling of the download - either have to do a login system so people can redownload (hello lulzsec - just because you can write a game doesn't mean you can write a secure web app - I'd say it probably disqualifies you).
Server's the cheapest part of the whole thing. It's the payments and website downloads that are the hardest parts.
It's partly why the Apple App Store is very popular - Apple handles all the tricky stuff, you provide the binaries. (Of course, you pay 30% for that privilege).
Depends how you compare. If you're trying to compare say, a Macbook Pro with a netbook, then yeah, Macs are more expensive. Or even a Macbook Air against a netbook. Ignoring stuff like an Atom is no way competitive to a Core2Duo, nevermind the i5, the SSD, memory, etc.
OTOH, if you try to compare like with like (as much as possible), they're quite competitive. The usual explainations for deviations is use of cheaper bigger heavier laptops in place of svelte ones (e.g., trying to compare a MBP against some much heavier, much larger Dell model instead of using Dell's more expensive smaller and more portable ones).
And displays as well - some fail to account for upgrading a 15" laptop from a 1366x768 display to I think the 1440x900+ that Apple puts in the 15" (nevermind the 1920x1200 on the 17")
Heck, even the Air is standing on its own compared to the Ultrabooks Intel's trying to bring out (hint: they're all a joke. First pass - no manufacturer wanted to make an ultrabook because they couldn't be competitive. Second pass - with Intel subsidies, they got the price to be the same as the Air, but with specs that were iffier (i3 vs. i5, slower, heavier, etc). Third pass (current) - intel relaxed the specs even more to be far more generous - so you can find 14" ultrabooks that are 1" thick or so - basically "small laptop').
Of course, this holds true pretty much for the first couple of months of Apple's refresh cycle. After that, it's not competitive anymore. Given the current Macbooks are all needing refresh, they are uncompetitive. Once Apple releases their Ivy Bridge laptops (WWDC?) they'll be competitive again. It's because Apple doesn't drop their price as time goes on nor do they have sales.
Problem is, people want phones - something they can pick up and play with immediately. Not think about it nor have antivirus/antispyware software installed and running as well like their PCs.
Plus, with all the coolness surrounding apps, you have the Dancing Pigs problem - people just want to go to the app store or market, click download and get going on that cool app. It's why sites all have direct links to the stores, or QR codes to scan - to get that app in the user's hands ASAP. As a result, they're not going to look at stuff like permission lists and such because that's just getting in the way of running the app.
Hell, ICS made it even easier to install apps without seeing the permission list - tap install and it takes you to the permission screen, but the install button is near the top and the permissions at the bottom. Users are more likely to just tap "download" rather than pull their eyes down and over the permission list.
Of course, the other thing is, Android makes it easy to sideload apps, so people love searching Bittorrent for new apps...
It means the data Google collects is, however, more valuable. Private posts reveal a lot - and encouraging circles means Google gets to trace relationships between people a lot better than Facebook can.
Public posts are worthless - they're read by everyone and very little marketing can come from it. But knowing who knows who through a directed graph (i.e., G+ circles) is a lot more valuable. If Google knows that one person seems to be read a lot by people, anything that person does may be of interest - effectively not just targeting ads at the person, but at their followers as well.
Effectively, a targeted ad can reach many more people (== more $$$) even if those people fall outside the general demographic the advertiser wants, purely because the viewer has shown keen interest.
Using information like how many people post back and forth privately also can generate metrics on how strong a relationship is and how likely one person's targeted ad may be relevant to their followers.
Add in the ability to distinguish how good circles are (close friends will have stronger links, and most people will have a circle of friends (strong links) and a circle of acquaintances (weak links)), which can feed back into the ad-targeting process.
For facebook, the data's just more jumbled, but Google's data is far more valuable adverising dollar wise than facebook's. Add in Google's automated content scanners and advertisers get a very powerful option of "include people outside demographic who would be interested" in ad campaigns. Where interest is determined by relationship (strength of link from previous messaging) and content of said messaging.
So yes, this story is bogus. But for Google, G+ is very powerful indeed at showing how a person relates to other people - something you can't do with public posts. Simply put - G+ gives higher quality metrics and data so Google can charge higher rates for advertising throughout their business (AdWords, Double Click, AdMob, etc).
They do provide ad-free TV though. One, you can buy them through DVD or Blu-Ray box sets. Two, you can often buy same through Amazon or Apple.
That's the price they're offering ad-free TV for - $2-3 per episode. I think Steve Jobs wanted to make it 99 cents/episode, but the networks balked. $5 if you want it in HD.
I'm just surprised they aren't ramming it and other pet legislation through via the budget bill. That thing's already got more than the budget in it - it rewrites several laws as well. Given it's at least 5 separate pieces of legislation (1 of which is the budget), why not toss in a few more?
As a future shareholder of facebook, I wil lbe encouraging it - I want access to all that sweet sweet data since I effectively own a part of it!
On a more serious note, there is no privacy on Facebook to begin with. The only reason for "privacy controls" is purely one of marketing - it's used to encourage people to spew their guts onto the site, under the guise of "privacy". Otherwise no site will be able to get much in the way of user data - unless you pretend there's some "privacy", people will be cautious.
And why "privacy"? It's easy. First, there's the adage "don't post online what you don't want the world to know". Second, these sites are "social" - you're supposed to share. And sharing with friends is the same as sharing to the world. (Try keeping news like a new bably, marriage, or divorce amongst "friends only" - you'll find a lot of non-friends would've spread the news). Third, if you're not sharing, for what reason are you telling facebook for? "Only me" is a stupid security setting because if it's only for you, don't post it online!
It's like keeping secrets. The best way is to not tell anyone.
Well, 300GHz+ is considered "light" rather than "radio", so it won't penetrate far through the walls. In fact, it may be a bit inconvenient since the only signal is coming through the open door unless you put in a repeater in the same room.
But yeah, if you switch to 5GHz, it's a lot more open but you'll find range is quite a bit shorter. I'm fairly certain the higher frequencies still are pretty much just-a-bit-more-than-a-room penetration.
Even editing media doesn't require SSDs - media is huge and even buffering a "small" amount like 1MB the seek time advantage of an SSD is minimal. Sure the transfer rate is impressive (under 200MB/sec reads if you go "conservative" instead of "cutting edge" and thus avoid most of the firmware issues), but RAID0 is actually plenty fast for it (and "good enough" considering you need terabytes of storage more than a single drive feeding the entire chain).
An SSD's benefit is zero seek time - with hard drives basically stuck at 100-200 seeks/second but an SSD can easily increase that by 2 orders of magnitude (10-20,000 IOPS is common). It makes little seeks so much faster (like when the OS is paging or loading executable images/resources from disk where you're doing little 4K reads more than massive 1MB reads).
Hell, IT upgraded my laptop with a spare SSD (it was destined for someone else, but their laptop had a 1.8" drive), and even though it's 2007-era "Vista Ready", the darn thing flies.
Well, the old technology is like that because it's overdesigned to be like that. It survives because all the parts are stronger than they need to be (material science being what it was then, and quality variance between batches was probably a lot higher) because they had to - unlike modern manufacturing processes where we can get remarkably consistent raw materials due to smeltters carefully controlling the alloys. When your inputs are of varying quality, you compensate by overdesigning. And yes, it happens today in the semiconductor industry - it's remarkably hard to produce a consistent product so transistors and such are overdesigned to compensate (we can spec chips to run slower, we avoid use of passive components (it's difficult to get resistors/capacitors to come out with less than a 20% tolerance in silicon - there are many "equivalent" circuits done using transistors which are easier to match), etc.
Plus, we also have survivor bias - the "old stuff" survives because we threw out the crap that failed long ago. Heck, your typewriter may be a victim of that - it's just you got one of the few good ones. When things were cranked out by the thousands, it happens.
Actually a large chunk of it goes to executives.
For most bands, the advance is the entire amount they'll be paid for an album. Let's say it's $10,000. After retailer's cut, the wholesale price of a CD is around $15 or so. The artist may get maybe $1 of that, but before that happens, the $10,000 has to be paid off first (i.e., they need to sell 10,000 CDs).
Of course, if you realize the label is pocketing $14, the lael only needs to sell about 715 CDs to break even. If we factor in production costs (really about $1), so they only get $13, that's still only 770 CDs. If they sell 1,000 of them, the 230 extra are pure profit for them (and the band would've paid off only $1,000 of their $10,000 advance) - or $2,990. The band "lost money" (didn't recover the advance), but the label made money ($2,990, after paying for production and "royalty").
And I'm actually "off". Technically for the first part, the band is getting nothing (they're paying off the royalty) so the label is pocketing $14/CD, which has a breakeven of 720 CDs. Of 1,000 CD run, the extra 280 CDs would bring in another $3,920. And the band pays for the manager, the road trips, the studio time, etc.
And that's all the label needs - just a bunch of bands able to sell 1,000 CDs for a $10,000 advance. After costs, that band made $14,000 for the label, or $4,000 after the advance. The band is "in the hole", but the label is happy because all costs were recouped. And that's where the trick is - the label only needed to sell 720-ish CDs to profit, whereas the band needed to sell 10,000 CDs to see any further revenue from the album. Given most albums will sell more than 720 and less than 10,000, anything above 720 is profit profit profit.
Depends on the pre-paid card. After all, if you buy a store gift card (prepaid card), you can often buy anything sold in that store with that card. So if you went into Safeway, bought a $10 gift card from them, re-encoded the stripe to be a debit card, you can then use that Safeway card to purchase a more expensive item. Safeway and other stores often sell a bunch of other prepaid cards, for stuff like cellphones, iTunes, Xbox/PSN/Wii, other online services, etc.
The thing is - store prepaid cards cost the store some money (the money they earn in interest basically keeps the system afloat - making the cards, administration, permanent liability (many places outlaw expiring gift cards)). However, a gift card to something like iTunes makes profit. Given the amount of 20% off iTunes card deals that happen regularly (e.g., $20 for $25 iTunes card), I'd really believe the store was getting them for a 25% discount (and Apple's 5% of the remainder (remember Apple takes 30%?) pays for the card and iTunes maintenance). I would think other cards have similar deals.
And most likely they bought those Visa prepaid cards they sell in stores - given it costs like $8 to buy 'em plus whatever you put in, I'm guessing the store gets a chunk of that $8 and maybe a percent of the preload value.
Their business was to sell broadband internet. Now, they purchased their bands with the intent of launching satellites up in space (I think they actually have one or two) to provide service. Of course, as anyone knows, latency sucks because the speed of light is just too slow.
So to compensate, they wanted to do the same thing, except without expensive satellites. Instead, they wanted to hook ground stations using the same band (licensed and bought as satellite-to-terrestrial band). Besides being significantly cheaper (it costs $1B to launch a satellite these days) they also cut down on latency.
However, everyone else using the band complained (especially since well, GPS was right beside what LightSquared purchased). So the FCC said no.
Satellite-ground bandwidth is significantly cheaper than ground-ground bandwidth (because only so many people can afford the $1B to launch), and cellphone carriers are always purchasing more bandwidth at billions apiece.
Had the FCC said yes, you can bet AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc. would be eyeing vairous bits and pieces of the satellite band to purchase - it's that much cheaper.
True, however one has to wonder why it's not rolled into the cost of basic service.
And given that the "goverment regulatory fee" is $6.50+ a month, and even the same carrier doesn't charge it on all plans, it's really a "profit fee". Yes, all the carriers have plans that DO NOT charge it!
It's like Bell Canada charging everyone $3 "touch-tone fee" in order ot use well, DTMF signalling. (and no, you can't call 'em up and say you want to go back to pulse dialling to avoid the fee).
Most of the fees are bogus and are meant to deflect attention elsewhere, since it's really a "profit fee" - just some random extra amount of money they charge you that goes into their balance sheet as profit.
Yep. Like Apple, HTC, Samsung, LG are also selling "4G" phones. That are not 4G. You might known them as selling "4G" Android phones. In fact, it was the considered the "Android is superior! It has 4G!" arguments.
In fact, it's so bad that phones are calling themselves "4G LTE" to separate themselves from HSPA-DC/HSPA+ that call themselves 4G phones.
And yes, I looked up 4G Android phones. Most only advertised HSPA+ support.
There are no clean hands - I think T-Mobile has a pile of 4G phones, but no LTE network at all (coming with the spectrum swap). Sprint and Verizon are probably the most honest - because their old technology ended at 3G, so they need WiMax/LTE to do 4G (they don't have HSPA+ to offer "4G").
And yes, there's the official ITU definition of 4G, and the marketing definition. Alas, the marketing definition took over in 2010-2011. Android users loved calling Apple out for not having "4G"...
Given the way the National Energy Board is doing their consulting, there's a lot more at play. They cancelled a meeting because members of a native band gathered at the airport to protest the Enbridge pipeline "scared" them (they were holding signs).
Given that once pipeline construction starts (they had to put a law in saying they can override all NEB recommendations, and even if the answer is "do not build", you can bet it's going to be built regardless), you can bet there will be lots of protests by the native bands and they will wear masks. On their land, of course. Given Harper's "oil all the way" mentality, we can't let this stop construction, so arrest them all because they're illegally blocking construction!
It's just putting in place all the pieces necessary to ramrod a pipeline through, consultations and recommendations be damned.
Yeah, USPS is probably one of the best shippers around - it's trackable through Canada (USPS stops at the border, but Canada Post tracks it through). It's also cheap. It will cost more to ship via USPS, but you don't pay UPS' extortionate fees to receive the package.
DHL is probably another good one - their fees are pretty reasonable (similar to Canada Post's), but very few American companies support DHL as a shipping option (probably because it sucked inside the US - despite being close or is the #1 worldwide carrier).
After that comes FedEx, because they do flat rate $25+taxes.
UPS - it's probably their cash cow - total bill can be anywhere from 30-200% of the item value. It's so bad that many US stores stopped shipping to Canada because people were refusing packages ($50 for a $40 item?) over the extortionate and gouging fees.
Now, there is ONE saving grace - there's something called "UPS Mail Innovations" that uses UPS within the US, who then hands it off to the local post office or USPS to carry across the border. Costs more than USPS and few know about it, but it's an option.
And it looks to be an ICAO rule, which means every country is affected (but only internationally - local laws can override ICAO if it stays in-country). Though, I suppose USPS just has to innovate and use ground crossings - fly it to the border gateway city, drive it across, and have Canada post continue with it. After all, the only time ICAO really applies is across countries (it's a set of de-facto rules). Though, nothing stops the US and Canada from forming an agreement to allow air transport across the border of batteries.
It's actually cheaper to mine recycled electronics for minerals than dig it out of the ground - the amount of stuff you have to sift through is far less, so there's value there.
It's not just gold - but copper, tantalum, aluminum, etc. All valuable metals and all far cheaper to extract from ground up electronics than digging it out.
Honestly, the web app "economy" failed. The iPhone tried it (it's the reason why Safari for Windows was produced) as the only apps available on it were web apps. Developers cried out, jailbreaks happened and some rather good apps were developed for jailbroken devices.
All this while Apple was pushing web apps, adding HTML5 support for sensors and location information, local storage etc so web apps could get access to a whole range of APIs. Eventually Apple relented and created the App Store. Web apps are still supported in iOS - and Apple promotes them as a way to get around the approval process.
Well, TV shows have started countering the DVR trend of skipping ads by doing more and more product placement. Where there was once a generic computer, there's a Dell or Apple. A cellphone, a Sprint Android or an iPhone. Generic canned drink? Now cola.
Hell, networks have even gone to the point of editing the TV episodes and adding their own product placements where the first time, there was none. It will also only be a matte rof time when you'll have audio ads interspersed with the TV show. Or we'll have scroller ads that take the bottom 10% of the screen (the TV networks are getting particularly obnoxious about this).
Hell, I'm betting once stuff like this gets common, the studios will figure out how they work and do the necessary distortions to mess up the programming - have the DVR on ad-skip mode? It'll automatically randomly skip through the programming for you, courtesy faked distortions the machine interprets as ads.
That's so ... ancient information. Anonymous and LOIC do NOT do ICMP Echo floods by default anymore. They do HTTP requests. The latest version of LOIC even makes the HTTP requests non-cachable (using various tricks that force a caching service to pass the request upstream so you'd need a really good CDN).
SOmetimes you have to. I mean, I have a bunch of stuff I love to use, like my Palm T|X. Problem is, accessories are REALLY hard to find. I had to replace the LCD, and it cost a few bucks. I'm thinking of picking up a few spares to keep it alive, but then you have to wonder if just switching completely is better.
It's just like PATA hard drives. I have lots of stuff that use it, but just try finding PATA hard drives. They're *expensive* - like $100/500GB expensive. ($100 can buy 2TB on sale, if SATA).
The old gear may work, but keeping it working can cost a lot more than migrating to newer technology.Even just to keep functionality the same.