"... he LA Times reports that the cost is about $100,000 to equip a plane. While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it...."
Doing anything to a commercial, passenger carrying aircraft in any country with a reasonably effective Aviation Regulatory environment for a mere $100K is a bargain, plain and simple. An in-flight movie system can add $2 to $5 million to the cost of an aircraft. A single cockpit GPS Navigation receiver in a commercial aircraft can cost $10K to install.
"... Next to the engines, it's the second most expensive item on an aircraft," said Lori Krans, spokeswoman for Thales, one of the world's largest IFE [In-Flight Entertainment] makers...." In-flight Entertainment Goes High Tech; Digital Journal, 6 April 2007
There will be other costs though... every ounce both raises fares (less available weight for passengers and luggage) and increases fuel consumption; the weight of additional fuel must also be subtracted from the fare-paying payload. Ten bucks (or whatever they charge individuals) is not the only cost penalty consumers, including those who have no use for in-flight wifi, will have to pay.
My guess is you will see it in the meals and beverages, the whipping boy of the hunt for ways to reduce weight, volume, fuel consumption and costs. That is if your airline still offers any.
Copyright is automatic, and if you sue someone and can make the necessary proof then you win.
What you don't get, without a proper copyright notice, in most countries, is the right to damages. I believe in the US there might be a requirement for a registration before you can get damages, but I could be wrong. Most nations do not require any form of registration of copyright.
For your money and your trouble, you get a judge to say "Stop it", but that's it. Of course, armed with the court ruling, the next infringement might bring damages.
Not sure about the US, but in most jurisdictions you must spell out the word 'copyright', include a date, and include the name of the copyright owner to make a legal copyright notice. The old computer (c) is specifically cited as not part of a legal copyright notice in some countries.
"... The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright -- and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes..."
Sorry. Nope. Not a chance. Never. Specifically mentioned in most copyright law as un-copyrightable, no less. Like titles. You have a song titled "Away with their heads'? So do I. The lyrics are different? Good then. Not actionable. Live with it; the world has for a century.
Too short, and an enforced limit at that, taking the doubt right out of it. If it's not a form of poetry and formatted as such, there goes pretty much your only chance.
Lots of comments here about potential roadblocks, stutters and genuine questions about viability. I'll leave that to everyone else, and just say this:
If this works (and time will tell), for fifty bucks a year, all in, I'm buying. It's that simple.
And so will everyone else. Like I said, maybe there are issues... I don't know. But there is a huge potential for a paradigm shift here, and let there be no doubt that these guys will have all the heavyweights breathing down their necks. Lawsuits on one side, competing services on the other. Someone, eventually, will win out, though.
Hopefully gamers will chose the lesser of the evils, the truly bad choices have to admit defeat and give up, and we're left with a win for the consumer, for a change.
I don't really know why, but for some reason this reminds me of the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
"... ve been working in banking as a programmer in banking for a few years now. More recently I've been programming the risk analysis systems they talk about in the article. I can tell you there is no one forumula used by everyone...."
Interesting post, and I have no reason to doubt you.
What, in your opinion, would be the deviation in the results between these different formulas if during an ordinary, nominally prosperous economic period, something that caused the input data to be suddenly restated... let's say (for the sake of argument) a major US Investment Bank failed without warning via abrupt announcement by the SEC?
Does the fact that they do differ and are constantly being evaluated and massaged matter or would they all have a similar reaction to the news?
In other words, accepting that they are different and even accepting that the parent post is wrong by attributing the formulas to being based on the work of one particular researcher, do they then "act as one" when faced with a particular significant event?
Well, I can see it ruffling a few feathers, but it's hardly news and I can't believe anyone, contributor or user, would seriously contest it. Usability is a problem on Open Source and on Linux. There, I said it.
Linux is really an ever-evolving work in progress, and it is never "done", and never done in a way that, say, XP or PalmOS don't experience. They pause for a while and let the world catch it's breath, developing as a more holistic whole. New documentation can be written as the next point upgrade is written, and tech blogs can write support as things come up in the user's experience.
Not so with Linux. Not only does nobody want to do the job in the first place, but nobody can keep up even if they are crazy enough to want to do it. Everything is in a constant state of (mostly useful, mostly working) flux.
It's much the same for the "usability" issue. To even start exploring usability with an Open Source app is to say it's "almost done", if not "done, period". That's a state that is rare indeed. "Why work on menus when the guts need work and it will all be different in the next release and besides I have this great idea to... " well, you get the point.
Linux really needs non-geeks to write and maintain that aspect of it, and it really needs non-geeks to say to developers, "no, that shouldn't be there, it should be here" and "if you do it that way, everyone will be confused" and so on. That kind of feedback should probably be happening in tandem with the underpinnings and code being written and rewritten.
But, there is no mechanism to pair the unsophisticated user with the code contributor and project manager, and I'm not even sure that if there was, they would still be talking to each other after a few months of collaboration. It definitely would slow things down a bit, and that alone might be enough to kill the idea with the traditional contributors.
Until then (and I'm betting on that being a word something like "never") Open Source tools will always be geeky and defiantly quirky, which leads to confusion and frustration at least some of the time. I really wish there was a way to change that, because all it really takes is that first 3 months and many people are hooked on Open Source, yes, even as an "only" desktop with no Commercial OS "safety net" to fall back on.
But it's damn hard to get over the hurdles of that first install, and although everyone loves to help, no-one wants to be a full-time free support person for your buddy. I can imagine wives of Open Source users who happily run OOo on Linux all day going out and buying a copy of Vista right after the divorce.
What choice do they really have? You can either have decent hand-holding documentation or you have intuitive software. Some dare to try for both. Some Open Source projects seem bent on having neither, and in a very real sense, it may not even be possible because Linux and Open Source never really just sits in one place to begin with.
Hello, this is Bob from Marketing here at FUD Advertising, and we've got this new account from these guys in Washington state called Microsoft.
We've decided to move them into full page adds in Technology and General Media, with short TV spots in support later. We want to go with "Movie-Style" ads: brief quotes from professionals who use the product and speak to potential buyers (Edit from Boss: scratch that... they want us to call them "users". Sounds like drug addicts to me, but whatever. They write the checks).
We love the idea, because these short quotes are so meaningless, easy to manipulate, memorable and almost perfectly supportive. We think black background, big type with product name at the top, nice picture, and quotes with attributions below... you know, like a movie ad in the paper.
"...Don't you have to pay Apple a fee to use this connector?..."
What Connector? Micro USB? No. Mini USB? No. The iPod connector? Standard Industry connector. No fee.
If it's "Firewire" you're talking about, it depends. Apple gave the specification away to the IEEE, so if you call it IEEE 1394 and implement it, you pay nothing. SONY gave the revised specification away to the IEEE (Sony's version is 4-pin; it just eliminates the 2 power connectors), so if you don't call that version iLink and instead call it IEEE 1394, you pay nothing.
However, "Firewire" is an Apple trademark for IEEE 1394, which they developed, and "iLink" is similarly a SONY trademark. So, if you call it either of those, you need Apple's or SONY's permission to use the trademark, which could involve a licensing fee, or you use the weasel words "compatible with... " and include the note that they are trademarks, and pay nothing.
They've been there before, where they concluded the whole exercise would be pointless. They will look at it again now, where they will decide the whole exercise is currently pointless. And then they will move to look at it again, in the future, in case something changes in the meantime. That's what these kinds of regulators do.
If anyone doubts any of the above, may I point out that they have in the last year refused to address Net Neutrality and Traffic Shaping, leaving it to remain wholly unregulated. Which basically sums up the only technology that has any hope whatsoever of doing anything of the sort.
Can I post my next Slashdot story now? I'll date it February 16, 2014 (five years from today).
I'm thinking of entitling it "CRTC Mulls Canadian Content On The Internet".
"... That leaves 70% for the artist and the label (if appropriate) to deal with (and you can really do without the latter in many cases)...."
Umm, that should be "... leaves 70% for the label..." The artist had to sign over all copyrights as a condition of signing with the label. The artist gets nothing beyond a royalty in return for giving up all his/her/their copyrights.
"... Also, I don't think that most artists could live off of 10 cents a song for downloads (or the $1-1.5 an album)..."
Well, don't let your babies grow up to be guitar pickers, then. No artist on earth gets a royalty from an RIAA member label as high as 10 cents, and no artist in history ever did. The "Statutory rate" is 7 cents per song. All contracts pay less than 7 cents, and whatever number they do get under the contract (around 5 is typical, according to industry lawyers) that amount is gross... there are deductions for promotion (10% of any royalty due, typically) and all royalties are only paid on full retail sales. All discounted CDs, Cassettes, LPs, etc result in a royalty of zero for artists, according to the standard contract, as does any music sold via record clubs, etc.
Were that not enough, the labels originally paid zero on all digital downloads, until they were sued. They finally agreed to pay a rate that is roughly 60% of the regular rate paid for CDs, etc. for digital files.
So, Apple, who gets to administer, promote, and pay for servers, gets 29 cents, the labels get 70 cents and have to put out zero in manufacturing costs, and the artists get, on average, about 3.5 cents per digital download and around 5 cents per full retail price CD (where "full retail price" means it was sold to the retailer at full wholesale price, regardless of the actual retail sales price).
Alberta has rats but contains the threat with an active anti-rat policy and full-time rat control officers. The province spends roughly a half million dollars each year on it's active Rat Control program. It helps that it's illegal to own rats as pets, to possess rats for research without a permit, or to fail to kill any rat any citizen of Alberta comes into contact with. If any company, municipality, individual or group fails to kill any and all rats they encounter, the province will do so for them, and will bill them for 100% of the costs.
The rat control policy began more than 50 years ago and it's true that without it, and without the rat control policy of neighboring Saskatchewan, who trained the Alberta rat control officers and the Alberta Department of Health personnel in 1950, Alberta would have the same rat problem as most North American jurisdictions do.
Alberta's rat control problem takes advantage of natural geographic barriers; the active rat control program area is only roughly 15 x 300 miles along 1/3 of just one of the four borders.
The program was initiated the moment the natural migration of Norway Rats (15 miles per year) from Eastern Canadian ports arrived at the Eastern border of Alberta in 1950. Had there been any delay, the problem would be unmanageable today. Were the program to extend to the entire province the "cost would be prohibitive" according to Alberta Government documents. As such, a similar program is unlikely to be useful anywhere else.
Currently the major issue the program has is with Alberta residents themselves, whom outside of the active control zone, cannot reliably identify a rat or rat sign. As such, control officers are often called out with regard to sightings of what turn out to be muskrats, pocket gophers, Richardson ground squirrels, busy tailed wood rats, or mice, according to Alberta officials.
Source: Rat Control in Alberta; Michael J. Dorrance; Alberta Environmental Centre; Vegreville, AB, Canada; Proceedings of the Eleventh Vertebrate Pest Conference.
Cats are wonderful mousers, and will gladly take on most smaller vermin, provided you don't feed them too much (which can be a problem in public spaces). If they're not a little hungry, they won't pursue mouse very vigilantly, usually.
However, you say you have a rat problem. It pays to know your enemy.
Rats will grow to roughly the size of small cats in about two years (then they die). Also, Rats will absolutely, positively, no exemptions whatsoever seek water, and they must have water every day or they die. They cannot survive very long without it. So, there is something you may be able to deal with right off the bat... find the source of water and fix that issue right now. Usually it's leaky something or other; they don't need much water, but they do need water.
Next, use the right tool for the job. Cats are not very useful against rats, and will not be able to eradicate them even if they are somewhat successful. Get a Terrier. These dog breeds were originally specifically bred as Ratters. They will seek out and kill any and all Rats they can. Although training would obviously help, they don't necessarily need it... any true Terrier will do it naturally.
I understand the concept of conserving energy, substituting less toxic materials, increasing ease of recycling, reducing weight = less fuel burned, etc.
However, corporations have to tread a fine line. There are plenty of ways we could be reducing our impact on the planet, but they run right up against things like profit and the overall health of the economy. Consumers might change their tune if they knew that REALLY going green might mean they lose their jobs.
Let's say you have two cities. In city A, everyone earns $10 an hour and everything costs $1. In city B, everyone earns $20 an hour and everything costs $2. As far as residents of each city go, the world is pretty much the same. People can afford the same things, and live similar lives. But the GDP of city B is twice that of city A (actually, it's more than 2x, due to some of the rules of economics, but whatever). City B can borrow more money and if both cities decide to build a road to each other, the problem becomes obvious right away. Guys from City B buy up all the "cheap" real estate in City A, for example.
Anyway, you can substitute citrus based cleaners for chemical soups. But chemical soups generate more money for the economy, the advertising industry, everyone. You can go green, but you can't go green and get rich.
What you can do is dance around the idea of green. You can build hybrids out of expensive rare earth minerals instead of iron and steel, and call that good. You can sell green products that cost more than the "black" (I just made that up, but I kind of like it...) products while using less electricity, but you can't go back to a simpler life of making soap out of bones and fat, because that dooms you to poverty by taking money out of circulation, permanently.
No wonder consumers are wary; they know, instinctively, that there is some kind of shell game going on, but they can't quite put their finger on what it is. Companies must continue to encourage consumption, which is another way of saying exploitation of the environment, or they risk innovating and planet-saving themselves out of existence.
So, we have "green" as an idea, not as reality. Companies promote recycling, when reduce and reuse have the real benefits to the environment. Recycling, however, benefits the economy as a whole. There is no "right" answer, and that frustrates consumers who don't see an effort being made where they instinctively know it should be made.
"... Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?"..."
Or is HP supplying printers to Iran under direction from the US gov't, via clandestine means, like an "illegal" importer from the area, to the unsuspecting Iranian government, military, academia, and commerce? It's not the first time printers were used to gather intelligence... I seem to recall a news story during the first year of Gulf War II about certain printers that the US had "modified" in such a way that they offered useful intelligence, gathered from the offices of Saddam's between-Gulf War military.
Even if that isn't going on here, all printers sold everywhere, including in the US, have embedded dots that can identify the origin of any document down to a specific printer. Sold to us as a means to counter counterfeiting of money, It's useful to have such data when you run across something someone printed in a foreign country you are very interested in knowing more secrets about.
Could be wrong, but methinks a secret blind eye, to advance intelligence gathering while appearing to enforce the embargo for the usual reasons, is somewhat more plausible than HP blatantly defying the law to make a few bucks in a relatively small market, as much as they do love the money.
It's either good or bad, depending on your perspective, that if it were true, it's best to deny it, and continue the charade with some kind of nominal punishment. So, we'll never know, unless of course they throw the book at HP.
"... or paying $50 for the 50 hours you actually use it (which is probably being generous in the time students actually use Office)?..."
Well, I beg to differ. Not that students use Office Software more than you believe; they may or they may not. I'm referring to HOW students use Office Software. Put simply, they dawdle. The IM is open, there is texting to cellphones (via the PC, the cellphone, or both), there is music playing on the PC, there is a whole lot of stuff going on that is not really homework so much as an exercise in avoiding homework. But, that copy of Office is open, and the ticker is ticking. I find it hard to believe you could do a years' worth of average Student-At-The-Home-Computer-Doing-Homework in under 50 hours. More like 6 hours a night, Office open the whole time, but a whole lot of simultaneous things going on as well.
Just my 2c; having raised more than one teen (whom got good grades and who did graduate from college with honors).
HUB noticed an error message for 19 days. For some reason, they either ignored the error message, or failed to investigate with whomever configured/installed/sold the PBX System, or they themselves did so and they failed to search the documentation for their PBX System. That they did not fully understand the System seems obvious.
On the 19th day they phone MTS who then look up the account and inform them of the charges. So, they had not got the paper bill at that point. The billing delays you mention are not an issue here.
Didn't read TFA, because I don't care what it says. It actually doesn't matter what it says, and that is rare on/. despite an overwhelming majority of/. readers testing the bounds with that one. These dudes are cruising around [some part of a country that is, quite frankly, huge] mapping things and taking pictures of the airport and such, yet... India is WIDE AWAKE and VIGILANT after being EMBARASSED by TERRORISTS.
"... Or they could stick to the analog media that is near failure proof...." Dude, a DVD is analog media. We use it to store digital data.
"... A box of analog photos, while harder to share, is a lot less likely to fail then a hard drive...." Dude, we call those "prints". They are analog data stored on analog media.
As someone with some experience with the specific good old analog media of which you speak, I can assure you that they are far from failure proof.
In fact, without special care at every stage it fails quite predictably. The very chemicals that will eat your image are stored in the paper it's printed on.
In the end, the whole story comes down to: why don't we just use "best practices" and quit paying attention to failures based on easily correctable yet sloppy archival technique, whether it's analog or digital data we seek to preserve?
Because it's always been that way where I'm at. I had CableModem with no cableTV in 1996, one of the first networks in North America to deliver broadband. DSL came a few years later. That marked the last time I had broadband and a telephone at the same time. During that entire time I never subscribed to CableTV. I did for a time have a Sat TV receiver.
CableModem, DSL, landline, cellular phone, TV... I've never had two off that list from the same company at the same time, in 12 years. Currently the DSL company offers every single item on that list if you want it, from one provider; if you are willing to go with a competitive cell provider, you can do hispeed, tv and telephone (VoIP) with your choice of three providers (cable, microwave guys, and some-other-antennae-thingy kind guys).
Currently I'm on DSL with no landline 5 down/768 up $23/month. Cellphone is $30 a month on a package that works well for my habits... on vacation I might run it up to $40. That's it... no TV since all I watch is sports anyway. I do have the TV and watch movies whenever. Televisions are so much more useful without actual TV channels on them, I find.
Either you have to needle someone into telling you the truth, no matter how much it hurts (them), or you have to threaten to switch providers.
The more the other guys can do as far as all the options (even though you are planning to do just one, or whatever) the bigger threat you're moving is to your potential as a source of revenue. You might be thinking "I'm taking my $30 cable bill and walking", but they will be thinking "he's taking a potential $120 cable/internet/telephone/security system/cellphone/long distance/phone features bundle and walking".
If they stil won't give you what you want, then turn on 'em and start switching back and forth to competitive providers, always taking the maximum incentive the very nano-second you are eligible to drop your last incentive-laden obligation. Where I am, that's every six months, and basically what happens is the cost of whatever you're consuming goes down by about 40% (would be more, but fees swallow some of it back).
They all will want to leave the equipment there, in case you change your mind later, so mention that it's OK with you if that's "more convenient" to them. Also, switchers get calls from the old provider offering special deals that no-one else hears about. When they offer, I always say I hate the new guys and want to go back to you right on dudes as soon as my obligation is over. And we're pals again. Sames script works on both (or more) of 'em, too.
I think I do get your point, but to be honest I don't know why you cited numbers. You are listing gross revenue and gross profit. But, gross profit does not really tell the story about how much money is available to, say, hire developers.
The figure we need is net profit; how much is available for retained earnings, dividends, new initiatives, investment, etc.
By way of example, a company could be selling a billion dollars worth of product every minute, and have 50% margins (a billion dollars in profit every two minutes) but if the cost of doing business is 1.1 billion per minute, they are in desperate need of cash.
The number you would need to back your argument would be net profit after taxes.
Also, only because it is also pertinent to your argument, both Apple and Microsoft have huge cash reserves. This is tax paid money that is sitting in the bank; money that is saved up from previous years net profits. Apple's cash position right now is more than twice the gross profits you mentioned, for example.
Microsoft Gross Revenue 2008 is about $US 60 Billion, Gross Profit is about $US 49 Billion; basically the numbers you cited. Net Profit is about $US 17 Billion before taxes and the 2008 cash position improved by about $US 4 Billion. I don't know MS's cash position but I know it's good.
Apple's Gross Revenue 2008 is about $US 33 Billion, Gross Profit is about $US 11 Billion, again the numbers you cited. But, Net Profit is about $5 Billion before taxes and the cash position improved by $US 2.5 Billion. Apple has about $US 24 Billion cash on hand right now. As you can see, the cash position is more significant than the profit position if you are thinking of how much flexibility they have regarding what to do next.
Apple has NEVER not recommended users install AntiVirus software. One of the first benefits of subscribing to Apple's DotMac web service, a service that is roughly as old as the first Gold Master release of OSX itself, was a complimentary copy of AntiVirus software (McAfee Virex 7.0, released September 2001).
The offer only applies to v7x; which no longer compatible with the latest OSX version, which probably goes a much longer way to explain why Apple is now recommending users install their own choice of a competitive application.
The most recent ad campaign, which does mention vulnerabilities to various malware on Windows machines, comes after more than two decades of people clamoring for Apple to do just that in it's marketing and sales literature. Rather than all of a sudden "quietly" recommending AV software, Apple has always (quietly) recommended it.
The (very lightweight) BBC article comes across as written by someone who only recently started paying attention to Apple, perhaps after her dad bought her an iPod in Journalism school.
Slashdot Mirror
" ... he LA Times reports that the cost is about $100,000 to equip a plane. While that number seems high, it will probably be worth it. ..."
Doing anything to a commercial, passenger carrying aircraft in any country with a reasonably effective Aviation Regulatory environment for a mere $100K is a bargain, plain and simple. An in-flight movie system can add $2 to $5 million to the cost of an aircraft. A single cockpit GPS Navigation receiver in a commercial aircraft can cost $10K to install.
" ... Next to the engines, it's the second most expensive item on an aircraft," said Lori Krans, spokeswoman for Thales, one of the world's largest IFE [In-Flight Entertainment] makers. ..." In-flight Entertainment Goes High Tech; Digital Journal, 6 April 2007
There will be other costs though ... every ounce both raises fares (less available weight for passengers and luggage) and increases fuel consumption; the weight of additional fuel must also be subtracted from the fare-paying payload. Ten bucks (or whatever they charge individuals) is not the only cost penalty consumers, including those who have no use for in-flight wifi, will have to pay.
My guess is you will see it in the meals and beverages, the whipping boy of the hunt for ways to reduce weight, volume, fuel consumption and costs. That is if your airline still offers any.
" ... Not sure about the US, but in most jurisdictions you must spell out the word 'copyright', ..."
Should be: ... spell out the word 'copyright' or use the official symbol © ..."
Copyright is automatic, and if you sue someone and can make the necessary proof then you win.
What you don't get, without a proper copyright notice, in most countries, is the right to damages. I believe in the US there might be a requirement for a registration before you can get damages, but I could be wrong. Most nations do not require any form of registration of copyright.
For your money and your trouble, you get a judge to say "Stop it", but that's it. Of course, armed with the court ruling, the next infringement might bring damages.
Not sure about the US, but in most jurisdictions you must spell out the word 'copyright', include a date, and include the name of the copyright owner to make a legal copyright notice. The old computer (c) is specifically cited as not part of a legal copyright notice in some countries.
" ... The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright -- and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes ..."
Sorry. Nope. Not a chance. Never. Specifically mentioned in most copyright law as un-copyrightable, no less. Like titles. You have a song titled "Away with their heads'? So do I. The lyrics are different? Good then. Not actionable. Live with it; the world has for a century.
Too short, and an enforced limit at that, taking the doubt right out of it. If it's not a form of poetry and formatted as such, there goes pretty much your only chance.
Lots of comments here about potential roadblocks, stutters and genuine questions about viability. I'll leave that to everyone else, and just say this:
If this works (and time will tell), for fifty bucks a year, all in, I'm buying. It's that simple.
And so will everyone else. Like I said, maybe there are issues ... I don't know. But there is a huge potential for a paradigm shift here, and let there be no doubt that these guys will have all the heavyweights breathing down their necks. Lawsuits on one side, competing services on the other. Someone, eventually, will win out, though.
Hopefully gamers will chose the lesser of the evils, the truly bad choices have to admit defeat and give up, and we're left with a win for the consumer, for a change.
I don't really know why, but for some reason this reminds me of the old Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."
" ... ve been working in banking as a programmer in banking for a few years now. More recently I've been programming the risk analysis systems they talk about in the article. I can tell you there is no one forumula used by everyone. ..."
Interesting post, and I have no reason to doubt you.
What, in your opinion, would be the deviation in the results between these different formulas if during an ordinary, nominally prosperous economic period, something that caused the input data to be suddenly restated ... let's say (for the sake of argument) a major US Investment Bank failed without warning via abrupt announcement by the SEC?
Does the fact that they do differ and are constantly being evaluated and massaged matter or would they all have a similar reaction to the news?
In other words, accepting that they are different and even accepting that the parent post is wrong by attributing the formulas to being based on the work of one particular researcher, do they then "act as one" when faced with a particular significant event?
Well, I can see it ruffling a few feathers, but it's hardly news and I can't believe anyone, contributor or user, would seriously contest it. Usability is a problem on Open Source and on Linux. There, I said it.
Linux is really an ever-evolving work in progress, and it is never "done", and never done in a way that, say, XP or PalmOS don't experience. They pause for a while and let the world catch it's breath, developing as a more holistic whole. New documentation can be written as the next point upgrade is written, and tech blogs can write support as things come up in the user's experience.
Not so with Linux. Not only does nobody want to do the job in the first place, but nobody can keep up even if they are crazy enough to want to do it. Everything is in a constant state of (mostly useful, mostly working) flux.
It's much the same for the "usability" issue. To even start exploring usability with an Open Source app is to say it's "almost done", if not "done, period". That's a state that is rare indeed. "Why work on menus when the guts need work and it will all be different in the next release and besides I have this great idea to ... " well, you get the point.
Linux really needs non-geeks to write and maintain that aspect of it, and it really needs non-geeks to say to developers, "no, that shouldn't be there, it should be here" and "if you do it that way, everyone will be confused" and so on. That kind of feedback should probably be happening in tandem with the underpinnings and code being written and rewritten.
But, there is no mechanism to pair the unsophisticated user with the code contributor and project manager, and I'm not even sure that if there was, they would still be talking to each other after a few months of collaboration. It definitely would slow things down a bit, and that alone might be enough to kill the idea with the traditional contributors.
Until then (and I'm betting on that being a word something like "never") Open Source tools will always be geeky and defiantly quirky, which leads to confusion and frustration at least some of the time. I really wish there was a way to change that, because all it really takes is that first 3 months and many people are hooked on Open Source, yes, even as an "only" desktop with no Commercial OS "safety net" to fall back on.
But it's damn hard to get over the hurdles of that first install, and although everyone loves to help, no-one wants to be a full-time free support person for your buddy. I can imagine wives of Open Source users who happily run OOo on Linux all day going out and buying a copy of Vista right after the divorce.
What choice do they really have? You can either have decent hand-holding documentation or you have intuitive software. Some dare to try for both. Some Open Source projects seem bent on having neither, and in a very real sense, it may not even be possible because Linux and Open Source never really just sits in one place to begin with.
Hello, this is Bob from Marketing here at FUD Advertising, and we've got this new account from these guys in Washington state called Microsoft.
We've decided to move them into full page adds in Technology and General Media, with short TV spots in support later. We want to go with "Movie-Style" ads: brief quotes from professionals who use the product and speak to potential buyers (Edit from Boss: scratch that ... they want us to call them "users". Sounds like drug addicts to me, but whatever. They write the checks).
We love the idea, because these short quotes are so meaningless, easy to manipulate, memorable and almost perfectly supportive. We think black background, big type with product name at the top, nice picture, and quotes with attributions below ... you know, like a movie ad in the paper.
So, this is what we have so far.
"Less confusing!"
"Pretty good!"
"A good starting point!!"
"Seems to have improved!!"
Send comments to my assistant by Friday.
Thaaaaaanks. That would be Greeaaaaaaaat.
Getting caught cheating Vegas Casinos? No biggie.
So, you lose your phone. Or is it the use of your right hand. I can never get those two straight.
" ...Don't you have to pay Apple a fee to use this connector? ..."
What Connector? Micro USB? No. Mini USB? No. The iPod connector? Standard Industry connector. No fee.
If it's "Firewire" you're talking about, it depends. Apple gave the specification away to the IEEE, so if you call it IEEE 1394 and implement it, you pay nothing.
SONY gave the revised specification away to the IEEE (Sony's version is 4-pin; it just eliminates the 2 power connectors), so if you don't call that version iLink and instead call it IEEE 1394, you pay nothing.
However, "Firewire" is an Apple trademark for IEEE 1394, which they developed, and "iLink" is similarly a SONY trademark. So, if you call it either of those, you need Apple's or SONY's permission to use the trademark, which could involve a licensing fee, or you use the weasel words "compatible with ... " and include the note that they are trademarks, and pay nothing.
They've been there before, where they concluded the whole exercise would be pointless. They will look at it again now, where they will decide the whole exercise is currently pointless. And then they will move to look at it again, in the future, in case something changes in the meantime. That's what these kinds of regulators do.
If anyone doubts any of the above, may I point out that they have in the last year refused to address Net Neutrality and Traffic Shaping, leaving it to remain wholly unregulated. Which basically sums up the only technology that has any hope whatsoever of doing anything of the sort.
Can I post my next Slashdot story now? I'll date it February 16, 2014 (five years from today).
I'm thinking of entitling it "CRTC Mulls Canadian Content On The Internet".
" ... That leaves 70% for the artist and the label (if appropriate) to deal with (and you can really do without the latter in many cases). ..."
Umm, that should be " ... leaves 70% for the label ..." The artist had to sign over all copyrights as a condition of signing with the label. The artist gets nothing beyond a royalty in return for giving up all his/her/their copyrights.
" ... Also, I don't think that most artists could live off of 10 cents a song for downloads (or the $1-1.5 an album) ..."
Well, don't let your babies grow up to be guitar pickers, then. No artist on earth gets a royalty from an RIAA member label as high as 10 cents, and no artist in history ever did. The "Statutory rate" is 7 cents per song. All contracts pay less than 7 cents, and whatever number they do get under the contract (around 5 is typical, according to industry lawyers) that amount is gross ... there are deductions for promotion (10% of any royalty due, typically) and all royalties are only paid on full retail sales. All discounted CDs, Cassettes, LPs, etc result in a royalty of zero for artists, according to the standard contract, as does any music sold via record clubs, etc.
Were that not enough, the labels originally paid zero on all digital downloads, until they were sued. They finally agreed to pay a rate that is roughly 60% of the regular rate paid for CDs, etc. for digital files.
So, Apple, who gets to administer, promote, and pay for servers, gets 29 cents, the labels get 70 cents and have to put out zero in manufacturing costs, and the artists get, on average, about 3.5 cents per digital download and around 5 cents per full retail price CD (where "full retail price" means it was sold to the retailer at full wholesale price, regardless of the actual retail sales price).
Just thought you would like to know.
"Move To Alberta. We don't have Rats".
Alberta has rats but contains the threat with an active anti-rat policy and full-time rat control officers. The province spends roughly a half million dollars each year on it's active Rat Control program. It helps that it's illegal to own rats as pets, to possess rats for research without a permit, or to fail to kill any rat any citizen of Alberta comes into contact with. If any company, municipality, individual or group fails to kill any and all rats they encounter, the province will do so for them, and will bill them for 100% of the costs.
The rat control policy began more than 50 years ago and it's true that without it, and without the rat control policy of neighboring Saskatchewan, who trained the Alberta rat control officers and the Alberta Department of Health personnel in 1950, Alberta would have the same rat problem as most North American jurisdictions do.
Alberta's rat control problem takes advantage of natural geographic barriers; the active rat control program area is only roughly 15 x 300 miles along 1/3 of just one of the four borders.
The program was initiated the moment the natural migration of Norway Rats (15 miles per year) from Eastern Canadian ports arrived at the Eastern border of Alberta in 1950. Had there been any delay, the problem would be unmanageable today. Were the program to extend to the entire province the "cost would be prohibitive" according to Alberta Government documents. As such, a similar program is unlikely to be useful anywhere else.
Currently the major issue the program has is with Alberta residents themselves, whom outside of the active control zone, cannot reliably identify a rat or rat sign. As such, control officers are often called out with regard to sightings of what turn out to be muskrats, pocket gophers, Richardson ground squirrels, busy tailed wood rats, or mice, according to Alberta officials.
Source: Rat Control in Alberta; Michael J. Dorrance; Alberta Environmental Centre; Vegreville, AB, Canada; Proceedings of the Eleventh Vertebrate Pest Conference.
Cats are wonderful mousers, and will gladly take on most smaller vermin, provided you don't feed them too much (which can be a problem in public spaces). If they're not a little hungry, they won't pursue mouse very vigilantly, usually.
However, you say you have a rat problem. It pays to know your enemy.
Rats will grow to roughly the size of small cats in about two years (then they die). Also, Rats will absolutely, positively, no exemptions whatsoever seek water, and they must have water every day or they die. They cannot survive very long without it. So, there is something you may be able to deal with right off the bat ... find the source of water and fix that issue right now. Usually it's leaky something or other; they don't need much water, but they do need water.
Next, use the right tool for the job. Cats are not very useful against rats, and will not be able to eradicate them even if they are somewhat successful. Get a Terrier. These dog breeds were originally specifically bred as Ratters. They will seek out and kill any and all Rats they can. Although training would obviously help, they don't necessarily need it ... any true Terrier will do it naturally.
I understand the concept of conserving energy, substituting less toxic materials, increasing ease of recycling, reducing weight = less fuel burned, etc.
However, corporations have to tread a fine line. There are plenty of ways we could be reducing our impact on the planet, but they run right up against things like profit and the overall health of the economy. Consumers might change their tune if they knew that REALLY going green might mean they lose their jobs.
Let's say you have two cities. In city A, everyone earns $10 an hour and everything costs $1. In city B, everyone earns $20 an hour and everything costs $2. As far as residents of each city go, the world is pretty much the same. People can afford the same things, and live similar lives. But the GDP of city B is twice that of city A (actually, it's more than 2x, due to some of the rules of economics, but whatever). City B can borrow more money and if both cities decide to build a road to each other, the problem becomes obvious right away. Guys from City B buy up all the "cheap" real estate in City A, for example.
Anyway, you can substitute citrus based cleaners for chemical soups. But chemical soups generate more money for the economy, the advertising industry, everyone. You can go green, but you can't go green and get rich.
What you can do is dance around the idea of green. You can build hybrids out of expensive rare earth minerals instead of iron and steel, and call that good. You can sell green products that cost more than the "black" (I just made that up, but I kind of like it ...) products while using less electricity, but you can't go back to a simpler life of making soap out of bones and fat, because that dooms you to poverty by taking money out of circulation, permanently.
No wonder consumers are wary; they know, instinctively, that there is some kind of shell game going on, but they can't quite put their finger on what it is. Companies must continue to encourage consumption, which is another way of saying exploitation of the environment, or they risk innovating and planet-saving themselves out of existence.
So, we have "green" as an idea, not as reality. Companies promote recycling, when reduce and reuse have the real benefits to the environment. Recycling, however, benefits the economy as a whole. There is no "right" answer, and that frustrates consumers who don't see an effort being made where they instinctively know it should be made.
" ... Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?" ..."
Or is HP supplying printers to Iran under direction from the US gov't, via clandestine means, like an "illegal" importer from the area, to the unsuspecting Iranian government, military, academia, and commerce? It's not the first time printers were used to gather intelligence ... I seem to recall a news story during the first year of Gulf War II about certain printers that the US had "modified" in such a way that they offered useful intelligence, gathered from the offices of Saddam's between-Gulf War military.
Even if that isn't going on here, all printers sold everywhere, including in the US, have embedded dots that can identify the origin of any document down to a specific printer. Sold to us as a means to counter counterfeiting of money, It's useful to have such data when you run across something someone printed in a foreign country you are very interested in knowing more secrets about.
Could be wrong, but methinks a secret blind eye, to advance intelligence gathering while appearing to enforce the embargo for the usual reasons, is somewhat more plausible than HP blatantly defying the law to make a few bucks in a relatively small market, as much as they do love the money.
It's either good or bad, depending on your perspective, that if it were true, it's best to deny it, and continue the charade with some kind of nominal punishment. So, we'll never know, unless of course they throw the book at HP.
" ... or paying $50 for the 50 hours you actually use it (which is probably being generous in the time students actually use Office)? ..."
Well, I beg to differ. Not that students use Office Software more than you believe; they may or they may not. I'm referring to HOW students use Office Software. Put simply, they dawdle. The IM is open, there is texting to cellphones (via the PC, the cellphone, or both), there is music playing on the PC, there is a whole lot of stuff going on that is not really homework so much as an exercise in avoiding homework. But, that copy of Office is open, and the ticker is ticking. I find it hard to believe you could do a years' worth of average Student-At-The-Home-Computer-Doing-Homework in under 50 hours. More like 6 hours a night, Office open the whole time, but a whole lot of simultaneous things going on as well.
Just my 2c; having raised more than one teen (whom got good grades and who did graduate from college with honors).
HUB noticed an error message for 19 days. For some reason, they either ignored the error message, or failed to investigate with whomever configured/installed/sold the PBX System, or they themselves did so and they failed to search the documentation for their PBX System. That they did not fully understand the System seems obvious.
On the 19th day they phone MTS who then look up the account and inform them of the charges. So, they had not got the paper bill at that point. The billing delays you mention are not an issue here.
'... Lord knows I'd hate to be "grilled" for simply collecting data. ..."
Fastest way I know to "Get Grilled".
Don't ask so many questions, you'll be allright.
Didn't read TFA, because I don't care what it says. /. despite an overwhelming majority of /. readers testing the bounds with that one. ...
It actually doesn't matter what it says, and that is rare on
These dudes are cruising around [some part of a country that is, quite frankly, huge] mapping things and taking pictures of the airport and such, yet
India is WIDE AWAKE and VIGILANT after being EMBARASSED by TERRORISTS.
So, you get arrested. Next.
" ... Or they could stick to the analog media that is near failure proof. ..."
Dude, a DVD is analog media. We use it to store digital data.
" ... A box of analog photos, while harder to share, is a lot less likely to fail then a hard drive. ..."
Dude, we call those "prints". They are analog data stored on analog media.
As someone with some experience with the specific good old analog media of which you speak, I can assure you that they are far from failure proof.
In fact, without special care at every stage it fails quite predictably. The very chemicals that will eat your image are stored in the paper it's printed on.
In the end, the whole story comes down to: why don't we just use "best practices" and quit paying attention to failures based on easily correctable yet sloppy archival technique, whether it's analog or digital data we seek to preserve?
Because it's always been that way where I'm at. I had CableModem with no cableTV in 1996, one of the first networks in North America to deliver broadband. DSL came a few years later. That marked the last time I had broadband and a telephone at the same time. During that entire time I never subscribed to CableTV. I did for a time have a Sat TV receiver.
CableModem, DSL, landline, cellular phone, TV ... I've never had two off that list from the same company at the same time, in 12 years. Currently the DSL company offers every single item on that list if you want it, from one provider; if you are willing to go with a competitive cell provider, you can do hispeed, tv and telephone (VoIP) with your choice of three providers (cable, microwave guys, and some-other-antennae-thingy kind guys).
Currently I'm on DSL with no landline 5 down/768 up $23/month. Cellphone is $30 a month on a package that works well for my habits ... on vacation I might run it up to $40. That's it ... no TV since all I watch is sports anyway. I do have the TV and watch movies whenever. Televisions are so much more useful without actual TV channels on them, I find.
Either you have to needle someone into telling you the truth, no matter how much it hurts (them), or you have to threaten to switch providers.
The more the other guys can do as far as all the options (even though you are planning to do just one, or whatever) the bigger threat you're moving is to your potential as a source of revenue. You might be thinking "I'm taking my $30 cable bill and walking", but they will be thinking "he's taking a potential $120 cable/internet/telephone/security system/cellphone/long distance/phone features bundle and walking".
If they stil won't give you what you want, then turn on 'em and start switching back and forth to competitive providers, always taking the maximum incentive the very nano-second you are eligible to drop your last incentive-laden obligation. Where I am, that's every six months, and basically what happens is the cost of whatever you're consuming goes down by about 40% (would be more, but fees swallow some of it back).
They all will want to leave the equipment there, in case you change your mind later, so mention that it's OK with you if that's "more convenient" to them. Also, switchers get calls from the old provider offering special deals that no-one else hears about. When they offer, I always say I hate the new guys and want to go back to you right on dudes as soon as my obligation is over. And we're pals again. Sames script works on both (or more) of 'em, too.
" ... I'm interested in language-independent opinions that Slashdotters might have on this matter. ..."
Slashdotters don't have any language-independent opinions. Sorry.
I think I do get your point, but to be honest I don't know why you cited numbers.
You are listing gross revenue and gross profit. But, gross profit does not really tell the story about how much money is available to, say, hire developers.
The figure we need is net profit; how much is available for retained earnings, dividends, new initiatives, investment, etc.
By way of example, a company could be selling a billion dollars worth of product every minute, and have 50% margins (a billion dollars in profit every two minutes) but if the cost of doing business is 1.1 billion per minute, they are in desperate need of cash.
The number you would need to back your argument would be net profit after taxes.
Also, only because it is also pertinent to your argument, both Apple and Microsoft have huge cash reserves. This is tax paid money that is sitting in the bank; money that is saved up from previous years net profits. Apple's cash position right now is more than twice the gross profits you mentioned, for example.
Microsoft Gross Revenue 2008 is about $US 60 Billion, Gross Profit is about $US 49 Billion; basically the numbers you cited. Net Profit is about $US 17 Billion before taxes and the 2008 cash position improved by about $US 4 Billion. I don't know MS's cash position but I know it's good.
Apple's Gross Revenue 2008 is about $US 33 Billion, Gross Profit is about $US 11 Billion, again the numbers you cited. But, Net Profit is about $5 Billion before taxes and the cash position improved by $US 2.5 Billion. Apple has about $US 24 Billion cash on hand right now. As you can see, the cash position is more significant than the profit position if you are thinking of how much flexibility they have regarding what to do next.
Apple has NEVER not recommended users install AntiVirus software. One of the first benefits of subscribing to Apple's DotMac web service, a service that is roughly as old as the first Gold Master release of OSX itself, was a complimentary copy of AntiVirus software (McAfee Virex 7.0, released September 2001).
The offer only applies to v7x; which no longer compatible with the latest OSX version, which probably goes a much longer way to explain why Apple is now recommending users install their own choice of a competitive application.
The most recent ad campaign, which does mention vulnerabilities to various malware on Windows machines, comes after more than two decades of people clamoring for Apple to do just that in it's marketing and sales literature. Rather than all of a sudden "quietly" recommending AV software, Apple has always (quietly) recommended it.
The (very lightweight) BBC article comes across as written by someone who only recently started paying attention to Apple, perhaps after her dad bought her an iPod in Journalism school.