Well, the way I see it, a government is supposed to have a responsibility to its' citizens in a sunshiney happy world. Of course, it's never like that but... in theory the government is by and for its' citizenry, so is answerable to them.
A corporate monopoly, on the other hand, has a fiduciary responsibility first and foremost, and secondarily must comply with laws. As a non-shareholder or non-customer I am essentially irrelevant to a company's priorities, in theory.
Of course, it isn't that black and white. But in general the participant pool *should* be larger in the case of a governmental monopoly. Besides, some things simply should not be operated on a for-profit basis. *cough*enron*cough*
I'm thinking about it in terms of putting the music-sharing ability of iTunes/Rendezvous (not the crippled version on 4.6+, but the early versions) on a mobile device that has much storage and connectivity.
Wouldn't it be nice to set up in a coffeeshop (ah, good ol cliches) and discover other people's playlists in range? Then, depending on how scrupulous the software used is, you can either stream new stuff, or *ahem* download shared tracks?
I've been looking for something like that for a long time. If they make it easy and popular to use, I think that it can revolutionise how I hear media. It almost reminds me of how I used to share files over IrDA with my PowerBook G3 back in the day.
Being from Texas, I handily expect any bill with technology to be the result of some well-placed pork barrel lobbying. *sound of aluminum hat crumpling*
That being said, should this pass, how easy would it be for someone to spoof a tag/chip? I wonder if it would be possible for a non-governmental rogue to either steal the information contained within or cause a reader to err...?
Technical reasons aside, it seems rather convenient that Apple chose NeXT and The Black Turtleneck's brainchild to form the future of MacOS. From what I understand, Jean-Louis was rather proud of making his OS from the ground up, and claimed that NeXT was based on decades-old technology (what can I say, he was trying to sell his wares). If you think about it, had Apple purchased Be and not NeXT, they might not Avie Tevanian or any of the amazing brain trust of NeXT. I wonder if they would have still made the iPod?
Hard worker? If you're in the middle of having sex and she answers her cell, and top top it off gives head like an epileptic cow licks rock salt and that's considered hard work....
I, for one, prefer quality. She needs to read up on Savage Love or something.
I agree that it's important that people must be more responsible with their debt and consider their loans and purchases more carefully. The wording of the current bankruptcy reforms seem to indicate encouraging more personal responsibility. However, I believe it's geared toward improving the credit / bank industry profits.
Well over half of the US's bankrupcies in 2001 were a result of medical bills. Most alarming:
"The study found that while three-fifths of respondents who declared bankruptcy due to illness or injury had private health insurance when they got sick, one-third of them subsequently lost coverage, often because they had to stop working."
So it can be inferred that not all these people are entering bankruptcy due to gross irresponsibility. Similarly, people running small businesses or self-employed people might be doubly vulnerable in the case of a medical crisis.
The $499 laptop is a perfect example of what is known to Wal-Mart as the "loss leader". Sure, $499 it's a striking number and it is getting a lot of press. It creates a mental association of Wal*Mart and low prices in Joe Consumer's mind. But who ever buys the cheapest item in the product line? Here's what I view as two likely scenarios:
1) Layperson goes to Wal-Mart to get a computer. They see "laptop" and $499. They are instantly sold, convinced and proud that they have the 'best value'. Their purchase was not driven by the technical details or quality as much as a 'good buy'. 2) The layperson sees this amazingly cheap $499 laptop at Wal-Mart. However, once they are at the store with the intent to pick it up, they see this other laptop for $50 more with "Windows" like they have in school or work, and a DVD player.
Which do you think is going to be flying off the shelves? For a much better idea of what loss leaders are, and their pricing schemes I highly recommend this article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.h tm l
Don't LCD displays use a separate element to illuminate the display? For instance, my old powerbook has a small flourescent light running along the bottom to provide illumination for the display. Were that to burn out (or when the power saving mode kicks in and turns off the illumination) you can still kind of see the LCD under bright light. So, were this part to fail one would simply have to order and install a new backlight. Smaller devices like iPod have solid state LEDs providing the backlight for the LCD display. (You can even get these customized or changed!) Those things would easily outlast the other parts in the unit itself. LCDs, if treated nicely will last a very long time.
I'm not convinced that the arm bands are a good solution. First, they tend to slip down my arm after a while (aside from jogging, using a mouse is my other workout so maybe my arms just aren't up to snuff). Secondly, the shaking and impact don't seem to be that greatly reduced with an arm band, unless you start chaning your jogging form to compensate. My 4G iPod already died because of the click of death (useage: 10k 3x a week for 3 months). I wonder if the iPod does any writing to disk when it accesses songs, or if it's read only (I figure it updates the index with the play counts, etc when you are using it). I wish there was a way it would 'beep' or something when it was ready to access the drive again so to warn you to limit your impact for that time.
I used to go on a 4mi run every other day with my iPod. While I don't typically switch songs in a playlist during my jogs, they are encoded at high bitrates (so I imagine the hard drive gets accessed more often). I would carry the iPod in either hand, alternating occasionally and trying to limit the motion of the hand it was in somewhat. I have also run into the problem where songs might stop playing, or skip slightly. It actually got so bad that I started hearing the "click of death" from my iPod hard drive (3 months after I got my 4G), and respite restoring it it would take minutes to mount. Needless to say, I've sent that one back and have a new one now-- that I won't take out running.
IBM is going to divest itself of it's somewhat profitable but evidently declining PC division to acquire a consumer electronics darling? While Apple's Personal Computer division is doing well enough with regards to $$$$ (if not market share) how would this improve IBM's bottom line? Sure, they have the iPod and it's a 'hot' product (mostly because of the coolness factor) but the corporate clash would be something like Quaker Oats taking over Snapple. That went over well, didn't it? I don't see why IBM wants to make a splash in the "living room" when they already make a killing in the "board room" (and the Server room) and selling their services and hired 'guns'. Besides, how is owning Apple (and ongoing competition in hardware and media formats) going to foster their close relationship to Sony and the Cell processor? The sheer numbers would dictate that their relationship with Sony / Toshiba would be much more important to their bottom line than some pipe dream that would end up alienating Mac devotees anyway.
The $480 million dollar settlement was reached between the Indian government and Union Carbide -- without the input of the families. To date, those affect have seen approximately US$300-500. That may be a lot in India but... Does that cover the bloody, spontaneous miscarriage pregnant women suffered that night? How about losing the primary bradwinner in the household?
MethylIsoCyanite killed those affected most severely by virtue of pulmonary edema. For those not medically inclined it means you drown in your own body fluids. People continue to suffer blindness, obscure cancers and all sorts of obscure disorders that are difficult to treat because of their rarity.
They have found that it also continue to have devastating effect on reproductive organs ensuring that the effects will be felt in their children and children's children. I hope I never get to see an earless, lipless or deformed child in person like the ones born there.
Isolate yourself from this tragedy if you want but just remember that corporations are isolated from responsibility and will continue to behave this way if someone does not step up to force people to think about the unique privilege enjoyed by corporations.
There were 6 safety systems incorporated in the design of the factory that were systematically disabled or misused that could have truly limted the impact. Why? Because this factory was not profitable in selling the pesticides, and they were going to shut it down anyway. Never mind that MIC (the toxin) should never have been stored in the megacontainers they stored them in (plant safety would dictate 55-gallon drums, not enough to store 40 TONS of this gas).
Alas, this is the way of the world. We understand that Union Carbide was not necessarily out to do what happened. Technically, it's not their fault right? I think it's the perfect example of what allows to go unchecked, and how legal liability and fiduciary responsibility take precedent over justice.
This reminds me of the Alfred P. Sloan and our beloved General Motors's successful sceme to ruin America's public transportation system in the 50s. http://www.verdant.net/natlcity.htm
But nearly free is still not free, right? I can imagine Verizon's idea of 'free' WiFi: Ad-bloated, tracked, data mined and generally so cumbersome as to make you want to pay for a service that could be free.
I prefer that my local government, that I have *a teensy* bit of say in control this much more than Verizon.
Seriously if people are paying for software to block these ads and said ads are raising the ire of users, is this an encouraging sign that people are even paying attention to the ads in a positive manner? Given that exposure to the ads is enough for some advertisers who measures reactions other than clickthrough?
*chuckle*
Slashdot Mirror
You mean F-l-a-w-i-d-u-h. Hanging chads. Hurricanes. Vegetables. And did I mention Jacksonville?
or....gay geeks.. B-D
...and that's exactly why I've continued to support Macs. If they start requiring MS-esque registration and stuff, then to heck with em!
Oh! Oh! I'm sorry, my irony sensor was on red alert.
Information overload? Nonsense! I never know if one day I might listen to every single one of the 5,600 audio files I regularly carry with me. Again.
Well, the way I see it, a government is supposed to have a responsibility to its' citizens in a sunshiney happy world. Of course, it's never like that but ... in theory the government is by and for
its' citizenry, so is answerable to them.
A corporate monopoly, on the other hand, has a fiduciary responsibility first and foremost, and secondarily must comply with laws. As a non-shareholder or non-customer I am essentially irrelevant to a company's priorities, in theory.
Of course, it isn't that black and white. But in general the participant pool *should* be larger in the case of a governmental monopoly. Besides, some things simply should not be operated on a for-profit basis. *cough*enron*cough*
Frankly, I'm a bit excited about this one!
I'm thinking about it in terms of putting the music-sharing ability of iTunes/Rendezvous (not the crippled version on 4.6+, but the early versions) on a mobile device that has much storage and connectivity.
Wouldn't it be nice to set up in a coffeeshop (ah, good ol cliches) and discover other people's playlists in range? Then, depending on how scrupulous the software used is, you can either stream new stuff, or *ahem* download shared tracks?
I've been looking for something like that for a long time. If they make it easy and popular to use, I think that it can revolutionise how I hear media. It almost reminds me of how I used to share files over IrDA with my PowerBook G3 back in the day.
*Personal Mass Storage Devices
Being from Texas, I handily expect any bill with technology to be the result of some well-placed pork barrel lobbying. *sound of aluminum hat crumpling*
That being said, should this pass, how easy would it be for someone to spoof a tag/chip? I wonder if it would be possible for a non-governmental rogue to either steal the information contained within or cause a reader to err...?
Technical reasons aside, it seems rather convenient that Apple chose NeXT and The Black Turtleneck's brainchild to form the future of MacOS. From what I understand, Jean-Louis was rather proud of making his OS from the ground up, and claimed that NeXT was based on decades-old technology (what can I say, he was trying to sell his wares).
If you think about it, had Apple purchased Be and not NeXT, they might not Avie Tevanian or any of the amazing brain trust of NeXT.
I wonder if they would have still made the iPod?
Hard worker? If you're in the middle of having sex and she answers her cell, and top top it off gives head like an epileptic cow licks rock salt and that's considered hard work....
I, for one, prefer quality. She needs to read up on Savage Love or something.
I agree that it's important that people must be more responsible with their debt and consider their loans and purchases more carefully. The wording of the current bankruptcy reforms seem to indicate encouraging more personal responsibility. However, I believe it's geared toward improving the credit / bank industry profits.
2 21.htm
Consider this article: http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/02/21/gvsc0
Well over half of the US's bankrupcies in 2001 were a result of medical bills. Most alarming:
"The study found that while three-fifths of respondents who declared bankruptcy due to illness or injury had private health insurance when they got sick, one-third of them subsequently lost coverage, often because they had to stop working."
So it can be inferred that not all these people are entering bankruptcy due to gross irresponsibility. Similarly, people running small businesses or self-employed people might be doubly vulnerable in the case of a medical crisis.
You're quite right to ask-- especially when you consider that this is the 'sire':c elebs_pics_04/PRINCE%20CHARLES.jpg
http://www.savagepictures.co.uk/celebrities_2004/
When you get the answer, please let us know!
The $499 laptop is a perfect example of what is known to Wal-Mart as the "loss leader". Sure, $499 it's a striking number and it is getting a lot of press. It creates a mental association of Wal*Mart and low prices in Joe Consumer's mind. But who ever buys the cheapest item in the product line?
h tm l
Here's what I view as two likely scenarios:
1) Layperson goes to Wal-Mart to get a computer. They see "laptop" and $499. They are instantly sold, convinced and proud that they have the 'best value'. Their purchase was not driven by the technical details or quality as much as a 'good buy'.
2) The layperson sees this amazingly cheap $499 laptop at Wal-Mart. However, once they are at the store with the intent to pick it up, they see this other laptop for $50 more with "Windows" like they have in school or work, and a DVD player.
Which do you think is going to be flying off the shelves? For a much better idea of what loss leaders are, and their pricing schemes I highly recommend this article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.
Don't LCD displays use a separate element to illuminate the display? For instance, my old powerbook has a small flourescent light running along the bottom to provide illumination for the display. Were that to burn out (or when the power saving mode kicks in and turns off the illumination) you can still kind of see the LCD under bright light. So, were this part to fail one would simply have to order and install a new backlight.
Smaller devices like iPod have solid state LEDs providing the backlight for the LCD display. (You can even get these customized or changed!) Those things would easily outlast the other parts in the unit itself.
LCDs, if treated nicely will last a very long time.
I'm not convinced that the arm bands are a good solution. First, they tend to slip down my arm after a while (aside from jogging, using a mouse is my other workout so maybe my arms just aren't up to snuff).
Secondly, the shaking and impact don't seem to be that greatly reduced with an arm band, unless you start chaning your jogging form to compensate.
My 4G iPod already died because of the click of death (useage: 10k 3x a week for 3 months).
I wonder if the iPod does any writing to disk when it accesses songs, or if it's read only (I figure it updates the index with the play counts, etc when you are using it). I wish there was a way it would 'beep' or something when it was ready to access the drive again so to warn you to limit your impact for that time.
I used to go on a 4mi run every other day with my iPod. While I don't typically switch songs in a playlist during my jogs, they are encoded at high bitrates (so I imagine the hard drive gets accessed more often). I would carry the iPod in either hand, alternating occasionally and trying to limit the motion of the hand it was in somewhat.
I have also run into the problem where songs might stop playing, or skip slightly. It actually got so bad that I started hearing the "click of death" from my iPod hard drive (3 months after I got my 4G), and respite restoring it it would take minutes to mount. Needless to say, I've sent that one back and have a new one now-- that I won't take out running.
iPod / Mini : Don't Steal Music
iPod Flash!: For external use only
(or...we will not gnaw on our iPod Flash)
"Get them slapped with fines, or get their 501(c)3 tax exempt status revoked for endorsing political candidates."
-Amen
IBM is going to divest itself of it's somewhat profitable but evidently declining PC division to acquire a consumer electronics darling?
While Apple's Personal Computer division is doing well enough with regards to $$$$ (if not market share) how would this improve IBM's bottom line?
Sure, they have the iPod and it's a 'hot' product (mostly because of the coolness factor) but the corporate clash would be something like Quaker Oats taking over Snapple. That went over well, didn't it?
I don't see why IBM wants to make a splash in the "living room" when they already make a killing in the "board room" (and the Server room) and selling their services and hired 'guns'.
Besides, how is owning Apple (and ongoing competition in hardware and media formats) going to foster their close relationship to Sony and the Cell processor?
The sheer numbers would dictate that their relationship with Sony / Toshiba would be much more important to their bottom line than some pipe dream that would end up alienating Mac devotees anyway.
The $480 million dollar settlement was reached between the Indian government and Union Carbide -- without the input of the families. To date, those affect have seen approximately US$300-500. That may be a lot in India but...
Does that cover the bloody, spontaneous miscarriage pregnant women suffered that night?
How about losing the primary bradwinner in the household?
MethylIsoCyanite killed those affected most severely by virtue of pulmonary edema. For those not medically inclined it means you drown in your own body fluids. People continue to suffer blindness, obscure cancers and all sorts of obscure disorders that are difficult to treat because of their rarity.
They have found that it also continue to have devastating effect on reproductive organs ensuring that the effects will be felt in their children and children's children. I hope I never get to see an earless, lipless or deformed child in person like the ones born there.
Isolate yourself from this tragedy if you want but just remember that corporations are isolated from responsibility and will continue to behave this way if someone does not step up to force people to think about the unique privilege enjoyed by corporations.
There were 6 safety systems incorporated in the design of the factory that were systematically disabled or misused that could have truly limted the impact. Why? Because this factory was not profitable in selling the pesticides, and they were going to shut it down anyway. Never mind that MIC (the toxin) should never have been stored in the megacontainers they stored them in (plant safety would dictate 55-gallon drums, not enough to store 40 TONS of this gas).
Alas, this is the way of the world. We understand that Union Carbide was not necessarily out to do what happened. Technically, it's not their fault right? I think it's the perfect example of what allows to go unchecked, and how legal liability and fiduciary responsibility take precedent over justice.
-- Just another bleeding heart.
This reminds me of the Alfred P. Sloan and our beloved General Motors's successful sceme to ruin America's public transportation system in the 50s.
http://www.verdant.net/natlcity.htm
But nearly free is still not free, right? I can imagine Verizon's idea of 'free' WiFi: Ad-bloated, tracked, data mined and generally so cumbersome as to make you want to pay for a service that could be free.
I prefer that my local government, that I have *a teensy* bit of say in control this much more than Verizon.
Or, more appropriately, a bunch of nicely clocked PPC 750x chips, I bet. I mean this is IBM we're talking about not Chipzilla
Seriously if people are paying for software to block these ads and said ads are raising the ire of users, is this an encouraging sign that people are even paying attention to the ads in a positive manner? Given that exposure to the ads is enough for some advertisers who measures reactions other than clickthrough?
*chuckle*