Regarding the high expense of the US health case system, part of the reason for that is....other nations. The US pays for almost all of the medical R&D that is required to develop a new drug and bring it to market. The US also houses the vast majority of the medical companies that create said drugs.
The reason the US pays for the majority of the R&D costs is the because other nations refuse to help pay for the costs to develop a drug. When a drug company goes to secure exclusivity on the drug they developed, these countries "negotiate" the price way down by threatening not to honor the drug companies patents. Not having the patents honored means generics can be developed before the drug companies ever make back the expensive R&D costs for the drug, let alone any profit. Yes, there is no right to profit but there needs to be some profit potential or no one will create any more drugs.
The reason most of the drugs are developed in the US is because other countries have passed so many laws that it is difficult to develop drugs in other countries.
So, if other countries want to rag on the US about health care costs, how about ponying up and paying your fair share of the R&D costs?
Sorry all if this sound inflammatory, but every time there's a discussion about US health care costs no one mentions these issues. This isn't the sole reason for the US health care system cost, but it is a significant factor and it should be addressed somehow. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing from people in countries outside of the US about how little they pay for drugs when their country is part of the reason the US pays so much more.
Other issues such as HMOs, doctor fees, lawsuits, not for profit drug companies, social health care, etc are issues for another post.:)
That doesn't entirely convince me. When playing via LAN, one of the machines is the "server" and with Diablo II I saw no difference in lag regardless of the power of the machine running as the server. Doesn't do much good if the "server" is lag free if the clients can't handle a hiccup in network transit times (which shouldn't happen on a local lan, but hey who knows). The fact the point out specifically that the server was lag free makes me weary. I'd like to think they fixed the lag problem, but they were unable to fix it (or even try to address it as far as I can see) in 10 patches.
Agreed. If I want to play with my wife or other friends from my place, why should we all have to use an internet connection to play together? LAN play makes much more sense.
And while we're on the subject of questions I'd like answered, did Blizzard fix their horrible networking code? I'd never played a network game that would lag as bad as Diablo II would on a home network. It was absolutely amazing how bad the lagging would get, and usually when it occurred you learned to run because a lot of something was coming thus causing the lag. Most times you just died because you couldn't see whatever it was that caused the lag before they killed you.
I haven't played PC games in years, but DIII was sounding interesting and I'm curious to see how the story ends. Without LAN play though, a lot of the replay value is lost for me. Once you play through the story once, the fun comes in playing new classes/building up classes with friends imo.
Mind sharing how you worded that e-mail? I don't have Sprint, but it couldn't hurt to try with ATT. I doubt they'd do it since they're in a different situation that Spring (Sprint is having issues keeping users), but I'd try anyway.
I have ATT and when I signed up my account over 3 years ago, I called and had them disable all features that would cost me extra money (web access, text messaging, etc). They were Cingular back then of course, and I got 1 or two charges on my bill for a text message I never received. For each one of those I would call them up and say I was supposed to have this disabled, they'd look at my account, agree, and then remove the charge. After those 2 charges (months apart) I haven't had an issue with a text message in years. Maybe ATT isn't so kind about it now, but my experience has been if you tell them to disable the feature they will remove any charges you receive related to that feature.
I have to say I agree with this action to some degree. Namely as it relates to drug companies though. I've been involved people that work in the pharmaceutical business, and getting a drub approved by the FDA is NOT easy. Many never make it to market, and almost all of them require a lot of money to develop in R&D. While making a product is no guarantee of making money, they should be allowed some protection for doing the work. Without a patent on the drug, the minute it hits the market it will be reverse engineered by a different drug company and sold cheaper. Some say that is the way it should be, but I honestly don't agree. The company creating the drug is spending a lot of time and money in R&D, without which we wouldn't get the current drugs we have and rely on. Why should another company get to easily piggy back on their efforts? Where is the motivation to find new cures in that environment?
As to the cost of the drugs, the companies are trying to make money. They're not non-profit organizations. Should they be? That's a different question all together which I won't address here. The rest of the world complains about the price of drugs and refuses to pay the prices the drug companies want to charge, instead deciding not to honor the patents on the drugs if the price doesn't come down. The result? The US has much higher drug prices than most of the rest of the world because we end up paying for the companies R&D costs since the rest of the world won't. Sorry, I can't feel bad about sanctions against countries that refuse to carry the burden of R&D costs and leave the US to carry it all. Do I feel the costs be lower? Definitely. However, I also don't know the R&D cost for a particular drug so whose to say the costs aren't in line with a reasonable time line to recoup R&D costs? I can't say I think having for profit companies develop the drugs helps things.
Given this situation, what's the way to handle it OTHER than patents? How can a company recoup the R&D costs (plus a profit) for a drug at a price level that is fair to all countries? Why shouldn't the countries in the rest of the world be forced to honor the drug companies' patents? It's not like it's a field where the companies can simply say "Pay up or you don't get the cure".
I don't really care much about the copyright portion of this story, but I get irked when I see people ranting against drug companies. They're definitely not perfect, but they are getting screwed by the rest of the world as bad as they screw the people in the US imo.
How would these downloaded games be preserved? If Nintendo is smart, they will not charge a rental fee for the old games or even a per-play fee. If they allow you to repurchase their old library of games and KEEP them (possibly on the SD cards) or alternately allow gamers to play the old games on demand for free, including the Gamecube games, then this could be a huge success. I know I'd be more interested in being able to play some of those old SNES games along with the Gamecube games (many of which I want to play already). On top of that, I'd obviously be willing to buy new games for the Revolution. If they do this right, it could be a good selling point. In my opinion anyway.
I don't know if you're being serious, or are just ignorant of history. The US tried just such a thing as you are mentioning before the Constitution was written. Anyone remember the Articles of Confederation? It failed miserably. States had their own currency, economies, etc.
The governing structure is such, because this is what works. Strong state governments with a weak Federal government was the original idea (see above). Our forefathers always had a strong loyalty to their state. In fact, if you care to dig even more into history, there was a reason Divisions in the Civial War were named after the states they came from. The members of the division had their first loyalty to their state, and the second to the Federal government, and that was after the Constitution was written.
The Founding Fathers had strong ties to their states, but the Articles of Confederation made them realize the importance of a strong Federal Government. As someone knowledgable (although not an expert) in how the United States came to be, and appreciative of all things previous generations have endured as well as things endured by the current generation (especially every person in the military) so that people of the US can live the way we do, to see you mention such an ignorant statement is rather insulting to be honest. Learn history before you decide to try to forge a new path in the future, as you'll probably see that your idea has been tried in the past already. Yes, the current government has expanded beyond the original ideas of our Founding Fathers, but that is almost to be expected. They couldn't have predicted the future, nor did that try. All they did was lay the building blocks and allow for expansion. If you don't like the current goverment's size (I personally don't), then try to educate your fellow voters. The reason the government is the size it is is because that is what the people want, as sad as that is.
Right on. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up as high as I can go. It's amazing how people argue for outsourcing, but fail to understand basic economic theory. Here's another economic thought to add to your list: Outsourcing Competitive Advantage. It ain't a great idea either.
However, most economists, and I tend to agree here too, agree that outsourcing isn't currently a major factor in the difficulty to find a job. They mostly say it is the large gains in productivity. While I agree that's probably the case now, I can't say that outsourcing won't be a big issue in the future.
As to all those people who think that outsourcing increases profits, you need to do some reading. In THEORY it would increase profits and lower prices, but in the past it has ended up raising costs. This is at least partially because of differences in culture, difficulty in communication, the lack of time to co-ordinate, the fact that most large companies don't have the management structure to effectively manage people over seas, etc. I could go on and on, but I hope people get the point. Not to mention that the "profits" from outsourcing tend to be short lived. It's a way to raise short-term shareholder value, but as far as I know (and in this I could be wrong) it's a negative to long-term shareholder value. Outsourcing has been done before and failed. I'm not saying it'll fail this time, but NO ONE is mentioning the problems of the past failures which to me says all those commenting on it (news or on slashdot) don't know what they're talking about.
Am I the only one who finds MS's newer crayonware interfaces a colossal PITA?
Microsoft contracted Fisher Price to create the Fisher Price My First Computer Interface. They were going to call the OS: Microsoft Windows featuring the My First Computer Interface (MSMFCI for short), but decided to just call it WindowsXP.
I'm older than 4, so the XP interface is painfully annoying
Actually, I wasn't saying anything bad about the Malaysian government. I was referring to earlier attempts to outsource IT jobs to that country (this was in the 80s I believe). The result was that the costs were so high to try to manage people half way around the world that most of the outsourced jobs came back. IT jobs have been outsourced before.
Outsourcing isn't the magic arrow CEOs want it to be. This article doesn't really address anything important at all. Ratings are pretty meaningless. I know parts of companies that are rated at SEI Level 5, but produce some of the worst crap I've seen. They're rated well though, so they much be good.
Why doesn't someone write an article about all the times outsourcing has been tried before? How about what happened with Malaysia? How about the fact that the overhead involved in trying to manage people half-way around the world is higher than the amount they save by outsourcing? This isn't a new fad people. Sure, the people and the places change but the problems don't.
Things are different now than they were in the 80's I'll grant you, but no one seems to be drawing the comparisons. Health Care costs are rising in the US, thus possibly providing better savings when outsourcing now. However, it's not like this is a new concept and that the problems aren't well known. Let's see some hard questions asked and analysis done based on past experience!
I never said you needed a new TV. I said you'd need a $200 receiver, what you're calling a converter box. They might be down to $50 by the time the switch over happens (in all likelihood they would), but that means the consumer has ANOTHER remote control to keep track of. People already don't like having many more than 1 for all their devices.
This isn't really relavant to my point anyway. The cost of the converter box is a cost many people will be upset to have to pay (let alone the additional remote I mentioned earlier in this post). Not to mention that that $50 will be more than most of the TVs people want to put them on will be worth. What about the person with 5 TVs? Are they going to want to spend $250 MORE to watch TV on TVs that likely aren't worth $50 anymore? For most people, the answer to this is no. Plain and simple.
If they're trying to sell the boxes to people who want to go "digital" quality, than I agree with you. However, MANDATING EVERYONE buy one to continue watching TV will not work. You just try telling people they have to spend more money to watch their TV and see their reaction. Ever been talked to people about a $2 increase in their cable bill?
Oh, and digital cable isn't digital, it's still analog. As an example, ATT (Now Comcast) has a digital cable offering. All the channels below 100 are still analog though. Everyone who has analog cable now are watching channels below 100, so what's the point? Digital Cable is anything but digital, hence the reason your analog TV still works. Satellite is digital, but you need a receiver for every TV. Same with "digital" cable if you want to access channels over 100 (the "digital" part of the cable service), and you know how well digital cable has taken off (not well). Satellite is doing well because they give the user their normal channels in digital quality. Digital cable does not, and thus isn't doing well. Satellite is having issues though because of the costs accociated with having multiple TVs. That's the only thing keeping me on analog cable, for instance. In terms of money, satellite gets REALLY expensive the more TVs you want to be able to watch independent shows.
I must disagree with you here. There are many households that will not be ABLE (read afford) to just purchase a new TV because the FCC wants to stop analog broadcasts. And what about those people who are more fortunate who have 5 TVs in their house? Think they'll run out and buy 5 new TVs? No. They might buy one, but they'll sure as hell be very unhappy about it. Analog broadcasts won't stop anytime soon, despite the FCC's mandate. Think anyone is going to buy a $200 receiver for their 10+ year old TV that isn't worth $200? Again, no.
After all, just THINK of the outcry from the TV networks and the TV viewers if half the fans of Survivor couldn't see the next series.:)
Since the FCC's mandate deals with over the air broadcasts, the only thing that really needs to be looked at are the number of homes with cable and those without. Last I checked (and I could be wrong now) the number of homes with cable were not the majority.
Is it just me, or did almost everyone here miss an underlying truth in Roblimo's article? Yes it was satire, but at the same time it proves a very valid point. Easy of use is equivalent to what you're used to. He was used to highlighting text and pressing a mouse button to paste. He was not, however, accustomed to using the keyboard for that operation so it would seem strange and frustrating.
As for IE, if you only used Linux, you'd know nothing about IE. You'd expect it to have the nicities that Linux browsers have (tabbed windows, popup blocking, etc), but it doesn't. Taken in the context of a person who is used to Linux, I think this article is pretty thought provoking. Everyone says windows is easier to use than Linux, but that's bunk. Windows is more well known, and that's it. I have used Linux for years (started in windows of course), and windows now annoys the piss out of me because the things I am used to in Linux are not available in windows. Not to mention the time I went web surfing with a browser other than Mozilla recently. Without popup blocking, the web is practically useless nowadays. I hadn't noticed this with Mozilla.
I'd like to see a non-satirical article written on this topic. A person who isn't a geek but is used to running linux for years switch to windows and see their review. I'd be willing to bet they complain as much as the windows users who review linux. You get used to the way an OS works and that's what you know. It has nothing to do with an OS being more "intuitive". At this stage, I'd say Linux and windows are about equal in terms of usability. It just all depends on what you're used to.
I test drove a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid and must say I was quite impressed. The pickup was nice, but about on par with a normal Civic. I mean let's face it, the car is still a Civic. The instrument panel was quite attractive, but the only nagging concern I would have about the Hybrid cars is battery life. Until these cars have been out on the road for a number of years we really won't know what the life expectancy is for the battery. I asked the sales rep and replacing the battery in the Civic would not be cheap. Still, if you're willing to take that risk I'd say go for it. The Hybrids look like great cars from what I've read/experienced. Just be aware of the possibility of replacing the battery.
Oh, and don't ask the sales rep about the battery life. One, they don't know, and two they'll say something like "I've heard it lasts longer than the car". I tried asking the sales rep I was talking to and he admitted point 1 and said point 2.
I whole heartedly agree. I've taken many economics courses, got a minor in Business (including a course on Accounting), and my father has an MBA. This means nothing more than that I have been exposed to a lot of accounting information, and I can say that GnuCash is an excellent program. It took me several hours to set up all the accounts I wanted and to transfer my data to the double accounting method introduced in 1.6 (I started using it around 1.4), but I can say I don't want to go back and the time was far from lost. People really should keep better track of their money anyway, and CnuCash allows that.
Even better was that when I wanted to figure out my cash flow per month/year so I could see if I could afford a house, GnuCash made it very easy. I agree I think the problem is that people have a total lack of understand of even basic accounting.
As far as I know, the contract for the Harry Potter movies only goes to 3 or 4. The actors themselves only have contracts for up to 3 movies. There is serious doubt about whether all the Harry Potter books (of which there will be 7) will make it to film. If they try, they will probably have a cast shift somewhere in the middle of the movies which could hurt their popularity and liklihood of making it to 7.
Actually, if you want to get technical, your digital cell phone is only half-duplex also. It just switches from listen to send so quickly and so often that you can't tell.:)
I work in a company that produces cell phones and recently went to a training class about this kind of stuff. I found it interesting that digital cell phones aren't truly full-duplex. It's a limit of the technology.
So how can this realistically be prevented? No matter what information they use to indentify a person, that information will be easy to obtain on the internet. Whether it is the SSN or not is irrelevant. Telemarketers buy and sell people's information all the time, so all people need to steal someone's ID is that unique token. Since the unique token is always needed to authenticate, it will just as easy to obtain as the SSN number.
The only way around this that I see is to allow only face to face transactions, but that will not realistically happen. I don't forsee any gov't official voting for a bill that will regress business transactions.
Am I missing something? Is there a way to protect privacy while also not setting business transactions back years?
Khyron
Why worried about IBM's patents?
on
My Visit to SCO
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Why is the author worried about IBM pulling out its patent portfolio and beating down SCO? As I understand patents, you don't have to enforce them with all parties. IBM has a current interest, and investment, in Linux so why would anyone by worried that IBM beating SCO to death with patents would mean IBM would then turn the patents on Linux?
Does anyone know if the anime on this channel will be edited for content? Dubbing can be pretty bad, but what's worse is when they edit the stories for content. Many times the story lines don't make as much sense and entire scenes are cut out. Sometimes entire episodes. If this becomes mainstream, I truly hope they aren't edited shows. Course, american culture would have to accept more nudity and/or blood for many shows. Guess there's not much chance of that.
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding the high expense of the US health case system, part of the reason for that is....other nations. The US pays for almost all of the medical R&D that is required to develop a new drug and bring it to market. The US also houses the vast majority of the medical companies that create said drugs.
The reason the US pays for the majority of the R&D costs is the because other nations refuse to help pay for the costs to develop a drug. When a drug company goes to secure exclusivity on the drug they developed, these countries "negotiate" the price way down by threatening not to honor the drug companies patents. Not having the patents honored means generics can be developed before the drug companies ever make back the expensive R&D costs for the drug, let alone any profit. Yes, there is no right to profit but there needs to be some profit potential or no one will create any more drugs.
The reason most of the drugs are developed in the US is because other countries have passed so many laws that it is difficult to develop drugs in other countries.
So, if other countries want to rag on the US about health care costs, how about ponying up and paying your fair share of the R&D costs?
Sorry all if this sound inflammatory, but every time there's a discussion about US health care costs no one mentions these issues. This isn't the sole reason for the US health care system cost, but it is a significant factor and it should be addressed somehow. Frankly, I'm tired of hearing from people in countries outside of the US about how little they pay for drugs when their country is part of the reason the US pays so much more.
Other issues such as HMOs, doctor fees, lawsuits, not for profit drug companies, social health care, etc are issues for another post. :)
That doesn't entirely convince me. When playing via LAN, one of the machines is the "server" and with Diablo II I saw no difference in lag regardless of the power of the machine running as the server. Doesn't do much good if the "server" is lag free if the clients can't handle a hiccup in network transit times (which shouldn't happen on a local lan, but hey who knows). The fact the point out specifically that the server was lag free makes me weary. I'd like to think they fixed the lag problem, but they were unable to fix it (or even try to address it as far as I can see) in 10 patches.
Agreed. If I want to play with my wife or other friends from my place, why should we all have to use an internet connection to play together? LAN play makes much more sense.
And while we're on the subject of questions I'd like answered, did Blizzard fix their horrible networking code? I'd never played a network game that would lag as bad as Diablo II would on a home network. It was absolutely amazing how bad the lagging would get, and usually when it occurred you learned to run because a lot of something was coming thus causing the lag. Most times you just died because you couldn't see whatever it was that caused the lag before they killed you.
I haven't played PC games in years, but DIII was sounding interesting and I'm curious to see how the story ends. Without LAN play though, a lot of the replay value is lost for me. Once you play through the story once, the fun comes in playing new classes/building up classes with friends imo.
Mind sharing how you worded that e-mail? I don't have Sprint, but it couldn't hurt to try with ATT. I doubt they'd do it since they're in a different situation that Spring (Sprint is having issues keeping users), but I'd try anyway.
I have ATT and when I signed up my account over 3 years ago, I called and had them disable all features that would cost me extra money (web access, text messaging, etc). They were Cingular back then of course, and I got 1 or two charges on my bill for a text message I never received. For each one of those I would call them up and say I was supposed to have this disabled, they'd look at my account, agree, and then remove the charge. After those 2 charges (months apart) I haven't had an issue with a text message in years. Maybe ATT isn't so kind about it now, but my experience has been if you tell them to disable the feature they will remove any charges you receive related to that feature.
I have to say I agree with this action to some degree. Namely as it relates to drug companies though. I've been involved people that work in the pharmaceutical business, and getting a drub approved by the FDA is NOT easy. Many never make it to market, and almost all of them require a lot of money to develop in R&D. While making a product is no guarantee of making money, they should be allowed some protection for doing the work. Without a patent on the drug, the minute it hits the market it will be reverse engineered by a different drug company and sold cheaper. Some say that is the way it should be, but I honestly don't agree. The company creating the drug is spending a lot of time and money in R&D, without which we wouldn't get the current drugs we have and rely on. Why should another company get to easily piggy back on their efforts? Where is the motivation to find new cures in that environment?
As to the cost of the drugs, the companies are trying to make money. They're not non-profit organizations. Should they be? That's a different question all together which I won't address here. The rest of the world complains about the price of drugs and refuses to pay the prices the drug companies want to charge, instead deciding not to honor the patents on the drugs if the price doesn't come down. The result? The US has much higher drug prices than most of the rest of the world because we end up paying for the companies R&D costs since the rest of the world won't. Sorry, I can't feel bad about sanctions against countries that refuse to carry the burden of R&D costs and leave the US to carry it all. Do I feel the costs be lower? Definitely. However, I also don't know the R&D cost for a particular drug so whose to say the costs aren't in line with a reasonable time line to recoup R&D costs? I can't say I think having for profit companies develop the drugs helps things.
Given this situation, what's the way to handle it OTHER than patents? How can a company recoup the R&D costs (plus a profit) for a drug at a price level that is fair to all countries? Why shouldn't the countries in the rest of the world be forced to honor the drug companies' patents? It's not like it's a field where the companies can simply say "Pay up or you don't get the cure".
I don't really care much about the copyright portion of this story, but I get irked when I see people ranting against drug companies. They're definitely not perfect, but they are getting screwed by the rest of the world as bad as they screw the people in the US imo.
KhyronHow will I know that I am working on MY computer and not THEIR computer? The internet is scary and all that...
KhyronHow would these downloaded games be preserved? If Nintendo is smart, they will not charge a rental fee for the old games or even a per-play fee. If they allow you to repurchase their old library of games and KEEP them (possibly on the SD cards) or alternately allow gamers to play the old games on demand for free, including the Gamecube games, then this could be a huge success. I know I'd be more interested in being able to play some of those old SNES games along with the Gamecube games (many of which I want to play already). On top of that, I'd obviously be willing to buy new games for the Revolution. If they do this right, it could be a good selling point. In my opinion anyway.
KhyronI don't know if you're being serious, or are just ignorant of history. The US tried just such a thing as you are mentioning before the Constitution was written. Anyone remember the Articles of Confederation? It failed miserably. States had their own currency, economies, etc.
The governing structure is such, because this is what works. Strong state governments with a weak Federal government was the original idea (see above). Our forefathers always had a strong loyalty to their state. In fact, if you care to dig even more into history, there was a reason Divisions in the Civial War were named after the states they came from. The members of the division had their first loyalty to their state, and the second to the Federal government, and that was after the Constitution was written.
The Founding Fathers had strong ties to their states, but the Articles of Confederation made them realize the importance of a strong Federal Government. As someone knowledgable (although not an expert) in how the United States came to be, and appreciative of all things previous generations have endured as well as things endured by the current generation (especially every person in the military) so that people of the US can live the way we do, to see you mention such an ignorant statement is rather insulting to be honest. Learn history before you decide to try to forge a new path in the future, as you'll probably see that your idea has been tried in the past already. Yes, the current government has expanded beyond the original ideas of our Founding Fathers, but that is almost to be expected. They couldn't have predicted the future, nor did that try. All they did was lay the building blocks and allow for expansion. If you don't like the current goverment's size (I personally don't), then try to educate your fellow voters. The reason the government is the size it is is because that is what the people want, as sad as that is.
KhyronAs Brodie in Mallrats says:
My Grandmother always used to say "why buy the cow, when you can get the sex for free".
Somehow, that's strangely appropriate. :)
KhyronAs in your side, their side, and the truth?
Think they'd know better than to reference a line from B5. :)
KhyronRight on. If I had mod points, I'd mod you up as high as I can go. It's amazing how people argue for outsourcing, but fail to understand basic economic theory. Here's another economic thought to add to your list: Outsourcing Competitive Advantage. It ain't a great idea either.
However, most economists, and I tend to agree here too, agree that outsourcing isn't currently a major factor in the difficulty to find a job. They mostly say it is the large gains in productivity. While I agree that's probably the case now, I can't say that outsourcing won't be a big issue in the future.
As to all those people who think that outsourcing increases profits, you need to do some reading. In THEORY it would increase profits and lower prices, but in the past it has ended up raising costs. This is at least partially because of differences in culture, difficulty in communication, the lack of time to co-ordinate, the fact that most large companies don't have the management structure to effectively manage people over seas, etc. I could go on and on, but I hope people get the point. Not to mention that the "profits" from outsourcing tend to be short lived. It's a way to raise short-term shareholder value, but as far as I know (and in this I could be wrong) it's a negative to long-term shareholder value. Outsourcing has been done before and failed. I'm not saying it'll fail this time, but NO ONE is mentioning the problems of the past failures which to me says all those commenting on it (news or on slashdot) don't know what they're talking about.
KhyronMicrosoft contracted Fisher Price to create the Fisher Price My First Computer Interface. They were going to call the OS: Microsoft Windows featuring the My First Computer Interface (MSMFCI for short), but decided to just call it WindowsXP.
I'm older than 4, so the XP interface is painfully annoying
KhyronActually, I wasn't saying anything bad about the Malaysian government. I was referring to earlier attempts to outsource IT jobs to that country (this was in the 80s I believe). The result was that the costs were so high to try to manage people half way around the world that most of the outsourced jobs came back. IT jobs have been outsourced before.
Outsourcing isn't the magic arrow CEOs want it to be. This article doesn't really address anything important at all. Ratings are pretty meaningless. I know parts of companies that are rated at SEI Level 5, but produce some of the worst crap I've seen. They're rated well though, so they much be good.
Why doesn't someone write an article about all the times outsourcing has been tried before? How about what happened with Malaysia? How about the fact that the overhead involved in trying to manage people half-way around the world is higher than the amount they save by outsourcing? This isn't a new fad people. Sure, the people and the places change but the problems don't.
Things are different now than they were in the 80's I'll grant you, but no one seems to be drawing the comparisons. Health Care costs are rising in the US, thus possibly providing better savings when outsourcing now. However, it's not like this is a new concept and that the problems aren't well known. Let's see some hard questions asked and analysis done based on past experience!
KhyronI never said you needed a new TV. I said you'd need a $200 receiver, what you're calling a converter box. They might be down to $50 by the time the switch over happens (in all likelihood they would), but that means the consumer has ANOTHER remote control to keep track of. People already don't like having many more than 1 for all their devices.
This isn't really relavant to my point anyway. The cost of the converter box is a cost many people will be upset to have to pay (let alone the additional remote I mentioned earlier in this post). Not to mention that that $50 will be more than most of the TVs people want to put them on will be worth. What about the person with 5 TVs? Are they going to want to spend $250 MORE to watch TV on TVs that likely aren't worth $50 anymore? For most people, the answer to this is no. Plain and simple.
If they're trying to sell the boxes to people who want to go "digital" quality, than I agree with you. However, MANDATING EVERYONE buy one to continue watching TV will not work. You just try telling people they have to spend more money to watch their TV and see their reaction. Ever been talked to people about a $2 increase in their cable bill?
Oh, and digital cable isn't digital, it's still analog. As an example, ATT (Now Comcast) has a digital cable offering. All the channels below 100 are still analog though. Everyone who has analog cable now are watching channels below 100, so what's the point? Digital Cable is anything but digital, hence the reason your analog TV still works. Satellite is digital, but you need a receiver for every TV. Same with "digital" cable if you want to access channels over 100 (the "digital" part of the cable service), and you know how well digital cable has taken off (not well). Satellite is doing well because they give the user their normal channels in digital quality. Digital cable does not, and thus isn't doing well. Satellite is having issues though because of the costs accociated with having multiple TVs. That's the only thing keeping me on analog cable, for instance. In terms of money, satellite gets REALLY expensive the more TVs you want to be able to watch independent shows.
KhyronI must disagree with you here. There are many households that will not be ABLE (read afford) to just purchase a new TV because the FCC wants to stop analog broadcasts. And what about those people who are more fortunate who have 5 TVs in their house? Think they'll run out and buy 5 new TVs? No. They might buy one, but they'll sure as hell be very unhappy about it. Analog broadcasts won't stop anytime soon, despite the FCC's mandate. Think anyone is going to buy a $200 receiver for their 10+ year old TV that isn't worth $200? Again, no.
After all, just THINK of the outcry from the TV networks and the TV viewers if half the fans of Survivor couldn't see the next series. :)
Since the FCC's mandate deals with over the air broadcasts, the only thing that really needs to be looked at are the number of homes with cable and those without. Last I checked (and I could be wrong now) the number of homes with cable were not the majority.
KhyronIs it just me, or did almost everyone here miss an underlying truth in Roblimo's article? Yes it was satire, but at the same time it proves a very valid point. Easy of use is equivalent to what you're used to. He was used to highlighting text and pressing a mouse button to paste. He was not, however, accustomed to using the keyboard for that operation so it would seem strange and frustrating.
As for IE, if you only used Linux, you'd know nothing about IE. You'd expect it to have the nicities that Linux browsers have (tabbed windows, popup blocking, etc), but it doesn't. Taken in the context of a person who is used to Linux, I think this article is pretty thought provoking. Everyone says windows is easier to use than Linux, but that's bunk. Windows is more well known, and that's it. I have used Linux for years (started in windows of course), and windows now annoys the piss out of me because the things I am used to in Linux are not available in windows. Not to mention the time I went web surfing with a browser other than Mozilla recently. Without popup blocking, the web is practically useless nowadays. I hadn't noticed this with Mozilla.
I'd like to see a non-satirical article written on this topic. A person who isn't a geek but is used to running linux for years switch to windows and see their review. I'd be willing to bet they complain as much as the windows users who review linux. You get used to the way an OS works and that's what you know. It has nothing to do with an OS being more "intuitive". At this stage, I'd say Linux and windows are about equal in terms of usability. It just all depends on what you're used to.
KhyronI test drove a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid and must say I was quite impressed. The pickup was nice, but about on par with a normal Civic. I mean let's face it, the car is still a Civic. The instrument panel was quite attractive, but the only nagging concern I would have about the Hybrid cars is battery life. Until these cars have been out on the road for a number of years we really won't know what the life expectancy is for the battery. I asked the sales rep and replacing the battery in the Civic would not be cheap. Still, if you're willing to take that risk I'd say go for it. The Hybrids look like great cars from what I've read/experienced. Just be aware of the possibility of replacing the battery.
Oh, and don't ask the sales rep about the battery life. One, they don't know, and two they'll say something like "I've heard it lasts longer than the car". I tried asking the sales rep I was talking to and he admitted point 1 and said point 2.
KhyronI whole heartedly agree. I've taken many economics courses, got a minor in Business (including a course on Accounting), and my father has an MBA. This means nothing more than that I have been exposed to a lot of accounting information, and I can say that GnuCash is an excellent program. It took me several hours to set up all the accounts I wanted and to transfer my data to the double accounting method introduced in 1.6 (I started using it around 1.4), but I can say I don't want to go back and the time was far from lost. People really should keep better track of their money anyway, and CnuCash allows that.
Even better was that when I wanted to figure out my cash flow per month/year so I could see if I could afford a house, GnuCash made it very easy. I agree I think the problem is that people have a total lack of understand of even basic accounting.
I'm off to see if I can contribute.
KhyronAs far as I know, the contract for the Harry Potter movies only goes to 3 or 4. The actors themselves only have contracts for up to 3 movies. There is serious doubt about whether all the Harry Potter books (of which there will be 7) will make it to film. If they try, they will probably have a cast shift somewhere in the middle of the movies which could hurt their popularity and liklihood of making it to 7.
KhyronActually, if you want to get technical, your digital cell phone is only half-duplex also. It just switches from listen to send so quickly and so often that you can't tell. :)
I work in a company that produces cell phones and recently went to a training class about this kind of stuff. I found it interesting that digital cell phones aren't truly full-duplex. It's a limit of the technology.
KhyronSo how can this realistically be prevented? No matter what information they use to indentify a person, that information will be easy to obtain on the internet. Whether it is the SSN or not is irrelevant. Telemarketers buy and sell people's information all the time, so all people need to steal someone's ID is that unique token. Since the unique token is always needed to authenticate, it will just as easy to obtain as the SSN number.
The only way around this that I see is to allow only face to face transactions, but that will not realistically happen. I don't forsee any gov't official voting for a bill that will regress business transactions.
Am I missing something? Is there a way to protect privacy while also not setting business transactions back years?
KhyronWhy is the author worried about IBM pulling out its patent portfolio and beating down SCO? As I understand patents, you don't have to enforce them with all parties. IBM has a current interest, and investment, in Linux so why would anyone by worried that IBM beating SCO to death with patents would mean IBM would then turn the patents on Linux?
KhyronDoes anyone know if the anime on this channel will be edited for content? Dubbing can be pretty bad, but what's worse is when they edit the stories for content. Many times the story lines don't make as much sense and entire scenes are cut out. Sometimes entire episodes. If this becomes mainstream, I truly hope they aren't edited shows. Course, american culture would have to accept more nudity and/or blood for many shows. Guess there's not much chance of that.
Khyron