The general public usually forgets that the best mergers are not just about money (and stock price) they are also about synergies. The potential merger with Comcast brought some synergies to the table (an outlet for Disney programming and cheaper advertising space). But ultimately, the key synergy is missing: Disney's focus on family entertainment.
To the external public, Disney is the ultimate family company. The ability for Disney to remain a reconginized name in family entertainment is crucial to its continued success. What does Comcast bring to that image? A merger could potentially dilute the image that Disney has worked decades to develop. (In accounting terms: Disney has a LOT of Goowill).
What's ironic about all of this is that Disney's external image and internal culture are so different. Many former employees have complained about it being a glue factory (i.e. hire people and use them up). Benefits, especially family benefits, are not as competitive as other companies in the industry. And most importantly--Disney no longer creates most of its content--almost all of it is outsourced to other organizations (i.e. Pixar) or just re-telling of old Disney stories (Cinderella, etc).
So, by wiping out this domain we avoid the typical web user playing through the following scenario:
1) Web user thinks: "I need to order a book, let's go to Amazon" 2) Web user types: "amazon.uk.co" 3) Web user sees 15,000 porn sites pop up 4) Web user starts to sweat, looks around office, hopes no one walks by 5) Web user clicks furiously, but fails to keep up with the rush of pop-ups, pop-unders, and installation prompts 6) Web user co-worker walks by, see's web user sweating, moaning softly and clicking so fast his/her hand is a blur 7) Web user hits reset button on PC, loses all work, but manages to stem the tide of porn 8) Web user sees co-worker next in cafeteria next day sitting with several other people, all are looking at web user and snickering...
It's happened to all of us, admit it! Getting rid of "spam" domains is a good thing!
Now, if they could could just get rid of whitehouse.com, I'd have a lot more respect for the American government!
I don't have the numbers for the past five years, but there are 85!! publicly traded companies worldwide that have that have revenues of more than 1 billion and operating margins higher than 40%. Notice that these companies are not considered monopolies. REVENUE AND NET OPERATING MARGIN alone cannot show a monopoly. In fact, higher revenues and net profits are usually a sign of market leadership, operational efficiency, or industry norms...not a sign of monopoly.
There are other reasons why MS is a monopoly, but lets at least agree that how much the company makes has nothing to do with it.
If you don't believe my numbers, use this great stock screener (http://www.stockscreener.com) to prove it to yourself. (Interestingly, most of the 85 companies are banking comglomerates...)
but Kafka & Orwell are not even close to the horizon. I know that every author and his mother loves to write stories about privacy that use the line "Big Brother is Watching!" But the images that Kafka and Orwell portray are much more systemic and detailed than the "invasion of privacy" that internet monitoring causes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm against a company disseminating my personal information when I explicitly prohibit them from doing so. However, all this talk of Big Brother and Joseph K. is a little too heavy on the melodrama and scare tactics.
Even if the U.S. government actively monitored every online activity that I take, they wouldn't be close to the vision portrayed by Orwell. And the path described by Kafka is not really privacy focused, its more a treatise on the effect of runaway bureaucracy and the impotence of the common man in face of the "grey wall" or government.
Privacy is important, but throwing out one doomday scenario after another won't lead to effective legislation that succesfully balances our current laws with our privacy rights.
When the user agent clicks on a broken link, return the user to their current page and inform them of the error.
How many times have I clicked the BACK button because nobody has put this in? How hard can it be?
In ready all the posts/comments about nanotech here and on other/. topics, I think I've stumbled upon a recurring theme: There are a lot of people scared of nanotech!
I'm not sure I understand the why this is such a scary field. First of all nanotechnology is defined in the article as "the study of devices that measure less than a nanometer, or one billionth of a meter" What's so intrinsically scary about that? If manage to create an AMD CPU that measures less than a nanometer in length, would people be scared of it? (Ooh, that AMD chip is out to get me!!!)
Second, even if you combine Nanotech with Artificial Intelligence you have to work at it to come up with a scary application. Sure, its scary to think about millions of intelligent machines running around doing whatever they want, but that's probably decades, if not hundreds of years away. And even if we did combine AI with Nanotech in this way, we'll probably figure out a way to limit the AI to a specific task long before we get to a technological implementation.
Interestingly enough, I agree with just about everything you've said. In a society that is prepared for the "information age" the sharing of information becomes a powerful phenomenon.
However, most of the world's societies have not yet laid a foundation that adequately prepares them for the "information age". In the U.S. we are extremely spoiled...even those who live in abject poverty or homelessnes have incredible access to services and information. But in most of the rest of the world access to more information would do them little, if any, good.
For example...I can post the schemactics to build a space shuttle, but if I don't have the appropriate technology base then having the information doesn't offer any value to me (other than knowing that something like that can be done).
I fundamentally believe the Internet is the Earth's new way of sharing information. However, I'm not sure everyone is ready for its benefits yet.
By the way, you mentioned the story about Nike using exploitive practices. Personally, I think its horrible that they did what they did. But what was the opinion of the people working FOR Nike. After we forced them to shut down the plants, did the people working there get another job? Or did the information actually harm them more??
However, the Internet might be a great enabler for building the porper foundations.
The beginning of your comment starts with an admirable goal, but makes me ask a simple question "What's the point?" What's the intrinsic benefit of teaching someone to use the 'net? Personally, I can barely remember life without my trusty browser, but to the majority of the world's population the Internet offers minimal value.
If I live in poverty in a third world country, having access to the 'net won't change my life one bit. I'm lucky if I can even READ, let alone benefit from using a computer. Show me an internet application that cures world hunger, and then I'll believe that 'net will truly change the world we live in.
The Internet, like almost all other major technologies, went through an amazing period of innovation and creativity. However, you can trace almost 90% of the truly important internet innovations to a period BEFORE 1996 (and maybe even before 1992). In this respect, the Internet is like almost every other major innovation of the last 100+ years.
For example, the automobile was invented in the late 19th century. The cars we use today are functionally the same to what was invented more than 100 years ago. The automobile was BIG when it was invented and started to take hold. Less than 20 years later, it was becoming a common part of daily life.
So, history tells us that the core functions of the Internet are already set. That everything else that will be done on the internet is nothing more than a new-fangled cupholder or a tricked-out alloy wheel.
If you want the next BIG Internet thing, we'll need to invent something other than the Internet...
Slashdot Mirror
The general public usually forgets that the best mergers are not just about money (and stock price) they are also about synergies. The potential merger with Comcast brought some synergies to the table (an outlet for Disney programming and cheaper advertising space). But ultimately, the key synergy is missing: Disney's focus on family entertainment.
To the external public, Disney is the ultimate family company. The ability for Disney to remain a reconginized name in family entertainment is crucial to its continued success. What does Comcast bring to that image? A merger could potentially dilute the image that Disney has worked decades to develop. (In accounting terms: Disney has a LOT of Goowill).
What's ironic about all of this is that Disney's external image and internal culture are so different. Many former employees have complained about it being a glue factory (i.e. hire people and use them up). Benefits, especially family benefits, are not as competitive as other companies in the industry. And most importantly--Disney no longer creates most of its content--almost all of it is outsourced to other organizations (i.e. Pixar) or just re-telling of old Disney stories (Cinderella, etc).
Sometimes it amazes me that the United States fights wars to protect liberty and freedom of speech...and this is what we get...
So, by wiping out this domain we avoid the typical web user playing through the following scenario:
1) Web user thinks: "I need to order a book, let's go to Amazon"
2) Web user types: "amazon.uk.co"
3) Web user sees 15,000 porn sites pop up
4) Web user starts to sweat, looks around office, hopes no one walks by
5) Web user clicks furiously, but fails to keep up with the rush of pop-ups, pop-unders, and installation prompts
6) Web user co-worker walks by, see's web user sweating, moaning softly and clicking so fast his/her hand is a blur
7) Web user hits reset button on PC, loses all work, but manages to stem the tide of porn
8) Web user sees co-worker next in cafeteria next day sitting with several other people, all are looking at web user and snickering...
It's happened to all of us, admit it! Getting rid of "spam" domains is a good thing!
Now, if they could could just get rid of whitehouse.com, I'd have a lot more respect for the American government!
I don't have the numbers for the past five years, but there are 85!! publicly traded companies worldwide that have that have revenues of more than 1 billion and operating margins higher than 40%. Notice that these companies are not considered monopolies. REVENUE AND NET OPERATING MARGIN alone cannot show a monopoly. In fact, higher revenues and net profits are usually a sign of market leadership, operational efficiency, or industry norms...not a sign of monopoly. There are other reasons why MS is a monopoly, but lets at least agree that how much the company makes has nothing to do with it. If you don't believe my numbers, use this great stock screener (http://www.stockscreener.com) to prove it to yourself. (Interestingly, most of the 85 companies are banking comglomerates...)
Don't get me wrong, I'm against a company disseminating my personal information when I explicitly prohibit them from doing so. However, all this talk of Big Brother and Joseph K. is a little too heavy on the melodrama and scare tactics.
Even if the U.S. government actively monitored every online activity that I take, they wouldn't be close to the vision portrayed by Orwell. And the path described by Kafka is not really privacy focused, its more a treatise on the effect of runaway bureaucracy and the impotence of the common man in face of the "grey wall" or government.
Privacy is important, but throwing out one doomday scenario after another won't lead to effective legislation that succesfully balances our current laws with our privacy rights.
When the user agent clicks on a broken link, return the user to their current page and inform them of the error. How many times have I clicked the BACK button because nobody has put this in? How hard can it be?
In ready all the posts/comments about nanotech here and on other /. topics, I think I've stumbled upon a recurring theme: There are a lot of people scared of nanotech!
I'm not sure I understand the why this is such a scary field. First of all nanotechnology is defined in the article as "the study of devices that measure less than a nanometer, or one billionth of a meter" What's so intrinsically scary about that? If manage to create an AMD CPU that measures less than a nanometer in length, would people be scared of it? (Ooh, that AMD chip is out to get me!!!)
Second, even if you combine Nanotech with Artificial Intelligence you have to work at it to come up with a scary application. Sure, its scary to think about millions of intelligent machines running around doing whatever they want, but that's probably decades, if not hundreds of years away. And even if we did combine AI with Nanotech in this way, we'll probably figure out a way to limit the AI to a specific task long before we get to a technological implementation.
Interestingly enough, I agree with just about everything you've said. In a society that is prepared for the "information age" the sharing of information becomes a powerful phenomenon.
However, most of the world's societies have not yet laid a foundation that adequately prepares them for the "information age". In the U.S. we are extremely spoiled...even those who live in abject poverty or homelessnes have incredible access to services and information. But in most of the rest of the world access to more information would do them little, if any, good.
For example...I can post the schemactics to build a space shuttle, but if I don't have the appropriate technology base then having the information doesn't offer any value to me (other than knowing that something like that can be done).
I fundamentally believe the Internet is the Earth's new way of sharing information. However, I'm not sure everyone is ready for its benefits yet.
By the way, you mentioned the story about Nike using exploitive practices. Personally, I think its horrible that they did what they did. But what was the opinion of the people working FOR Nike. After we forced them to shut down the plants, did the people working there get another job? Or did the information actually harm them more??
However, the Internet might be a great enabler for building the porper foundations.
The beginning of your comment starts with an admirable goal, but makes me ask a simple question "What's the point?" What's the intrinsic benefit of teaching someone to use the 'net? Personally, I can barely remember life without my trusty browser, but to the majority of the world's population the Internet offers minimal value.
If I live in poverty in a third world country, having access to the 'net won't change my life one bit. I'm lucky if I can even READ, let alone benefit from using a computer. Show me an internet application that cures world hunger, and then I'll believe that 'net will truly change the world we live in.
The Internet, like almost all other major technologies, went through an amazing period of innovation and creativity. However, you can trace almost 90% of the truly important internet innovations to a period BEFORE 1996 (and maybe even before 1992). In this respect, the Internet is like almost every other major innovation of the last 100+ years. For example, the automobile was invented in the late 19th century. The cars we use today are functionally the same to what was invented more than 100 years ago. The automobile was BIG when it was invented and started to take hold. Less than 20 years later, it was becoming a common part of daily life. So, history tells us that the core functions of the Internet are already set. That everything else that will be done on the internet is nothing more than a new-fangled cupholder or a tricked-out alloy wheel. If you want the next BIG Internet thing, we'll need to invent something other than the Internet...