Get a paypal account and a checking account to link it to. Anytime money is received, move it OUT of your checking account into another account at the same bank, which should be instantaneous. Do this daily. If paypal decides to screw around, they can't pull any money back, and you're never more than one day in the hole. Immediately stop using that paypal account and either set up a new one, with a new checking account, or stop using it until the dispute is resolved.
Ultimately, however, if you can afford it and your credit can handle it, just get a merchant account and accept credit cards directly. I'm sure there are people that only do paypal to paypal, but many more use credit cards through paypal and can probably pay with a credit/debit card if paypal itself wasn't an option. And of course, anyone can go buy a throwaway debit card if they really need to. Then just keep paypal as an additional option, but discourage its use.
But this is what I do. I keep all of the computers in my office. The server that plays the media (several are in use for purposes of storing it), has video and audio output that feeds into a UHF modulator, and I feed the output of that into a backwards splitter and combine it with the regular cable signal on channel 90 (which is unused by my cable company). I could easily use more channels as well with extra modulators, but I so far haven't needed more than one channel at a time. I set this up several years back, and I think I tried mythtv at the time but had issues getting it installed correctly, so I just wrote my own interface and use a netbook as a remote control, but if I was doing it over again, I'd probably use myth or something similar and a RF remote or an IR transceiver.
You never get "found" innocent. You already ARE innocent until PROVEN guilty.
A more serious question would be, if you are acquitted, and decide to later get the arrest expunged, you would then have the right to force the department to completely remove all public records that you were ever arrested. Their failure to do so completely would technically give you grounds for a libel lawsuit, since legally the arrest never happened. It would be interesting what might happen if the arrest records were copied and republished by a third party. Would it be the responsibility of the police to then track down and enforce the removal of all of that data as well? It's one thing if you're a public figure. If you're a popular football player or movie star who's arrest trial were tabloid quality events, and you later get your record expunged, or get a pardon, people are still going to remember what happened, and will likely remember for many years. Then again, most of those people don't generally don't have to play in the same sandbox with the rest of us, and football teams and movie studios alike don't seem to consider felony convictions to be a showstopper (no pun intended) when it comes to employment, so why would they care one bit about an acquittal?
This is why people shouldn't set automatic limits. Of course, it's kinda silly even under normal circumstances. If you have money invested somewhere, you should pay attention to it. You should pay attention to the health of the companies you are invested in. You should pay attention to see if they have competent management, put out quality products, and keep their production in line. If on a daily basis, you notice the stock starting to slip, find out why. Even Enron and Worldcom didn't tank overnight. There was plenty of time to realize that there was a problem brewing and get out without some artificially set "limit" to sell the stock automatically. Besides, when the fit finally does hit the shan, and your sell order isn't hit until after that point, there's a chance you won't get anything near what you're wanting, since nobody will be buying at that point.
An automatic buy order is stupid for the exact same reason. You might set yourself up to snap up a bargain if and when it ever happens, but the problem is, if the stock suddenly drops due to a pending bankruptcy or some other equally devastating reason, you'll get your stock purchase, making some other desperate seller very happy, and never be able to recover the cost.
It's also possible, that out of the blue, Google lawyers approach Namco, say they want to make a cool front-page gizmo that emulates a pacman game in light of the 30th anniversary, and works out a contract for the right to do it. Pacman being a classic, but old and relatively profit-less production at this point, probably allowed it for not much more than the name recognition, if that. Getting permission in advance is usually much easier, and besides, if pacman wasn't a realistic option, there are hundreds of other classic games that would work equally well for the educational experience, and certainly ONE of their companies would have allowed it.
Of course, if this were only a project that stayed in the classroom, Namco likely would never of heard of it.
Not to take the side of the cable company, but the Lite service is the second from the bottom in terms of cost. It's not meant for the high-end bandwidth consumer. As the site says, that service is stated to be "Perfect for email, moderate web surfing, and sharing files." It's 3M/256k with a 15 gig monthly limit. However, if you plan to download several movies a day, this clearly isn't going to be enough for you. Thankfully, the company offers OTHER service options. The Ultimate plan, has 50/2 and a 175 gig limit, with only 50 cents per additional gig. Of course, you'll pay more for that plan, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that the second cheapest service plan should have completely unlimited bandwidth.
And if the ultimate plan isn't enough for you, there are business plans available which will offer even more, although it's likely going to cost more and the plans apparently aren't available to view on the site. But this is pretty typical for a cable company. I'm not sure what the complaint is supposed to be.
I can always sniff out the ip address of the host I'm communicating with, even if all of the data is encrypted. The only way to prevent that is to run all of the data (video, audio, and text) through a central server (or multiple central servers) or some type of proxy. The point is, someone is going to have to pay for a huge amount of bandwidth, as opposed to the way it works now where all the main server has to do is arrange the connections.
I think the rub is that, while it would seem weird for me to track down girls I barely knew in Jr. High and probe them for information on if, when and who they married, about their kids, their jobs, and who their friends are, there apparently seems to be nothing strange at all about "friending" them on facebook and exploring those same topics. It's like voluntarily allowing yourself to be stalked... within limits (maybe, depending on today's version of Facebook's rapidly changing privacy policy).
This gives you the opportunity to keep in touch with people you otherwise wouldn't have kept in touch with anyway, and your life is probably no better for it, but now, at least, it's easy.
I personally have rejected almost all of the friend requests that have come from people I used to know but was never friends with. My opinion is, if I wasn't friends with you then, why would I want to be friends with you now, when the only thing we USED to have in common was that we currently attended the same school. We don't even have THAT anymore, so why do you suddenly want to be my friend NOW? Why do you even CARE? There's a reason that high school reunions aren't held on a daily/monthly or even yearly basis. Agreed, there IS a certain novelty to discovering the fate of people you haven't spoken to or heard about in years, but it's a very short-lived experience and doesn't accomplish a great deal. Afterwards, you just go right back to ignoring each other like you always did.
Assuming a band can crank out an album once a year, the band members are making $45K per year. AFTER TAXES. While yes, I agree, that's hardly a rock star salary, the article isn't talking about rock stars. It's talking about the artists that never sell enough CDs to recoup their loan.
Also consider the fact, that the loan never HAS to be paid back. If the band only sells ONE CD, they don't have to pay back the advance. $1 million is hardly chump change to most people. And yes, you can produce an album a lot cheaper than that. Some decent instruments and recording equipment, a CDR burner and you're all set. And if you can make more than $45K per year doing that, go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you. The record company is providing the artist with a completely risk-free proposition, and all they have to do is give up 90% of the earnings, and pay back all the loans before they see royalties.
Of course, an artist in that situation is smart enough (or SHOULD be anyway) to realize that the money for the artist isn't made on CD sales, it's on tours. Radio stations play your music, people buy your CDs, and then line up for hours to buy tickets for your shows whenever you come relatively close to wherever they live.
Of course, all of this is before the internet changed how music is distributed. We don't NEED the CDs anymore, since it's just as easy to find the songs online.. for free. On the other hand, if the internet is the primary distribution for an artist's work, through piracy or some other means, there's really no need to get involved with the record company at all. Just do a decent recording and distribute it as an mp3. Sell the song, or even the whole album for a buck on itunes, and you will make more than you would through a record company deal. Ultimately, this should result in better record deals for the artists as the RIAA attempts to compete for the small time (but still profitable) artists who will never recoup their investment. They might start earning more than 10% of the sale. But if not, at least today, there are other options available.
Why shouldn't I seperate my online persona(s) from my real life identity? What problem is Blizzard trying to solve here? I make it a point to avoid any forum identity that could be easliy traced back to my real name, because stuff comes back to haunt you. Do you really want somehting you said 20 years ago in some gaming forum to come up in a job interview?
It's remarkably easy to not say something that will hurt you in the future. Nobody in the future will ever care that you played the game, or had a vested interest in it, or participated in guild wars, or posted various gameplay techniques, or making any in-character or relevant comments related to the game. They might, however, consider racist, overtly profane, or harassing comments... you know, the ones that say what type of person YOU are, to be relevant to how they might wish to relate to you in the future. If you do find your job prospects to be negatively affected because of a previous inability to act civilized, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
I don't think google WANTS to handle that process. That's not really what they do. They probably just want you to be able to type in a city and links for flights to that city from where you're at will show up in the search results, complete with prices, along with the news, shopping, ads and youtube results, as well as the regular search results. They just want to do the searching. The financial transaction can be handled by someone else.
While the big spinning mirror thing in a box is really cool, it suffers from the same problem all holograms do, especially when comparing it to the R2-D2 style of hologram. That is, it's entirely contained within a projection medium. The neat trick would be getting a 3D projection onto an unoccupied space. From what I've read on the subject, this isn't really possible (unless there is sufficient particulate matter in the air to provide something to project onto). I suppose it might be possible to use creative optics to create the illusion of a projected hologram, but it would be difficult to provide the same illusion to everyone watching, from every angle, using the same projector.
Not to cast scorn on what was obviously a very scary thing for many a day-trader, but for a long term institutional investor, this was barely a blip on the radar. REAL crashes happen for a reason, and you can almost always see them coming, at least in hindsight. Looking back at 2008 and 1929, there's a very clear pattern that indicates exactly what is wrong, and how the likely result came to be. They still can't even figure out what happened this time, and a day later, it's hard to tell why it really matters anyway.
In a REAL crash, there will be an underlying reason. Prior to the crash, a lot of smart people, investing over the long term, will recognize the signs that the stock market is about to become a bad investment, and will either stop investing in it, or it appears to be cost-effective, sell off some of their more risky holdings, and re-invest in something more recession proof. This is what starts the decline (which happens over a period of months). Then suddenly, one day, when everyone really gets all panicy, it'll start dropping more rapidly, the media gets in on the fun, etc.
The May 6 crash, on the other hand, had less to support it. Sure, there was that whole mess in Greece, but they're hardly holding up all the world markets anyway. One possibility is that someone purchased a huge amount of stock at significantly below market price. Since the ticker prices we are all intimately familiar with are little more than the last price something sold at, if enough consecutive trades go through at that same price, it will have the effect of suddenly dropping the market price for everyone. For your normal investor who ISN'T hitting reload every 10 seconds, they aren't going to notice this. However, the computers will. And everyone who has put in automatic sell orders will get triggered, and those shares will also sell automatically at whatever cost someone will pay for them. Seeing a sudden sell-off, any automatic purchasing might also be temporarily put on hold, increasing the downward trend.
Now, some savvy investors, both long-term and short-term, realizing there is no sensible reason for the selloff, will see this as a rare buying opportunity, and will rapidly start purchasing shares in huge quantities. This will quickly cause the market to correct itself back upwards, until it gets close to where it was supposed to be. The problem solved itself. The REAL problem was investors who put in automatic sell orders, as if the stock in a stable company is going to plummet so rapidly that they won't have a chance to escape before the company goes bankrupt. Check some of the stock graphs for Enron and Worldcom. Those companies both went to pot practically overnight, but even then, you had months to watch the stock price fall, and could sell off at any time you wanted. Automatic sell-offs are just asking for trouble, and are just an excuse to not pay attention to your own money.
Because (in the first place) happened about 100 years ago (if you're thinking DSL), or mid 80's (if you're thinking cable. The reason that phone and cable providers are the two prominent providers at the moment is because they already had most of the infrastructure in place to provide the service at the moment that suddenly everyone wanted it. That's not to say that they aren't constantly upgrading their services, lines, etc, but that's a project that can be worked on slowly over a long period of time, while generating revenue doing it.
Sure, it would be great to run fiber to every building in the USA, but until the underlying infrastructure is ready, it won't work, and until it works, you can't charge for it, and even once you CAN charge for it, and you get all the kinks worked out, you have to recoup your investment, which will be substantial. Therefore, roll-outs will happen in densely populated areas that also have easy and cheap access to public right-of-ways such that the entire infrastructure can be installed as inexpensively as possible and as quickly as possible, so it can start generating revenue. And once they've profited sufficiently to build up enough capital to tackle another area, they will do so.
Of course, they could take out loans to cover the cost of deployment, but that would require interest payments to pay off, which would result in higher prices for the consumer, and make it less competitive. A company is therefore better off funding the project with money they already have... you know, the money they've been "lining their pockets with".
I suppose the government could fund the deployment, but someone is going to pay for it. If it's not funding through income taxes, it'll be funded by a tax levied on the very internet services that such a deployment would provide, which ALSO would raise the prices for the consumer, and you're back to square one.
The thing is, the stock market and its investors don't rely on the 30 year payback from a company like Apple. They expect that the company, and therefore the stock price will grow over time, significantly reducing the time it will take to double in value. Knowing this, investors are willing to pay more for it than the total asset value of the company would imply that it's actually worth.
As for the stock value of your healthcare company, I'm pretty sure the value is realistic. You only mentioned inventory, not overall assets and not liabilities. Many corporations have a negative balance sheet, yet still earn an annual profit, which gives the company value. However, that value could very easily be less than the assets.
People talking on cellphones tend to carry their voices better than two people having a conversation amongst themselves in public. Anytime I answer the phone in public, I make a distinct effort to lower my voice, and if possible find a suitably private area, for the sole reason that I don't want to annoy the crap out of people I don't know just because I'm talking on the phone. I think if people would chat at the same volume on the phone as they do in person, it wouldn't be annoying to anyone.
It also seems like people tend to tune out the fact that people are around them. This might somewhat explain the volume increase, but it also means that they seem to feel comfortable talking about more intimate topics. Most people would be somewhat guarded about information about where and when their kids will be, phone numbers, etc.. but I hear people blurt information out loudly enough for everyone within 30 feet to clearly make it out.
This is a bit off topic, but not really. I was just pondering the ultimate threat, that if piracy continues as it currently does, that it will no longer be cost effective to produce entertainment media, which we all CLEARLY can't live without. Would the industry completely die? And if it did, what would take its place? I can somewhat appreciate the position that the media companies are in. They can't charge more, as it will push more people toward piracy. They can't charge less, as it will significantly cut profits while at the same time, not significantly increasing the customer base. They could become a more efficient operation. No more shelling out $20 million to a single actor, but since apparently THAT is what draws in the crowds to begin with, it might be a worthwhile expense.
So seriously, what DO they do? And if the entire industry collapses in upon itself, what would happen? What new beast would spring up to take its place? People the world over seem perfectly content to entertain themselves with home-made youtube videos featuring hilarious cats, and perhaps there is a market for this as well, maybe even enough that it could replace part of what conventional commercial media has provided us for years. But what if we had no choice in the matter? What if the world found itself culturally surviving almost entirely on low budget movies and indie bands, because there was nothing else. And even more importantly, would that be a bad thing?
Something to think about while sitting through the 15 minutes of ads on the DVD you just bought.
A new drive, which isn't even available yet, will not be compatible on some older hardware and with older operating systems. BTW, in the future, they will release some 128 gig ram chips that aren't compatible with your current motherboard either. Everyone expects to upgrade hardware and software over time as we utilize new technology. I figure, by the time that Fry's has a huge pallet of them sitting by the front door, there will be enough customers that have sufficiently upgraded to be able to utilize one fully.
I don't think the point is that they have no copyright claim. The problem is, any effort to bring forth such a claim could and very likely would be countered by a DMCA lawsuit, and possibly other lawsuits or charges with related to the facilitation of piracy. It also would require someone to attach a real name(s) to an operation that has enjoyed legal "protection" through anonymity, and expose them to many more potential lawsuits from other software companies. So yes, they MIGHT be able to claim a copyright violation, but it could be a VERY expensive claim, with very little chance of success.
In all fairness, when compared to the projects that government historically spends money on, blowing a couple hundred million bucks to drive a rc-car around on Mars doesn't seem like a bad investment. At least NASA and its contractors have come up with a few useful tech advances as a byproduct of throwing stuff into space.
Not only that, since we seem to crash 50% of everything we send to mars, you pretty much have to outlast your design requirements to get an average success rate.
The toughest part of the mission is just getting the thing on the ground in one piece. Some redundancy in engineering to hopefully make the rover last the failure of a few components will almost certainly ensure a long lifespan. Even so, don't forget we almost lost Spirit right in the beginning due to a software problem of all things. THAT would have sucked, especially considering how well the hardware has held up.
How long would it actually take to switch over? All of the IPv4 addresses are already available as IPv6 addresses. If everyone just magically started using IPv6 tomorrow, the currently allocated addresses would all still work, as would the routing.
I see a few problems. First off, everyone who is currently familiar with how to configure and manage IPv4 would be expected to know how to do all of the same things with IPv6. While I'm certain the learning curve isn't TOO high, there are certainly many people who simply haven't bothered because they haven't had to yet.
Secondly, what legacy operating systems, hardware, and application software still exists that has no support for IPv6? This is no small problem, as I'm certain there's a large number of 20+ year old software still in service that may not be feasible to upgrade. It might have survived Y2K, but this one could finally kill it off. Of course, if this software need not connect to the internet at large, it could live on in an internal network forever.
Of course, no matter how much preparation you do, no matter how much you advertise the change. On D-Day, ISP's are going to have a busy day on the phones, convincing their customers that "no, in fact, the web ISN'T broken. No, we don't still support 16 bit netscape on windows 3.1."
Since, in theory anyway, IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist right now, it does make sense to demand.. or at least strongly encourage all hardware and software developers to ensure full IPv6 capability along with IPv4 in all of their products from this point forward, assuming they haven't been doing so already, and also make the configuration seamless. If you configure IPv4, IPv6 is already configured using those addresses and works as-is, so on the day that IPv4 goes dead, the software still works without a hitch.
The biggest issue of all, of course, is who decides when to pull the plug on IPv4? While nobody will really just turn off IPv4, there WILL come a day when someone starts using IPv6 addresses that don't correspond to IPv4 addresses and from that point on, it will be necessary for the entire Internet to be in compliance. Who makes that call? And do we listen to them? This isn't the same scale of a problem as converting the broadcast TV to digital was. They couldn't even keep a schedule on that, and it was only one country. How do you ensure that the entire world, including countries we don't all entirely get along with, to agree to a mass-scale, instant upgrade on a specific date? This is likely to be more than just a mild inconvenience. The Internet is used for far more critical applications than twitter and porn distribution. At least, it'll be an interesting news day... assuming I can get online.:)
Exactly.. an example of regulation that actually DOES work, as opposed to many examples of regulation that do not.
What needs to be done... anywhere... is to define the specific zones in which wind farms would be acceptable, and be sure enough of those zones exist to make the operation feasible. Obviously, nobody is going to put a windfarm in a residential area, but there is a lot of farmland and empty space out there which would be perfectly acceptable and won't really bother anyone.
Where we run into the problems is we've got an area zoned as acceptable for wind farms, and then someone steps in and says we can't build them there because of (pick your environmental crisis). Texas tends to have fewer of those problems... and a heck of a lot of free space. As far as building them off shore, we are already used to seeing oil wells off shore, so why would we care if we saw windmills? At least they wouldn't leave tar on the beaches (although that's not a problem I've seen for a couple decades now).
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Get a paypal account and a checking account to link it to. Anytime money is received, move it OUT of your checking account into another account at the same bank, which should be instantaneous. Do this daily. If paypal decides to screw around, they can't pull any money back, and you're never more than one day in the hole. Immediately stop using that paypal account and either set up a new one, with a new checking account, or stop using it until the dispute is resolved.
Ultimately, however, if you can afford it and your credit can handle it, just get a merchant account and accept credit cards directly. I'm sure there are people that only do paypal to paypal, but many more use credit cards through paypal and can probably pay with a credit/debit card if paypal itself wasn't an option. And of course, anyone can go buy a throwaway debit card if they really need to. Then just keep paypal as an additional option, but discourage its use.
-Restil
But this is what I do. I keep all of the computers in my office. The server that plays the media (several are in use for purposes of storing it), has video and audio output that feeds into a UHF modulator, and I feed the output of that into a backwards splitter and combine it with the regular
cable signal on channel 90 (which is unused by my cable company). I could easily use more channels as well with extra modulators, but I so far haven't needed more than one channel at a time. I set this up several years back, and I think I tried mythtv at the time but had issues getting it installed correctly, so I just wrote my own interface and use a netbook as a remote control, but if I was doing it over again, I'd probably use myth or something similar and a RF remote or an IR transceiver.
-Restil
You never get "found" innocent. You already ARE innocent until PROVEN guilty.
A more serious question would be, if you are acquitted, and decide to later get the arrest expunged, you would then have the right to force the department to completely remove all public records that you were ever arrested. Their failure to do so completely would technically give you grounds for a libel lawsuit, since legally the arrest never happened. It would be interesting what might happen if the arrest records were copied and republished by a third party. Would it be the responsibility of the police to then track down and enforce the removal of all of that data as well? It's one thing if you're a public figure. If you're a popular football player or movie star who's arrest trial were tabloid quality events, and you later get your record expunged, or get a pardon, people are still going to remember what happened, and will likely remember for many years. Then again, most of those people don't generally don't have to play in the same sandbox with the rest of us, and football teams and movie studios alike don't seem to consider felony convictions to be a showstopper (no pun intended) when it comes to employment, so why would they care one bit about an acquittal?
-Restil
This is why people shouldn't set automatic limits. Of course, it's kinda silly even under normal circumstances. If you have money invested somewhere, you should pay attention to it. You should pay attention to the health of the companies you are invested in. You should pay attention to see if they have competent management, put out quality products, and keep their production in line. If on a daily basis, you notice the stock starting to slip, find out why. Even Enron and Worldcom didn't tank overnight. There was plenty of time to realize that there was a problem brewing and get out without some artificially set "limit" to sell the stock automatically. Besides, when the fit finally does hit the shan, and your sell order isn't hit until after that point, there's a chance you won't get anything near what you're wanting, since nobody will be buying at that point.
An automatic buy order is stupid for the exact same reason. You might set yourself up to snap up a bargain if and when it ever happens, but the problem is, if the stock suddenly drops due to a pending bankruptcy or some other equally devastating reason, you'll get your stock purchase, making some other desperate seller very happy, and never be able to recover the cost.
-Restil
It's also possible, that out of the blue, Google lawyers approach Namco, say they want to make a cool front-page gizmo that emulates a pacman game in light of the 30th anniversary, and works out a contract for the right to do it. Pacman being a classic, but old and relatively profit-less production at this point, probably allowed it for not much more than the name recognition, if that. Getting permission in advance is usually much easier, and besides, if pacman wasn't a realistic option, there are hundreds of other classic games that would work equally well for the educational experience, and certainly ONE of their companies would have allowed it.
Of course, if this were only a project that stayed in the classroom, Namco likely would never of heard of it.
-Restil
Not to take the side of the cable company, but the Lite service is the second from the bottom in terms of cost. It's not meant for the high-end bandwidth consumer. As the site says, that service is stated to be "Perfect for email, moderate web surfing, and sharing files." It's 3M/256k with a 15 gig monthly limit. However, if you plan to download several movies a day, this clearly isn't going to be enough for you. Thankfully, the company offers OTHER service options. The Ultimate plan, has 50/2 and a 175 gig limit, with only 50 cents per additional gig. Of course, you'll pay more for that plan, but I don't think anyone was seriously thinking that the second cheapest service plan should have completely unlimited bandwidth.
And if the ultimate plan isn't enough for you, there are business plans available which will offer even more, although it's likely going to cost more and the plans apparently aren't available to view on the site. But this is pretty typical for a cable company. I'm not sure what the complaint is supposed to be.
-Restil
There's always Merton. And Ben Folds imitating him. But otherwise, you're pretty spot-on.
-Restil
I can always sniff out the ip address of the host I'm communicating with, even if all of the data is encrypted. The only way to prevent that is to run all of the data (video, audio, and text) through a central server (or multiple central servers) or some type of proxy. The point is, someone is going to have to pay for a huge amount of bandwidth, as opposed to the way it works now where all the main server has to do is arrange the connections.
-Restil
I think the rub is that, while it would seem weird for me to track down girls I barely knew in Jr. High and probe them for information on if, when and who they married, about their kids, their jobs, and who their friends are, there apparently seems to be nothing strange at all about "friending" them on facebook and exploring those same topics. It's like voluntarily allowing yourself to be stalked... within limits (maybe, depending on today's version of Facebook's rapidly changing privacy policy).
This gives you the opportunity to keep in touch with people you otherwise wouldn't have kept in touch with anyway, and your life is probably no better for it, but now, at least, it's easy.
I personally have rejected almost all of the friend requests that have come from people I used to know but was never friends with. My opinion is, if I wasn't friends with you then, why would I want to be friends with you now, when the only thing we USED to have in common was that we currently attended the same school. We don't even have THAT anymore, so why do you suddenly want to be my friend NOW? Why do you even CARE? There's a reason that high school reunions aren't held on a daily/monthly or even yearly basis. Agreed, there IS a certain novelty to discovering the fate of people you haven't spoken to or heard about in years, but it's a very short-lived experience and doesn't accomplish a great deal. Afterwards, you just go right back to ignoring each other like you always did.
-Restil
Assuming a band can crank out an album once a year, the band members are making $45K per year. AFTER TAXES. While yes, I agree, that's hardly a rock star salary, the article isn't talking about rock stars. It's talking about the artists that never sell enough CDs to recoup their loan.
Also consider the fact, that the loan never HAS to be paid back. If the band only sells ONE CD, they don't have to pay back the advance. $1 million is hardly chump change to most people. And yes, you can produce an album a lot cheaper than that. Some decent instruments and recording equipment, a CDR burner and you're all set. And if you can make more than $45K per year doing that, go right ahead. Nobody's stopping you. The record company is providing the artist with a completely risk-free proposition, and all they have to do is give up 90% of the earnings, and pay back all the loans before they see royalties.
Of course, an artist in that situation is smart enough (or SHOULD be anyway) to realize that the money for the artist isn't made on CD sales, it's on tours. Radio stations play your music, people buy your CDs, and then line up for hours to buy tickets for your shows whenever you come relatively close to wherever they live.
Of course, all of this is before the internet changed how music is distributed. We don't NEED the CDs anymore, since it's just as easy to find the songs online.. for free. On the other hand, if the internet is the primary distribution for an artist's work, through piracy or some other means, there's really no need to get involved with the record company at all. Just do a decent recording and distribute it as an mp3. Sell the song, or even the whole album for a buck on itunes, and you will make more than you would through a record company deal. Ultimately, this should result in better record deals for the artists as the RIAA attempts to compete for the small time (but still profitable) artists who will never recoup their investment. They might start earning more than 10% of the sale. But if not, at least today, there are other options available.
-Restil
Why shouldn't I seperate my online persona(s) from my real life identity? What problem is Blizzard trying to solve here? I make it a point to avoid any forum identity that could be easliy traced back to my real name, because stuff comes back to haunt you. Do you really want somehting you said 20 years ago in some gaming forum to come up in a job interview?
It's remarkably easy to not say something that will hurt you in the future. Nobody in the future will ever care that you played the game, or had a vested interest in it, or participated in guild wars, or posted various gameplay techniques, or making any in-character or relevant comments related to the game. They might, however, consider racist, overtly profane, or harassing comments... you know, the ones that say what type of person YOU are, to be relevant to how they might wish to relate to you in the future. If you do find your job prospects to be negatively affected because of a previous inability to act civilized, you have nobody to blame but yourself.
-Restil
I don't think google WANTS to handle that process. That's not really what they do. They probably just want you to be able to type in a city and links for flights to that city from where you're at will show up in the search results, complete with prices, along with the news, shopping, ads and youtube results, as well as the regular search results. They just want to do the searching. The financial transaction can be handled by someone else.
-Restil
While the big spinning mirror thing in a box is really cool, it suffers from the same problem all holograms do, especially when comparing it to the R2-D2 style of hologram. That is, it's entirely contained within a projection medium. The neat trick would be getting a 3D projection onto an unoccupied space. From what I've read on the subject, this isn't really possible (unless there is sufficient particulate matter in the air to provide something to project onto). I suppose it might be possible to use creative optics to create the illusion of a projected hologram, but it would be difficult to provide the same illusion to everyone watching, from every angle, using the same projector.
-Restil
Not to cast scorn on what was obviously a very scary thing for many a day-trader, but for a long term institutional investor, this was barely a blip on the radar. REAL crashes happen for a reason, and you can almost always see them coming, at least in hindsight. Looking back at 2008 and 1929, there's a very clear pattern that indicates exactly what is wrong, and how the likely result came to be. They still can't even figure out what happened this time, and a day later, it's hard to tell why it really matters anyway.
In a REAL crash, there will be an underlying reason. Prior to the crash, a lot of smart people, investing over the long term, will recognize the signs that the stock market is about to become a bad investment, and will either stop investing in it, or it appears to be cost-effective, sell off some of their more risky holdings, and re-invest in something more recession proof. This is what starts the decline (which happens over a period of months). Then suddenly, one day, when everyone really gets all panicy, it'll start dropping more rapidly, the media gets in on the fun, etc.
The May 6 crash, on the other hand, had less to support it. Sure, there was that whole mess in Greece, but they're hardly holding up all the world markets anyway. One possibility is that someone purchased a huge amount of stock at significantly below market price. Since the ticker prices we are all intimately familiar with are little more than the last price something sold at, if enough consecutive trades go through at that same price, it will have the effect of suddenly dropping the market price for everyone.
For your normal investor who ISN'T hitting reload every 10 seconds, they aren't going to notice this. However, the computers will. And everyone who has put in automatic sell orders will get triggered, and those shares will also sell automatically at whatever cost someone will pay for them. Seeing a sudden sell-off, any automatic purchasing might also be temporarily put on hold, increasing the downward trend.
Now, some savvy investors, both long-term and short-term, realizing there is no sensible reason for the selloff, will see this as a rare buying opportunity, and will rapidly start purchasing shares in huge quantities. This will quickly cause the market to correct itself back upwards, until it gets close to where it was supposed to be. The problem solved itself. The REAL problem was investors who put in automatic sell orders, as if the stock in a stable company is going to plummet so rapidly that they won't have a chance to escape before the company goes bankrupt. Check some of the stock graphs for Enron and Worldcom. Those companies both went to pot practically overnight, but even then, you had months to watch the stock price fall, and could sell off at any time you wanted. Automatic sell-offs are just asking for trouble, and are just an excuse to not pay attention to your own money.
-Restil
Because (in the first place) happened about 100 years ago (if you're thinking DSL), or mid 80's (if you're thinking cable. The reason that phone and cable providers are the two prominent providers at the moment is because they already had most of the infrastructure in place to provide the service at the moment that suddenly everyone wanted it. That's not to say that they aren't constantly upgrading their services, lines, etc, but that's a project that can be worked on slowly over a long period of time, while generating revenue doing it.
Sure, it would be great to run fiber to every building in the USA, but until the underlying infrastructure is ready, it won't work, and until it works, you can't charge for it, and even once you CAN charge for it, and you get all the kinks worked out, you have to recoup your investment, which will be substantial. Therefore, roll-outs will happen in densely populated areas that also have easy and cheap access to public right-of-ways such that the entire infrastructure can be installed as inexpensively as possible and as quickly as possible, so it can start generating revenue. And once they've profited sufficiently to build up enough capital to tackle another area, they will do so.
Of course, they could take out loans to cover the cost of deployment, but that would require interest payments to pay off, which would result in higher prices for the consumer, and make it less competitive. A company is therefore better off funding the project with money they already have... you know, the money they've been "lining their pockets with".
I suppose the government could fund the deployment, but someone is going to pay for it. If it's not funding through income taxes, it'll be funded by a tax levied on the very internet services that such a deployment would provide, which ALSO would raise the prices for the consumer, and you're back to square one.
-Restil
However, the subs had diesel engines that required them to surface every so often to operate them, in order to recharge the batteries.
-Restil
The thing is, the stock market and its investors don't rely on the 30 year payback from a company like Apple. They expect that the company, and therefore the stock price will grow over time, significantly reducing the time it will take to double in value. Knowing this, investors are willing to pay more for it than the total asset value of the company would imply that it's actually worth.
As for the stock value of your healthcare company, I'm pretty sure the value is realistic. You only mentioned inventory, not overall assets and not liabilities. Many corporations have a negative balance sheet, yet still earn an annual profit, which gives the company value. However, that value could very easily be less than the assets.
-Restil
People talking on cellphones tend to carry their voices better than two people having a conversation amongst themselves in public. Anytime I answer the phone in public, I make a distinct effort to lower my voice, and if possible find a suitably private area, for the sole reason that I don't want to annoy the crap out of people I don't know just because I'm talking on the phone. I think if people would chat at the same volume on the phone as they do in person, it wouldn't be annoying to anyone.
It also seems like people tend to tune out the fact that people are around them. This might somewhat explain the volume increase, but it also means that they seem to feel comfortable talking about more intimate topics. Most people would be somewhat guarded about information about where and when their kids will be, phone numbers, etc.. but I hear people blurt information out loudly enough for everyone within 30 feet to clearly make it out.
-Restil
This is a bit off topic, but not really. I was just pondering the ultimate threat, that if piracy continues as it currently does, that it will no longer be cost effective to produce entertainment media, which we all CLEARLY can't live without.
Would the industry completely die? And if it did, what would take its place? I can somewhat appreciate the position that the media companies are in. They can't charge more, as it will push more people toward piracy. They can't charge less, as it will significantly cut profits while at the same time, not significantly increasing the customer base. They could become a more efficient operation. No more shelling out $20 million to a single actor, but since apparently THAT is what draws in the crowds to begin with, it might be a worthwhile expense.
So seriously, what DO they do? And if the entire industry collapses in upon itself, what would happen? What new beast would spring up to take its place? People the world over seem perfectly content to entertain themselves with home-made youtube videos featuring hilarious cats, and perhaps there is a market for this as well, maybe even enough that it could replace part of what conventional commercial media has provided us for years. But what if we had no choice in the matter? What if the world found itself culturally surviving almost entirely on low budget movies and indie bands, because there was nothing else. And even more importantly, would that be a bad thing?
Something to think about while sitting through the 15 minutes of ads on the DVD you just bought.
-Restil
A new drive, which isn't even available yet, will not be compatible on some older hardware and with older operating systems. BTW, in the future, they will release some 128 gig ram chips that aren't compatible with your current motherboard either. Everyone expects to upgrade hardware and software over time as we utilize new technology. I figure, by the time that Fry's has a huge pallet of them sitting by the front door, there will be enough customers that have sufficiently upgraded to be able to utilize one fully.
-Restil
I don't think the point is that they have no copyright claim. The problem is, any effort to bring forth such a claim could and very likely would be countered by a DMCA lawsuit, and possibly other lawsuits or charges with related to the facilitation of piracy. It also would require someone to attach a real name(s) to an operation that has enjoyed legal "protection" through anonymity, and expose them to many more potential lawsuits from other software companies. So yes, they MIGHT be able to claim a copyright violation, but it could be a VERY expensive claim, with very little chance of success.
-Restil
In all fairness, when compared to the projects that government historically spends money on, blowing a couple hundred million bucks to drive a rc-car around on Mars doesn't seem like a bad investment.
At least NASA and its contractors have come up with a few useful tech advances as a byproduct of throwing stuff into space.
-Restil
Not only that, since we seem to crash 50% of everything we send to mars, you pretty much have to outlast your design requirements to get an average success rate.
The toughest part of the mission is just getting the thing on the ground in one piece. Some redundancy in engineering to hopefully make the rover last the failure of a few components will almost certainly ensure a long lifespan. Even so, don't forget we almost lost Spirit right in the beginning due to a software problem of all things. THAT would have sucked, especially considering how well the hardware has held up.
-Restil
How long would it actually take to switch over? All of the IPv4 addresses are already available as IPv6 addresses. If everyone just magically started using IPv6 tomorrow, the currently allocated addresses would all still work, as would the routing.
I see a few problems. First off, everyone who is currently familiar with how to configure and manage IPv4 would be expected to know how to do all of the same things with IPv6. While I'm certain the learning curve isn't TOO high, there are certainly many people who simply haven't bothered because they haven't had to yet.
Secondly, what legacy operating systems, hardware, and application software still exists that has no support for IPv6? This is no small problem, as I'm certain there's a large number of 20+ year old software still in service that may not be feasible to upgrade. It might have survived Y2K, but this one could finally kill it off. Of course, if this software need not connect to the internet at large, it could live on in an internal network forever.
Of course, no matter how much preparation you do, no matter how much you advertise the change. On D-Day, ISP's are going to have a busy day on the phones, convincing their customers that "no, in fact, the web ISN'T broken. No, we don't still support 16 bit netscape on windows 3.1."
Since, in theory anyway, IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist right now, it does make sense to demand.. or at least strongly encourage all hardware and software developers to ensure full IPv6 capability along with IPv4 in all of their products from this point forward, assuming they haven't been doing so already, and also make the configuration seamless. If you configure IPv4, IPv6 is already configured using those addresses and works as-is, so on the day that IPv4 goes dead, the software still works without a hitch.
The biggest issue of all, of course, is who decides when to pull the plug on IPv4? While nobody will really just turn off IPv4, there WILL come a day when someone starts using IPv6 addresses that don't correspond to IPv4 addresses and from that point on, it will be necessary for the entire Internet to be in compliance. Who makes that call? And do we listen to them? This isn't the same scale of a problem as converting the broadcast TV to digital was. They couldn't even keep a schedule on that, and it was only one country. How do you ensure that the entire world, including countries we don't all entirely get along with, to agree to a mass-scale, instant upgrade on a specific date? This is likely to be more than just a mild inconvenience. The Internet is used for far more critical applications than twitter and porn distribution. At least, it'll be an interesting news day... assuming I can get online. :)
-Restil
Exactly.. an example of regulation that actually DOES work, as opposed to many examples of regulation that do not.
What needs to be done... anywhere... is to define the specific zones in which wind farms would be acceptable, and be sure enough of those zones exist to make the operation feasible. Obviously, nobody is going to put a windfarm in a residential area, but there is a lot of farmland and empty space out there which would be perfectly acceptable and won't really bother anyone.
Where we run into the problems is we've got an area zoned as acceptable for wind farms, and then someone steps in and says we can't build them there because of (pick your environmental crisis).
Texas tends to have fewer of those problems... and a heck of a lot of free space. As far as building them off shore, we are already used to seeing oil wells off shore, so why would we care if we saw windmills? At least they wouldn't leave tar on the beaches (although that's not a problem I've seen for a couple decades now).
-Restil