Indeed, but if you want a real shock go look at what it will cost to replace it if you have to do so out of pocket. And since the systems are so integrated anymore you are almost forced to do so as you've lost a lot more than just your radio/maps (and if they pass the laws that they are talking about to require reverse sensors then you'll have to by law or fail your inspections (in states that have them) since it would then be "safety" equipment).
The reason the units cost so much is because of non standardization Because each manufacturer is different, and none of them are cross compatible, no one can build in volume to gain economies of scale, so the prices remain astronomical for even the simplest devices. You couldn't ask for a better example of how standardization is good for the consumer, and the lack thereof is bad.
Because we haven't come up with a way to induce people to do jobs which need doing but aren't pleasant without a general policy that you have to work to get money, and have money to get food.
sooner or later, there will no longer be any "unpleasant work" left to be done by people. At that point, Capitalism will become unnecessary. The question of what it gets replaced with scares the crap out of me...
I can't believe this was modded insightful by anyone. So do I get (or forced) to be the one that stays home because I'm not needed. When do we tell people they can't have kids because they are not needed.
When they cant support their own kids, they have no business having them. Progeny is a privilege, not a right. This is not my doing, nor is it anything that we could change, even if we wanted to, it is a natural law. If they cant feed their children (or themselves), then they die. Its simpler and far less cruel if they don't have the kids in the first place, but the choice is theirs.
Do not mistake the governments of the world, that bear the name communist, as being socialist. Socialism doesnt exist, and in fact cant exist for the same reason that anarchy cant exist. In either form of society, there is nothing to prevent the hooligans from coming in and converting your utopia into something far uglier. Capitalism isn't the ideal social tool, just the best one we know about that can survive cronyism.
Or something better that we haven't bothered to come up with yet
My inclination would be that our economic system could continue to function with relatively few adjustments.
First, free food, shelter, birth control and entertainment to all citizens who have 0 or 1 children. Welfare stops the minute you have a second child, either accidentally or deliberately.
In essence, anyone can elect to be a pure drain on society, but the minute you perpetuate the behavior with a new generation of person, the gloves are off. This will allow people to enjoy their youth, and will ensure that only successful people live to increase the population. Those who cannot support themselves through useful work will find the choice is eating or procreating. That choice practically makes itself.
I expect that this will cause a general reduction in population, with the reduction happening, by definition, in the otherwise useless parts of society. The parts that flourish will be the parts that are most useful (Smarter, stronger, better looking...). Basically its a gentler version of survival of the fittest.
Now keep in mind this is an off the cuff idea, so I'm sure there are problems I haven't thought of, so lets hear em.
I see automation doing more and more work that used to be done by "unskilled" labour. Given that not everyone can do "skilled" labour, what do we do with the people that used to do the "unskilled" labour?
As callous as this may sound; Darwin always gets the last laugh...
I would also like it noted that I work in one of those industries that will soon be replaced by robots, so my assessment isn't so much of a neener neener as it is an: I hope they at least let me repair the robots for a living...
And every wave of automation creates the same fears from people that don't understand economics. If you believe the lump of labor fallacy, as most people do, then it is obvious that robots will displace humans. Of course, real economies don't work that way, but neo-Luddites and economic illiterates will continue to believe that poverty is caused by improvements in productivity.
The lump of labor fallacy is an interesting theory, and it is in fact correct, but specific conditions must be included. In the extreme short term, the lump of labor is not a fallacy, but is in fact a real phenomenon. How short term is up for debate, as economists have not been yet forced to apply good engineering principles to their art. In the long term, the lump of labor concept is in fact a fallacy for the reasons they assert in the Wikipedia article.
Another way to look at it is the labor market has a significant resistance to change. This means that the behavior of the market in response to stimuli depends on the frequency of the stimulus. Extremely high frequency inputs will saturate the economy before it can adjust, and as such will have a destabilizing effect. Lower frequency, longer spanning inputs will not have the same effects as the overall whole will absorb these changes. Our economy is a giant high pass filter. Things that happen too rapidly directly affect day to day life. slow changes are not really noticeable.
In the end, as far as the whole economy is concerned, unemployment will not go up permanently as a result of increasing efficiency, but this does little good for the poor sod who has lost his job and been replaced by a robot. He will not get much comfort knowing that 10 years down the road unemployment will fall back down to normal levels again, or that his sacrifice has allowed his fellow citizens to afford a slightly better standard of living with more gadgets that he can no longer afford.
I once had a cheap feature phone with a physical keyboard -- it's way easier than you think it is. The issue with touch screens is that you need to look at the keyboard while you type. This leads to typos going unnoticed until after hitting send. Throw in some auto-corruption and touch screen typing is a real slow down.
I have been using an iPhone for about 2 years now, and I find that I no longer need to look at the keys while I am typing. I can type pretty much full speed with only an occasional miss, which the auto correct fixes. I only really get tripped up on names and contacts, which the auto fixes to some pretty bizarre things sometimes. Its just like any other typing skill, practice makes perfect.
I sincerely am not trying to be mean, but to my mind it would have been far wiser to not do so. You took a risk, and it paid off, but it was a terribly large risk that could have wiped you out if the market had changed.
I fully understand your concerns, and the behavior does involve risks, but I came through the height of the housing burst, and the worst recession in the last half century by being very good at managing my risk. I am good at what I do, and I survived because I didn't take the idiotic risks that others had taken. Rule #1, never buy a property you wont be willing to live in, because you might end up living there. Rule 2. No more purchases than your income can support as complete dead weight. This is the one that too many people forgot. I survived because my downside risks were much lower than others. It meant that my upside profits were a lot lower too. That deal I just finished only had 5K in profit, but I turned my nose up at plenty of 20k and 30k deals because they were simply too large for me to handle if they tanked. Others got stupid and leveraged too far. Those others included a large swath of people, but most of them had one thing in common. They were investing money, and didn't want to know the details of how the returns were earned. They gave their money to property managers who earned them 30% when things were going good, but bankrupted them when things tanked. Many of us in the business did just fine, even when things tanked because we did a very good job at estimating our downside risk and an even better job at managing it.
Like many others, I lost some money when the thing tanked, but I still own all of my income properties, and as prices recover so will my net value. In the mean time, rents have been jumping up by leaps and bound for 4 years, which is why I had some spare income to throw at this recent project. I am almost back where I was in '07, and will pass that value in less than a year.
not carry a balance like people who live beyond their means do with a regular credit card.
FTFY.
Im sure there are cases where this isnt true
It definitely isn't always true. Credit is a very useful tool, even for people not making much money. Individuals can use credit (aka leverage) the same way companies do. My last buy n flip house was done this way. I had practically no cash laying around, so I bought the thing on credit, paid for all the repairs on credit, and paid off the bill when the place sold. All told, I made about $5k off it, and never once used "my money" to do it. If I hadn't had the credit available, I never would have had the free cash to do the project. I rolled that balance for about a year though. Kinda ate into my profits, but not enough to stop me from doing it again.
Credit is a tool that accelerates finance. If you're doing good things with your money, then credit will allow you to do them faster. If you're doing dumb things, then credit will help you do them faster as well.
If it is true that SF missed the deadlines twice and yet charged also twice the original estimate, I can't see how they could be suing for "damages"...
SF didn't miss the deadlines. What they delivered on time was what they thought they had contracted to deliver, but it was not at all what MyPillow thought they were buying. After wrangling out new requirements, SF delivered the newly agreed upon product by the new deadline, and it appears to have been, yet again, not what MyPillow wanted.
From what I have read from a few other sources, MyPillow had no idea how to describe what they wanted, and SF's sales guy had no problem taking advantage of this to sell progressively more expensive product at high markups by introducing artificial time pressure. The only question is whether or not SF's sales guy did it deliberately, and whether or not that matters. Either way, buyer beware. This guy putting the thing on his corporate amex was somewhat abnormal, but not really consequent to this case.
^^^ The problem is, you really don't have any choice in the matter. Most MegaHuge Corporations won't reimburse you for purchases not made with the official corporate card, so if that card is Amex, they can pretty much rape your ass any way they feel like doing, and you really don't have any choice in the matter besides quitting your job or getting fired for being unable to travel and refusing to cooperate.
You do in fact have a choice in the matter. You simply refuse to make the purchase at all. I had an issue with this with my employer. I was stupid enough to get one of the amex corporate cards, and after the company failed to pay the expense account for 6 months, I cancelled the card. The next time they wanted me to go on a business trip, I told them they needed to issue me a card, my boss hit the wall about why I didn't have an amex. When I explained it to him, he fired me on the spot. I went down to HR and explained the problem, and the HR manager and I all went back to my boss and HR explained to him that if he did insist on firing me, and that I decided to fight it, the company would be opened up to a potentially costly wrongful termination lawsuit. End of the story; I was issued a corporate amex that did *not* have my name on it. I still had to submit expense accounting with receipts, but if the company failed to pay the bill, it was no longer my problem. My former boss did eventually get the company sued for wrongful termination (he loved firing people), and the company decided it was time to let him go. The moral of the story, is never mix your personal assets and company assets. Put your foot down and make them understand its not acceptable. The whole thing is like getting romantically involved with someone you meet while working. It never ends well, and for mostly the same reasons.
XP is 12 years old. It'll be 13 when it's EOL'd. I wouldn't call that short. The problem isn't Windows, it's vendors using proprietary file formats and charging for full software upgrades instead of just driver updates for existing software.
When the software is EOL'd before the hardware fails, the lifespan is too short. New versions of MS tools have a habit of breaking everything they touch. This stands in stark contrast to the *NIX variants where software tends to work across all versions of the OS, and often across different variants as well.
And I'm sure they're not. Medical imaging software, for example, working on embedded machines is definitely NOT available for Linux, nor they will ever be. The market is too small to allow porting software to multiple OSs. It's simply not worth it. Sure, there's Xebra but that's only for viewing already generated imagery, all software actually generating imagery works under Windows. And Xebra doesn't really offer any sort of support or proper accountability.
Absolutely it *is* available for Linux. There are any number of perfectly good virtualization tools out there, and if all else fails, use WINE. You can keep using your existing software, often without too much configuration effort. You can keep using your existing hardware, or upgrade the hardware at any point and your system will be as future proof as it can ever get. At the very least it should buy you another decade, and it will be a damn sight cheaper than $10k. Even if it does cost close to the same amount or more, the protection against future forced upgrades would be worth it. Its a perfect example of why all managers, and small business owners really cant afford not to have a basic IT education. They need to know when they are being sold into bondage...
You can probably count on one hand all the directly life critical software running as a regular app on XP, in the whole world.
It's very unlikely there's anything at the eye doctor's office that falls in that category. This is a case of simple vendor lock-in. That's all.
The problem is that the software takes significant time to write. Lets say it takes a team of three programmers 1 year to write. Now, say that its a blockbuster, and 1/3 of all opticians use it. You're only talking about a couple thousand copies total. Maybe a thousand copies a year. Now, you also have to have someone do tech support and maintenance. So, You paid $300,000 to develop the software, and are paying $100,000 per year in maintenance. to sell 1000 copies per year. (Thats a very high estimate btw). So, at break even, with no other company overhead, your product costs $400. Now if you take a more realistic view that most opticians already have the software they need, your annual sales expectation is probably more like 100 units, not 1000, and now you're looking at a $4000 price tag.
Before you start talking open source, blah blah, lets not forget that this is a highly specialized application with very little general appeal, and no geek factor. The best you could hope for would be a project that somewhat resembles what you want and pay (by the hour I might add) to have someone adapt it to your needs. This quickly adds up too.
All that having been said, the solution is actually simpler than it sounds. Good XP emulation is not that hard to find. WINE already does a pretty good job of it, and is unlikely to be end-of-lifed any time soon. It is likely that the best alternative for these boutique operations is to switch to Ubuntu or Debian with WINE, and be reasonably certain that they can survive the next hardware upgrade. It wont be cheap, but it will be better than $10k for a new copy of xyz opticiansoft, and it will be M$ proof.
I'd say it sounds like you need to find better people to play with, at a place where they enforce the rules, and even kick people who aren't playing for the objective, and just trying to be aholes. And don't rent equipment and buy supplies (reloads) at the paintball range. Have to assume you're doing one or both cause walmart and the interwebs have that stuff cheeeeap.
I would also suggest seeking out and joining the local recball group, as they will tend to play more seriously than casual players, but not so serious that it just turns into a straight up shootout. You don't need massively expensive equipment to have fun playing either, but rental equipment is rarely well maintained, and as the military is fond of saying, you live and die by your weapon.
Getting shot and the possibility of getting hurt are on the plus side. That's what makes things not-boring.
This is one of the things I find puzzling about people who enjoy sport and exercise. The active pursuit of pain and discomfort. Paintball: you're likely to get a bruising, painful projectile whack you. Many team sports: an obligation to spend hours in the cold and wet. Cyclists actively prefer hilly routes. And so on.
Exercise causes your body to release endorphins. In non technical lingo, its addictive, and only the discomfort is what keeps it from being as all-consuming as some other addictions.
If you're really serious about messing with one of these guys, sending ten bucks can be well worth the money. If you play it right, even that small an amount of money can keep one of these guys hooked for months, wasting huge amounts of time trying to get more. With a little skill you can sometimes even cause them to spend far more than you have sent (certified mailings, long distance charges. Set up a 900 number for them to contact you, etc...). Its just another variation on the gamblers addiction.
Control (that magical 51%) is only about $12 billion.
No, you need the full $24bil. If you try and do a piecemeal buyout, the price per share goes up, and so you end up coughing up the full amount anyway. That is why buyout offers are done this way instead.
As far as it being " only" $24bil, the largest kickstarter projects attract less than 100k contributors for an average of $100 each. This would require 1 million contributors for an average of $24k. It just isn't going to happen.
Kickstarter is not nearly as big as people think it is The whole site has only generated a few hundred millions dollars in its entire history. Its an interesting idea, but is not terribly useful beyond a very narrow scope of projects.
Yeah, sure, the only problem Dell is facing is a lack of quality advertising, and an out of work actor has really managed to outsmart the board of directors.
I'm not a stock analyst, but I'll wager that the overall decline of the PC market in general, coupled with Dells complete lack of innovation in any space, is why the investors backed off. Dying companies' books have a certain smell, even if the company is showing no other outward signs of trouble.
I mean, shit, we need a manufacturer that actually doesn't hate the FOSS community.
The value might actually get low enough that it's possible...:P
The kickstarter community doesn't have anywhere near that kind of money. Dell has a long way to slide before they do have enough.
All of that aside, The whole point of privatization is that a relatively small group of people own the business. If large groups of people want to buy something, they are more than welcome to go out and buy some stock. It is, after all, publicly traded. They can then start a proxy fight for control of the corporation. It would require far less capital, and probably be easier to actually accomplish. The whole thing is a pipe dream anyway, Dell is a has-been, and nothing short of a radical change of management is going to change that.
News for Nerds! There are other nerds than those who sling lines of code all day or design computers. Explosions are of interest to Chemical, Mechanical, Civil engineers, etc. EE's may also be interested depending on what was the ignition source.
Not to mention, techies always have the best video links. I have found links to some behemoth explosions, not related to this event, just by reading the comments of other posters. Try getting that from CNN or the BBC.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure they had a great reason to require dealerships 80 years ago
Probably the same great reason they have today: Campaign contributions...
Indeed, but if you want a real shock go look at what it will cost to replace it if you have to do so out of pocket. And since the systems are so integrated anymore you are almost forced to do so as you've lost a lot more than just your radio/maps (and if they pass the laws that they are talking about to require reverse sensors then you'll have to by law or fail your inspections (in states that have them) since it would then be "safety" equipment).
The reason the units cost so much is because of non standardization Because each manufacturer is different, and none of them are cross compatible, no one can build in volume to gain economies of scale, so the prices remain astronomical for even the simplest devices. You couldn't ask for a better example of how standardization is good for the consumer, and the lack thereof is bad.
Because we haven't come up with a way to induce people to do jobs which need doing but aren't pleasant without a general policy that you have to work to get money, and have money to get food.
sooner or later, there will no longer be any "unpleasant work" left to be done by people. At that point, Capitalism will become unnecessary. The question of what it gets replaced with scares the crap out of me...
Socialism.
I can't believe this was modded insightful by anyone. So do I get (or forced) to be the one that stays home because I'm not needed. When do we tell people they can't have kids because they are not needed.
When they cant support their own kids, they have no business having them. Progeny is a privilege, not a right. This is not my doing, nor is it anything that we could change, even if we wanted to, it is a natural law. If they cant feed their children (or themselves), then they die. Its simpler and far less cruel if they don't have the kids in the first place, but the choice is theirs.
The humanity and compassion of socialism
Ha-ha.
Ha-ha-ha.
You're killing me.
Do not mistake the governments of the world, that bear the name communist, as being socialist. Socialism doesnt exist, and in fact cant exist for the same reason that anarchy cant exist. In either form of society, there is nothing to prevent the hooligans from coming in and converting your utopia into something far uglier. Capitalism isn't the ideal social tool, just the best one we know about that can survive cronyism.
Socialism.
Or something better that we haven't bothered to come up with yet
My inclination would be that our economic system could continue to function with relatively few adjustments.
First, free food, shelter, birth control and entertainment to all citizens who have 0 or 1 children. Welfare stops the minute you have a second child, either accidentally or deliberately.
In essence, anyone can elect to be a pure drain on society, but the minute you perpetuate the behavior with a new generation of person, the gloves are off. This will allow people to enjoy their youth, and will ensure that only successful people live to increase the population. Those who cannot support themselves through useful work will find the choice is eating or procreating. That choice practically makes itself.
I expect that this will cause a general reduction in population, with the reduction happening, by definition, in the otherwise useless parts of society. The parts that flourish will be the parts that are most useful (Smarter, stronger, better looking...). Basically its a gentler version of survival of the fittest.
Now keep in mind this is an off the cuff idea, so I'm sure there are problems I haven't thought of, so lets hear em.
I see automation doing more and more work that used to be done by "unskilled" labour. Given that not everyone can do "skilled" labour, what do we do with the people that used to do the "unskilled" labour?
As callous as this may sound; Darwin always gets the last laugh...
I would also like it noted that I work in one of those industries that will soon be replaced by robots, so my assessment isn't so much of a neener neener as it is an: I hope they at least let me repair the robots for a living...
And every wave of automation creates the same fears from people that don't understand economics. If you believe the lump of labor fallacy, as most people do, then it is obvious that robots will displace humans. Of course, real economies don't work that way, but neo-Luddites and economic illiterates will continue to believe that poverty is caused by improvements in productivity.
The lump of labor fallacy is an interesting theory, and it is in fact correct, but specific conditions must be included. In the extreme short term, the lump of labor is not a fallacy, but is in fact a real phenomenon. How short term is up for debate, as economists have not been yet forced to apply good engineering principles to their art. In the long term, the lump of labor concept is in fact a fallacy for the reasons they assert in the Wikipedia article.
Another way to look at it is the labor market has a significant resistance to change. This means that the behavior of the market in response to stimuli depends on the frequency of the stimulus. Extremely high frequency inputs will saturate the economy before it can adjust, and as such will have a destabilizing effect. Lower frequency, longer spanning inputs will not have the same effects as the overall whole will absorb these changes. Our economy is a giant high pass filter. Things that happen too rapidly directly affect day to day life. slow changes are not really noticeable.
In the end, as far as the whole economy is concerned, unemployment will not go up permanently as a result of increasing efficiency, but this does little good for the poor sod who has lost his job and been replaced by a robot. He will not get much comfort knowing that 10 years down the road unemployment will fall back down to normal levels again, or that his sacrifice has allowed his fellow citizens to afford a slightly better standard of living with more gadgets that he can no longer afford.
I once had a cheap feature phone with a physical keyboard -- it's way easier than you think it is. The issue with touch screens is that you need to look at the keyboard while you type. This leads to typos going unnoticed until after hitting send. Throw in some auto-corruption and touch screen typing is a real slow down.
I have been using an iPhone for about 2 years now, and I find that I no longer need to look at the keys while I am typing. I can type pretty much full speed with only an occasional miss, which the auto correct fixes. I only really get tripped up on names and contacts, which the auto fixes to some pretty bizarre things sometimes. Its just like any other typing skill, practice makes perfect.
I sincerely am not trying to be mean, but to my mind it would have been far wiser to not do so. You took a risk, and it paid off, but it was a terribly large risk that could have wiped you out if the market had changed.
I fully understand your concerns, and the behavior does involve risks, but I came through the height of the housing burst, and the worst recession in the last half century by being very good at managing my risk. I am good at what I do, and I survived because I didn't take the idiotic risks that others had taken. Rule #1, never buy a property you wont be willing to live in, because you might end up living there. Rule 2. No more purchases than your income can support as complete dead weight. This is the one that too many people forgot. I survived because my downside risks were much lower than others. It meant that my upside profits were a lot lower too. That deal I just finished only had 5K in profit, but I turned my nose up at plenty of 20k and 30k deals because they were simply too large for me to handle if they tanked. Others got stupid and leveraged too far. Those others included a large swath of people, but most of them had one thing in common. They were investing money, and didn't want to know the details of how the returns were earned. They gave their money to property managers who earned them 30% when things were going good, but bankrupted them when things tanked. Many of us in the business did just fine, even when things tanked because we did a very good job at estimating our downside risk and an even better job at managing it.
Like many others, I lost some money when the thing tanked, but I still own all of my income properties, and as prices recover so will my net value. In the mean time, rents have been jumping up by leaps and bound for 4 years, which is why I had some spare income to throw at this recent project. I am almost back where I was in '07, and will pass that value in less than a year.
Mind if I ask the jurisdiction where this happened? (I'm currently in a right-to-work state).
New York State, Capital Region.
not carry a balance like people who live beyond their means do with a regular credit card.
FTFY.
Im sure there are cases where this isnt true
It definitely isn't always true. Credit is a very useful tool, even for people not making much money. Individuals can use credit (aka leverage) the same way companies do. My last buy n flip house was done this way. I had practically no cash laying around, so I bought the thing on credit, paid for all the repairs on credit, and paid off the bill when the place sold. All told, I made about $5k off it, and never once used "my money" to do it. If I hadn't had the credit available, I never would have had the free cash to do the project. I rolled that balance for about a year though. Kinda ate into my profits, but not enough to stop me from doing it again.
Credit is a tool that accelerates finance. If you're doing good things with your money, then credit will allow you to do them faster. If you're doing dumb things, then credit will help you do them faster as well.
If it is true that SF missed the deadlines twice and yet charged also twice the original estimate, I can't see how they could be suing for "damages"...
SF didn't miss the deadlines. What they delivered on time was what they thought they had contracted to deliver, but it was not at all what MyPillow thought they were buying. After wrangling out new requirements, SF delivered the newly agreed upon product by the new deadline, and it appears to have been, yet again, not what MyPillow wanted.
From what I have read from a few other sources, MyPillow had no idea how to describe what they wanted, and SF's sales guy had no problem taking advantage of this to sell progressively more expensive product at high markups by introducing artificial time pressure. The only question is whether or not SF's sales guy did it deliberately, and whether or not that matters. Either way, buyer beware. This guy putting the thing on his corporate amex was somewhat abnormal, but not really consequent to this case.
^^^ The problem is, you really don't have any choice in the matter. Most MegaHuge Corporations won't reimburse you for purchases not made with the official corporate card, so if that card is Amex, they can pretty much rape your ass any way they feel like doing, and you really don't have any choice in the matter besides quitting your job or getting fired for being unable to travel and refusing to cooperate.
You do in fact have a choice in the matter. You simply refuse to make the purchase at all. I had an issue with this with my employer. I was stupid enough to get one of the amex corporate cards, and after the company failed to pay the expense account for 6 months, I cancelled the card. The next time they wanted me to go on a business trip, I told them they needed to issue me a card, my boss hit the wall about why I didn't have an amex. When I explained it to him, he fired me on the spot. I went down to HR and explained the problem, and the HR manager and I all went back to my boss and HR explained to him that if he did insist on firing me, and that I decided to fight it, the company would be opened up to a potentially costly wrongful termination lawsuit. End of the story; I was issued a corporate amex that did *not* have my name on it. I still had to submit expense accounting with receipts, but if the company failed to pay the bill, it was no longer my problem. My former boss did eventually get the company sued for wrongful termination (he loved firing people), and the company decided it was time to let him go. The moral of the story, is never mix your personal assets and company assets. Put your foot down and make them understand its not acceptable. The whole thing is like getting romantically involved with someone you meet while working. It never ends well, and for mostly the same reasons.
Are you suggesting a doctor run critical software on WINE?
You certainly are a madman.
It cant be any worse than running critical software on windows 95, can it?
XP is 12 years old. It'll be 13 when it's EOL'd. I wouldn't call that short. The problem isn't Windows, it's vendors using proprietary file formats and charging for full software upgrades instead of just driver updates for existing software.
When the software is EOL'd before the hardware fails, the lifespan is too short. New versions of MS tools have a habit of breaking everything they touch. This stands in stark contrast to the *NIX variants where software tends to work across all versions of the OS, and often across different variants as well.
And I'm sure they're not. Medical imaging software, for example, working on embedded machines is definitely NOT available for Linux, nor they will ever be. The market is too small to allow porting software to multiple OSs. It's simply not worth it. Sure, there's Xebra but that's only for viewing already generated imagery, all software actually generating imagery works under Windows. And Xebra doesn't really offer any sort of support or proper accountability.
Absolutely it *is* available for Linux. There are any number of perfectly good virtualization tools out there, and if all else fails, use WINE. You can keep using your existing software, often without too much configuration effort. You can keep using your existing hardware, or upgrade the hardware at any point and your system will be as future proof as it can ever get. At the very least it should buy you another decade, and it will be a damn sight cheaper than $10k. Even if it does cost close to the same amount or more, the protection against future forced upgrades would be worth it. Its a perfect example of why all managers, and small business owners really cant afford not to have a basic IT education. They need to know when they are being sold into bondage...
You can probably count on one hand all the directly life critical software running as a regular app on XP, in the whole world.
It's very unlikely there's anything at the eye doctor's office that falls in that category. This is a case of simple vendor lock-in. That's all.
The problem is that the software takes significant time to write. Lets say it takes a team of three programmers 1 year to write. Now, say that its a blockbuster, and 1/3 of all opticians use it. You're only talking about a couple thousand copies total. Maybe a thousand copies a year. Now, you also have to have someone do tech support and maintenance. So, You paid $300,000 to develop the software, and are paying $100,000 per year in maintenance. to sell 1000 copies per year. (Thats a very high estimate btw). So, at break even, with no other company overhead, your product costs $400. Now if you take a more realistic view that most opticians already have the software they need, your annual sales expectation is probably more like 100 units, not 1000, and now you're looking at a $4000 price tag.
Before you start talking open source, blah blah, lets not forget that this is a highly specialized application with very little general appeal, and no geek factor. The best you could hope for would be a project that somewhat resembles what you want and pay (by the hour I might add) to have someone adapt it to your needs. This quickly adds up too.
All that having been said, the solution is actually simpler than it sounds. Good XP emulation is not that hard to find. WINE already does a pretty good job of it, and is unlikely to be end-of-lifed any time soon. It is likely that the best alternative for these boutique operations is to switch to Ubuntu or Debian with WINE, and be reasonably certain that they can survive the next hardware upgrade. It wont be cheap, but it will be better than $10k for a new copy of xyz opticiansoft, and it will be M$ proof.
I'd say it sounds like you need to find better people to play with, at a place where they enforce the rules, and even kick people who aren't playing for the objective, and just trying to be aholes. And don't rent equipment and buy supplies (reloads) at the paintball range. Have to assume you're doing one or both cause walmart and the interwebs have that stuff cheeeeap.
I would also suggest seeking out and joining the local recball group, as they will tend to play more seriously than casual players, but not so serious that it just turns into a straight up shootout. You don't need massively expensive equipment to have fun playing either, but rental equipment is rarely well maintained, and as the military is fond of saying, you live and die by your weapon.
Getting shot and the possibility of getting hurt are on the plus side. That's what makes things not-boring.
This is one of the things I find puzzling about people who enjoy sport and exercise. The active pursuit of pain and discomfort. Paintball: you're likely to get a bruising, painful projectile whack you. Many team sports: an obligation to spend hours in the cold and wet. Cyclists actively prefer hilly routes. And so on.
Exercise causes your body to release endorphins. In non technical lingo, its addictive, and only the discomfort is what keeps it from being as all-consuming as some other addictions.
Never send them any money.
If you're really serious about messing with one of these guys, sending ten bucks can be well worth the money. If you play it right, even that small an amount of money can keep one of these guys hooked for months, wasting huge amounts of time trying to get more. With a little skill you can sometimes even cause them to spend far more than you have sent (certified mailings, long distance charges. Set up a 900 number for them to contact you, etc...). Its just another variation on the gamblers addiction.
It's **ONLY** $24 billion.
Control (that magical 51%) is only about $12 billion.
No, you need the full $24bil. If you try and do a piecemeal buyout, the price per share goes up, and so you end up coughing up the full amount anyway. That is why buyout offers are done this way instead.
As far as it being " only" $24bil, the largest kickstarter projects attract less than 100k contributors for an average of $100 each. This would require 1 million contributors for an average of $24k. It just isn't going to happen.
Kickstarter is not nearly as big as people think it is The whole site has only generated a few hundred millions dollars in its entire history. Its an interesting idea, but is not terribly useful beyond a very narrow scope of projects.
Easy, bring back the Dell Dude
Yeah, sure, the only problem Dell is facing is a lack of quality advertising, and an out of work actor has really managed to outsmart the board of directors.
I'm not a stock analyst, but I'll wager that the overall decline of the PC market in general, coupled with Dells complete lack of innovation in any space, is why the investors backed off. Dying companies' books have a certain smell, even if the company is showing no other outward signs of trouble.
let's create a kickstarter and buy it.
I mean, shit, we need a manufacturer that actually doesn't hate the FOSS community.
The value might actually get low enough that it's possible... :P
The kickstarter community doesn't have anywhere near that kind of money. Dell has a long way to slide before they do have enough.
All of that aside, The whole point of privatization is that a relatively small group of people own the business. If large groups of people want to buy something, they are more than welcome to go out and buy some stock. It is, after all, publicly traded. They can then start a proxy fight for control of the corporation. It would require far less capital, and probably be easier to actually accomplish. The whole thing is a pipe dream anyway, Dell is a has-been, and nothing short of a radical change of management is going to change that.
News for Nerds! There are other nerds than those who sling lines of code all day or design computers. Explosions are of interest to Chemical, Mechanical, Civil engineers, etc. EE's may also be interested depending on what was the ignition source.
Not to mention, techies always have the best video links. I have found links to some behemoth explosions, not related to this event, just by reading the comments of other posters. Try getting that from CNN or the BBC.