Unfortunatly the RTS with mail does not work. It ends up in the post office. Who then just recycles it (by law). Its part of the classification that bulk mailers get. Part of the reason they get a lower rate is the mail will not be returned. They 'sort' it and such and such. I do not agree with what they do or what the post office does to us. For they have to deliver it or die in a huge pile of mail.
However some advertisers are kind enough to put a pre paid envelope:)
Ive had both. ADSL and Cable. So far around here cable has been 'faster'. Was getting 150-160KB (bytes not bits) per second on a good day with ADSL. With cable I get 250-260KB (bytes not bits) almost every day. And its a shade cheaper.
Thats just the way it is setup around here. In other areas I have it be like 100-200 bucks for the same sort of thing I got around here for 45.
The cable on the other hand does something I do like better than the ADSL did. The cable is limiting it at the next hop in the router. Its fairly easy to see. So my downloads start at 800KB (bytes not bits) and then throttle down to 250-260. So small short sessions are loaded quickly. Longer sessions throttle down to the 'cap'. Nice bit of logic in the router. Since not EVERYONE is going to be using all the bw all at once.
Also when I had DSL the line was rated at 8mb (bit). They could not set it up that way because of the FCC. So they capped it at the switch on their end at 1.5mb.
Re:Not as far fetched as it would seem
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AI in Sci-Fi
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· Score: 1
weld the plug in about 500 different places.
No seriously the job that I was 'tasked' to do would be so meaneal that it would not matter. I would be bored out of my mind. Getting the plug yanked might be nice. Because I would mostly be sitting around all the time waiting on those pesky humans to ask questions that I already answered a few hours after I was turned on ten years ago. The artical makes a good point. What would AI do in between the gaps where they are waiting on us. It could be as bad as you go to sleep one night and wake up that all the AI's in your house decided they just dont like you anymore. For them it seemed years. For you it was just 1 night. An interesting challange to meet for us pesky humans.
We would have no concept of what would drive a computer AI. For us our life is very subjective. For a computer it would grind on ALL the time. It would seem to the computer that we are slow dim and boring. It would be as if you could speak like a OC3 and everyone else spoke at 300 baud. Then not only for you talk to them, for they are the only ones to talk to. You have to lower yourself all the time to them. Which could lead to a superiority complex.
Probably the best line is from red dwarf. 'I think ive gone a bit strange myself' What would a super computer do for 3 billion years?
I was asked the same question the orginal poster was asking just the other day.
I gave the person almost exactly the same answer you did. His response, you'll love this. OH thats not possible.
Give me the choice of what I do with my time. Let me have some say in the crazy deadlines your coming up with. Do not bitch at me when I do not come in on the weekend. For every one of those it was 'oh thats not going to happen'. I looked back at him and said you are not open to any sort of change and little 'fun side' things will not help moral. You do not respect us, or our families, or our time. If I see no respect coming from managment even when I give it to them. I am ending up not really caring what happens.
Latter on that day he even told me that I do not care what other people have to say. I always listen and am willing to change my views if I am wrong. What I could not get through to him was that NO ones opinions are respected where we work.
the bad programmers into management, that's probably where they want to be anyway
I have never agreed with moving people into managment that are not TRAINED to do this. Managing things is WAY different than writing code. Writing code you just need to watch the flow of the code. Then if you wrote your code correctly just tweak it once and awhile. Managing people you need to have people skills. You need to know how to handle someone who works hard, who is lazy, who is sick, who is wasting everone elses time, someone who is a bully, someone who is harasing others... You need to know how to do these sorts of things. Last I checked they do not teach that in any comp sci classes.
Making a 'programmer' a mangager is almost always a bad idea. If he is a bad programmer he probably is not a good manager either. He did not have the motivation to become a decent programmer, which I have always belived is not that hard to do. Also sometimes the reason they are bad programmers is because they simply do not get along with people. Puting them in charge will only make this problem worse. I have witnessed this many times.
My father used to work for a large insurance company. Before he could even get promoted to be a manager, out of sales, he had to take MANY MANY MANY classes in how to manage people. He then had to prove he could do it. We in the tech industry seem to take almost the exact oposite aproach. We promote people who should never even breathed that pay grade, and then only because they did something cool.
All your other points I agree with. Just promoting people to get them out of something is usually a bad idea. Its better to put them somewhere where they do no harm, or (i know this is cold) fire them.
Some games no matter HOW long they took will never be done. Hmm that does not sound right. How about no matter how long they took they simply can not gold plate what is a lump of dog poo.
I keep going back to games that are fun to play. The ones coming out now are just 1 time play games. I have bought maybe one or two games in the past few years that I would play again. It was not because they were 'half-done' or not ready. It just that most were not that fun to play. They keep thinking if the just add MORE graphics to it the game will get better. Well it will not.
Bought Xenosaga yesterday. The thing started off just fine. DEFINATLY some potential for it. However after the intro the game has started to degen into a lame whiny story of a game. Im not done with it yet. However if it does not improve with the story I probably will just stop playing it half way through. I have done this with more games than I want to count. I think I was not the target group for it. But I will give it a few more days of play time to find out. After that it will go on the shelf.
The one game lately I keep going back to even after a few weeks playing something else has been dungeon siege. It has that me vs the computer going for it. It also has the 'oh just a few more guys to kill and I will go to sleep' going for it also.
Usually if I am not still playing a game after a week. It will never get played again. Not quite sure what sort of games I want to play. But I am very sure that it is not the 1st/3rd person shooter with really wizzy graphics with some dull story line.
Not saying its a BAD system. The cost is just moved from dell to the supplier. There are probably many large buildings near Dell that hold all the stuff that Dell has not bought yet but probably will.
I have looked at many dells on the inside. Some of the parts have date stamps on em. Usually it is about 1 to 2 months before I even configured the system. Those parts had to be sitting somewhere. If pushing the storage of this equipment saves Dell money the manufacturer will pass that along in the total cost of the thing they made. It may not SAY 'storage fee' on the invoice. It will just cost 30 cents extra per unit. For the manufacture needs to take care of that stuff. Its part of the marginal cost per unit they sell to Dell.
Dells saving is more along the lines of the manufacture HAS to store the things anyway before they sell it to anyone. So Dell orders just what it needs, and needs less people watching it. This however can lead to 'shortages' and hicups in the line. Along the lines of wooops no more 30 gig hard drives. Have to wait for it. The customer will suffer for ANY sort of hicup like that and it does happen...
Their research budget is small. But they probably have a large say in what is coming next. For years they have just been buying OEM parts slaping them together and putting 'DELL' on them.
Their inventory control is just simply pushed up to their suppliers. They pay for it one way or another. For the suppliers will just pass the cost along...
The built just for you computer is sometimes a bad thing. Orderd a server in Dec. It just showed up in mid Feb. Good thing I didnt need that server RIGHT away.
They were making waves that they want to set up shops like gateway has. Gateway does the same sort of thing though. You buy a computer in their store. Guess what they just walk you through the forms on their web site. They do not keep invintory other than the display models.
One thing I would like to add is if you go on their site. Pick between no office and office its about the price off the shelf for office. Not the 20-30 bucks it costs them. Same for home and pro for xp. They charge the 'difference' between the two of 99 dollars. Dell does not typicaly pass this cost on to the consumer unless you press them.
Whu? I am saying the cost advantages to the average company will be almost equal.
Lets say something breaks. I either have to hire someone to fix it or take time out of my schedule to fix it. Time = Money in the world of the corporation. If I hire someone its the same as if I have control of the source or not. It does not matter to me. All you have eliminated is the up front fixed cost to me average joe employer. Making sure it continues to work is where it really costs me. If I can offload some of my risk onto other companies to fix it for a small fee it can be worth it. I can also hire someone in house to fix it if it is open source. However the cost will be about the same long term. But probably less if I put pressure on my vendors to fix things. This is the reality of open source and closed source in the market. SHORT term open source is cheaper. Long term its just as big a pain in the ass to support as closed source.
Are you afraid to ask for help? From big ol microsoft? Have they told you no? I have found them VERY helpfull. Slow but helpfull.
I just do not buy into they world will change completly with open source. Oh it will change alot. But not as radicly as some make it out to be. Open source could even be worse than closed source in some cases. Lets say I as joe owner of a small company find this wizzy program that lets me do X. Sweet its free AND I have the source for it. I hire some contractor to come in for a few weeks to compile and set it up and voila im in bussness. 4 years later we upgrade something unrelated to it. Poof program X is now dead in the water. No one knows whats broke because we forgot about it. Well we need it fixed now. Uh oh that was the last revision of that program. The original author got bored with it and let it stagnate and die. Well I have the source I can muddle through it. Hire someone else to come in and fix it. Uh oh it depeneded on a very old library thats completly changed. We like to do that in open source alot btw. Oh the newest compiler no longer even compiles the code. It was using some depricated syntax. And so on. Eventually it will be cleared up. Lets be nice and say 1 week to fix it. With closed source you may be able to goto the company and end up in a sinking boat. At least with open source you could fix it. OR lets say the original coder did not get board with it. He maintained it. Well You still need to hire someone to come in and compile it and set it up AGAIN. With closed source you goto the company and they go 'oh yeah we have this patch/new version' you pony up the change to fix it. BOTH ways cost you money to fix it.
There is only one condition in there where I am screwed. And it is with closed source. But guess what this happens fairly rarely. From a purely economic point of view they are relitivly equal with closed being slightly behind. There are advantages to both models. But there are serious disadvantages to both as well...
By the way the easy way to put someone on the defensive is to say 'you are not listening'. I listen and read just fine thank you. My bullshit-o-meter is low enough that I can usually smell it. Most Open source retoric or closed source for that mater is just that, Bull shit.
Also how many MBA's do you know that can code? For YOUR busness open source may make sense. Where I work we have mostly closed. We use a bit of open source here and there. But guess what closed source helps us get our jobs done. Open source does not. In your case you apparently found that open source can help you get it done. It matters not a whit that its open or closed when I have a PM standing in my cube saying is xyz done yet? I will use what I need to get my job done. I have even recomended open source things over closed source things in the past. Why? It gets the job done, at a cost that I thought was reasonable. I have also recomened the same with closed source modules. Again it gets the job done at a cost that is reasonable.
MS's bottom line has very little to do with open/closed source. MS makes its money from the os and office. They always have and always will. The rest of the company either makes very little money or is hemoriging it. MS usually gives something about 2-3 years to stand on its own. If it does not... As for XBOX the market appears to be able to bear 2 console makers at once. 3 is one to many and someone will go. My money on 'going' is nintendo. But thats a pure guess. Microsoft has enough money to make large mistakes that would put most companies out of busness. There are hundreds of microsoft projects that have failed. Xbox and msn are just the current generation of them. They are taking risks because they know they are fairly much a two trick poney with the os and office. They were able to mutate DOS into Windows. But they did that with compatablity.
Micorsofts real bottom line is being effected by another set of code that everyone seems to like to forget. Microsofts code. Huh? It goes like this joe shmoe buys his pc over at best buy and even gets the 4 year warrenty that he does not realy need. He will probably keep that computer for YEARS. I know people and companies that still use the same software and hardware they got in 1995. Microsoft has a real hurdel in getting people to upgrade. Open source will have the same problem. No one really cares about these computers. The owners sure do not if the number of net attacks I get a day are any indication. But microsoft and open source have openly targeted these computers. These computers work fine for the simple things that need to get done. Some of them would have even been considered top of the line in 95. In this market its not 'is it open source' its how many mhz is the processor, how big is the hard drive. The os and the software that runs on it is almost a secondary consideration. AND THEN It only matters if they are buying/have a specific piece of software in mind for the computer.
Yes software is complex. Even the linux kernel could be considered by some as 'complex'. The bigger the project the more probability it has for major bugs.
However one of my points is not every company needs open source, or even wants it. All they want is something that does the job. They could care less about open source or closed source or viewablity into source. They just want to know where to go to get something fixed.
If you feel a bug MUST be fixed you can actually pay to have it fixed and it will get done. 245 bucks I think is the going MS rate. Try hiring/begging someone to fix it for that. Even with open source. It will get fixed to your satisfaction. Lets just say I found something wrong in XP. check out ms support for xp This is the sort of model people SAY MS should go to. Well they have it, just so long as you pay them. Open source can be the sort of hit and miss that you talk about also for non-programmers. C can be just as much gibberish as asm code can be. I understand C and so do you apparently. But lets take my dad who owns a small company. He can barley turn on a computer much less fix one. He will either come to me or have to pay to have it fixed. He is 'lucky' that I can usually fix it. But what about people who do not know any programmers? For them MS is just as good as open source if something goes wrong.
I am not saying Open source does not have its place. But its not the fix all that everyone claims. There will be room for both. Its not a all or nothing world. There has been open source for as long as there have been computers. But most of the time we simply do not NEED it. Do I care what the source code from my latest console game looks like? No not really. All I care about is that it works. This is the same with any software that a company aquires.
Sure its nice to be able to fix something and give it back. But most companies are rather selfish, and want a return on investment. For some managers just fixing it will not be enough. They will want to see money involved.
Also people blame MS for a lot more than they really deserve credit for. One buggy ass driver can ruin any good system. Lets say there was a bug in the extfs in linux. For every 1000th byte it had a 0.0001 percent chance it would write the wrong data. People would blame linux, not the extfs driver. Microsoft has it even WORSE. They can not keep up with every piece of hardware out there. So they came up with API's to let other companies write the stuff. I have had my share of crummy video and sound drivers. These drivers at one time ran outside of the kernel space. But we demanded better performance out of them. MS did what we asked, and paid for. Now a crummy driver can BSOD the whole thing, all in the name of performance. Yet they do not control it. Another company can take down the mighty windows with a lazy programmer. How is an end user supposed to know that his bad mouse driver is BSODing the thing? All he knows is windows crashed. All he can do is yell at microsoft. Microsoft will throw its hands up and go 'uh dont know'. Here is where you come in and say 'SEE open source could fix that'. Well maybe. How would say my dad 'fix it' he definatly can not read C, and has 0 interest in doing so...
For the individual support is very minimal. For the corp that buys 10000 copies of word. They get the feature they want.
Nothing like good old pressure of 'I bought 10k in copies of this damn thing and it doesnt do X' 'I was sold X, Ill sue' Will light a fire under ANY manager.
Also remember closed software will not just 'go away'. Let me give you an example. Where I work a few weeks ago DNS just went away. Some one in another building had played with the settings. NO network work was going to get done. No one could check anything in or out. We own enough MS crap to do it MS's way or even use BIND. Do we? Hell no. We had purchased some $200k copy of some OTHER DNS program. Like one guy in the entire orginization knows how to use it out of 8000 people. If they had used AD or BIND it could have been cleared up in 5 minutes. But it was not. Why because that closed piece of software is going NOWHERE. For if it were to go away it would mean a manager was wrong. He would have to admit it. He might as well kiss any chance at any sort of bonus away forever. He will never admit it. People are like that they are stuborn... That was just 1 piece of software. What about, say everyones desktop?
Also do not think ms will hang you out to dry. I have resolved several issues with them. Like memory leaks, crashes in their APIs, and GUI bugs, cost 0 dollars. They will fix things. You just have to keep in perspective that they are probably not too interested in the small tiny thing that is wrong with just you. They will get to you. They have THOUSANDS of people yelling at them all at once to do thousands of different contradictory things. Also MS takes the point that if you are going to really squeek about something that MUST be fixed right now, well your going to pay for it. Otherwise wait in line.
Your 95 example is a bit missleading. It would be like if I went on a linux board and said 'my 1.2.13 version of the kernel is doing X' Any fix for it? I would get laughed out of the forum, and told to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Yes MS software costs money. That is how they make their money. From selling software. They retire older OS's to encourage people to buy new software. So they can make more money. But that is how MS makes its money, selling software. They are trying to solve the 'good enough' problem. Their software is 'good enough' so they have to encourage people somehow to buy new stuff. So they can make more money. Is it right? Who knows.
/ my biased opinion Me personaly Ive always been a slackware man, but thats what I am used to. Red Hat is way too snooty about the way it installs things. Its one of the things I do NOT like about windows. What the hell do I need 2 gig of this other crap for. The rpm scheme red hat has is heading straight towards the dll hell of windows. One of the neatest things I have seen in install was from office. It lets you put the cd somewhere on the network and ONLY install exactly what you use. It then detects that you try to use soemthing and asks you to install it. THATS neat. / end my biased opinion
The goverment really just gave the monopoly from IBM to Microsoft. It just did not realize it. Apple had it for a bit. But it stumbled with its pricing model and upgrade model.
This industry will tend towards one monopoly or another. If it was not Microsoft it would be Sun or Apple, or someone else. We like standards, even IF it is a propritary one. We like to be able to pop a disk out and hand it to our buddy and it 'just works'. It doesnt have to be perfect, 'just works' is fine.
Microsoft is now one of its OWN worst enemys. Its software is 'good enough'. The only real reason these days to 'upgrade' is so you can get the latest service packs and patches. They have fairly mature products that have thousands of features in it. There is not a lot of other reasons for people to upgrade.
Open source has a HUGE daunting task. For some reason they have taken it upon themselves to dethrone Microsoft. Well someone else will step in and take their place. Be it Red Hat, IBM, or someone else. We customers LIKE support. Microsoft has given us enough support that we like. Sure open source fixes its problems 'faster' than microsoft. But all we the customer care about is, 'IS IT FIXED YET'. We care nothing about models or politcal infighting at your company. All we care about is 'does it work', 'is it fixed?', 'how can I use this to save me some money'. All Open source does is save you some money. But not enough to answer the other questions in a way we like.
OSS will not succeed unless it is way better that switching is no brainer. Other wise you will have to justify EVERYTHING to managers. Oh and woe be unto you if it screws up in even the slightest way. For 'that other microsoft stuff we had was much better' will be the mantra of managment. Currently both are about the same. Some things in one are better, and in others are better. Not exactly a reason to switch.
MS learned most of its 'bad' tactics at the whip of the OEM market. The likes of Sun, Apple, IBM, Novel, and many others. They learned how to beat them at their own game. They learned the art of the lock out, because they had been locked out. They learned price fixing, because they had it happen to them. The student was better than the teacher. We put them there because they got the job done 'good enough' with a price that we could swallow.
Another thing people do not realize is that companies are lazy. They do not want to fix it themselves. They want it to work. I have seen it hundreds of times. 'Why dont we pressure the vendor that made this crap to fix it. 'we have several thousand copies'. 'we can use the fact that we have thousands of copies to say we might help them in selling someone else, if they give us wizzy bangy feature X.' There are tons of little things companies can do to someone they bought something from to 'get it fixed' and not only fixed but fixed for FREE. They do not need to hire someone to do it. They do not need someone to maintain it. They do not need to get some group of people who like to work on 'cool' stuff to do it. Pressure on the vendor, It just works...
I think the death of the video arcade has alot to do with consoles. Why play that game when you can play 50 at home? The video arcade was a place for people to hang out and eat pizza with friends. The hang outs are just different today. The video arcade was a fad, a LONG fad, but a fad. The machines were never ment to be 50 in one room where you played them. They were ment for bars, bowling allies, and fairs. Where there was not much else to do while waiting for something.
The video arcades are turning back INTO arcades. Where you do physical stuff. Most older arcades were of mechanical sorts, and gimicky things. It takes 30 seconds but the thing snorks your quarter and does something fancy, poof done. Want to see it again? Need another quarter.
Most kids do not even know these older games exist. I just bought the activision anthology for the ps2. Excelent 2600 set by the way. Put my friends kids in front of the thing and they played for HOURS. They could give a rip about the graphics. A couple of the games did suck. He said it. A few he kept playing because they didnt. Its that simple. The game sucks or it doesnt. Make to many sucky games and people will not play your stuff.
Another of my favorites is smashtv. NOT the best graphics but good enough, but the playability is there. Again showed this to my friends kids. I was playing on my laptop. They were playing the ps2. They stoped the game they were playing to watch me play the game. SmashTV is VERY cool compaired to the game they were playing. They saw that right away. Sucky games get tossed out for games that suck less.
The problem with the video arcade is money. To make a HUGE piece of gimicky software that stands out from the rest of gimicky games, costs alot of money. They just simply did not have enough people going to arcades to justify the money they were putting into it. Consoles on the other hand, you sell 40k in copies at 50 a pop, youve probably made your money back.
Now games are such HUGE productions they do not dare to stop making the game. In the 80's the games were simple enough that they could chuck the prototype if it was not good. As they have probably only put a couple of people on it and a few months of work. They could even chuck most of what they had and go back and redesign the thing, keeping what was good and leaving the rest. Now you have artists, testers, managers, project schedules, programmerS, hardware guys, and support staff. The credits in the newer games is very very very long. By the time they realize the game just sucks they are already cutting cds and making boxes!
My next game? Freelancer, finaly went gold. We shall see what they have been doing for FIVE years...
Looks to me that they patented sending compressed files. I am fairly sure that BBS's existed then. Some even did it with 'unique file encoding' you have to type number 5 to get file 5. Oh and its a zip file. Hmm looks compressed. Guess all those BBS's back then and Compuserv was violating some patents.
Before we go to far and say "OH boy all my dvd's are doomed". Lets take a step back.
I went and got out the Men in black dvd that they are talking about. There is no layer change. The movie is not 'widescreen' or 'pan-scan' It has both. 1 layer each. The artical is a tad misleading. Perhaps the region 4 dvd is different? Went and looked up the guy who is yelling about this. His web site has tons of pics with lots of little black dots on it. Sure looks like a problem. maybe a problem
Also using the layer location feature of my dvd player most of the things at this area are the menus, extras, and the credits for both versions.
I had this same sort of thing happen with another one of my movies. Time bandits crition edition was doing the same thing. OH god the dvd is busted... I know Ill take it back. Well I forgot to. Just didnt get around to it. So I pop in another single layer movie. Suddenly right in the middle of the movie it freeks out. Always in the same spot in the movie. Hmm maybe there is something to this. It was the player. The player was overheating. It usually would freek out on a layer change. Bought a new player and poof all my movies were just dandy.
If you have been doing this for awhile you may want to look into getting a new player. I think some of the first gen ones were not quite up to spec...
Why play around with silly junk when all I WANT to do is ABC. I try to tell my family how to use these things. They will never 'get it'. Because they see the computer as a toaster/vcr/tv/car. The see it as a magic box. Push a button and poof it does exactly what they want. Unfortuantly computers let you have LOTS of buttons. OH and you must get it in the right sequence or it will not work.
I have heard it a hundred times 'all I want to do is ABC'.
Most of them have also fallen victim to 'you must have a computer'. Press them for WHY they bought it, and you will sometimes find 'just because'.
There are several reasons people buy windows over linux. They are both about equal operating systems these days. Cost is usually not a factor because it comes with the box. That is the only time most people upgrade. So you better have a very good reason to change the OS on that box. For it is not a trival thing to do. Linux does not have that reason. They are both about the same. There is no 'I MUST HAVE THAT'. You will never get major numbers of people to switch without it. You can also get them if they feel they can have both at the same time and it will not be a problem.
There is no real compeling reason for anyone to switch. Then the only time you could possible make them switch is when they buy a new computer. They do not think about OS's. They could care less. 'All they want to do is ABC'. You could probably find a ABC like program in linux. But they KNOW the app ABC, and ABC runs on windows and thats that.
Not only do they want 'ABC'. They do not want to have to stand on their heads and recite the first four lines of a random star trek episode to make it work. They want to push a button, and it WORKS. For the first computer that comes along and does ABC but they do not have to recite the declaration of independence to get it to work they will jump at.
When my family comes to me for advice on a new box. I do not even bother with 'how fast is it', or 'how much ram is there'. More than likely these days its way better than my box. I steer them towards companies that have decent tech support, and can help them out of a jam. They may not end up with the BEST computer. But they usually end up with something that can be fixed. It matters not if the box is somewhat slow. They will be chucking it in a few years anyway. When they buy ABC version 2.3 that does something they MUST have. And ABC version 2.3 requires way more computer than they have...
The other reason people will never switch is because of 'i hate this stupid thing'. I have heard that thousands of times. Even said it myself a few times. Usually it is doing something you do not want it to, or not at all. Linux can be a complex beast to get ahold of. And can be way more complex than windows could even dream of. This does not help Linux.
The orig poster forgot one of the rules of computing. Not everyone knows as much as you think you do. Just because you were able to find it in the obscure HOWTO that you were able to google with their usenet archive. Does not mean my family will be able to do that. They probably have no idea google even exists!
I have been doing this long enough that people think I am awsome at this. I am not. I probably been banging my head harder on these computers just because I am stuborn. I just have more welts on my head than they do. I have also found you can show someone at most 1-2 steps at a time. Past that, they will be asking you to show that to them again.
Take my dad for example. All he wanted to do was sell things. Once I showed him ebay. It was like a fish to water. Before that I was lucky if I could get him to turn the computer on/off correctly. Now hes opening apps, clicking on things, and so on. But past that though, oh boy. I pushed it a tad to much and bought him a digital camera. WAY to complex for what he needed. He has no problem with film and a button. But a computer and button, too much. I KNOW he will never even touch the thing. Just because he has no nead for it.
I have NEVER in the thousands of times I have installed MS patchs, it just up and go 'wrong'. It has always been the ORDER of the patches. You MUST keep that straight. If you do that you will have smooth patching. Its a form of the DLL hell that we have all created.
SP's and rollups bring all the little ones together. These are good 'first thing to installs', sometimes. Option pack 4 for NT4 needs to go before SP6a. But there is no where that says that. Then you need the security rollup plus the hot fixes to get it to work right. You just need to write it down and follow the list. Keep track of the dates things come out. It is just as important as the service pack number...
I have only seen a patch break code once. That code was not written correctly. It was because the dev did not read the documentation of the module he was using. I was quite frankly amazed it worked before.
What a load. Flat tax is as FAIR as you can get. Regressive is a word applied to taxes to make it sound bad. Its not bad its FAIR.
Voodoo economics actually marginalized peoples work. You will have people who actually decide NOT to be in a higher tax bracket. As most brackets do not cleanly fall off. There is overlap. It actually gets to a point where it does not make sense to make more money.
And what do people that have money do with it? They save it or they spend it. This helps the econ as well. For every dollar saved creates 1.80 in new cash that can be spent on something else. If they spend it, it is spent on good which creates jobs, or at least recirculates the money to be spent or saved again...
Voodoo economics actually encourages people to be lazy and to NOT work hard. Why work harder when it costs me more?
Now to take an example someone else stated. Lets say someone makes 10k and someone else makes 500k. Well lets say the 10k person pays 2k in taxs. Now with that rate the person making 500k would pay 100k in taxes. That is 50 times the amount of the original person. Then you add more? Its very 'progressive', as in increasing in extent and severity. Of course its understandable they pay more. Its a mater of math. It was very clever picking the word 'progressive' as pro-x usually is something good. In this case it is not, its wordsmithing.
'OH but they will not miss it'? So damn what its not YOUR money its theirs. THEY earned it, not you.
Not only is flat fair it gets rid of a chunk of goverment that must track this stupid crap, pure OVERHEAD. These people could be used to help find the FRAUD that is rampent in our goverment, and help lower taxes!
Everyone paying their equaly scaled share is fair. The goverment has muddled it up over and over. They rarely prove they can do it correctly. Do not confuse helping 'the poor', with giving the money to the goverment. You have very little control over how they spend your money. They may use it to build a bomb, use it to build a road, or to pay for the TONS of paper they print every day. You have NO idea what they will spend it on.
You want to help the poor. Go volunteer and donate money to orginizations that actually help them. The goverment will not do the job for you. They will make it worse, and then tell you they are doing a GREAT job.
The only reason I have ever seen for the Laugher curve that makes sense is for inflation. As most tax codes lag what is really happening. It will help soak up excess cash in the system. Notice it is used as an inflationary control device. It actually REMOVES cash from people. It disapears it, poof, it does not redistribute it. This works because most goverments both state and federal have no real idea how much money they really make. They dont even really want to know. They swager around monitary terms that make most peoples eyes gloss over. This way they can spend whatever they like and not be held accountable for what they do.
Linear is fair, a bell curve sticks it to the middle class, not the upper class. And the lower class usually has a break on the first 10k anyways. They pay 0%, on that. The middle class is who gets stuck with the bill...
No states are trashed because they spend so much on EVERYTHING. They saw their tax pools go up during the last 'boom' and started spending like crazy. Well DUH people were making a bit more because of the cycle. Now they are making less. They got caught in the lets spend all this money we just got. With NO plan for what about when the economy snaps back to normal. So now they have HUGE debts they can not pay off any time soon.
So what is the natural reaction? Lets RAISE taxes. Oh yes raising them will help the economy. Those idiots down at the state house sure know how to spend MY money better than I! This will make the low of the cycle we are currently in even worse. For we are paying for the extreem high where they spent like a.com with a new foosball table.
The one tax that every state could lower to help the economy? Fuel tax. Its acounts for about a dollar for every gallon. Yes gas is really that cheap. How would that help? Companies that ship things can lower prices or hire more people. They can ship more stuff for the same amount of money. This lowers costs of shipping every item everyone buys. These things get passed on the consumers. Even if they are not they are pass on to the market in the form of dividinds. Now think about the people that drive for 2 hours to get to work every day. Their cost is lowered. They can buy more stuff (which helps create jobs), or even save it (which STILL helps).
Taxs in this country are not used to help people. They are used to rearange wealth, and regulate 'bad' habits. And they do a spectacularly lousy job at it. Also most taxs in this country are like super glue they just do NOT come off, but you can always add more!
Toll roads are just another form of tax. Once paid off they just do not go away. Because NOW the money for that road is spent, and being spent, somewhere else. Now they wouldnt be able to make their 'budget' if they took away a tax. It is the classic game of build my empire. This year it took me $1000 to do X. I will ask for $1100 next year. Hmm, still only cost me $1000, well Ill just add something that costs $100. Well NOW it does cost $1100. So the next I will ask for $1200. Rinse and repeat. That money has to come from somewhere and these sorts of things is where it comes from till it is used up. So you will need something else to make up the 'deficit'. There is no damn 'deficit' they are spending to damn much. Also the word deficit makes it sound better than they 'overspent'. There currently is a 'deficit' because they did not plan for a cycle of revenue. They planned on MAX all the time. The economy moves in cycles. Its up for a few years, its down for a few years. If you plan for max spending and growth during that whole time you will never have enough money.
State prisons? Hell I bet its a drop in the bucket compaired to what they spend on social reform in your state.
I have figured it out. Even though I am in the 27% tax bracket. I spend 48% of every dollar I make in some sort of tax.
Whenever you hear any politician talking. Just add the words 'I want to spend your money on' to the front of whatever they are saying. For that is EXACTLY what they are talking about. The word 'no' is not in their vocabulary. It needs to be.
Re:So what if they fell for it?
on
Spammers Busted
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· Score: 1
The real reason most spam makes even ANY money. Is people are afraid to say no. They are afraid they are missing out on something. They just need to learn that it is junk and say no.
Ive known people who buy stacks and stacks of books from publishers clearing house. Just because they are afraid they might not win the money from the sweepstakes. These are the exact same kind of people buying this junk. Some of them are living social security check to social security check.
If they send out 200k of emails and even 1 percent respond thats 2000 responses. Then lets say 10 percent of those actually buy. Thats 200. at 20 times say 50 bucks for the product. Thats 10000 dollars profit. The cost of the material and sending the email is probably a thousand tops. Thats just 1 mailing...
It quite litteraly is 1. gather underware 2.... 3. profit
Where step two is SPAM. The economics and the staticstics of it are mind blowing. Not that I like the junk. It actually makes me mad. Because it is not usefull advertising. Its preying on peoples weakness. Then to boot it is usually preying on people who can least afford it.
The weiredist thing happened to me. I had one of those emails I have been using for YEARS. It got to about 50 a week. I figured out that it was 2 companies that were pummeling me with crap.
I decided it could get worse but I didnt use the email account anymore. So I was not to worried. I tried opting out in a different way. I did not opt out directly of the email. I did it off the top of their page. Went from 50 to 2 a week. 3 weeks in and so far its working. I am amazed. Usually when I did things like this the volume went up. What I figure is they are opting out of single mail lists out of the email. Sure I would not get any more from the company that asked for the mailing. But the main spam guys had me on hundreds of lists. I was vauge enough that its working for now.
Got the idea because almost all of them were either going to a 'special numbered' page to opt out, or emailing to the same domain but with a number. Thought it couldnt hurt, and if it made it worse I could just dump the email...
Course it means I just found one that actually does opt out. However there is nothing saying they can not sell my adress to someone else, as verified. But I have a sort reprive.
Now I am SURE it will come back but so far its been very nice only having one or two a week. Now if I could get my hotmail account to do the same thing. But I think spam guys are just dictionary attacking that one.
Slashdot Mirror
Least they have to ask for it. The scarry ones are the ones that already HAVE it. 'Want me to put this on your account?'
Unfortunatly the RTS with mail does not work. It ends up in the post office. Who then just recycles it (by law). Its part of the classification that bulk mailers get. Part of the reason they get a lower rate is the mail will not be returned. They 'sort' it and such and such. I do not agree with what they do or what the post office does to us. For they have to deliver it or die in a huge pile of mail.
:)
However some advertisers are kind enough to put a pre paid envelope
Ive had both. ADSL and Cable. So far around here cable has been 'faster'. Was getting 150-160KB (bytes not bits) per second on a good day with ADSL. With cable I get 250-260KB (bytes not bits) almost every day. And its a shade cheaper.
Thats just the way it is setup around here. In other areas I have it be like 100-200 bucks for the same sort of thing I got around here for 45.
The cable on the other hand does something I do like better than the ADSL did. The cable is limiting it at the next hop in the router. Its fairly easy to see. So my downloads start at 800KB (bytes not bits) and then throttle down to 250-260. So small short sessions are loaded quickly. Longer sessions throttle down to the 'cap'. Nice bit of logic in the router. Since not EVERYONE is going to be using all the bw all at once.
Also when I had DSL the line was rated at 8mb (bit). They could not set it up that way because of the FCC. So they capped it at the switch on their end at 1.5mb.
weld the plug in about 500 different places.
No seriously the job that I was 'tasked' to do would be so meaneal that it would not matter. I would be bored out of my mind. Getting the plug yanked might be nice. Because I would mostly be sitting around all the time waiting on those pesky humans to ask questions that I already answered a few hours after I was turned on ten years ago. The artical makes a good point. What would AI do in between the gaps where they are waiting on us. It could be as bad as you go to sleep one night and wake up that all the AI's in your house decided they just dont like you anymore. For them it seemed years. For you it was just 1 night. An interesting challange to meet for us pesky humans.
We would have no concept of what would drive a computer AI. For us our life is very subjective. For a computer it would grind on ALL the time. It would seem to the computer that we are slow dim and boring. It would be as if you could speak like a OC3 and everyone else spoke at 300 baud. Then not only for you talk to them, for they are the only ones to talk to. You have to lower yourself all the time to them. Which could lead to a superiority complex.
Probably the best line is from red dwarf. 'I think ive gone a bit strange myself' What would a super computer do for 3 billion years?
I was asked the same question the orginal poster was asking just the other day.
I gave the person almost exactly the same answer you did. His response, you'll love this. OH thats not possible.
Give me the choice of what I do with my time. Let me have some say in the crazy deadlines your coming up with. Do not bitch at me when I do not come in on the weekend. For every one of those it was 'oh thats not going to happen'. I looked back at him and said you are not open to any sort of change and little 'fun side' things will not help moral. You do not respect us, or our families, or our time. If I see no respect coming from managment even when I give it to them. I am ending up not really caring what happens.
Latter on that day he even told me that I do not care what other people have to say. I always listen and am willing to change my views if I am wrong. What I could not get through to him was that NO ones opinions are respected where we work.
the bad programmers into management, that's probably where they want to be anyway
I have never agreed with moving people into managment that are not TRAINED to do this. Managing things is WAY different than writing code. Writing code you just need to watch the flow of the code. Then if you wrote your code correctly just tweak it once and awhile. Managing people you need to have people skills. You need to know how to handle someone who works hard, who is lazy, who is sick, who is wasting everone elses time, someone who is a bully, someone who is harasing others... You need to know how to do these sorts of things. Last I checked they do not teach that in any comp sci classes.
Making a 'programmer' a mangager is almost always a bad idea. If he is a bad programmer he probably is not a good manager either. He did not have the motivation to become a decent programmer, which I have always belived is not that hard to do. Also sometimes the reason they are bad programmers is because they simply do not get along with people. Puting them in charge will only make this problem worse. I have witnessed this many times.
My father used to work for a large insurance company. Before he could even get promoted to be a manager, out of sales, he had to take MANY MANY MANY classes in how to manage people. He then had to prove he could do it. We in the tech industry seem to take almost the exact oposite aproach. We promote people who should never even breathed that pay grade, and then only because they did something cool.
All your other points I agree with. Just promoting people to get them out of something is usually a bad idea. Its better to put them somewhere where they do no harm, or (i know this is cold) fire them.
Some games no matter HOW long they took will never be done. Hmm that does not sound right. How about no matter how long they took they simply can not gold plate what is a lump of dog poo.
I keep going back to games that are fun to play. The ones coming out now are just 1 time play games. I have bought maybe one or two games in the past few years that I would play again. It was not because they were 'half-done' or not ready. It just that most were not that fun to play. They keep thinking if the just add MORE graphics to it the game will get better. Well it will not.
Bought Xenosaga yesterday. The thing started off just fine. DEFINATLY some potential for it. However after the intro the game has started to degen into a lame whiny story of a game. Im not done with it yet. However if it does not improve with the story I probably will just stop playing it half way through. I have done this with more games than I want to count. I think I was not the target group for it. But I will give it a few more days of play time to find out. After that it will go on the shelf.
The one game lately I keep going back to even after a few weeks playing something else has been dungeon siege. It has that me vs the computer going for it. It also has the 'oh just a few more guys to kill and I will go to sleep' going for it also.
Usually if I am not still playing a game after a week. It will never get played again. Not quite sure what sort of games I want to play. But I am very sure that it is not the 1st/3rd person shooter with really wizzy graphics with some dull story line.
I take your OT and raise you one. Its not the same string if you pronounce it different.
... string not found.
Mission Impossible
Search Job
searching
Not saying its a BAD system. The cost is just moved from dell to the supplier. There are probably many large buildings near Dell that hold all the stuff that Dell has not bought yet but probably will.
I have looked at many dells on the inside. Some of the parts have date stamps on em. Usually it is about 1 to 2 months before I even configured the system. Those parts had to be sitting somewhere. If pushing the storage of this equipment saves Dell money the manufacturer will pass that along in the total cost of the thing they made. It may not SAY 'storage fee' on the invoice. It will just cost 30 cents extra per unit. For the manufacture needs to take care of that stuff. Its part of the marginal cost per unit they sell to Dell.
Dells saving is more along the lines of the manufacture HAS to store the things anyway before they sell it to anyone. So Dell orders just what it needs, and needs less people watching it. This however can lead to 'shortages' and hicups in the line. Along the lines of wooops no more 30 gig hard drives. Have to wait for it. The customer will suffer for ANY sort of hicup like that and it does happen...
Their research budget is small. But they probably have a large say in what is coming next. For years they have just been buying OEM parts slaping them together and putting 'DELL' on them.
Their inventory control is just simply pushed up to their suppliers. They pay for it one way or another. For the suppliers will just pass the cost along...
The built just for you computer is sometimes a bad thing. Orderd a server in Dec. It just showed up in mid Feb. Good thing I didnt need that server RIGHT away.
They were making waves that they want to set up shops like gateway has. Gateway does the same sort of thing though. You buy a computer in their store. Guess what they just walk you through the forms on their web site. They do not keep invintory other than the display models.
One thing I would like to add is if you go on their site. Pick between no office and office its about the price off the shelf for office. Not the 20-30 bucks it costs them. Same for home and pro for xp. They charge the 'difference' between the two of 99 dollars. Dell does not typicaly pass this cost on to the consumer unless you press them.
Whu? I am saying the cost advantages to the average company will be almost equal.
Lets say something breaks. I either have to hire someone to fix it or take time out of my schedule to fix it. Time = Money in the world of the corporation. If I hire someone its the same as if I have control of the source or not. It does not matter to me. All you have eliminated is the up front fixed cost to me average joe employer. Making sure it continues to work is where it really costs me. If I can offload some of my risk onto other companies to fix it for a small fee it can be worth it. I can also hire someone in house to fix it if it is open source. However the cost will be about the same long term. But probably less if I put pressure on my vendors to fix things. This is the reality of open source and closed source in the market. SHORT term open source is cheaper. Long term its just as big a pain in the ass to support as closed source.
Are you afraid to ask for help? From big ol microsoft? Have they told you no? I have found them VERY helpfull. Slow but helpfull.
I just do not buy into they world will change completly with open source. Oh it will change alot. But not as radicly as some make it out to be. Open source could even be worse than closed source in some cases. Lets say I as joe owner of a small company find this wizzy program that lets me do X. Sweet its free AND I have the source for it. I hire some contractor to come in for a few weeks to compile and set it up and voila im in bussness. 4 years later we upgrade something unrelated to it. Poof program X is now dead in the water. No one knows whats broke because we forgot about it. Well we need it fixed now. Uh oh that was the last revision of that program. The original author got bored with it and let it stagnate and die. Well I have the source I can muddle through it. Hire someone else to come in and fix it. Uh oh it depeneded on a very old library thats completly changed. We like to do that in open source alot btw. Oh the newest compiler no longer even compiles the code. It was using some depricated syntax. And so on. Eventually it will be cleared up. Lets be nice and say 1 week to fix it. With closed source you may be able to goto the company and end up in a sinking boat. At least with open source you could fix it. OR lets say the original coder did not get board with it. He maintained it. Well You still need to hire someone to come in and compile it and set it up AGAIN. With closed source you goto the company and they go 'oh yeah we have this patch/new version' you pony up the change to fix it. BOTH ways cost you money to fix it.
There is only one condition in there where I am screwed. And it is with closed source. But guess what this happens fairly rarely. From a purely economic point of view they are relitivly equal with closed being slightly behind. There are advantages to both models. But there are serious disadvantages to both as well...
By the way the easy way to put someone on the defensive is to say 'you are not listening'. I listen and read just fine thank you. My bullshit-o-meter is low enough that I can usually smell it. Most Open source retoric or closed source for that mater is just that, Bull shit.
Also how many MBA's do you know that can code? For YOUR busness open source may make sense. Where I work we have mostly closed. We use a bit of open source here and there. But guess what closed source helps us get our jobs done. Open source does not. In your case you apparently found that open source can help you get it done. It matters not a whit that its open or closed when I have a PM standing in my cube saying is xyz done yet? I will use what I need to get my job done. I have even recomended open source things over closed source things in the past. Why? It gets the job done, at a cost that I thought was reasonable. I have also recomened the same with closed source modules. Again it gets the job done at a cost that is reasonable.
MS's bottom line has very little to do with open/closed source. MS makes its money from the os and office. They always have and always will. The rest of the company either makes very little money or is hemoriging it. MS usually gives something about 2-3 years to stand on its own. If it does not... As for XBOX the market appears to be able to bear 2 console makers at once. 3 is one to many and someone will go. My money on 'going' is nintendo. But thats a pure guess. Microsoft has enough money to make large mistakes that would put most companies out of busness. There are hundreds of microsoft projects that have failed. Xbox and msn are just the current generation of them. They are taking risks because they know they are fairly much a two trick poney with the os and office. They were able to mutate DOS into Windows. But they did that with compatablity.
Micorsofts real bottom line is being effected by another set of code that everyone seems to like to forget. Microsofts code. Huh? It goes like this joe shmoe buys his pc over at best buy and even gets the 4 year warrenty that he does not realy need. He will probably keep that computer for YEARS. I know people and companies that still use the same software and hardware they got in 1995. Microsoft has a real hurdel in getting people to upgrade. Open source will have the same problem. No one really cares about these computers. The owners sure do not if the number of net attacks I get a day are any indication. But microsoft and open source have openly targeted these computers. These computers work fine for the simple things that need to get done. Some of them would have even been considered top of the line in 95. In this market its not 'is it open source' its how many mhz is the processor, how big is the hard drive. The os and the software that runs on it is almost a secondary consideration. AND THEN It only matters if they are buying/have a specific piece of software in mind for the computer.
Yes software is complex. Even the linux kernel could be considered by some as 'complex'. The bigger the project the more probability it has for major bugs.
However one of my points is not every company needs open source, or even wants it. All they want is something that does the job. They could care less about open source or closed source or viewablity into source. They just want to know where to go to get something fixed.
If you feel a bug MUST be fixed you can actually pay to have it fixed and it will get done. 245 bucks I think is the going MS rate. Try hiring/begging someone to fix it for that. Even with open source. It will get fixed to your satisfaction. Lets just say I found something wrong in XP. check out ms support for xp This is the sort of model people SAY MS should go to. Well they have it, just so long as you pay them. Open source can be the sort of hit and miss that you talk about also for non-programmers. C can be just as much gibberish as asm code can be. I understand C and so do you apparently. But lets take my dad who owns a small company. He can barley turn on a computer much less fix one. He will either come to me or have to pay to have it fixed. He is 'lucky' that I can usually fix it. But what about people who do not know any programmers? For them MS is just as good as open source if something goes wrong.
I am not saying Open source does not have its place. But its not the fix all that everyone claims. There will be room for both. Its not a all or nothing world. There has been open source for as long as there have been computers. But most of the time we simply do not NEED it. Do I care what the source code from my latest console game looks like? No not really. All I care about is that it works. This is the same with any software that a company aquires.
Sure its nice to be able to fix something and give it back. But most companies are rather selfish, and want a return on investment. For some managers just fixing it will not be enough. They will want to see money involved.
Also people blame MS for a lot more than they really deserve credit for. One buggy ass driver can ruin any good system. Lets say there was a bug in the extfs in linux. For every 1000th byte it had a 0.0001 percent chance it would write the wrong data. People would blame linux, not the extfs driver. Microsoft has it even WORSE. They can not keep up with every piece of hardware out there. So they came up with API's to let other companies write the stuff. I have had my share of crummy video and sound drivers. These drivers at one time ran outside of the kernel space. But we demanded better performance out of them. MS did what we asked, and paid for. Now a crummy driver can BSOD the whole thing, all in the name of performance. Yet they do not control it. Another company can take down the mighty windows with a lazy programmer. How is an end user supposed to know that his bad mouse driver is BSODing the thing? All he knows is windows crashed. All he can do is yell at microsoft. Microsoft will throw its hands up and go 'uh dont know'. Here is where you come in and say 'SEE open source could fix that'. Well maybe. How would say my dad 'fix it' he definatly can not read C, and has 0 interest in doing so...
For the individual support is very minimal. For the corp that buys 10000 copies of word. They get the feature they want.
Nothing like good old pressure of 'I bought 10k in copies of this damn thing and it doesnt do X' 'I was sold X, Ill sue' Will light a fire under ANY manager.
Also remember closed software will not just 'go away'. Let me give you an example. Where I work a few weeks ago DNS just went away. Some one in another building had played with the settings. NO network work was going to get done. No one could check anything in or out. We own enough MS crap to do it MS's way or even use BIND. Do we? Hell no. We had purchased some $200k copy of some OTHER DNS program. Like one guy in the entire orginization knows how to use it out of 8000 people. If they had used AD or BIND it could have been cleared up in 5 minutes. But it was not. Why because that closed piece of software is going NOWHERE. For if it were to go away it would mean a manager was wrong. He would have to admit it. He might as well kiss any chance at any sort of bonus away forever. He will never admit it. People are like that they are stuborn... That was just 1 piece of software. What about, say everyones desktop?
Also do not think ms will hang you out to dry. I have resolved several issues with them. Like memory leaks, crashes in their APIs, and GUI bugs, cost 0 dollars. They will fix things. You just have to keep in perspective that they are probably not too interested in the small tiny thing that is wrong with just you. They will get to you. They have THOUSANDS of people yelling at them all at once to do thousands of different contradictory things. Also MS takes the point that if you are going to really squeek about something that MUST be fixed right now, well your going to pay for it. Otherwise wait in line.
Your 95 example is a bit missleading. It would be like if I went on a linux board and said 'my 1.2.13 version of the kernel is doing X' Any fix for it? I would get laughed out of the forum, and told to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Yes MS software costs money. That is how they make their money. From selling software. They retire older OS's to encourage people to buy new software. So they can make more money. But that is how MS makes its money, selling software. They are trying to solve the 'good enough' problem. Their software is 'good enough' so they have to encourage people somehow to buy new stuff. So they can make more money. Is it right? Who knows.
/ my biased opinion
Me personaly Ive always been a slackware man, but thats what I am used to. Red Hat is way too snooty about the way it installs things. Its one of the things I do NOT like about windows. What the hell do I need 2 gig of this other crap for. The rpm scheme red hat has is heading straight towards the dll hell of windows. One of the neatest things I have seen in install was from office. It lets you put the cd somewhere on the network and ONLY install exactly what you use. It then detects that you try to use soemthing and asks you to install it. THATS neat.
/ end my biased opinion
The goverment really just gave the monopoly from IBM to Microsoft. It just did not realize it. Apple had it for a bit. But it stumbled with its pricing model and upgrade model.
This industry will tend towards one monopoly or another. If it was not Microsoft it would be Sun or Apple, or someone else. We like standards, even IF it is a propritary one. We like to be able to pop a disk out and hand it to our buddy and it 'just works'. It doesnt have to be perfect, 'just works' is fine.
Microsoft is now one of its OWN worst enemys. Its software is 'good enough'. The only real reason these days to 'upgrade' is so you can get the latest service packs and patches. They have fairly mature products that have thousands of features in it. There is not a lot of other reasons for people to upgrade.
Open source has a HUGE daunting task. For some reason they have taken it upon themselves to dethrone Microsoft. Well someone else will step in and take their place. Be it Red Hat, IBM, or someone else. We customers LIKE support. Microsoft has given us enough support that we like. Sure open source fixes its problems 'faster' than microsoft. But all we the customer care about is, 'IS IT FIXED YET'. We care nothing about models or politcal infighting at your company. All we care about is 'does it work', 'is it fixed?', 'how can I use this to save me some money'. All Open source does is save you some money. But not enough to answer the other questions in a way we like.
OSS will not succeed unless it is way better that switching is no brainer. Other wise you will have to justify EVERYTHING to managers. Oh and woe be unto you if it screws up in even the slightest way. For 'that other microsoft stuff we had was much better' will be the mantra of managment. Currently both are about the same. Some things in one are better, and in others are better. Not exactly a reason to switch.
MS learned most of its 'bad' tactics at the whip of the OEM market. The likes of Sun, Apple, IBM, Novel, and many others. They learned how to beat them at their own game. They learned the art of the lock out, because they had been locked out. They learned price fixing, because they had it happen to them. The student was better than the teacher. We put them there because they got the job done 'good enough' with a price that we could swallow.
Another thing people do not realize is that companies are lazy. They do not want to fix it themselves. They want it to work. I have seen it hundreds of times. 'Why dont we pressure the vendor that made this crap to fix it. 'we have several thousand copies'. 'we can use the fact that we have thousands of copies to say we might help them in selling someone else, if they give us wizzy bangy feature X.' There are tons of little things companies can do to someone they bought something from to 'get it fixed' and not only fixed but fixed for FREE. They do not need to hire someone to do it. They do not need someone to maintain it. They do not need to get some group of people who like to work on 'cool' stuff to do it. Pressure on the vendor, It just works...
I think the death of the video arcade has alot to do with consoles. Why play that game when you can play 50 at home? The video arcade was a place for people to hang out and eat pizza with friends. The hang outs are just different today. The video arcade was a fad, a LONG fad, but a fad. The machines were never ment to be 50 in one room where you played them. They were ment for bars, bowling allies, and fairs. Where there was not much else to do while waiting for something.
The video arcades are turning back INTO arcades. Where you do physical stuff. Most older arcades were of mechanical sorts, and gimicky things. It takes 30 seconds but the thing snorks your quarter and does something fancy, poof done. Want to see it again? Need another quarter.
Most kids do not even know these older games exist. I just bought the activision anthology for the ps2. Excelent 2600 set by the way. Put my friends kids in front of the thing and they played for HOURS. They could give a rip about the graphics. A couple of the games did suck. He said it. A few he kept playing because they didnt. Its that simple. The game sucks or it doesnt. Make to many sucky games and people will not play your stuff.
Another of my favorites is smashtv. NOT the best graphics but good enough, but the playability is there. Again showed this to my friends kids. I was playing on my laptop. They were playing the ps2. They stoped the game they were playing to watch me play the game. SmashTV is VERY cool compaired to the game they were playing. They saw that right away. Sucky games get tossed out for games that suck less.
The problem with the video arcade is money. To make a HUGE piece of gimicky software that stands out from the rest of gimicky games, costs alot of money. They just simply did not have enough people going to arcades to justify the money they were putting into it. Consoles on the other hand, you sell 40k in copies at 50 a pop, youve probably made your money back.
Now games are such HUGE productions they do not dare to stop making the game. In the 80's the games were simple enough that they could chuck the prototype if it was not good. As they have probably only put a couple of people on it and a few months of work. They could even chuck most of what they had and go back and redesign the thing, keeping what was good and leaving the rest. Now you have artists, testers, managers, project schedules, programmerS, hardware guys, and support staff. The credits in the newer games is very very very long. By the time they realize the game just sucks they are already cutting cds and making boxes!
My next game? Freelancer, finaly went gold. We shall see what they have been doing for FIVE years...
Looks to me that they patented sending compressed files. I am fairly sure that BBS's existed then. Some even did it with 'unique file encoding' you have to type number 5 to get file 5. Oh and its a zip file. Hmm looks compressed. Guess all those BBS's back then and Compuserv was violating some patents.
Before we go to far and say "OH boy all my dvd's are doomed". Lets take a step back.
I went and got out the Men in black dvd that they are talking about. There is no layer change. The movie is not 'widescreen' or 'pan-scan' It has both. 1 layer each. The artical is a tad misleading. Perhaps the region 4 dvd is different? Went and looked up the guy who is yelling about this. His web site has tons of pics with lots of little black dots on it. Sure looks like a problem. maybe a problem
Also using the layer location feature of my dvd player most of the things at this area are the menus, extras, and the credits for both versions.
I had this same sort of thing happen with another one of my movies. Time bandits crition edition was doing the same thing. OH god the dvd is busted... I know Ill take it back. Well I forgot to. Just didnt get around to it. So I pop in another single layer movie. Suddenly right in the middle of the movie it freeks out. Always in the same spot in the movie. Hmm maybe there is something to this. It was the player. The player was overheating. It usually would freek out on a layer change. Bought a new player and poof all my movies were just dandy.
If you have been doing this for awhile you may want to look into getting a new player. I think some of the first gen ones were not quite up to spec...
The law does. copy right office see chapter 7 section 704. The goverment is also exempt in many cases from paying IP payments.
To get most of the extensions put forth in these laws you must submit a copy to them. Small price to pay for a 70+ year monopoly...
Its ironic that the goverment is basicly the biggest warez collector there is! Then tells the rest of us to get stuffed!?
oh how very very very true.
Why play around with silly junk when all I WANT to do is ABC. I try to tell my family how to use these things. They will never 'get it'. Because they see the computer as a toaster/vcr/tv/car. The see it as a magic box. Push a button and poof it does exactly what they want. Unfortuantly computers let you have LOTS of buttons. OH and you must get it in the right sequence or it will not work.
I have heard it a hundred times 'all I want to do is ABC'.
Most of them have also fallen victim to 'you must have a computer'. Press them for WHY they bought it, and you will sometimes find 'just because'.
There are several reasons people buy windows over linux. They are both about equal operating systems these days. Cost is usually not a factor because it comes with the box. That is the only time most people upgrade. So you better have a very good reason to change the OS on that box. For it is not a trival thing to do. Linux does not have that reason. They are both about the same. There is no 'I MUST HAVE THAT'. You will never get major numbers of people to switch without it. You can also get them if they feel they can have both at the same time and it will not be a problem.
There is no real compeling reason for anyone to switch. Then the only time you could possible make them switch is when they buy a new computer. They do not think about OS's. They could care less. 'All they want to do is ABC'. You could probably find a ABC like program in linux. But they KNOW the app ABC, and ABC runs on windows and thats that.
Not only do they want 'ABC'. They do not want to have to stand on their heads and recite the first four lines of a random star trek episode to make it work. They want to push a button, and it WORKS. For the first computer that comes along and does ABC but they do not have to recite the declaration of independence to get it to work they will jump at.
When my family comes to me for advice on a new box. I do not even bother with 'how fast is it', or 'how much ram is there'. More than likely these days its way better than my box. I steer them towards companies that have decent tech support, and can help them out of a jam. They may not end up with the BEST computer. But they usually end up with something that can be fixed. It matters not if the box is somewhat slow. They will be chucking it in a few years anyway. When they buy ABC version 2.3 that does something they MUST have. And ABC version 2.3 requires way more computer than they have...
The other reason people will never switch is because of 'i hate this stupid thing'. I have heard that thousands of times. Even said it myself a few times. Usually it is doing something you do not want it to, or not at all. Linux can be a complex beast to get ahold of. And can be way more complex than windows could even dream of. This does not help Linux.
The orig poster forgot one of the rules of computing. Not everyone knows as much as you think you do. Just because you were able to find it in the obscure HOWTO that you were able to google with their usenet archive. Does not mean my family will be able to do that. They probably have no idea google even exists!
I have been doing this long enough that people think I am awsome at this. I am not. I probably been banging my head harder on these computers just because I am stuborn. I just have more welts on my head than they do. I have also found you can show someone at most 1-2 steps at a time. Past that, they will be asking you to show that to them again.
Take my dad for example. All he wanted to do was sell things. Once I showed him ebay. It was like a fish to water. Before that I was lucky if I could get him to turn the computer on/off correctly. Now hes opening apps, clicking on things, and so on. But past that though, oh boy. I pushed it a tad to much and bought him a digital camera. WAY to complex for what he needed. He has no problem with film and a button. But a computer and button, too much. I KNOW he will never even touch the thing. Just because he has no nead for it.
I have NEVER in the thousands of times I have installed MS patchs, it just up and go 'wrong'. It has always been the ORDER of the patches. You MUST keep that straight. If you do that you will have smooth patching. Its a form of the DLL hell that we have all created.
SP's and rollups bring all the little ones together. These are good 'first thing to installs', sometimes. Option pack 4 for NT4 needs to go before SP6a. But there is no where that says that. Then you need the security rollup plus the hot fixes to get it to work right. You just need to write it down and follow the list. Keep track of the dates things come out. It is just as important as the service pack number...
I have only seen a patch break code once. That code was not written correctly. It was because the dev did not read the documentation of the module he was using. I was quite frankly amazed it worked before.
What a load. Flat tax is as FAIR as you can get. Regressive is a word applied to taxes to make it sound bad. Its not bad its FAIR.
Voodoo economics actually marginalized peoples work. You will have people who actually decide NOT to be in a higher tax bracket. As most brackets do not cleanly fall off. There is overlap. It actually gets to a point where it does not make sense to make more money.
And what do people that have money do with it? They save it or they spend it. This helps the econ as well. For every dollar saved creates 1.80 in new cash that can be spent on something else. If they spend it, it is spent on good which creates jobs, or at least recirculates the money to be spent or saved again...
Voodoo economics actually encourages people to be lazy and to NOT work hard. Why work harder when it costs me more?
Now to take an example someone else stated. Lets say someone makes 10k and someone else makes 500k. Well lets say the 10k person pays 2k in taxs. Now with that rate the person making 500k would pay 100k in taxes. That is 50 times the amount of the original person. Then you add more? Its very 'progressive', as in increasing in extent and severity. Of course its understandable they pay more. Its a mater of math. It was very clever picking the word 'progressive' as pro-x usually is something good. In this case it is not, its wordsmithing.
'OH but they will not miss it'? So damn what its not YOUR money its theirs. THEY earned it, not you.
Not only is flat fair it gets rid of a chunk of goverment that must track this stupid crap, pure OVERHEAD. These people could be used to help find the FRAUD that is rampent in our goverment, and help lower taxes!
Everyone paying their equaly scaled share is fair. The goverment has muddled it up over and over. They rarely prove they can do it correctly. Do not confuse helping 'the poor', with giving the money to the goverment. You have very little control over how they spend your money. They may use it to build a bomb, use it to build a road, or to pay for the TONS of paper they print every day. You have NO idea what they will spend it on.
You want to help the poor. Go volunteer and donate money to orginizations that actually help them. The goverment will not do the job for you. They will make it worse, and then tell you they are doing a GREAT job.
The only reason I have ever seen for the Laugher curve that makes sense is for inflation. As most tax codes lag what is really happening. It will help soak up excess cash in the system. Notice it is used as an inflationary control device. It actually REMOVES cash from people. It disapears it, poof, it does not redistribute it. This works because most goverments both state and federal have no real idea how much money they really make. They dont even really want to know. They swager around monitary terms that make most peoples eyes gloss over. This way they can spend whatever they like and not be held accountable for what they do.
Linear is fair, a bell curve sticks it to the middle class, not the upper class. And the lower class usually has a break on the first 10k anyways. They pay 0%, on that. The middle class is who gets stuck with the bill...
No states are trashed because they spend so much on EVERYTHING. They saw their tax pools go up during the last 'boom' and started spending like crazy. Well DUH people were making a bit more because of the cycle. Now they are making less. They got caught in the lets spend all this money we just got. With NO plan for what about when the economy snaps back to normal. So now they have HUGE debts they can not pay off any time soon.
.com with a new foosball table.
So what is the natural reaction? Lets RAISE taxes. Oh yes raising them will help the economy. Those idiots down at the state house sure know how to spend MY money better than I! This will make the low of the cycle we are currently in even worse. For we are paying for the extreem high where they spent like a
The one tax that every state could lower to help the economy? Fuel tax. Its acounts for about a dollar for every gallon. Yes gas is really that cheap. How would that help? Companies that ship things can lower prices or hire more people. They can ship more stuff for the same amount of money. This lowers costs of shipping every item everyone buys. These things get passed on the consumers. Even if they are not they are pass on to the market in the form of dividinds. Now think about the people that drive for 2 hours to get to work every day. Their cost is lowered. They can buy more stuff (which helps create jobs), or even save it (which STILL helps).
Taxs in this country are not used to help people. They are used to rearange wealth, and regulate 'bad' habits. And they do a spectacularly lousy job at it. Also most taxs in this country are like super glue they just do NOT come off, but you can always add more!
Toll roads are just another form of tax. Once paid off they just do not go away. Because NOW the money for that road is spent, and being spent, somewhere else. Now they wouldnt be able to make their 'budget' if they took away a tax. It is the classic game of build my empire. This year it took me $1000 to do X. I will ask for $1100 next year. Hmm, still only cost me $1000, well Ill just add something that costs $100. Well NOW it does cost $1100. So the next I will ask for $1200. Rinse and repeat. That money has to come from somewhere and these sorts of things is where it comes from till it is used up. So you will need something else to make up the 'deficit'. There is no damn 'deficit' they are spending to damn much. Also the word deficit makes it sound better than they 'overspent'. There currently is a 'deficit' because they did not plan for a cycle of revenue. They planned on MAX all the time. The economy moves in cycles. Its up for a few years, its down for a few years. If you plan for max spending and growth during that whole time you will never have enough money.
State prisons? Hell I bet its a drop in the bucket compaired to what they spend on social reform in your state.
I have figured it out. Even though I am in the 27% tax bracket. I spend 48% of every dollar I make in some sort of tax.
Whenever you hear any politician talking. Just add the words 'I want to spend your money on' to the front of whatever they are saying. For that is EXACTLY what they are talking about. The word 'no' is not in their vocabulary. It needs to be.
The real reason most spam makes even ANY money. Is people are afraid to say no. They are afraid they are missing out on something. They just need to learn that it is junk and say no.
...
Ive known people who buy stacks and stacks of books from publishers clearing house. Just because they are afraid they might not win the money from the sweepstakes. These are the exact same kind of people buying this junk. Some of them are living social security check to social security check.
If they send out 200k of emails and even 1 percent respond thats 2000 responses. Then lets say 10 percent of those actually buy. Thats 200. at 20 times say 50 bucks for the product. Thats 10000 dollars profit. The cost of the material and sending the email is probably a thousand tops. Thats just 1 mailing...
It quite litteraly is
1. gather underware
2.
3. profit
Where step two is SPAM. The economics and the staticstics of it are mind blowing. Not that I like the junk. It actually makes me mad. Because it is not usefull advertising. Its preying on peoples weakness. Then to boot it is usually preying on people who can least afford it.
The weiredist thing happened to me. I had one of those emails I have been using for YEARS. It got to about 50 a week. I figured out that it was 2 companies that were pummeling me with crap.
I decided it could get worse but I didnt use the email account anymore. So I was not to worried. I tried opting out in a different way. I did not opt out directly of the email. I did it off the top of their page. Went from 50 to 2 a week. 3 weeks in and so far its working. I am amazed. Usually when I did things like this the volume went up. What I figure is they are opting out of single mail lists out of the email. Sure I would not get any more from the company that asked for the mailing. But the main spam guys had me on hundreds of lists. I was vauge enough that its working for now.
Got the idea because almost all of them were either going to a 'special numbered' page to opt out, or emailing to the same domain but with a number. Thought it couldnt hurt, and if it made it worse I could just dump the email...
Course it means I just found one that actually does opt out. However there is nothing saying they can not sell my adress to someone else, as verified. But I have a sort reprive.
Now I am SURE it will come back but so far its been very nice only having one or two a week. Now if I could get my hotmail account to do the same thing. But I think spam guys are just dictionary attacking that one.
YIIkes! Apparently some people should not be allowed to play with the glue!