You write "which is influenced by local wages and rents" as if it was accounting for only cents in the retail price. I think it probably has a bigger influence than that.
Yes, a few dollars perhaps. Look at the price of a generic transformer, same size, shipping cost, similar manufaturing cost, and the overhead (wages & rent) should be similar too. But the branded one sells for much, much more. There's no reasonable explanation except profiteering. Like many inkjet refills, for instance. Generic brand; same quality, 1/4 the price.
Yeah, my typing is crap. It takes too long to preview (well, at least 10 seconds) so I usually just hit submit. Most other forums have an "edit" button and I'm used to fixing my errors post facto.
Notice however that for some reason all the errors are concentrated in the first line. The rest seems relatively intelligible.
The average wage in Vietnam is $700/year [1] while in the US it is $36,764/year [2].
I'm not even going to bother with calculations. I think the point is clear: You're not really comparing apples to apples there.
Irrelevant. The manufacturer doesn't bill depending on the customers' average wage levels. And I think the shipping cost from Vietnam to the US (in the worst case) in any quantity will be a few cents per unit. The rest is retail markup -- which is influenced by local wages and rents, but considering how cheap a lot of similar gadgets are, shows you most of it is profiteering because you have no option but to use the prorietary charger.
What a peculiar headline: "Facebook Exposes Advertisers To Hate Speech".
It's obvious the submitter is trying to pressure Facebook by implying that advertisers will pull ads. But why should we promote that tactic?
It's Muslims that are being exposed to hate speech, not advertisers (unless thae advertisers happen to be Muslim).
The aspect Slashdot should be concentrating on is that of freedom of expression vs preventing hate speech. Whether the number of ad impressions of Facebook is impacted is not really of much interest; certainly not the most important factor as the headline implies.
Uh, who? And which format will they choose that MS Word doesn't support?
Various government bodies have been mentioned, mostly in Europe if I recall correctly. Probably none are actually doing it, yet. But I didn't say that MSWord couldn't make the files, only that the DOC format (or its pretend-open version, OOXML) might not be accepted. Word will obviously be able to make ODF if required, just MS doesn't want to now while it's fighting this.
When I have to interoperate with people using Word files I try to get them to save as RTF. (Though RTF is an MS-controlled format, it's better supported and more stable than DOC if you're not using the same version of Word.) It's sometimes impossible for them to grasp the concept of "save as", and I have to give up and try to use their DOC files. Anything that would make people aware that "file" is not an short way of saying "MS Word DOC" would be an improvement. There was a time when.doc was a generic extension used for plain text files. MS hijacked that, so even if your file IS plain text, Word will open it by default, and if you edit it at all, transform it into their format.
Only for those who believe the initial capital, maintenance and debt servicing costs are insignificant. The last estimates I saw suggested the capital investment required would be a mere $40 billion dollars.
If 40 billion wuld do it, fuck, do it now. It;s about what you sopend in Iraq uin a year.
As for payoff, for example a space elevator makes asteroid mining viable. A medium sized metallic asteroid delivered (carefully...) to the surface is worth that easily. I've seen estimates of trillions, though obviously having a few megatons of metal on hand will change the market cost. And we could build O'Neill colonies, and beam solar power back to earth. Getting stuff up to orbit cheaply opens up the whole solar system to exploitation -- and we don't even have to feel guilty about despoiling an ecosystem.
Microsoft will continue to go the way they want to go and the 90% of the Office customer base will follow them
However, a number of important bodies will feel bound to use only ISO-approved formats. And if you want to deal with them, you will have to too. Any chink in the blanket "Word doc only" attitude that has built up over the last 10 years threatens their monopoly, as Word doesn't have any functional advantages (compared with OO or WordPerfect, say) to the great majority of users.
Whatever happend to "sorry man, I fucked up, my mistake" "oh, ok, shit happens, have a good day, watch it next time" and simply get on with your life?
Well, according to the summary (TFA being dead now), no one said "sorry man", instead the cop looked for another pretext to charge and arrest him. So lawyers are already in the picture.
If you don't like someone smoking in the bar or restaurant, which is a PRIVATELY OWNED BUSINESS, that you wish to go to, too bad if they are. You don't have to go there if you don't like it
In every city I've lived in, with smoking in bars unregulated, EVERY SINGLE BAR was smoking. There was NO CHOICE for non-smokers. The owners believed that smokers, as addicts, would always choose a smoking bar. And non-smokers would tolerate it, and in any case, had no option.
Fortunately, now many civilised cities are banning smoking in bars, over the screams of the bar owners who said they'd all go broke. Now it's the smokers who have the option of staying at home, "too bad if they don't like it". That's only fair, it was our (non-smokers') option for the last 100 years. But in every case, a year or so later -- eg, in Ireland, Scotland, New York, Hong Kong -- we find that the bars are as a whole doing at least as well as before. And now I can go out and get drunk without getting raspy eyeballs, stinky clothes and coughing all night.
What if a majority of students/researchers in China are working on their Internet (yes, their) and the "virtua-cop" fucks up their work? I can't imagine that this will do anything but be ridiculous and annoying.
In TFA this is mentioned as being part of various sites, like Sina.com. Not an independent program. So you'd see it only if you are browsing these portals.
It doesn't mention the technology, but I'd bet it was just a Flash animation. There are plenty of other animated Flash ads to distract you online (and Chinese sites are even more obnoxious in that line than most). I'm sure it will be easy to block on your desktop, but not in an Internet cafe where you can't install blockers.
The real irony is now this out-of-control economic "success" in China is spawning a corrupt attitude that you can package any shit you like in a box, stamp "Barbie" on it and send it off to eager kiddies in far off lands.
The only company that is selling anything in Barbie boxes is Mattel. Mattel pays Chinese factories to make them. It's Mattel's responsibility to set quality standards. China doesn't send products to the US and drop them by parachute. They're ordered, imported and sold by American companies.
China is about profits, about getting influence...
I promise to laugh the next time a white community is sexually terrorized by monkeys.
The "sexual terrorization" was all you noticed about this story? People's crops being destroyed and fear of their children being hurt? Not funny, ignored.
It's funny, because it's absurd. Did you laugh at Pulp Fiction? Oh, you're an asshole.
Pulp Fiction was "fiction". This is real. There is a difference between laughing at the Three Stooges taking a pratfall, and a real person falling and cracking their head. One is an appropriate response, one is being an asshole.
"The predominantly farming community is now having to receive famine relief food. The residents report that the monkeys have killed livestock and guard dogs, which has also left the villagers living in fear, especially for the safety of their babies and children."
But they're only black African savages, so it's "funny".
Really? Why would a court, should it come to that, accept an honour system as a security measure? If you have a duty to prevent "enemies" from accessing something, leaving it in the open, unguarded, with a "please do not take" sign on it is evidence of criminal negligence, not of fulfilling your duty. Judges are notoriously technically ignorant, but even they understand that this is useless. Why do you think this figleaf will protect you? Has anyone ever tested this defence in court? Or is it just everyone else does it, so you do it too?
implement controls on the information you are providing (to prevent access by countries on the weapons export list)
Ah yes, all those "If you are a terrorist, please do not download this file" warnings we see on stites with encryption software and such. I'm sure that is extremely effective. And terrroists don't know how to use proxy servers to hide their IP location either.
Why do the people who live in 'these guys' countries want to get outta said countries and come live in the U.S.?
There are 6 or 7 billion of us "these guys" in the world. We're not all trying to get Green Cards or wading across the Rio Grande. Most of us really are happy never to visit your country. And we wish you'd butt out of trying to tell us how to run ours. Thanks.
Do you really believe that the viagra spammer "imagines that the recipient wants what he is offering" as you say?
Some people at least must be stupid enough to buy from them. Though I'm sure they know that most people hate their guts.
viagra, this is something anyone can get, but the anti-censorship spam actually [i]is[/i] offering something that is thought to be hard or dangerous to obtain.
Dodging censorship is easy, not "hard or dangerous". If the information you are so desperate to send a secret? Any one in China who wants to sidestep censorship KNOWS ALREADY. They can ask a friend to instruct them on the details and give them the URLs. Why on earth would they trust a spam from a foreign country tellng them to do something that could get them into trouble?
The idea is well intentioned, but foolish, naive and counter-productive.
Basically this case means that (as I was saying in my original post) you need permission - traditional, analogue permission - to legally access a hotspot, unsecured or not.
That seems to be what the police are saying. Obviously though most posters here disagree. I hope the merits do get argued in court but most likely he'll plead guilty for a slap-on-the-wrist sentence. What we need is some firebrand to do it publicly and make a test case.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, a few dollars perhaps. Look at the price of a generic transformer, same size, shipping cost, similar manufaturing cost, and the overhead (wages & rent) should be similar too. But the branded one sells for much, much more. There's no reasonable explanation except profiteering. Like many inkjet refills, for instance. Generic brand; same quality, 1/4 the price.
Notice however that for some reason all the errors are concentrated in the first line. The rest seems relatively intelligible.
Irrelevant. The manufacturer doesn't bill depending on the customers' average wage levels. And I think the shipping cost from Vietnam to the US (in the worst case) in any quantity will be a few cents per unit. The rest is retail markup -- which is influenced by local wages and rents, but considering how cheap a lot of similar gadgets are, shows you most of it is profiteering because you have no option but to use the prorietary charger.
It's obvious the submitter is trying to pressure Facebook by implying that advertisers will pull ads. But why should we promote that tactic?
It's Muslims that are being exposed to hate speech, not advertisers (unless thae advertisers happen to be Muslim).
The aspect Slashdot should be concentrating on is that of freedom of expression vs preventing hate speech. Whether the number of ad impressions of Facebook is impacted is not really of much interest; certainly not the most important factor as the headline implies.
I have a hard time seeing "Fuck Islam" as an example of "making fun".
Various government bodies have been mentioned, mostly in Europe if I recall correctly. Probably none are actually doing it, yet. But I didn't say that MSWord couldn't make the files, only that the DOC format (or its pretend-open version, OOXML) might not be accepted. Word will obviously be able to make ODF if required, just MS doesn't want to now while it's fighting this.
When I have to interoperate with people using Word files I try to get them to save as RTF. (Though RTF is an MS-controlled format, it's better supported and more stable than DOC if you're not using the same version of Word.) It's sometimes impossible for them to grasp the concept of "save as", and I have to give up and try to use their DOC files. Anything that would make people aware that "file" is not an short way of saying "MS Word DOC" would be an improvement. There was a time when .doc was a generic extension used for plain text files. MS hijacked that, so even if your file IS plain text, Word will open it by default, and if you edit it at all, transform it into their format.
If 40 billion wuld do it, fuck, do it now. It;s about what you sopend in Iraq uin a year.
As for payoff, for example a space elevator makes asteroid mining viable. A medium sized metallic asteroid delivered (carefully...) to the surface is worth that easily. I've seen estimates of trillions, though obviously having a few megatons of metal on hand will change the market cost. And we could build O'Neill colonies, and beam solar power back to earth. Getting stuff up to orbit cheaply opens up the whole solar system to exploitation -- and we don't even have to feel guilty about despoiling an ecosystem.
However, a number of important bodies will feel bound to use only ISO-approved formats. And if you want to deal with them, you will have to too. Any chink in the blanket "Word doc only" attitude that has built up over the last 10 years threatens their monopoly, as Word doesn't have any functional advantages (compared with OO or WordPerfect, say) to the great majority of users.
Well, according to the summary (TFA being dead now), no one said "sorry man", instead the cop looked for another pretext to charge and arrest him. So lawyers are already in the picture.
What city in the world doesn't?
In every city I've lived in, with smoking in bars unregulated, EVERY SINGLE BAR was smoking. There was NO CHOICE for non-smokers. The owners believed that smokers, as addicts, would always choose a smoking bar. And non-smokers would tolerate it, and in any case, had no option.
Fortunately, now many civilised cities are banning smoking in bars, over the screams of the bar owners who said they'd all go broke. Now it's the smokers who have the option of staying at home, "too bad if they don't like it". That's only fair, it was our (non-smokers') option for the last 100 years. But in every case, a year or so later -- eg, in Ireland, Scotland, New York, Hong Kong -- we find that the bars are as a whole doing at least as well as before. And now I can go out and get drunk without getting raspy eyeballs, stinky clothes and coughing all night.
In TFA this is mentioned as being part of various sites, like Sina.com. Not an independent program. So you'd see it only if you are browsing these portals.
It doesn't mention the technology, but I'd bet it was just a Flash animation. There are plenty of other animated Flash ads to distract you online (and Chinese sites are even more obnoxious in that line than most). I'm sure it will be easy to block on your desktop, but not in an Internet cafe where you can't install blockers.
The only company that is selling anything in Barbie boxes is Mattel. Mattel pays Chinese factories to make them. It's Mattel's responsibility to set quality standards. China doesn't send products to the US and drop them by parachute. They're ordered, imported and sold by American companies.
China is about profits, about getting influence ...
And so is the US.
So everyone knows it's futile. It would be interesting to see the actual legislation or regulations this is supposed to be justified by.
Could you list these newspapers? No? So how do you know how this correlates with their editorial line?
None of the reports I've seen list them, let alone categorise them by "leftiness". I conclude you just made this factoid up.
So after screwing around at Salon.com:
Today's strip is here. And all strips here.
OK?
The "sexual terrorization" was all you noticed about this story? People's crops being destroyed and fear of their children being hurt? Not funny, ignored.
Pulp Fiction was "fiction". This is real. There is a difference between laughing at the Three Stooges taking a pratfall, and a real person falling and cracking their head. One is an appropriate response, one is being an asshole.
But they're only black African savages, so it's "funny".
Really? Why would a court, should it come to that, accept an honour system as a security measure? If you have a duty to prevent "enemies" from accessing something, leaving it in the open, unguarded, with a "please do not take" sign on it is evidence of criminal negligence, not of fulfilling your duty. Judges are notoriously technically ignorant, but even they understand that this is useless. Why do you think this figleaf will protect you? Has anyone ever tested this defence in court? Or is it just everyone else does it, so you do it too?
Ah yes, all those "If you are a terrorist, please do not download this file" warnings we see on stites with encryption software and such. I'm sure that is extremely effective. And terrroists don't know how to use proxy servers to hide their IP location either.
There are 6 or 7 billion of us "these guys" in the world. We're not all trying to get Green Cards or wading across the Rio Grande. Most of us really are happy never to visit your country. And we wish you'd butt out of trying to tell us how to run ours. Thanks.
Some people at least must be stupid enough to buy from them. Though I'm sure they know that most people hate their guts.
viagra, this is something anyone can get, but the anti-censorship spam actually [i]is[/i] offering something that is thought to be hard or dangerous to obtain.
Dodging censorship is easy, not "hard or dangerous". If the information you are so desperate to send a secret? Any one in China who wants to sidestep censorship KNOWS ALREADY. They can ask a friend to instruct them on the details and give them the URLs. Why on earth would they trust a spam from a foreign country tellng them to do something that could get them into trouble?
The idea is well intentioned, but foolish, naive and counter-productive.
That seems to be what the police are saying. Obviously though most posters here disagree. I hope the merits do get argued in court but most likely he'll plead guilty for a slap-on-the-wrist sentence. What we need is some firebrand to do it publicly and make a test case.