The mystique of the quality German car quickly evaporates when you own one or crunch the numbers on the cost of purchase, maintenance, parts and accessories
I guess all those millions of BMWs I see on the road must be a figment of my imagination then.
Google has been working on this AI problem since probably 2008 or so and been road-testing self-driving cars since 2011. As far as I know BMW has no development at all on this concept.
BMW has been making cars since 1916. How long has Google been making them? How hard is it for established manufacturers to get the tens of thousands of parts in a road car 100% correct at design time? Google is not infallible. If they do indeed decide to mass manufacture their own cars (which I doubt) it will take years and billions of miles to iron out all the issues. Engineering isn't software.
Say you're BMW's favourite kind of customer: you buy new, all the gimmicks, change your car for another BMW every 4-5 years and have been doing so for 20 years. Are you going to start buying Google's plastic toy car that's only been in production for 2 years instead? You might buy one to go with your BMW, especially if you live in a city, but you're still going to buy the BMW.
Research and development is an extremely long process, there, and as far as I know BMW's R and D is focused on building cars.... they probably don't have people who even know about robotics, let-alone AI for the self-driving problem.
Presumably they'll do what Google, Apple, FB and the rest of the tech-cartels do when they want to muscle in on something: buy it in.
Actually, having said that, I very much doubt BMW will be competing with Google for car sales anyway, because I very much doubt Google will be retailing their cars. They will either operate the fleet themselves or sell them to other fleet operators or just sell the software.
The irony is that with noscript enabled you simply don't exist for 95% of sites (log crunching is SO 1999). You might think that you like it that way but it's extremely shortsighted: you can hardly expect people to develop content that appeals to you if they don't know you exist.
Yeah, but that async code has only existed for a couple of months. Until recently analytics code was the bottleneck on most sites, making it a bit rich for google to be claiming to have sped up the internet.
Ah yes, but you're forgetting that postgre is advocated by smug holier-than-thou geeks, the kind that everyone wants to punch in the face. This means that it will continue to be an obscure footnote in database history, while mysql continues to be the world's most widely used database.
We've also all seen the classical antidepressant commercial
Actually, only Americans and New Zealanders have seen that (in the first world). They are the only two OECD countries that allow direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers.
Why? Who cares if webcomic X gets its own 2 line wikipedia page? It doesn't cost anything (except a trivial amount of disk space) and no one has to look at it if they don't want to. The idea of wikipedia being a rival to Britannica et al should be left behind: while editing is open to all no one can treat it as definitive and frankly I doubt anyone does. Wikipedia is "good enough". It's 95% there, but that extra 5% will take a hell of a lot of effort and come at a cost that many would find unnacceptable. Just accept that it is what it is and enjoy it, stop striving for something unobtainable and frankly undesirable.
As someone with some experience in retail I can tell you that 50% margin would be considered extremely good for an electronic item at final retail. Normally the high street retailer will make 10-20% on these things and the internet discounters will be pushing 5%. There is just so much competition out there and people are very sensitive to price for electronics, however amazon has no competitors for the kindle, so they can pretty much charge what they want. (For comparison, clothing will normally make 50-80%, books 35%, though it depends greatly on the industry and niche)
I think you maybe on the wrong site. As you point out, people here like to base their discussions on the "facts" they just inserted into to wikipedia. Actual facts from actual people who work in the actual industry are right out.
So, to continue this shocking analogy, you would prefer to have to ring round 5 gritting companies beforehand to get the best price, keeping an eye on the weather all the time just to make sure you don't forget? And there's a fair chance your neighbours will have used a different company, meaning several journeys by several trucks (which is clearly not more efficient) not forgetting that the companies will necessarily being buying in smaller quantities therefore getting a worse price. Not to mention the people who choose not to pay and get the benefit of other people paying for them, leading to a tragedy of the commons. No, sometimes competition is good, in some cases it is clearly ludicrous.
If you've learnt one thing from the events of the last 12 months in the economy it should be that there is no guiding hand; free markets are not by default the most efficient solution. Like natural selection the market goes to local maxima in the landscape rather than the best solution. Sometimes the local maxima IS the best solution, but oftimes it's not.
The other three factors mentioned are economic, are poor people more likely to have vinyl flooring than, say, wood flooring? Anecdotally it would seem so to me...
Skype for business is truly awful. There is no support , their software locks users out of their accounts randomly along with their credit, it also blocks them from the business account randomly, oh and did I mention there is no way to contact skype?
I can deal with the lack of support and dropped calls in their free version, but as soon as I start paying them money I expect to at least have some level of contact with the company and people who are paying a considerable amount (and there are people spending thousands complaining in their forum) will expect personal contact. If they ever want to turn a profit I suggest they get this part of their business sorted or they are boned.
That only proves that they're *not* rapid free marketeers, not that they *are* left wing. Every government around the world has effectively nationalised its banks, N Rock was the very first and they obviously decided that the political ramifications of using the N word were too much to bear. Of all the banks only Lehman was allowed to collapse and, once again, that was soon considered A Bad Thing. Now they are all just nationalised, no sorry, "bailed out".
Proof that they are not lefties? The privatisation of Royal Mail. Not even Maggie, in her wildest fantasies, dreamt of doing that. It doesn't make sense even to them, but they desperately want to do it no matter what.
Can we now stack people more efficiently so they take up less space?
Re:In some ways it was much better in 1996
on
Jurassic Web
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· Score: 1
While Google was great between about '97 and '03 or so, it's become so gamed to be as bad as Altavista was in 1996
You are kidding right? This is some form of humor? Altavista at the end was a very lame joke. Yes google is poor if you happen to be searching for ring tones or asbestos lawyers but 99.9% of searches are very good. With altavista you were lucky if you got ANY genuine results.
There was more porn, and it was more extreme and less restricted
Based on what? There might have been more porn as a percentage of all web pages, but I can GUARANTEE there is absolutely more out there now. Also what on earth are you looking for that you can't find right now in two clicks from google?
I can't help looking back fondly to a lot of things that are no longer with us
Things move on; embrace change. Although it makes people really angry chnage is rarely bad and the past is always viewed through a lameness filter.
heh, that's funny, 7 years ago Windows 98 was the best operating system that anyone had ever used and XP was the unstable new PoS that no-one was ever going to use and was going to be Microsoft's death knell. How times change...
Slashdot Mirror
The mystique of the quality German car quickly evaporates when you own one or crunch the numbers on the cost of purchase, maintenance, parts and accessories
I guess all those millions of BMWs I see on the road must be a figment of my imagination then.
Google has been working on this AI problem since probably 2008 or so and been road-testing self-driving cars since 2011. As far as I know BMW has no development at all on this concept.
BMW has been making cars since 1916. How long has Google been making them? How hard is it for established manufacturers to get the tens of thousands of parts in a road car 100% correct at design time? Google is not infallible. If they do indeed decide to mass manufacture their own cars (which I doubt) it will take years and billions of miles to iron out all the issues. Engineering isn't software.
Say you're BMW's favourite kind of customer: you buy new, all the gimmicks, change your car for another BMW every 4-5 years and have been doing so for 20 years. Are you going to start buying Google's plastic toy car that's only been in production for 2 years instead? You might buy one to go with your BMW, especially if you live in a city, but you're still going to buy the BMW.
Research and development is an extremely long process, there, and as far as I know BMW's R and D is focused on building cars.... they probably don't have people who even know about robotics, let-alone AI for the self-driving problem.
Presumably they'll do what Google, Apple, FB and the rest of the tech-cartels do when they want to muscle in on something: buy it in.
Actually, having said that, I very much doubt BMW will be competing with Google for car sales anyway, because I very much doubt Google will be retailing their cars. They will either operate the fleet themselves or sell them to other fleet operators or just sell the software.
The irony is that with noscript enabled you simply don't exist for 95% of sites (log crunching is SO 1999). You might think that you like it that way but it's extremely shortsighted: you can hardly expect people to develop content that appeals to you if they don't know you exist.
Yeah, but that async code has only existed for a couple of months. Until recently analytics code was the bottleneck on most sites, making it a bit rich for google to be claiming to have sped up the internet.
Ah yes, but you're forgetting that postgre is advocated by smug holier-than-thou geeks, the kind that everyone wants to punch in the face. This means that it will continue to be an obscure footnote in database history, while mysql continues to be the world's most widely used database.
For the unenlightened the Daily Mail is about as reliable and non-partisan as the National Enquirer. Stories from them should be filtered at source.
We've also all seen the classical antidepressant commercial
Actually, only Americans and New Zealanders have seen that (in the first world). They are the only two OECD countries that allow direct marketing of prescription drugs to consumers.
i agree with you completely
Why? Who cares if webcomic X gets its own 2 line wikipedia page? It doesn't cost anything (except a trivial amount of disk space) and no one has to look at it if they don't want to. The idea of wikipedia being a rival to Britannica et al should be left behind: while editing is open to all no one can treat it as definitive and frankly I doubt anyone does. Wikipedia is "good enough". It's 95% there, but that extra 5% will take a hell of a lot of effort and come at a cost that many would find unnacceptable. Just accept that it is what it is and enjoy it, stop striving for something unobtainable and frankly undesirable.
As someone with some experience in retail I can tell you that 50% margin would be considered extremely good for an electronic item at final retail. Normally the high street retailer will make 10-20% on these things and the internet discounters will be pushing 5%. There is just so much competition out there and people are very sensitive to price for electronics, however amazon has no competitors for the kindle, so they can pretty much charge what they want. (For comparison, clothing will normally make 50-80%, books 35%, though it depends greatly on the industry and niche)
Except of course they will never get round to paying off their debt. They will inflate their way out, like every other time they got into trouble.
So don't keep cash; only land and gold hold their value.
Damn straight; socialists did it..
I think you maybe on the wrong site. As you point out, people here like to base their discussions on the "facts" they just inserted into to wikipedia. Actual facts from actual people who work in the actual industry are right out.
But thank you anyway.
So, to continue this shocking analogy, you would prefer to have to ring round 5 gritting companies beforehand to get the best price, keeping an eye on the weather all the time just to make sure you don't forget? And there's a fair chance your neighbours will have used a different company, meaning several journeys by several trucks (which is clearly not more efficient) not forgetting that the companies will necessarily being buying in smaller quantities therefore getting a worse price. Not to mention the people who choose not to pay and get the benefit of other people paying for them, leading to a tragedy of the commons. No, sometimes competition is good, in some cases it is clearly ludicrous.
If you've learnt one thing from the events of the last 12 months in the economy it should be that there is no guiding hand; free markets are not by default the most efficient solution. Like natural selection the market goes to local maxima in the landscape rather than the best solution. Sometimes the local maxima IS the best solution, but oftimes it's not.
In the UK "Socialists" would have come round and put rock salt on the road while you were asleep, thus saving you from making this Bad Analogy.
They irony is that Google IS paying AP for their content. Millions of dollars according to the BBC news article
The other three factors mentioned are economic, are poor people more likely to have vinyl flooring than, say, wood flooring? Anecdotally it would seem so to me...
Anyone who manages to get funding to attempt to falsify this theory will be onto a good thing...
Skype for business is truly awful. There is no support , their software locks users out of their accounts randomly along with their credit, it also blocks them from the business account randomly, oh and did I mention there is no way to contact skype?
I can deal with the lack of support and dropped calls in their free version, but as soon as I start paying them money I expect to at least have some level of contact with the company and people who are paying a considerable amount (and there are people spending thousands complaining in their forum) will expect personal contact. If they ever want to turn a profit I suggest they get this part of their business sorted or they are boned.
The BBC calls them narcissists: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7943906.stm
Yes, a generation of self centred jerks who've never been told they're wrong; I look forward to the bright new future...
That only proves that they're *not* rapid free marketeers, not that they *are* left wing. Every government around the world has effectively nationalised its banks, N Rock was the very first and they obviously decided that the political ramifications of using the N word were too much to bear. Of all the banks only Lehman was allowed to collapse and, once again, that was soon considered A Bad Thing. Now they are all just nationalised, no sorry, "bailed out".
Proof that they are not lefties? The privatisation of Royal Mail. Not even Maggie, in her wildest fantasies, dreamt of doing that. It doesn't make sense even to them, but they desperately want to do it no matter what.
Please point me to some (real) evidence that New Labour is left wing in any way whatsoever...
Can we now stack people more efficiently so they take up less space?
While Google was great between about '97 and '03 or so, it's become so gamed to be as bad as Altavista was in 1996
You are kidding right? This is some form of humor? Altavista at the end was a very lame joke. Yes google is poor if you happen to be searching for ring tones or asbestos lawyers but 99.9% of searches are very good. With altavista you were lucky if you got ANY genuine results.
There was more porn, and it was more extreme and less restricted
Based on what? There might have been more porn as a percentage of all web pages, but I can GUARANTEE there is absolutely more out there now. Also what on earth are you looking for that you can't find right now in two clicks from google?
I can't help looking back fondly to a lot of things that are no longer with us
Things move on; embrace change. Although it makes people really angry chnage is rarely bad and the past is always viewed through a lameness filter.
heh, that's funny, 7 years ago Windows 98 was the best operating system that anyone had ever used and XP was the unstable new PoS that no-one was ever going to use and was going to be Microsoft's death knell. How times change...