Generally the one who first occupies the battlefield awaiting the enemy is at ease; the one who comes later and rushes into battle is fatigued. Therefore those skilled in warfare move the enemy, and are not moved by the enemy. - Sun Tzu
We occupied Iraq, jihadists are coming to us there. We seem to be in agreement with the Tao in this case.
Vietnam was lost because the US fought an enemy on their own ground, where they could defend and hide as a native force.
Perhaps you have a poor translation of Sun Tzu but it is the virtuous force, not the native force that has the advantage. Or perhaps you know little of Sun Tzu's teachings beyond out of context quotes. We virtually wiped out the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong were not a virtuous force, as their failure to spark revolution in the Thet offensive demonstrated. When you have a native force that relies on brutality and fear, as in the Viet Cong case, an external force will find natives willing to provide them with intelligence and guides so that the external force will understand the terrain, tactical, and stragic situations. Sun Tzu provides ample lessons regarding defeating a native force on their home ground.
Your understanding of US history is a bit superficial, pop culture like again. The Vietnam war was not lost in Vietnam. It was lost in the US. North Vietnamese general Giap failed in his seige of Khe San, Giap failed in his Thet offensive in that it failed to spark the popular uprising, the Pentagon failed in that through its conduct it lost credibility and the Thet Offensive was erroneously received as a defeat by the US public. Giap's victories occured in the US, not in Vietnam. The US was able to eventually force North Vietnam to accept terms where they recognized the existence of South Vietnam's government and the US left. Later North Vietnam violated this treaty and invaded the South, ironically this was a very conventional invation, heavy armor and all, and would have been defeated had the US provided assistance to South Vietnam. However the political climate in the US prevented such assistance.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea sound familiar to you?
Sure, I understand the point you attempt but you are overlooking something. He actually practiced some socialism, government control and orgranization of industry. Industrialists were tolerated due to their short term necessity. There was a generous safety net, well for those citizens deemed genetically worthy. In short you confuse the initial short term behaviour with the longer term 1,000 year plan. It's that plan which makes the term socialist applicable.
Fascists HATE communists.
Communists war against eachother, socialists war against eachother,... Political groups hate competition, similar/dissimilar beliefs don't change that.
I mean, if the soldiers were stationed in your homeland and a foreign invasion was imminent, that I could understand, but while they're occupying some third world country halfway across the globe? Nope, does not follow.
You should avoid a career in strategy. A defensive posture as you suggest is inferior to an offensive strategy that takes the fight to the enemy, denies the enemy the initiative, dictates the terrain to the enemy,... While there may have been only one or two terrorist training camps in Iraq prior to the invasion Al Queda and other jihadists are certainly there now. Where would they be if Iraq were not such a magnet? They were displaced from Afganistan, we gave them a place to go, we gave their potential recruits a place to go. In the long run we may be better off by drawing them to Iraq for battle than by letting them disperse around the globe and choose the time and place of their attacks (New York, Pennsyvania, Washington DC, Spain, London). Is this fair to the Iraqi's that we use their country as a battlefield in the global war on terror? No. Are all the attacks in Iraq conducted by foreigners and jihadists? No.
It is premature to draw conclusions about Iraq. It will be decades before we can tell if the US invasion made things better or worse. For now, just keep in mind that the political left distorts events to favor their politics just as the political right does.
"When I go to the range I use cheap standard bullets, but when I load it for home defense, it's hollow point. Goes in with a centimeter, comes out with a decimeter."
Sir, I suggest you Trademark that phrase and enter Bullet Manufacturing.
That would be a waste of money. The home market is primarily in the US so metric units are fairly useless.;-)
These are computers installed for educational purposes in a number of telecenters in the public libraries in Mexico for all the young students preparing for a global world.
So these are special purpose computers that have a limited role. Preventing users from installing software seems like a pretty good idea. The BSD systems I used at the university had similar restrictions. How did we manage to get those CS degree under such oppression. More seriously:
Doesn't MIT engage in philosophically similar practices with the $100 laptop initiative. Apple was turned down for no other reason than to promote the donating community when Apple wanted to donate Mac OS X. The "tinkering" thing is a fraud, a cover story, basic computer literacy does not require tinkering. Wouldn't the children have been better off with a Unix based OS that also had the premier UI for their demographic. Apple designs for novices and school age kids. The education market has been a focus for decades.
"Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment."
Bill Gates amassed a fortune through ruthless and merciless and eventually illegal practices. That he has chosen to give some back, and I tip my hat to him for that, anc for all the good he is now doing I liken to the mafia giving ill-gotten gains to charities and somehow being anointed for that.
Bill's corporation competed against other corporations, it harmed some of them, but that is how the market is supposed to work. That is in part how we have a darwinian process that determines supply and demand. MS' illegal practices were not obviously illegal at the time they were put into practice, the line is fuzzy and they were definitely treading in questionable territory but it was not a given that the government would see that it would warrant prosecution and it was not a given that a judge would rule against them. Comparing MS to the Mafia just destroys any credibility you may have, it exposes your politics / blind hatred. Linux destroys corporations, the traditional Unix vendrors. Apple can be even more heavy handed than MS. They merely don't get the bad press because they are not on top. Markets are like hamburgers, their creation is not a pretty picture.
1. "Man of the Year" is not awarded for doing good. It is awarded for influencing the world, for good or evil.
2. He was a delusional piss-poor amateur strategist. The general staff had some brilliant people, going on his own he got hundreds of thousands of his soldiers killed/captured for no good reason. Oddly, the world was better off due to his imcompetence. He was delusional partly due to a malfunctioning brain and partly due to sentiments like those you offer. Some successs in the amateur hour politics of post-WWI germany, where thuggery trumped intellectualism and competence, proves nothing.
Your heart is in the right place, nobody thinks hunger is a good thing, but there is also the reality that well meaning people may create an even greater human tragedy in the future. If you feed a million people hungry people now and DO NOT address the underlying conditions that contributed to the hunger in the first place then you will just have several miilion hungry people in a generation. You have to address the root causes of hunger, not merely treat the symptom which is the hunger itself. The underlying problems are not transporting excess food, they are local political, economic, religious, and cultural. These are very hard to change. This problem is far more complex than you suggest. If it were as easy to fix as you suggest it would have been fixed long ago.
If you think the runtime of sorting algorithms is esoteric, I can't imagine what you think everyday knowledge for a programmer is.
Sorting is an important topic in school, or independent study if you are going that route, but everyday knowledge is to understand the issues surrounding sorting and how to research what method best first your situation and data. It may be good to recall that C/C++, if that's your language, offers quicksort and its' run-time and optimal/degenerate data patterns but that is about it. The last time I needed specialized sorting (sort atoms along z axis - fairly stable order as a molecular structure is animated) was years ago and I consulted Knuth to find what matched my situation/data, implemented that, profiled it, saw that sorting didn't show up (0.1% cutoff), done with sorting for another few years and Knuth is still on the bookshelve for when that day comes. So yeah, keeping detail of a half dozen sorting algorithms is memory is a waste, it's far more efficient to remember where your copy of Knuth is.
"Actually, as you get older you realize that school habits are not applicable to the real world. Jobs are not like a quiz, you shouldn't be pulling details from memory, that's why we have reference manuals."
If you think Computer Science degrees are "about" memorization then you either went to a shitty school or don't have a CS degree.
"Quiz" != "CS Degree"
CS Degrees are about showing that you may have the potenitial to be a good programmer. If you think it means any more than that come back when you have more experience. People who are good programmers at the time they graduate generally did a lot of programming outside of their assignments.
As you get older, your brain changes configuration. You don't want/can't learn as fast, or don't care about the details anymore.
Actually, as you get older you realize that school habits are not applicable to the real world. Jobs are not like a quiz, you shouldn't be pulling details from memory, that's why we have reference manuals. Do I need to memorize the the run-time complexity of 10 sorting algorithms? No, what a waste, I merely need to have Knuth Vol 3 Sorting and Searching with a post-it note on the page with side-by-side comparisons of various sorting alogorithms, their run-tme complexity giving various types of data, info on optimal and degenerate data, etc.
Learning is not about memorizing lots of trivia. It is about filtering important info from the huge volume of crap and trivia. Learning was once described to me as the *selective* loss of information. You have to think about that for a second. We're bombarded with info, overwhelmed with it, we have to discard some of it. The better strategy is to discard info on a selective basis, the trivia, rather than discard info randomly. What some consider "not caring" is what others would consider "being selective".
They are still involved in development, they just know better than to get involved in the high profile / high risk / 80 hour a week stuff. They work on boring things you don't hear about on slashdot, and only work around 40 hours a week so they have more time for the new convertible and new blonde that comes with the mid life crisis.
The Mini is their first attractively priced system in quite a while. I'm sure it has expanded their sales somewhat but it has also cababalized upgrades of higher priced models.
I heard that Mac users tend to buy new machines a lot less often than their Windows/PC using counterparts which negatively affects their market share.
That may not be the factor it used to be. It used to be the case that newer PCs would come out and you could see dramatic differences in performance, that spurred upgrade cycles. I recent years this has not been the case, PCs surpassed the performance needs of users years ago. Unless you are into games a 2.0GHz system feels about the same as a 3.4GHz system. PC vendors are noticing that people are holding on to their PCs longer today. This also explains a migration from desktops to laptops. Laptops may be lower performing in theory but in practice they are just fine for most users, the convenience, not performance, becomes the dominant factor.
I thought Apple had something of a resurgence in the last couple years, but I don't see much indication of that.
Yes, but that was due to the iPod not the Mac. They are offering the most capable Macs ever, a industrial strength Unix with an actual credible consumer oriented UI on top of it, and with the Mini an attractive price. Yet they are merely maintaining or moderately expanding their market position. They may be on an upward trajectory but nothing dramatic is evident on the Mac side yet. Apple's current buzz and stock price is all about the iPod.
The only REAL COMPETITION story is in the home computer market. That is where we had C=, Apple, Tandy, TI, Atari etc actually innovating and competing. The business market never even gave a single platform a chance other than IBM PC's...
The graphs included the home market. The Apple II was used in businesses quite a bit back in the day. Apple had a chance, there was a battle, Apple lost.
.. if only some of the big unix vendors back then had thought: Gee, lets push our operating system as a general purpose desktop system. Instead, we had a whole range of proprietary unixes that ran on their own proprietary platforms.
It was tried. Microsoft sold Xenix, no one cared, MS then gave up and sold it to SCO I think. MS' second attempt to get people to move to a "proper" operating system was OS/2 1.x, that failed too. You just couldn't get people to give up on DOS. You literally have to "give away" alternatives, either practical give aways as in Windows bundled with PCs or literal give aways as with Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
Also the big Unix vendors were really hardware vendors. It's like Apple today, it would be suicide to let their OS run on generic PC hardware. You are effectively arguing that all these companies should have abandoned their core business and volumteered to become a small fraction of their former selves. Linux is not something that helps Unix vendors, it kills them. Linux is not much of a threat to MS as many around here assume. Linux's real competition is Sun and other traditional vendors. It is a disruptive technology that destroyed a market segment. The traditional Unix vendors never had a chance.
I'm not arguing that the world is better or worse off. I'm merely arguing that your proposal would not have helped the vendors.
That's about the only situation Timmy could USE such a weapon though. The guns you named aren't hunting weapons, so that's out.
Not true.
Sporting uses of firearms are not limited to hunting. Target shooting, an Olympic sport, is more common and less controversial. Some may question how applicable an M4 is to target shooting, the more common indoor ranges won't be able to accommodate it as they could a.22 caliber rifle. However outdoor ranges that serve high powered rifles, such as hunting rifles, will be able to accomodate it.
The M4 is at it's core a low-end hunting rifle in terms of power. In fact a civilian model (AR-15 type - no automatic fire) only differs from low end semi-automatic hunting rifles in cosmetics, and they often ship with 5 round magazines to be compliant with hunting regulations.
Sure, the dealership will know how to service it, but that wasn't what I was referring to by "garages".
Maintenance is included is the sale price of BMWs, most owners will never need to visit a 3rd party garage. For the few people who do tend to hang on to cars beyond (extended-)maintenance periods (I tend to go beyond 100K miles), well, given that we're referring to BMW owners the dealership price is probably not an issue and/or by that time the technology won't be so new and some 3rd parties may be able to deal with it. I admit I'm a little skeptical about the later, given the former a sizeable non-dealer market may never really develop. There will be the occasional 3rd party specialty shop (a buddy has one specializing in "German" cars).
"Seriously, wait 18 months and the price of this rig drops by 50%. Until then, I'm quite content to play in 1024x768 at 60Hz with medium textures; and you know, it doesn't bother me in the least."
Don't do that. 800x600 at 72Hz is okay, but 60Hz is more than likely to give you a headache.
It's a safe bet that he is referring to a flat panel. I picked up a dirt cheap 15" flat panel and saved the box so I could cart it to LAN parties. Combine that with a Shuttle-like system, easy to move, low footprint, lower power consumption,...
I must be soul-sucking enough to write the dreck that is on TV, knowing your bosses are making more money so you can be forced to write even more dreck with product-placement would be too much.
Soul sucking? So what. That's the tradeoff you make for a somewhat reliable paycheck, you get to implement someone else's vision not yours. If they are not willing to quit their job and live in a small cabin near a pond while they work on their great novel they don't get to talk about artistic integrity. Although I'm overstating things, I am half serious.
>"How many homebrew projects can be thrown *through a closed* second floor window and have 99.9% reliability?"
Throw a brick first. They're pretty reliable. Or, for $4800 - make that an ingot.
Bricks don't have the heft and trajectory of a grenade. They'll likely miss, and it's a danger when it bounces off the wall and comes back down even if you are wearing kevlar.
The brick cannot provide imagery of what was going on in the room before everyone got startled.
Even if the window is open you still need milspec grade electronics. Homebrew will still be too unreliable, bouncing off walls and floors is often too much, you need weather resistance as well,...
These things aren't expensive because of gouging. These things are expensive because R&D was necessary to solve problems we amateurs don't understand, QA is far more rigorous and costly than with consumer electronics, and there is a limitted supply of buyers at this point.
To get to the host OS you've had to go through whatever the standard login validation is. The host OS may still be doing keylogging, you are not totally secure *iff* someone is going through extaordinarty measure to monitor that cafe's systems.
This is a new one. Are you seriously suggesting that complex monopolies and cartels are economically impossible and have never existed?
Amazing, even for a throat-stamping free market fundamentalist.
The GP was correct
Remove the tinfoil and come out of your bunker and checkout the real world. Observe the non-binary state of things. While it is theoretically possible for a cartel to hold, in practice they usually fail and failure is more likely as membership grows. 10 member cartel, you get 10% of cartel price times quantity demanded. You might consider cheating and go for 100% of 95% of cartel price time quantity, or you might fear that some other member may try. This presumes monitoring is lagged. If monitoring is instant then other member simply match price. The net result is that cartel prices are generally unstable and tend to fall towards the market equilibrium price. For cartels to work there usually needs to be some strong enforcement method. To return to the prisoner's dilema theme, this would be knowing something bad would happen to your family.
And yes, I really did have microeconomics last quarter.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Generally the one who first occupies the battlefield awaiting the enemy is at ease; the one who comes later and rushes into battle is fatigued. Therefore those skilled in warfare move the enemy, and are not moved by the enemy. - Sun Tzu
We occupied Iraq, jihadists are coming to us there. We seem to be in agreement with the Tao in this case.
Vietnam was lost because the US fought an enemy on their own ground, where they could defend and hide as a native force.
Perhaps you have a poor translation of Sun Tzu but it is the virtuous force, not the native force that has the advantage. Or perhaps you know little of Sun Tzu's teachings beyond out of context quotes. We virtually wiped out the Viet Cong. The Viet Cong were not a virtuous force, as their failure to spark revolution in the Thet offensive demonstrated. When you have a native force that relies on brutality and fear, as in the Viet Cong case, an external force will find natives willing to provide them with intelligence and guides so that the external force will understand the terrain, tactical, and stragic situations. Sun Tzu provides ample lessons regarding defeating a native force on their home ground.
Your understanding of US history is a bit superficial, pop culture like again. The Vietnam war was not lost in Vietnam. It was lost in the US. North Vietnamese general Giap failed in his seige of Khe San, Giap failed in his Thet offensive in that it failed to spark the popular uprising, the Pentagon failed in that through its conduct it lost credibility and the Thet Offensive was erroneously received as a defeat by the US public. Giap's victories occured in the US, not in Vietnam. The US was able to eventually force North Vietnam to accept terms where they recognized the existence of South Vietnam's government and the US left. Later North Vietnam violated this treaty and invaded the South, ironically this was a very conventional invation, heavy armor and all, and would have been defeated had the US provided assistance to South Vietnam. However the political climate in the US prevented such assistance.
Democratic People's Republic of Korea sound familiar to you?
... Political groups hate competition, similar/dissimilar beliefs don't change that.
Sure, I understand the point you attempt but you are overlooking something. He actually practiced some socialism, government control and orgranization of industry. Industrialists were tolerated due to their short term necessity. There was a generous safety net, well for those citizens deemed genetically worthy. In short you confuse the initial short term behaviour with the longer term 1,000 year plan. It's that plan which makes the term socialist applicable.
Fascists HATE communists.
Communists war against eachother, socialists war against eachother,
I mean, if the soldiers were stationed in your homeland and a foreign invasion was imminent, that I could understand, but while they're occupying some third world country halfway across the globe? Nope, does not follow.
... While there may have been only one or two terrorist training camps in Iraq prior to the invasion Al Queda and other jihadists are certainly there now. Where would they be if Iraq were not such a magnet? They were displaced from Afganistan, we gave them a place to go, we gave their potential recruits a place to go. In the long run we may be better off by drawing them to Iraq for battle than by letting them disperse around the globe and choose the time and place of their attacks (New York, Pennsyvania, Washington DC, Spain, London). Is this fair to the Iraqi's that we use their country as a battlefield in the global war on terror? No. Are all the attacks in Iraq conducted by foreigners and jihadists? No.
You should avoid a career in strategy. A defensive posture as you suggest is inferior to an offensive strategy that takes the fight to the enemy, denies the enemy the initiative, dictates the terrain to the enemy,
It is premature to draw conclusions about Iraq. It will be decades before we can tell if the US invasion made things better or worse. For now, just keep in mind that the political left distorts events to favor their politics just as the political right does.
"When I go to the range I use cheap standard bullets, but when I load it for home defense, it's hollow point. Goes in with a centimeter, comes out with a decimeter."
;-)
Sir, I suggest you Trademark that phrase and enter Bullet Manufacturing.
That would be a waste of money. The home market is primarily in the US so metric units are fairly useless.
These are computers installed for educational purposes in a number of telecenters in the public libraries in Mexico for all the young students preparing for a global world.
n line.wsj.com/public/article/SB113193305149696140-4 42o71jo_IlBrLpyUeeOdsqDs7E_20061113.html%3Fmod%3Dt ff_main_tff_top+%24100+laptop+mit+apple&hl=en&clie nt=firefox-a
So these are special purpose computers that have a limited role. Preventing users from installing software seems like a pretty good idea. The BSD systems I used at the university had similar restrictions. How did we manage to get those CS degree under such oppression. More seriously:
Doesn't MIT engage in philosophically similar practices with the $100 laptop initiative. Apple was turned down for no other reason than to promote the donating community when Apple wanted to donate Mac OS X. The "tinkering" thing is a fraud, a cover story, basic computer literacy does not require tinkering. Wouldn't the children have been better off with a Unix based OS that also had the premier UI for their demographic. Apple designs for novices and school age kids. The education market has been a focus for decades.
"Steve Jobs, Apple Computer Inc.'s chief executive, offered to provide free copies of the company's operating system, OS X, for the machine, according to Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT who is one of the initiative's founders. "We declined because it's not open source," says Dr. Papert, noting the designers want an operating system that can be tinkered with. An Apple spokesman declined to comment."
http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:PAAMCASTOyMJ:o
Bill Gates amassed a fortune through ruthless and merciless and eventually illegal practices. That he has chosen to give some back, and I tip my hat to him for that, anc for all the good he is now doing I liken to the mafia giving ill-gotten gains to charities and somehow being anointed for that.
Bill's corporation competed against other corporations, it harmed some of them, but that is how the market is supposed to work. That is in part how we have a darwinian process that determines supply and demand. MS' illegal practices were not obviously illegal at the time they were put into practice, the line is fuzzy and they were definitely treading in questionable territory but it was not a given that the government would see that it would warrant prosecution and it was not a given that a judge would rule against them. Comparing MS to the Mafia just destroys any credibility you may have, it exposes your politics / blind hatred. Linux destroys corporations, the traditional Unix vendrors. Apple can be even more heavy handed than MS. They merely don't get the bad press because they are not on top. Markets are like hamburgers, their creation is not a pretty picture.
1. "Man of the Year" is not awarded for doing good. It is awarded for influencing the world, for good or evil.
2. He was a delusional piss-poor amateur strategist. The general staff had some brilliant people, going on his own he got hundreds of thousands of his soldiers killed/captured for no good reason. Oddly, the world was better off due to his imcompetence. He was delusional partly due to a malfunctioning brain and partly due to sentiments like those you offer. Some successs in the amateur hour politics of post-WWI germany, where thuggery trumped intellectualism and competence, proves nothing.
Your heart is in the right place, nobody thinks hunger is a good thing, but there is also the reality that well meaning people may create an even greater human tragedy in the future. If you feed a million people hungry people now and DO NOT address the underlying conditions that contributed to the hunger in the first place then you will just have several miilion hungry people in a generation. You have to address the root causes of hunger, not merely treat the symptom which is the hunger itself. The underlying problems are not transporting excess food, they are local political, economic, religious, and cultural. These are very hard to change. This problem is far more complex than you suggest. If it were as easy to fix as you suggest it would have been fixed long ago.
It's only the commie books that the US has trouble with. Hitler was a fascist.
"National Socialist Workers" party sound familiar at all to you?
I still use punch cards, although as a lifetime supply of bookmarks these days. ;-)
If you think the runtime of sorting algorithms is esoteric, I can't imagine what you think everyday knowledge for a programmer is.
Sorting is an important topic in school, or independent study if you are going that route, but everyday knowledge is to understand the issues surrounding sorting and how to research what method best first your situation and data. It may be good to recall that C/C++, if that's your language, offers quicksort and its' run-time and optimal/degenerate data patterns but that is about it. The last time I needed specialized sorting (sort atoms along z axis - fairly stable order as a molecular structure is animated) was years ago and I consulted Knuth to find what matched my situation/data, implemented that, profiled it, saw that sorting didn't show up (0.1% cutoff), done with sorting for another few years and Knuth is still on the bookshelve for when that day comes. So yeah, keeping detail of a half dozen sorting algorithms is memory is a waste, it's far more efficient to remember where your copy of Knuth is.
"Actually, as you get older you realize that school habits are not applicable to the real world. Jobs are not like a quiz, you shouldn't be pulling details from memory, that's why we have reference manuals."
If you think Computer Science degrees are "about" memorization then you either went to a shitty school or don't have a CS degree.
"Quiz" != "CS Degree"
CS Degrees are about showing that you may have the potenitial to be a good programmer. If you think it means any more than that come back when you have more experience. People who are good programmers at the time they graduate generally did a lot of programming outside of their assignments.
As you get older, your brain changes configuration. You don't want/can't learn as fast, or don't care about the details anymore.
Actually, as you get older you realize that school habits are not applicable to the real world. Jobs are not like a quiz, you shouldn't be pulling details from memory, that's why we have reference manuals. Do I need to memorize the the run-time complexity of 10 sorting algorithms? No, what a waste, I merely need to have Knuth Vol 3 Sorting and Searching with a post-it note on the page with side-by-side comparisons of various sorting alogorithms, their run-tme complexity giving various types of data, info on optimal and degenerate data, etc.
Learning is not about memorizing lots of trivia. It is about filtering important info from the huge volume of crap and trivia. Learning was once described to me as the *selective* loss of information. You have to think about that for a second. We're bombarded with info, overwhelmed with it, we have to discard some of it. The better strategy is to discard info on a selective basis, the trivia, rather than discard info randomly. What some consider "not caring" is what others would consider "being selective".
They are still involved in development, they just know better than to get involved in the high profile / high risk / 80 hour a week stuff. They work on boring things you don't hear about on slashdot, and only work around 40 hours a week so they have more time for the new convertible and new blonde that comes with the mid life crisis.
Mac sales have doubled since last year ...
The Mini is their first attractively priced system in quite a while. I'm sure it has expanded their sales somewhat but it has also cababalized upgrades of higher priced models.
I heard that Mac users tend to buy new machines a lot less often than their Windows/PC using counterparts which negatively affects their market share.
That may not be the factor it used to be. It used to be the case that newer PCs would come out and you could see dramatic differences in performance, that spurred upgrade cycles. I recent years this has not been the case, PCs surpassed the performance needs of users years ago. Unless you are into games a 2.0GHz system feels about the same as a 3.4GHz system. PC vendors are noticing that people are holding on to their PCs longer today. This also explains a migration from desktops to laptops. Laptops may be lower performing in theory but in practice they are just fine for most users, the convenience, not performance, becomes the dominant factor.
I thought Apple had something of a resurgence in the last couple years, but I don't see much indication of that.
Yes, but that was due to the iPod not the Mac. They are offering the most capable Macs ever, a industrial strength Unix with an actual credible consumer oriented UI on top of it, and with the Mini an attractive price. Yet they are merely maintaining or moderately expanding their market position. They may be on an upward trajectory but nothing dramatic is evident on the Mac side yet. Apple's current buzz and stock price is all about the iPod.
The only REAL COMPETITION story is in the home computer market. That is where we had C=, Apple, Tandy, TI, Atari etc actually innovating and competing. The business market never even gave a single platform a chance other than IBM PC's...
The graphs included the home market. The Apple II was used in businesses quite a bit back in the day. Apple had a chance, there was a battle, Apple lost.
.. if only some of the big unix vendors back then had thought: Gee, lets push our operating system as a general purpose desktop system. Instead, we had a whole range of proprietary unixes that ran on their own proprietary platforms.
It was tried. Microsoft sold Xenix, no one cared, MS then gave up and sold it to SCO I think. MS' second attempt to get people to move to a "proper" operating system was OS/2 1.x, that failed too. You just couldn't get people to give up on DOS. You literally have to "give away" alternatives, either practical give aways as in Windows bundled with PCs or literal give aways as with Linux, FreeBSD, etc.
Also the big Unix vendors were really hardware vendors. It's like Apple today, it would be suicide to let their OS run on generic PC hardware. You are effectively arguing that all these companies should have abandoned their core business and volumteered to become a small fraction of their former selves. Linux is not something that helps Unix vendors, it kills them. Linux is not much of a threat to MS as many around here assume. Linux's real competition is Sun and other traditional vendors. It is a disruptive technology that destroyed a market segment. The traditional Unix vendors never had a chance.
I'm not arguing that the world is better or worse off. I'm merely arguing that your proposal would not have helped the vendors.
That's about the only situation Timmy could USE such a weapon though. The guns you named aren't hunting weapons, so that's out.
.22 caliber rifle. However outdoor ranges that serve high powered rifles, such as hunting rifles, will be able to accomodate it.
Not true.
Sporting uses of firearms are not limited to hunting. Target shooting, an Olympic sport, is more common and less controversial. Some may question how applicable an M4 is to target shooting, the more common indoor ranges won't be able to accommodate it as they could a
The M4 is at it's core a low-end hunting rifle in terms of power. In fact a civilian model (AR-15 type - no automatic fire) only differs from low end semi-automatic hunting rifles in cosmetics, and they often ship with 5 round magazines to be compliant with hunting regulations.
Sure, the dealership will know how to service it, but that wasn't what I was referring to by "garages".
Maintenance is included is the sale price of BMWs, most owners will never need to visit a 3rd party garage. For the few people who do tend to hang on to cars beyond (extended-)maintenance periods (I tend to go beyond 100K miles), well, given that we're referring to BMW owners the dealership price is probably not an issue and/or by that time the technology won't be so new and some 3rd parties may be able to deal with it. I admit I'm a little skeptical about the later, given the former a sizeable non-dealer market may never really develop. There will be the occasional 3rd party specialty shop (a buddy has one specializing in "German" cars).
"Seriously, wait 18 months and the price of this rig drops by 50%. Until then, I'm quite content to play in 1024x768 at 60Hz with medium textures; and you know, it doesn't bother me in the least."
...
Don't do that. 800x600 at 72Hz is okay, but 60Hz is more than likely to give you a headache.
It's a safe bet that he is referring to a flat panel. I picked up a dirt cheap 15" flat panel and saved the box so I could cart it to LAN parties. Combine that with a Shuttle-like system, easy to move, low footprint, lower power consumption,
I must be soul-sucking enough to write the dreck that is on TV, knowing your bosses are making more money so you can be forced to write even more dreck with product-placement would be too much.
Soul sucking? So what. That's the tradeoff you make for a somewhat reliable paycheck, you get to implement someone else's vision not yours. If they are not willing to quit their job and live in a small cabin near a pond while they work on their great novel they don't get to talk about artistic integrity. Although I'm overstating things, I am half serious.
>"How many homebrew projects can be thrown *through a closed* second floor window and have 99.9% reliability?" Throw a brick first. They're pretty reliable. Or, for $4800 - make that an ingot.
...
Bricks don't have the heft and trajectory of a grenade. They'll likely miss, and it's a danger when it bounces off the wall and comes back down even if you are wearing kevlar.
The brick cannot provide imagery of what was going on in the room before everyone got startled.
Even if the window is open you still need milspec grade electronics. Homebrew will still be too unreliable, bouncing off walls and floors is often too much, you need weather resistance as well,
These things aren't expensive because of gouging. These things are expensive because R&D was necessary to solve problems we amateurs don't understand, QA is far more rigorous and costly than with consumer electronics, and there is a limitted supply of buyers at this point.
To get to the host OS you've had to go through whatever the standard login validation is. The host OS may still be doing keylogging, you are not totally secure *iff* someone is going through extaordinarty measure to monitor that cafe's systems.
This is a new one. Are you seriously suggesting that complex monopolies and cartels are economically impossible and have never existed? Amazing, even for a throat-stamping free market fundamentalist.
;-)
The GP was correct
Remove the tinfoil and come out of your bunker and checkout the real world. Observe the non-binary state of things. While it is theoretically possible for a cartel to hold, in practice they usually fail and failure is more likely as membership grows. 10 member cartel, you get 10% of cartel price times quantity demanded. You might consider cheating and go for 100% of 95% of cartel price time quantity, or you might fear that some other member may try. This presumes monitoring is lagged. If monitoring is instant then other member simply match price. The net result is that cartel prices are generally unstable and tend to fall towards the market equilibrium price. For cartels to work there usually needs to be some strong enforcement method. To return to the prisoner's dilema theme, this would be knowing something bad would happen to your family.
And yes, I really did have microeconomics last quarter.