I just don't know what to make of AOL. So much potential, so little action. Why did they buy Netscape and then not make any use of it in their offerings? Why didn't they ever get into broadband? How could they let so many other companies pass them by in so many areas where they should have been a pioneer?
I know they are hated by some for letting so many of the "unwashed" on the Internet so quickly, but I think they have done more good than harm in many respects. Yet lately almost everything they do seems like such an obvious mistake. Sounds like they are WAY late for the party on this one, but I wish them well anyway.
I participated in a focus group thing done for them (we later found out) in which it was clear they were trying to think of a way to equalize themselves with the likes of Yahoo, MSN and Google in the various things that they do from portals to search engines. All catch-up stuff. So far no hints they are actually working on such a thing though. Now after all those lay-offs I have to wonder if anything can save this company. Will they throw tons of money into a new media player, abandon Winamp, and then in the end not put a product out at all? Nothing would surprise me. I wish them luck, which is apparently what they are looking for.
Serius (sp?) is commercial free (I think) while XM is MOSTLY commercial free. When I listened to XM, they would interupt the content to advertise... XM, which seemed sort of silly.
If you are old enough, you will remember that cable TV was commercial free too back when a montly subscription was $10 (and you wondered why it had to cost so much).
"Literally, there's a whole department, almost, that takes care of it."
Well, is it "literally" or not? Is it a "whole department" or part of one? Did you just make this up on the spot and then have second thoughts about it in mid-sentence? Does Microsoft literally give a rat's ass about their customers, sort of, almost?
"How long ago did they promise 250 MB for each account? And I'm still running on 2 MB? The new credit cards they hand out have almost as much memory as a Hotmail account, which is just sad. But hey, we all knew it was a Microsoft marketing stunt."
I agree that it's both a joke and a stunt:) But I DID finally get my 250meg a few days ago. Something like six months after they convinced all the technical journals to make the claim for them. I'm very disappointed (but not surprised) that so few of the professional publications called them out on this. The Hotmail interface sucks. Yahoo is much better, and Gmail is better still. Ditto for performance.
I think the biggest impact of Google to both Yahoo and Hotmail is that both services are now having to give away for free service levels that they were previously charging for. My guess is that sign-ups for these extended services are way down, and those who are signing up are doing so because they actually intend to make use of all that extra storage (2-gig for Yahoo for example) and are going to want to be on the phone yelling at someone anytime it's not available. In other words those that do pay for these formerly free services are going to be the squeaky wheel types that will eat up all your proffit margin.
It hasn't been that long (1999 or so) since several companies were offering free online disk storage, online word processing and several other services. The dot-com-bust made them all dry up real fast. I'm glad to see the moneyed players start testing these waters again though since I think the future of computing (especially for the home user) is going to be free or near-free online services rather than having to have an ad-hoc systems administrator in every household in the land. The Microsoft "everything on your desktop" model was moronic from the get-go and it took a "genius" like Bill Gates to actually profit so well from such a bad idea. Now if we could get back to true technology, which was already in progress before the Microsoft interruption.
Re:Why there is a privacy issue..
on
The Webmail Wars
·
· Score: -1, Troll
I think the grandparent should be modded troll.
If the Patriot Act called for all people with a limp to be shot it would be a terrible thing wouldn't it? But it doesn't, and even if it did, it would have nothing to do with the operation of Google.
Electronic communications were most likely being scanned-up-one-side-of-your-sphincter-and-down-the -other BEFORE the Patriot act. Said act makes changes in the way such data can be used. Go find a political forum somewhere and argue whether that is a good thing or not. Read the Act before you do so though so you will know what you are talking about.
"For all the talk about labels vs. folders, I find labels are counter-intuitive. Here in my filing cabinet I sort documents into folders; I don't stick 3 or 4 different labels on documents and throw them all into the same drawer. It's crazy!"
So, how often do you go to the Xerox machine, make three copies of the original document and file the four copies in four different places? How do you keep track of the fact that you have done this? Do you write on each copy a list of all the other places it's been filed? Do you ever have to make a note on one of these documents and then have to go locate the copies to make the same note? You must have lots of filing cabinets.
The nice thing about labels is that there is only one copy of each document. Evolution handles this also with what I think they call "Virtual Folders". In the real world, of course, you must rely on the Xerox machine and whatever complex scheme you come up with to maintain these copies of things and keep them in synch. This is one of the many things from the real world that need not, and should not be copied to the virtual world. It takes some getting used to, but labels (virtual folders or whatever you want to call them) is a better system. Trust me.
Of course, for people like you who are already USED to some very specific filing system Google could have taken a slightly different approach. I would have (and have suggested) that they allow for "move" and "copy" operations between the labeled groupings. So rather than apply label "friends" to a new message and then Archive it (to remove it from my Inbox), simply "move"ing it to "Friends" would have the same effect. I could also "move" a message from one label category to another in order to remove the old label and attach the new, or "Copy" from one label grouping to another in order to have both labels. The advantage of this paradigm is that it saves a step in most cases. It would also satisfy the needs of some people for the paradigm they are used to. The only "odd" thing about my way of doing it would be the need to warn a user if they were about to delete the last "copy" of a message. Deleting all but the last "copy" of a message would simply be removing extra labels from it, deleting the last copy would be marking it for trash. At no time would there actually be more than one copy of the file though.
I suspect some future versions of file systems will take this approach too, using "links" to store the apparent copies without the user having to do that explicitly. Some extra tools would be required to allow for backups (when you actually want a copy) or clean-ups when you actually want to delete files. File systems that implemented this at a low enough level would save a lot of fragmentation as well, since a lot of files that are opened for update end up never actually getting updated.
While I like the idea of a transit debt card. Don't you just KNOW that if that were implemented nationwide by any North American government there would be outrage from "privacy" advocates. The Washington DC system is in fact going to something like this, using a single debit card. Having the technology to do something (which we do in this case) doesn't necessarily make it an idea worth throwing everything else out for...
China isn't the first to bypass land line phones for cell phones. Countries in Africa have been doing it for years. If you don't have trenches dug all over your country for telephone wires, a nationwide cellular system makes a lot of sense. On the other hand if you dug your trenches in the 50's why not use them? You are not going to implement broadband Internet, cable TV , especially movies on-demand over a cellular phone system. China, African countries, and others when they have such services will dig holes and run wires, probably fiber-optic ones at which point wired phones in the home (probably VOIP-like) will make perfect sense. We'll end up there too. In our case we have to get to the point of justifying the replacement of something that "just works" whereas countries running "behind" us will be adding a new service and doing it a better way from the beginning. Being in the forefront is not the most cost-effective way to use technology. That rule applies to countries just as it does in our personal lives.
"The question is, though, do we need such things in our cars?"
I agree. Before I gave up on my last car, but after having replaced almost all the major components, I was told that it needed a new computer. Ahhh, I'd heard of that issue before. But then the mechanic informed me that he wasn't sure WHICH computer needed to be replaced. Turns out the engine computer and the "body" computer interact in mysterious ways, and it took some little time to figure out which one was really at fault. Whatever they did lasted another 6 months after which I decided to take the same route with cars that I took with computers: get something cheap, used if necessary, when it breaks, throw it away and get another one. Computers in cars have made cars just like PCs... hard/impossible to diagnose, unpredictable, overpriced.
Also from the article:
"Longtime industry watchers, however, caution that enthusiasm for computerized cars sometimes outstrips what consumers actually want. Four years ago, Sun Microsystems and General Motors proclaimed that Java would be the computing standard for the auto industry. That never happened."
With billions of dollars to spend Microsoft is throwing seed corn all over the place, hoping that something will spring up to replace existing monopolies. Each such effort meets with fan-fare fora week or two and then (mostly) you don't hear any more about it. Sounds like the PR people are deluging/. wit stuff this week. *yawn*
As an expert on "YAY!" (using the term many times a day) I can assure you that you have nothing to worry about.
I don't think SBC is bigger in the DSL area than Verizon (who also partners with MS) and it (SBC)is a smaller company as well.
Remember the Dot-Com Bust? Well just before that companies layed fiber all over the damned place. It's all sitting down there with the earthworms being sold off for pennies on the dollar, so everyone in the "Comm" industry had "big plans" for how to use it. Remember we are all going to be downloading movies onto our TIVO boxes courtesy of Netflix. Why would we want to stream movies onto a box running an OS full of viruses?
I'll bet big money that SBC is taking ALL of the risk on this and MS will sit on the sidelines collecting a piece of the action... if any action actually materializes. And if it doesn't (which is probably won't) they'll walk away from it very quietly.
And, um, yes, you will continue to get those annoying phone calls.
I only have direct experience with two. In one case the machines were not returned for a year or so, and I think by the time they were they had been written off and replaced anyway.
In the other case, involving a very small company the hardware (which wasn't in very good shape to begin with) was returned in a month or so and some of it had actually been repaired (not sure if this was them being nice or just a byproduct of the investigative process).
My guess is that the results vary greatly based on the mood and free time available to the techs involved.
Beat me to it...but I'll add, that if you listen carfully they get at least as far as 1/256, but it's so far in the background it's hard to make out. This bit I supposed predicted such a system as described in the article, or even GPS systems we use today. Sometimes I really wonder if at least one of the Firesign Theater crew had access to a time machine. They could have had a second career as SF authors I'd say.
This looks a lot to me like one of those thrown together PHP/MySQL web sites (that I'm sorry to say I've been responsible for at one time or another). It's also quite slow. If they can't handle a Slashdotting I wonder if they can handle all multi-meg photo messages that some people will be tempted to throw at it. Whether it's 1G, 10G, or 1T, it doesn't do anyone any good if the server is too slow to handle the traffic.
By the Way... .Mac upping storage too.
on
100 GB Email Account
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
Apple is FINALLY uping their.Mac e-mail space to 250M. I doubt that will get another $99 out of me but I think its interesting that in spite of the hype (reported here a day or so ago) about Hotmail finally rolling out their new storage, a later story (not reported here to my knowledge) has it that they (MS) are running into problems and putting many of the upgrades (mine for example) off indefinitely.
As I predicted when G-mail first came out the MS infrastructure is going to collapse under the weight of trying to keep up. Maybe they just need to BUY another company who can do this, as well as a lot more RAID storage. HP and Intel will be happy.
I was going to say something like this. They've variously been promising this for months and at time even advertising that the 250M deal was already in place while at the same time offering storage upgrades for $20. I frankly don't think they have the disk space to support all their users at 250M. But we'll see. The more they hype this the worse they look next to Yahoo (who's rollout was overnight) and Gmail who's giving out invites faster than people can use them.
Yet another instance of Microsoft trying to tell hardware makers how to run their business, but not wanting to take the risks themselves.
Look, they have plenty of money to start their own PC component integration business. There is very little doubt in fact, that if they were to go head-to-head with the Dell's and Compaq...err HP's of this world that they *could* do rather well and could indeed set the standards for the PC world.
Another ten years and there will be no U.S. company in the desktop computer hardware business, other than perhaps a few who integrate components for business servers. If MS wants to make the XBox into a general purpose desktop computer, fine... go for it. But I predict that their market share will look a lot like Apple's, or worse if the OS that they put out favors their own hardware.
The last thing we need is for PC hardware to stay in lock-step with a company as, um, "innovative" as Microsoft.
I didn't express myself well. The closest department store other than the Walmarts is a Sears, 30 miles away, but I don't consider that much of an improvement. To really get to "the big city" and some shopping choice is a 3 hour drive even when there is no traffic (which of course only happens at 3 in the morning), about 150 miles I'd say. Yes, I could drive there in the morning, shop for 2 hours and get back before bedtime, but it's not something I'd want to do. My trips to the city will (I just moved here so its all future tense) probably consist of overnight stays to visit friends and do other things. For normal shopping needs the Walmarts are very welcome.
I should also add, that since I live in a "resort" town, there are THOUSANDS of small shops here, and as far as I know, none of them are particularly threatened by the existence of the Walmart. I don't doubt that there are cases of Walmarts having an adverse effect on pre-existing mom-and-pop stores. I just don't think the phenomena is a pandemic as many would suggest.
As to displaced textile workers (for example) let's not confuse cause and effect. The flood of manufactured goods from China, etc. was happening and is happening independently of Walmart. You don't solve an economic imbalance such as that by punishing a single vendor. Trade barriers, import taxes, and all sorts of other things are possible solutions. Boycotting Walmart will just cause those goods to be purchased at other stores and have little or no effect on the overall situation. IMHO.
There are two Walmarts "near" me. One is 20 miles to the north, the other is 15 miles to the south. They are the two closest "department" store operations near me, although I can drive 30 miles or so east to a Sears. I can't see how either of the Walmarts have put anyone out of business. There were no department stores here before Walmart, now, there are still none, but the Walmarts are at least within a days drive. Walmart does not have a very large selection in some areas, particularly computers. What they do have represents good "value", with no-names at the low end and HP and Compaqs at the "high" end. For online 3D game-play you probably need something a bit better than you are going to find at Walmart (in the stores at least, their mail-order selection is better). For what I do with a computer most of the time (web, email, photo and music collection, etc. these mid-range computers (some of which are available without the Microsoft tax) are more than adequate. For me and other people in my situation you are not going to get us to feel guilty for going to Walmart, so you might as well stop trying. You shop wherever you want to, and I'll do the same.
Slashdot Mirror
I just don't know what to make of AOL. So much potential, so little action. Why did they buy Netscape and then not make any use of it in their offerings? Why didn't they ever get into broadband? How could they let so many other companies pass them by in so many areas where they should have been a pioneer?
I know they are hated by some for letting so many of the "unwashed" on the Internet so quickly, but I think they have done more good than harm in many respects. Yet lately almost everything they do seems like such an obvious mistake. Sounds like they are WAY late for the party on this one, but I wish them well anyway.
I participated in a focus group thing done for them (we later found out) in which it was clear they were trying to think of a way to equalize themselves with the likes of Yahoo, MSN and Google in the various things that they do from portals to search engines. All catch-up stuff. So far no hints they are actually working on such a thing though. Now after all those lay-offs I have to wonder if anything can save this company. Will they throw tons of money into a new media player, abandon Winamp, and then in the end not put a product out at all? Nothing would surprise me. I wish them luck, which is apparently what they are looking for.
Serius (sp?) is commercial free (I think) while XM is MOSTLY commercial free. When I listened to XM, they would interupt the content to advertise... XM, which seemed sort of silly.
If you are old enough, you will remember that cable TV was commercial free too back when a montly subscription was $10 (and you wondered why it had to cost so much).
It will get worse. Trust me.
Spinmiester Ballmer says:
"Literally, there's a whole department, almost, that takes care of it."
Well, is it "literally" or not? Is it a "whole department" or part of one? Did you just make this up on the spot and then have second thoughts about it in mid-sentence? Does Microsoft literally give a rat's ass about their customers, sort of, almost?
"How long ago did they promise 250 MB for each account? And I'm still running on 2 MB? The new credit cards they hand out have almost as much memory as a Hotmail account, which is just sad. But hey, we all knew it was a Microsoft marketing stunt."
:) But I DID finally get my 250meg a few days ago. Something like six months after they convinced all the technical journals to make the claim for them. I'm very disappointed (but not surprised) that so few of the professional publications called them out on this. The Hotmail interface sucks. Yahoo is much better, and Gmail is better still. Ditto for performance.
I agree that it's both a joke and a stunt
I think the biggest impact of Google to both Yahoo and Hotmail is that both services are now having to give away for free service levels that they were previously charging for. My guess is that sign-ups for these extended services are way down, and those who are signing up are doing so because they actually intend to make use of all that extra storage (2-gig for Yahoo for example) and are going to want to be on the phone yelling at someone anytime it's not available. In other words those that do pay for these formerly free services are going to be the squeaky wheel types that will eat up all your proffit margin.
It hasn't been that long (1999 or so) since several companies were offering free online disk storage, online word processing and several other services. The dot-com-bust made them all dry up real fast. I'm glad to see the moneyed players start testing these waters again though since I think the future of computing (especially for the home user) is going to be free or near-free online services rather than having to have an ad-hoc systems administrator in every household in the land. The Microsoft "everything on your desktop" model was moronic from the get-go and it took a "genius" like Bill Gates to actually profit so well from such a bad idea. Now if we could get back to true technology, which was already in progress before the Microsoft interruption.
I think the grandparent should be modded troll.
e -other BEFORE the Patriot act. Said act makes changes in the way such data can be used. Go find a political forum somewhere and argue whether that is a good thing or not. Read the Act before you do so though so you will know what you are talking about.
If the Patriot Act called for all people with a limp to be shot it would be a terrible thing wouldn't it? But it doesn't, and even if it did, it would have nothing to do with the operation of Google.
Electronic communications were most likely being scanned-up-one-side-of-your-sphincter-and-down-th
"For all the talk about labels vs. folders, I find labels are counter-intuitive. Here in my filing cabinet I sort documents into folders; I don't stick 3 or 4 different labels on documents and throw them all into the same drawer. It's crazy!"
So, how often do you go to the Xerox machine, make three copies of the original document and file the four copies in four different places? How do you keep track of the fact that you have done this? Do you write on each copy a list of all the other places it's been filed? Do you ever have to make a note on one of these documents and then have to go locate the copies to make the same note? You must have lots of filing cabinets.
The nice thing about labels is that there is only one copy of each document. Evolution handles this also with what I think they call "Virtual Folders". In the real world, of course, you must rely on the Xerox machine and whatever complex scheme you come up with to maintain these copies of things and keep them in synch. This is one of the many things from the real world that need not, and should not be copied to the virtual world. It takes some getting used to, but labels (virtual folders or whatever you want to call them) is a better system. Trust me.
Of course, for people like you who are already USED to some very specific filing system Google could have taken a slightly different approach. I would have (and have suggested) that they allow for "move" and "copy" operations between the labeled groupings. So rather than apply label "friends" to a new message and then Archive it (to remove it from my Inbox), simply "move"ing it to "Friends" would have the same effect. I could also "move" a message from one label category to another in order to remove the old label and attach the new, or "Copy" from one label grouping to another in order to have both labels. The advantage of this paradigm is that it saves a step in most cases. It would also satisfy the needs of some people for the paradigm they are used to. The only "odd" thing about my way of doing it would be the need to warn a user if they were about to delete the last "copy" of a message. Deleting all but the last "copy" of a message would simply be removing extra labels from it, deleting the last copy would be marking it for trash. At no time would there actually be more than one copy of the file though.
I suspect some future versions of file systems will take this approach too, using "links" to store the apparent copies without the user having to do that explicitly. Some extra tools would be required to allow for backups (when you actually want a copy) or clean-ups when you actually want to delete files. File systems that implemented this at a low enough level would save a lot of fragmentation as well, since a lot of files that are opened for update end up never actually getting updated.
Hmmmm
I was underwhelmed.
While I like the idea of a transit debt card. Don't you just KNOW that if that were implemented nationwide by any North American government there would be outrage from "privacy" advocates. The Washington DC system is in fact going to something like this, using a single debit card. Having the technology to do something (which we do in this case) doesn't necessarily make it an idea worth throwing everything else out for...
China isn't the first to bypass land line phones for cell phones. Countries in Africa have been doing it for years. If you don't have trenches dug all over your country for telephone wires, a nationwide cellular system makes a lot of sense. On the other hand if you dug your trenches in the 50's why not use them? You are not going to implement broadband Internet, cable TV , especially movies on-demand over a cellular phone system. China, African countries, and others when they have such services will dig holes and run wires, probably fiber-optic ones at which point wired phones in the home (probably VOIP-like) will make perfect sense. We'll end up there too. In our case we have to get to the point of justifying the replacement of something that "just works" whereas countries running "behind" us will be adding a new service and doing it a better way from the beginning. Being in the forefront is not the most cost-effective way to use technology. That rule applies to countries just as it does in our personal lives.
"The question is, though, do we need such things in our cars?"
/. wit stuff this week. *yawn*
I agree. Before I gave up on my last car, but after having replaced almost all the major components, I was told that it needed a new computer. Ahhh, I'd heard of that issue before. But then the mechanic informed me that he wasn't sure WHICH computer needed to be replaced. Turns out the engine computer and the "body" computer interact in mysterious ways, and it took some little time to figure out which one was really at fault. Whatever they did lasted another 6 months after which I decided to take the same route with cars that I took with computers: get something cheap, used if necessary, when it breaks, throw it away and get another one. Computers in cars have made cars just like PCs... hard/impossible to diagnose, unpredictable, overpriced.
Also from the article:
"Longtime industry watchers, however, caution that enthusiasm for computerized cars sometimes outstrips what consumers actually want. Four years ago, Sun Microsystems and General Motors proclaimed that Java would be the computing standard for the auto industry. That never happened."
With billions of dollars to spend Microsoft is throwing seed corn all over the place, hoping that something will spring up to replace existing monopolies. Each such effort meets with fan-fare fora week or two and then (mostly) you don't hear any more about it. Sounds like the PR people are deluging
As an expert on "YAY!" (using the term many times a day) I can assure you that you have nothing to worry about.
I don't think SBC is bigger in the DSL area than Verizon (who also partners with MS) and it (SBC)is a smaller company as well.
Remember the Dot-Com Bust? Well just before that companies layed fiber all over the damned place. It's all sitting down there with the earthworms being sold off for pennies on the dollar, so everyone in the "Comm" industry had "big plans" for how to use it. Remember we are all going to be downloading movies onto our TIVO boxes courtesy of Netflix. Why would we want to stream movies onto a box running an OS full of viruses?
I'll bet big money that SBC is taking ALL of the risk on this and MS will sit on the sidelines collecting a piece of the action... if any action actually materializes. And if it doesn't (which is probably won't) they'll walk away from it very quietly.
And, um, yes, you will continue to get those annoying phone calls.
I only have direct experience with two. In one case the machines were not returned for a year or so, and I think by the time they were they had been written off and replaced anyway.
In the other case, involving a very small company the hardware (which wasn't in very good shape to begin with) was returned in a month or so and some of it had actually been repaired (not sure if this was them being nice or just a byproduct of the investigative process).
My guess is that the results vary greatly based on the mood and free time available to the techs involved.
'Nuff said.
Sort of fun to watch Microsoft try and respond to this isn't it?
I wonder why they didn't just immediatly give everyone 20M or something while they scrounged up the hardware to do 250?
As usual they promised big and now are trying to figure out how to deliver anything at all.
Yahoo at least came through with 100M in a hurry. With their user base that's pretty impressive.
MS underwhelms.
Beat me to it...but I'll add, that if you listen carfully they get at least as far as 1/256, but it's so far in the background it's hard to make out. This bit I supposed predicted such a system as described in the article, or even GPS systems we use today. Sometimes I really wonder if at least one of the Firesign Theater crew had access to a time machine. They could have had a second career as SF authors I'd say.
This looks a lot to me like one of those thrown together PHP/MySQL web sites (that I'm sorry to say I've been responsible for at one time or another). It's also quite slow. If they can't handle a Slashdotting I wonder if they can handle all multi-meg photo messages that some people will be tempted to throw at it. Whether it's 1G, 10G, or 1T, it doesn't do anyone any good if the server is too slow to handle the traffic.
Apple is FINALLY uping their .Mac e-mail space to 250M. I doubt that will get another $99 out of me but I think its interesting that in spite of the hype (reported here a day or so ago) about Hotmail finally rolling out their new storage, a later story (not reported here to my knowledge) has it that they (MS) are running into problems and putting many of the upgrades (mine for example) off indefinitely.
As I predicted when G-mail first came out the MS infrastructure is going to collapse under the weight of trying to keep up. Maybe they just need to BUY another company who can do this, as well as a lot more RAID storage. HP and Intel will be happy.
What a shame to post this AC. Great thinking.
I didn't know that Dan Rather worked for e-week now.
I bet we get the REAL story in a few days from someone other than the PHB that made this decision.
I was going to say something like this. They've variously been promising this for months and at time even advertising that the 250M deal was already in place while at the same time offering storage upgrades for $20. I frankly don't think they have the disk space to support all their users at 250M. But we'll see. The more they hype this the worse they look next to Yahoo (who's rollout was overnight) and Gmail who's giving out invites faster than people can use them.
Every time I see a story like this I think of the movie "Brazil" and the guy siting in front of a big magnifying glass with a tiny display behind it.
Yet another instance of Microsoft trying to tell hardware makers how to run their business, but not wanting to take the risks themselves.
Look, they have plenty of money to start their own PC component integration business. There is very little doubt in fact, that if they were to go head-to-head with the Dell's and Compaq...err HP's of this world that they *could* do rather well and could indeed set the standards for the PC world.
Another ten years and there will be no U.S. company in the desktop computer hardware business, other than perhaps a few who integrate components for business servers. If MS wants to make the XBox into a general purpose desktop computer, fine... go for it. But I predict that their market share will look a lot like Apple's, or worse if the OS that they put out favors their own hardware.
The last thing we need is for PC hardware to stay in lock-step with a company as, um, "innovative" as Microsoft.
Thanks, but no thanks.
HAHA!
Darn, I wasted my mod points on another article too.
Er... or with only a slight re-wording you probably COULD make money off this idea.
I wonder if someone who works at a company with one of these premium service plans could leak the information? Would Microsoft sue them?
Please mod parent up to +6
I just hope the people who are too lazy to do their own research will also be too lazy to vote.
I worry more about an electorate that gets it's information from the entertainment industry than just about anything else.
I didn't express myself well. The closest department store other than the Walmarts is a Sears, 30 miles away, but I don't consider that much of an improvement. To really get to "the big city" and some shopping choice is a 3 hour drive even when there is no traffic (which of course only happens at 3 in the morning), about 150 miles I'd say. Yes, I could drive there in the morning, shop for 2 hours and get back before bedtime, but it's not something I'd want to do. My trips to the city will (I just moved here so its all future tense) probably consist of overnight stays to visit friends and do other things. For normal shopping needs the Walmarts are very welcome.
I should also add, that since I live in a "resort" town, there are THOUSANDS of small shops here, and as far as I know, none of them are particularly threatened by the existence of the Walmart. I don't doubt that there are cases of Walmarts having an adverse effect on pre-existing mom-and-pop stores. I just don't think the phenomena is a pandemic as many would suggest.
As to displaced textile workers (for example) let's not confuse cause and effect. The flood of manufactured goods from China, etc. was happening and is happening independently of Walmart. You don't solve an economic imbalance such as that by punishing a single vendor. Trade barriers, import taxes, and all sorts of other things are possible solutions. Boycotting Walmart will just cause those goods to be purchased at other stores and have little or no effect on the overall situation. IMHO.
What I'd like to know is: who has the largest non-working computer grid. My guess is that it would be a lot bigger.
There are two Walmarts "near" me. One is 20 miles to the north, the other is 15 miles to the south. They are the two closest "department" store operations near me, although I can drive 30 miles or so east to a Sears. I can't see how either of the Walmarts have put anyone out of business. There were no department stores here before Walmart, now, there are still none, but the Walmarts are at least within a days drive. Walmart does not have a very large selection in some areas, particularly computers. What they do have represents good "value", with no-names at the low end and HP and Compaqs at the "high" end. For online 3D game-play you probably need something a bit better than you are going to find at Walmart (in the stores at least, their mail-order selection is better). For what I do with a computer most of the time (web, email, photo and music collection, etc. these mid-range computers (some of which are available without the Microsoft tax) are more than adequate. For me and other people in my situation you are not going to get us to feel guilty for going to Walmart, so you might as well stop trying. You shop wherever you want to, and I'll do the same.