"The thing that I find amazing is that Bezos is the one to launch a successful e-reader..."
That's not quite how it happened, if I remember correctly. When the first e-reader became available, there was a huge amount of press about the new technology.
Amazon negotiated with publishers. with whom the company already had contracts, for e-books. There are a lot of people who can't or won't carry heavy books. It was easy to see there was a market.
I joked with my wife about her criticism of me for buying something at a dollar store for $1 without a good plan of how I would use it.
Something about being a billionaire makes people crazy. I guess it's because they have no friends, or they think everyone wants to be with them because of their money.
Another quote from Bezos: "This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation."
It's a sad, sad day for the employees at the Washington Post. It's a sad, sad day for the United States. I love the U.S., and I'm sad.
"The head of police for Moscow's subway system..."
He knows NOTHING about technology, but wants to make decisions about it.
As someone said above, electromagnetic signals can be stopped by wrapping a phone with aluminum foil. People would not be able to use their phones on the subway, which is probably not possible anyway unless antennas have been installed in the tunnels.
That larceny is being done by Bill Gates, along with his partner, Nathan Myhrvold. Bill Gates owns stock in Intellectual Ventures. He is a somewhat silent partner.
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold wrote a really, really poor book together, The Road Ahead. People bought the book thinking it would have useful information. But it seems as though several editors must have examined the book very carefully to make sure it had nothing of value. In my opinion, it was fraud, a way of stealing from people who bought the book because they assumed they would learn something.
Quote from the Wikipedia page:
The New York Times review called the book "bland and tepid" and reading "as if it had been vetted by a committee of Microsoft executives"; it is "little more than a positioning document, sold in book form with accompanying CD-ROM and designed mainly to advance the interests of the Microsoft Corporation."
It appears to me that Bill Gates is using "philanthropy" to find ways to make more money. He discovers difficulties people have, asks for ideas for technology to fix those difficulties, and then turns those ideas into money-making projects for Intellectual Ventures.
"There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things."
Google is not attending to the social issues inside the company, in my opinion. We study the sociology of technology companies intensely because we have found that they often fail because of social issues.
Here is a short list: Fairchild Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Tektronix. At one time they were the best in their fields.
HP began failing long before most people noticed. Products were released and sold that weren't finished even before 1973.
Someone at Microsoft told me that FoxPro had 1.5 million active users. The next year Microsoft killed FoxPro.
The story is worse than that. dBase was a dependable language with many suppliers. Microsoft introduced odd extensions to the language that caused Microsoft's version to be incompatible. People would use the extensions without realizing the social issues.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
I don't know why Microsoft did that. Microsoft sometimes seems to want to act out abusiveness more than it wants to make money.
There could have been a conversion program that helped users migrate to another language.
I think you are out of touch with what everyone is saying, not just Slashdot commenters. For example, from Forbes Magazine, about Steve Ballmer:"The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
It's NOT just us. EVERYONE dislikes Monkey Boy. (Scroll down in that article.)
Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, "Should Have Already Been Fired." Quote from the article:"Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."
More about Steve Ballmer from that article: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
Scroll down in this article to see Businessweek's January 16 cover that called Steve Ballmer "Monkey Boy".
The cover says "No More", but that doesn't take away from the fact that the magazine called him Monkey Boy -- on its cover.
Manipulation of men can function only if the men do not realize they are being manipulated. The fact that the connection is not obvious is necessary to make manipulation function.
Pretending that someone is especially important only because she is the member of a family is not honest.
You said, "The Queen's speech will have been written for her by Parliament, so in instances like this, her opinions are not really her own."
Notice that you are suggesting that dishonesty is acceptable.
I lived in the U.K. for 5 months with an English woman. We were interviewing each other for marriage. It was my impression that allowing constant dishonesty helped English women manipulate English men. If the English culture is arranged such that the Queen can lie and be accepted, other women can lie and their lies will be accepted.
They are not "High Tech Vending Machines". They are normal vending machines loaded with computer accessories.
"Facebook CIO Tim Campos decided to take a more user-friendly approach" should be "a computer support employee recommended using vending machines", according to the story.
The American health care system is expensive because we demand expensive health care.
It is expensive because of extreme corruption. Here is a good summary: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. As the article says, health care organizations often charge 10 or 100 times what things cost.
Slashdot Mirror
"The thing that I find amazing is that Bezos is the one to launch a successful e-reader..."
That's not quite how it happened, if I remember correctly. When the first e-reader became available, there was a huge amount of press about the new technology.
Amazon negotiated with publishers. with whom the company already had contracts, for e-books. There are a lot of people who can't or won't carry heavy books. It was easy to see there was a market.
If you would like to know what sort of communicator Jeff Bezos is, look at Amazon.com. It's an annoying mess.
..."
But maybe Jeff Bezos has a plan? No: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Buys Washington Post for $250 Million. Quote: "I don't want to imply that I have a worked-out plan,
I joked with my wife about her criticism of me for buying something at a dollar store for $1 without a good plan of how I would use it.
Something about being a billionaire makes people crazy. I guess it's because they have no friends, or they think everyone wants to be with them because of their money.
Another quote from Bezos: "This will be uncharted terrain and it will require experimentation."
It's a sad, sad day for the employees at the Washington Post. It's a sad, sad day for the United States. I love the U.S., and I'm sad.
You are, basically, saying that the New York Times is poorly managed.
It seems to me that newspapers are losing money because of poor management, not only because of loss of advertising to the internet.
To me, the New York Times seems like it is managed by people who don't have much understanding of the technical or sociological issues.
Yes, the power switch is more effective. However, some phones may not actually stop transmitting until the battery is removed.
My point, which I didn't make effectively, is that it is easy to avoid transmission of electromagnetic energy.
"Totally ineffective." When the reception is extremely poor, GSM phones cannot find a provider and stop frequent transmission.
"People do not wrap their phones in tinfoil."
Obviously, they can, and that prevents the usefulness of that method of spying.
"The head of police for Moscow's subway system..."
He knows NOTHING about technology, but wants to make decisions about it.
As someone said above, electromagnetic signals can be stopped by wrapping a phone with aluminum foil. People would not be able to use their phones on the subway, which is probably not possible anyway unless antennas have been installed in the tunnels.
Jimmy Carter Defends Snowden, Says U.S. Has No "Functioning Democracy".
You used a typewriter font for a web page about a modern page-layout program? And triple paragraph spacing?
What you have described is very much needed, but if you are sloppy in communicating, expect little popularity.
Is Apple on the way down, now that Steve Jobs is dead?
Print to PDF using the open source PDFCreator, which would create another PDF file?
"- PDF is no longer searchable"
Use a PDF OCR product like Adobe Acrobat Professional or an ABBYY FineReader product.
" Future drones will likely use unjammable line-of-sight lasers to a relay..."
Laws of Physics: There are no wavelengths of light that can get through most clouds.
You seem enthusiastic about U.S. government violence. All war, all the time? Every war makes us poor. And those who profit from war rich.
Jimmy, please have some good photos of you taken.
Most photos of you are ugly, for example, the photo in this N.Y. Times article: Jimmy Wales Is Not an Internet Billionaire.
In my opinion, it is much, much worse than we are saying. Read the linked articles. Read about "the most hated company in tech".
Here is a list of a few of the abuses: TechRights on Intellectual Ventures.
That larceny is being done by Bill Gates, along with his partner, Nathan Myhrvold. Bill Gates owns stock in Intellectual Ventures. He is a somewhat silent partner.
Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold wrote a really, really poor book together, The Road Ahead. People bought the book thinking it would have useful information. But it seems as though several editors must have examined the book very carefully to make sure it had nothing of value. In my opinion, it was fraud, a way of stealing from people who bought the book because they assumed they would learn something.
Quote from the Wikipedia page:
It appears to me that Bill Gates is using "philanthropy" to find ways to make more money. He discovers difficulties people have, asks for ideas for technology to fix those difficulties, and then turns those ideas into money-making projects for Intellectual Ventures.
To read more about how they use business to do what many regard as evil, read the August 21, 2012 article, Inside Intellectual Ventures, the most hated company in tech.
"There is no real reason why Google can't do all of these things."
Google is not attending to the social issues inside the company, in my opinion. We study the sociology of technology companies intensely because we have found that they often fail because of social issues.
Here is a short list: Fairchild Semiconductor, Hewlett-Packard (HP), and Tektronix. At one time they were the best in their fields.
HP began failing long before most people noticed. Products were released and sold that weren't finished even before 1973.
See our web site for more examples.
Someone at Microsoft told me that FoxPro had 1.5 million active users. The next year Microsoft killed FoxPro.
The story is worse than that. dBase was a dependable language with many suppliers. Microsoft introduced odd extensions to the language that caused Microsoft's version to be incompatible. People would use the extensions without realizing the social issues.
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.
I don't know why Microsoft did that. Microsoft sometimes seems to want to act out abusiveness more than it wants to make money.
There could have been a conversion program that helped users migrate to another language.
I think you are out of touch with what everyone is saying, not just Slashdot commenters. For example, from Forbes Magazine, about Steve Ballmer: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
It's NOT just us. EVERYONE dislikes Monkey Boy. (Scroll down in that article.)
Best Buy's former CEO, Brian Dunn, was named Worst CEO of 2012.
Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, "Should Have Already Been Fired." Quote from the article: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."
More about Steve Ballmer from that article: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
Scroll down in this article to see Businessweek's January 16 cover that called Steve Ballmer "Monkey Boy". The cover says "No More", but that doesn't take away from the fact that the magazine called him Monkey Boy -- on its cover.
Manipulation of men can function only if the men do not realize they are being manipulated. The fact that the connection is not obvious is necessary to make manipulation function.
Pretending that someone is especially important only because she is the member of a family is not honest.
You said, "The Queen's speech will have been written for her by Parliament, so in instances like this, her opinions are not really her own."
Notice that you are suggesting that dishonesty is acceptable.
I lived in the U.K. for 5 months with an English woman. We were interviewing each other for marriage. It was my impression that allowing constant dishonesty helped English women manipulate English men. If the English culture is arranged such that the Queen can lie and be accepted, other women can lie and their lies will be accepted.
In my opinion, having royalty weakens an entire country.
They are not "High Tech Vending Machines". They are normal vending machines loaded with computer accessories. "Facebook CIO Tim Campos decided to take a more user-friendly approach" should be "a computer support employee recommended using vending machines", according to the story.
It is expensive because of extreme corruption. Here is a good summary: Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us. As the article says, health care organizations often charge 10 or 100 times what things cost.