These have been bred since the 50's they're dozens of generations from "wild" and probably wouldn't even survive for long left alone any more.
Cats become equally violent after only a generation or two. The whole "cats in the cradle" thing came from the time when you didn't let barn cats in the house because they lived "wild" and would silently attack babies.
Not really, most full versions of Office only include INSTALL support and maybe one phone call (only if you find a bug, not user error) Student and bundled version include NO support other than what's online. Your school or OEM is supposed to answer your help calls in exchange for lower price.
The same applies to Windows. OEM (the cheap one from newegg) versions mean you get support from your builder, not Microsoft. Upgrade versions include only INSTALL support, other support is expected from your computer builder. Again, only Full Retail includes support for install, and maybe one other support call.. all calls to Microsoft require $75-$100 bucks up front on a credit card for consumer stuff and they don't charge if it's "their" problem.
For regular folks, Open Source and Microsoft have about the same level of support... People that repair problems with Office or Windows are easier to find, that's about all.
I think the issue is the measure of what you're doing for the company to make them money with IT projects.
Many, many small companies see IT as "janitors" for the computers, and don't really expect much other than keeping the "tubes" flowing. If the article poster is working for one of those companies then they're probably about staffed OK. The job being to make your own work more efficient so you can go home on time! The biggest problem with working for those companies is skill-lag, you're doing all your skill learning outside of work so you don't get to put new things for 2600 users on your resume.
Smart companies see IT as adding value and are open to IT coming up with new tools and better ways for users to do their jobs. If you build IT along with your business, your accounting/shipping/production clerks that were handling 20 customers are now handling 100 with no loss of quality.
There's the 3 steps, if you write something down in a log, it should go in a spreadsheet to be shared and backed up; if it's important to be in a spreadsheet with lots of people looking at it, it should be in a database with proper rules. Most importantly, are you writing down in ink what can electronically collected? People in Information Technology should be working on making better Information available to the company all the time. If you're not doing THAT work then YOU are losing value as an employee in your career.
but like Malcom pointed out, this IS an animal man made extinct by hunting and taking away its environment, 9 years is a blip in terms of ecosystems time line, like they weren't even gone.
Estate tax is only for people too poor to find a shelter like holding companies. A common thing for very rich is to create a holding company that "owns" all but one small house and one checking account. All the shares and property are owned by the holding company. Family members get "1099" wages with enough padding to cover the amount owed in taxes.
When Dad dies, kids are already on the "board" of the holding company as "employees" so the whole thing skips estate taxes all together except for cash and valuables that are personal belongings. Kids elect a new boss and continue to get checks.
Generally the Store Manager is responsible for updating sales tax tables in each store and they only have to be responsible for THEIR STORE.
They aren't responsible to account for sales tax where the product is USED like Amazon is being asked to. If I buy something at the mall outside the city and take it home inside the city or even a different state the mall store is not responsible as they collected the tax for their physical location.
The constitution forbids states taxing exports to another state. So it's illegal to ask Amazon in California to pay CA sales tax on things it mails other places.
I'd think the better places to collect the tax might be the Post Office (which is federal and doesn't have to follow state laws) or UPS/FedEx. As they deliver to addresses and have physical presence, it might be possible to include the sales tax in the delivery fees.
I'd also consider the Credit card companies, as they are legally regulated at the state level to do business at your physical address.
I think eventually what will happen is that online sales will have to be reported to the IRS at the federal level, they're the only ones with the authority to demand this. Then that line item gets reported to states and cities and you add that to your tax form. The main problem becomes demanding every mail order/online seller send every customer a "tax form", and also trying to get all those forms collected at the IRS in time to be filed.
But what's in it for the players...i.e. news publishers?
You're missing the TRADE part.
If I got to a news page via Google search, Google already has THEIR money. How does the newspaper make money? Selling ads doesn't work because whatever ad is on my page came from Google too.. and if the person wanted to go to that page they would have just done it already!
So Google got to "trade" me ads for search answers.
What did Google trade the newspaper to be searched? The paper traded a "chance" to get me to read? Is that valuable enough? Trade requires agreement from two sides, so did Google trade anything to the newspaper at all if they just read the page?
What did I trade the newspaper to read their page? Their ads aren't worth anything because Google already showed them to ME once. For "market maker" status to apply I'd have to trade something to the news publisher MORE valuable than their cost to put the news up there. Since Google has already seen the whole page I can use Google to subvert whatever revenue the newspaper might try to get out of me.
I'm not paying the newspaper [remember ads aren't that valuable when coming FROM a search] and Google's not paying the newspaper.
In the case of Microsoft they're a tolerable monopoly because they mostly stay out of hardware and there's lots of software they don't want to bother with. Microsoft gets $50 for Windows and you buy a $1000 computer from Dell, and some Cad software from Autocad. It's tolerable to deal with Microsoft because they provide a platform to make software development and lots of customers to sell to that offsets the cost of tools.
Google was essentially a "publisher" of the internet and it was good. It's fine for "little people" but now they are publishing other publishers' works that those people paid to have made. We're just about at the tipping point where Google will have to start paying to link TO pages or people will start pulling the pages from lack of funds to pay the bandwidth bills (cause Google's not paying for that). Selling ads doesn't work on news pages because Google has already collected the Ad revenue once, and what makes publishers most upset is that they would only get a small cut of the links on their pages. Google could help this offering higher value for ads from well read sites, but even then if my business is selling ads why should I pay anything to Google who's my direct competition.
But Murdoch PAYS people to gather the news with that advertising money. The other element is what ads are news pages supposed to run? Really?
Who's got the best online ad engine? Google
Who got the user to my page in the first place? Google
Who would I goto to get ads for my page from? Google
Where did the user come from? Google
What ad have they ALREADY SEEN? Google's
Is Google giving a newspaper premium for showing ads on their news pages? Doubt it
So how valuable is a Google Ad [or ANY ad] on a page somebody already found with Google? ???
This is the big question. Telling news publishers to "suck up" isn't fair because any useful search ad has already been served by Google. Worse, to get good hits, I'd need to use Google who has no incentive to pay ME because they already showed my customers ads once. I suppose I could get some small "blogger quality" cut from running ads but Google doesn't PAY much for those versus what they made off you searching for my page.
This is why publishers need Google or somebody to put money on the table for THEM.
How useful is Google when news is behind a paywall?
More importantly, how much money is Microsoft willing to put on the table for publishers to offset the lost ad revenue? $$$
From a publisher point-of-view Google is taking away their key business... selling ad space with the news. Newspapers, radio, TV all have strict rules about how big they can be in a geographic area, and that limits what they can recoup from selling ads. Google is a massive Monopoly compared to ANY paper just for the amount of NEWS they serve up, let alone all the other things they serve ads for. Newspapers PAY for reporters to go places and research things and for printing presses, delivery boys, etc. and Google isn't really doing any of that. When you search for their content Google puts up ads for other people.
He's saying Google has a very fair engine, but that engine is also efficient and finds the content cut-n-pasted someplace else for free.... and Google makes a dime doing it! THAT is the problem publishers have. This is the same issue book sellers have as well. Google isn't really paying for the books they have on Book Search. Even Libraries are OK to publishers because they have to BUY materials the readers demand, and have to have enough copies per branch for users to share. Again, Google is "borrowing" a copy to scan and not using it "like a book" and again, Google is efficient and helps you find a "liberated" copy of the material somewhere other than the publisher.
The issue is that when you search for a news piece, Google make ad money FIRST right on the search page. How many times is Google being paid for just one page of search ads? "Go sell ads" on each news page is a bit disingenuous for Google to tell publishers because Google is the leader in SELLING ads on webpages. Google is getting a cut to FIND your page and another cut if you want to TRY for ad revenue. These are professional news agencies. Why shouldn't Google be chipping in a dime when it's search customers hit a page at a news site? They've already had "me" as a search advertising customer once, it's not really far to ask the news publishers to "gamble" they "might" get some revenue. Google's not doing a good job of respecting "official" channels of publishers, short of publishers hiring teams of people to search for copies of news articles not on their site (they have a copyright after all, it's not fair to copy it to your blog) and issuing DMCAs.
Again, the issue is Google because their not limited by geography AND they are the leading ad seller. The issue is how DO you stop Google from strangling all the individual papers doing reporting just like Microsoft did when it added all the little pieces to it's empire. It's a matter of who needs who more right now. Publishers are gearing up to put all their content behind paywalls to make Google wake up. Once they lock down AP and Reuters (and add those contract requirements to individual newspaper webpages) Google will be hard pressed to find news. I think we'd have to go thru a lot of pain before Google will start paying for stuff, and even then do we want Google to "own" reporters and editors too? Do you want Google CREATING the news content? Imagine the power Google has to re-write history while it's happening for whatever [non-evil] agenda they have...they already have more power of day-to-day information than the US government.
Actually, believe in "Santa" is fundamental to the very concept of Quantum physics.
The idea that something is acting because we can see it's effects [presents}, but we can't catch it and measure it without changing it [nobody has seen Santa] is a very high level of logical thinking at a wee age.
Most of the "christian" labels are owned by the Big 4 now anyway. The real question is why the good acts aren't being promoted more often. Reliant K had small success "crossing over" but why is it even called that now? Put too many "christian" songs on the CD and they don't even bother queuing it to stations. I think the biggest problem is the culture of "pop" music in "sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll" used as a tool of the publishers to keep artists on the road and not watching the books. Many of the Christian musicians refuse to play that game so that instantly the little "sandbox... ethics and the music industry don't really mix... but we already knew that.
Part of the issue too is that the culture is still shifting. There's a lot of push back if a station plays non-western music even. We are just now getting a few popular people like Seinfeld or Sandler that are Jewish and popular enough to get their holiday pieces aired in spite of it. A huge portion of the "political/religious" class is dreading the day some Hindu or Islamic holiday music gets put on the air. The US "right vs left" movement has removed religious discussion from public life more efficiently than even Stalin did in Soviet Russia [to borrow a bad joke].
My problem is that I do believe the Bible and if my kids were playing a game I would not want it "loosely based" on things. I'd imagine Hindus, Buddhists, etc would not really like their religious figures turned into game characters either... and that's why publishers won't touch it.
You mention C.S. Lewis, who was a heavy proponent of Allegory and fantasy in stories. I'm more like Tolkien in that I want my stories as "play" and my religion taken seriously. C.S. Lewis did a bit of disservice because many of his fantasy books are "too close" and people expect all religious elements to be like that. I always avoid the Star Wars "Force" debate with my Uncle because Star Wars is "play" with good guys and bad guys, it's not a "religion". But the same token not all religious imagery has to be viewed as "Christian vs. non-Christian". I don't think computer games quite have the level of play needed to do good "religious" experiments yet.
For historical perspective look at how the Church handled this in the Middle Ages. As the majority of folks couldn't read, religious tales were told thru statuary, stained glass, and story telling. By the 1200's especially after the Plagues, religious imagery was taken to extremes serving as folklore, and "science fiction" of the day. Debates about "angels on the head of a pin" were taken as morally "right" or "wrong" fighting arguments. The religion BECAME the imagery and the Church is STILL hung up on some of those things. One thing I don't like about SCA is that they really discourage playing in the religious aspects of the Middle Ages and religion was the defining thing of Western Europe from 700-1500. When it comes to religion in media and culture there is a lot to learn about how it was done [or not done] before in Western culture. I think that also colors how we look at things now. Because we want people that are part of a religion to understand what they believe. With so many things out there competing now there is no room for "playing AT church" like there was in the 50's and 60's where "everybody" was Christian.
I want one! Foxes are cute and smaller than dogs but clever like cats.
If they have bred them to be more behaved they would probably be good house pets for urban dwellers. Foxes are pretty adaptable anyway, living off the scraps of society for a few hundred years already. It's mostly people that keep them out of populated places. That's how man started taming dogs and cats.
The key with domesticated animals is that they don't typically do as well in the wild. If you look at something like American Mustangs that are the runaways they went "native" and are their own unique breed now. You do have some ecology issues, but in the case of the Mustangs, we killed off all the Buffalo all by ourselves.. the horses fill much of the same niche roaming the plains. The biggest problem with domesticated animals is that we people put up fences and displace wild animals over vast areas so the ones we like can live safely. Again, with the wild horses ranchers don't like them even on federal land where they are wildlife because they compete with steers for range.
While all people are not the same, who gets to decide what features are "important" or "better"? Right now we use the "market" system of allowing all the people to compete as equally as we can so that ability or even luck is the primary decider. As history shows BAD THINGS HAPPEN when somebody starts deciding what are "good" people and what are "extra" people. Yes, it still happens every day, but civilized people have chosen not to do that.
In reality that's how humans have evolved though. We tend to flock together in like groups. If somebody is too "different" they tend to get "pushed" out of that society and in the past migrated and started their own group from hardy people that struggled against the elements on their own. If anything, we're running out of places to go, people that "don't fit" can't exactly hop off the Earth just yet so that will actually slow human evolution. Although we do exchange individuals between nations so that the best of the best often meet around the world creating a new type of "global tribe".
I do think that it would be a clever experiment to try with people. We have about 100 years of good medical data now, where your parents and grandparents still have records on file to use for typing. I think if something like eHarmony was used to match people not just by personality (which is genetic) but also by genetics you could do this and people would probably even be happier with their mates and families. I think the problem is once a "selection" takes place for the next generation, is it really their fault? If you breed some to be workers, then don't provide the task you selected for them, who fixes it? If you selected somebody to be a "worker" versus somebody to be a "businessman" then how do you distribute wealth fairly if you know those people were not "created equal'. And again, you run into the "extra people" problem.
we don't get paid $50 per hour to build PCs from parts. It might actually be cheaper per box, but the company wants to be spending your limited time (=$$) on other things with more return.
parent clearly underestimates how poorly minimum wage theater kids treat 35mm film. Handling is at best "poor" in order to maintain film quality. Film falls off the camera on the floor all the time, gets stepped on, wrinkled, jammed in the projector, has frames cut out and gets taped back together.
IMAX is the exception because they demand better operators and that the film be handled better.. but with all the "regular" venues showing Imax-lite now I bet those films get tore up terrible.
Having kids on meds I can see that the "normal" treatment is with pretty nasty stuff... Things like Ritalin are half-a-molecule away from hard illegal drugs. But those medicines are proven to work, even if they're harsh.
Being middle class with good insurance though we did exactly what the article talks about and the wife researched similar non-narcotic replacement drugs from discussing with local support groups and online... simply for the factor of being able to not have to get DEA prescriptions that had to be hand carried every month. The replacement drugs have fewer side effects because they are tailored to the underlying problems and not just hitting behavior with the big drug hammer... they are also VERY expensive, the co-pays with good insurance are steep.
A bottle of Ritalin is really cheap...almost $4 Walmart cheap... far less than my copay for better stuff, and medicade doesn't mind paying for all those checkups and visits to get a new script every month.
My opinion on the whole thing is that we as parents and schools are paying more attention to our kids... There's no more "factory jobs" out there that will feed a family like even 15 years ago. All kids are pushed to perform in ways I'm not asked to, and I'm attending college both on campus and/or online and work full time. Frankly I think that's overkill but "education" seems to think that everybody should be trying to go to Harvard rather than state school.
but you have to really understand what's going on. A program like this is to measure "influence"... so they now have leverage to keep people from publicly switching as they will lose their "influence discount" and have to start over at "retail price" if they want to "come back to the fold". This is about Microsoft not losing share to other players by squeezing the share it's already got. At an enterprise level that could be tens of thousands of dollars if they saw you reducing Windows desktop licenses but wanting to keep some Server and development tools for stuff yet-to-be-switched.
it's both... raise the "list retail" price as high as possible, then offer more people "influential discounts" back down to the price they paid before... and offer FEWER of them as you're "measuring" who is getting influence and who's not.
That's already the scheme in the Enterprise front... Fortune 500 companies pay far less "per program per seat" but they buy lots of seats... Microsoft keeps the prices lower for them because a company like Ford will have thousands of suppliers and dealers that will be forced to deal in compatible versions of documents and communications that have to pay up. As the company gets smaller they pay more and more because they don't have "volume" right down to all the employees that buy the most expensive retail versions so they can do work at home and look good.
But the deal is that's what they're selling "unlimited".
Like GrantRobertson pointed out, the metrics that the telco sells to users are monthly payments and an amount of bandwidth. ISPs drastically oversold...they're passing out 3, 5,7+ Mb pipes then complaining when people use them "full speed" more than an hour or two a day. That's what these artificial limits amount to.
If ISPs needed to reduce usage they could easily adjust the bandwidth plans to be more appropriate. Businesses pay $1000+ for 24x7 3MB pipe... ISPs need to adjust their user pools, but again by adjusting bandwidth, not connected services. My thought is to install smarter routers at homes so that you can have 2-3 hours a day of 5Mb service and the rest 1Mb, but not crank all day... of course rates would have to adjust. (downward as they're selling 5Mb all day now)
The real problem is that all the ISP/telco/cable operators WANT to install 10Mb pipes... I've noticed my video-on-demand service uses IP for delivery... operators just want to use the fat pipes to sell THEIR services, and exclude users from choosing their own on the internet. What will need to happen eventually is to divorce "data service" from "content"... again... then we can build out one data wire to everybody and run the services we need.
What always gets missed on Slashdot is that we don't need 10Mb to everybody's house... we need 1Mb to everybody that has a phone line now, including people in the "country". I know a lot of people that would be more active online except they live "one mile" from DSL or cable drops.
I have a special place in heck for Epsons. The cartridge has no "printhead" parts, but requires nearly 20% of the ink to clean the heads.. hence when you have 6 colors you can literally use 4/5 of a cartridge in cleaning cycles.. and you can't use the scanner without valid "full" cartridges.
If I printed more, I'd probably use the "external tanks". where you have little tubes to draw ink right from the bottle outside the tank instead of little cartridges. That's how wide-format inkjet plotters work.
There's an HP model out there for business that does this.. the catch is that they will only RENT the printer for a fixed price per page.
it's discretionary as part of being an admin. After all, the school board and administrators COULD be sitting on folding chairs and card tables that could be easily re-purposed rather than they way nice office furniture and carpeting they get. If he was formally reprimanded for installing the program multiple times it would be a different story. Most employers have "three strikes" style write-up systems... for something this trivial that should have been followed.
The real issue of course is that IT people are usually "left alone in a closet" and nobody schedules Steering Committiees to review the software installs on a regular basis and management doesn't "have time" to audit what their admins are doing what their supposed to (i.e. what the steering committee didn't have time to set down).. or rather what management EXPECTS them to be doing. The best part of being in IT is being very independent with little supervision... the worst thing about being in IT is keeping things going behind the scenes without management knowing how hard you're working. Guy was told to "make it go" and he did that and a side project too. Unless they give the guy a good clear 6 months to clean up his mess or he blatantly refuses overreaction is out of line.
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These have been bred since the 50's they're dozens of generations from "wild" and probably wouldn't even survive for long left alone any more.
Cats become equally violent after only a generation or two. The whole "cats in the cradle" thing came from the time when you didn't let barn cats in the house because they lived "wild" and would silently attack babies.
Not really, most full versions of Office only include INSTALL support and maybe one phone call (only if you find a bug, not user error) Student and bundled version include NO support other than what's online. Your school or OEM is supposed to answer your help calls in exchange for lower price.
The same applies to Windows. OEM (the cheap one from newegg) versions mean you get support from your builder, not Microsoft. Upgrade versions include only INSTALL support, other support is expected from your computer builder. Again, only Full Retail includes support for install, and maybe one other support call.. all calls to Microsoft require $75-$100 bucks up front on a credit card for consumer stuff and they don't charge if it's "their" problem.
For regular folks, Open Source and Microsoft have about the same level of support... People that repair problems with Office or Windows are easier to find, that's about all.
I think the issue is the measure of what you're doing for the company to make them money with IT projects.
Many, many small companies see IT as "janitors" for the computers, and don't really expect much other than keeping the "tubes" flowing. If the article poster is working for one of those companies then they're probably about staffed OK. The job being to make your own work more efficient so you can go home on time! The biggest problem with working for those companies is skill-lag, you're doing all your skill learning outside of work so you don't get to put new things for 2600 users on your resume.
Smart companies see IT as adding value and are open to IT coming up with new tools and better ways for users to do their jobs. If you build IT along with your business, your accounting/shipping/production clerks that were handling 20 customers are now handling 100 with no loss of quality.
There's the 3 steps, if you write something down in a log, it should go in a spreadsheet to be shared and backed up; if it's important to be in a spreadsheet with lots of people looking at it, it should be in a database with proper rules. Most importantly, are you writing down in ink what can electronically collected? People in Information Technology should be working on making better Information available to the company all the time. If you're not doing THAT work then YOU are losing value as an employee in your career.
but like Malcom pointed out, this IS an animal man made extinct by hunting and taking away its environment, 9 years is a blip in terms of ecosystems time line, like they weren't even gone.
Estate tax is only for people too poor to find a shelter like holding companies. A common thing for very rich is to create a holding company that "owns" all but one small house and one checking account. All the shares and property are owned by the holding company. Family members get "1099" wages with enough padding to cover the amount owed in taxes.
When Dad dies, kids are already on the "board" of the holding company as "employees" so the whole thing skips estate taxes all together except for cash and valuables that are personal belongings. Kids elect a new boss and continue to get checks.
Generally the Store Manager is responsible for updating sales tax tables in each store and they only have to be responsible for THEIR STORE.
They aren't responsible to account for sales tax where the product is USED like Amazon is being asked to. If I buy something at the mall outside the city and take it home inside the city or even a different state the mall store is not responsible as they collected the tax for their physical location.
The constitution forbids states taxing exports to another state. So it's illegal to ask Amazon in California to pay CA sales tax on things it mails other places.
I'd think the better places to collect the tax might be the Post Office (which is federal and doesn't have to follow state laws) or UPS/FedEx. As they deliver to addresses and have physical presence, it might be possible to include the sales tax in the delivery fees.
I'd also consider the Credit card companies, as they are legally regulated at the state level to do business at your physical address.
I think eventually what will happen is that online sales will have to be reported to the IRS at the federal level, they're the only ones with the authority to demand this. Then that line item gets reported to states and cities and you add that to your tax form. The main problem becomes demanding every mail order/online seller send every customer a "tax form", and also trying to get all those forms collected at the IRS in time to be filed.
But what's in it for the players...i.e. news publishers?
You're missing the TRADE part.
If I got to a news page via Google search, Google already has THEIR money. How does the newspaper make money? Selling ads doesn't work because whatever ad is on my page came from Google too.. and if the person wanted to go to that page they would have just done it already!
So Google got to "trade" me ads for search answers.
What did Google trade the newspaper to be searched? The paper traded a "chance" to get me to read? Is that valuable enough? Trade requires agreement from two sides, so did Google trade anything to the newspaper at all if they just read the page?
What did I trade the newspaper to read their page? Their ads aren't worth anything because Google already showed them to ME once. For "market maker" status to apply I'd have to trade something to the news publisher MORE valuable than their cost to put the news up there. Since Google has already seen the whole page I can use Google to subvert whatever revenue the newspaper might try to get out of me.
I'm not paying the newspaper [remember ads aren't that valuable when coming FROM a search] and Google's not paying the newspaper.
In the case of Microsoft they're a tolerable monopoly because they mostly stay out of hardware and there's lots of software they don't want to bother with. Microsoft gets $50 for Windows and you buy a $1000 computer from Dell, and some Cad software from Autocad. It's tolerable to deal with Microsoft because they provide a platform to make software development and lots of customers to sell to that offsets the cost of tools.
Google was essentially a "publisher" of the internet and it was good. It's fine for "little people" but now they are publishing other publishers' works that those people paid to have made. We're just about at the tipping point where Google will have to start paying to link TO pages or people will start pulling the pages from lack of funds to pay the bandwidth bills (cause Google's not paying for that). Selling ads doesn't work on news pages because Google has already collected the Ad revenue once, and what makes publishers most upset is that they would only get a small cut of the links on their pages. Google could help this offering higher value for ads from well read sites, but even then if my business is selling ads why should I pay anything to Google who's my direct competition.
But Murdoch PAYS people to gather the news with that advertising money. The other element is what ads are news pages supposed to run? Really?
Who's got the best online ad engine? Google
Who got the user to my page in the first place? Google
Who would I goto to get ads for my page from? Google
Where did the user come from? Google
What ad have they ALREADY SEEN? Google's
Is Google giving a newspaper premium for showing ads on their news pages? Doubt it
So how valuable is a Google Ad [or ANY ad] on a page somebody already found with Google? ???
This is the big question. Telling news publishers to "suck up" isn't fair because any useful search ad has already been served by Google. Worse, to get good hits, I'd need to use Google who has no incentive to pay ME because they already showed my customers ads once. I suppose I could get some small "blogger quality" cut from running ads but Google doesn't PAY much for those versus what they made off you searching for my page.
This is why publishers need Google or somebody to put money on the table for THEM.
How useful is Google when news is behind a paywall?
More importantly, how much money is Microsoft willing to put on the table for publishers to offset the lost ad revenue? $$$
How many Reporters and Editors does Google have on Staff to track the news?
From a publisher point-of-view Google is taking away their key business... selling ad space with the news. Newspapers, radio, TV all have strict rules about how big they can be in a geographic area, and that limits what they can recoup from selling ads. Google is a massive Monopoly compared to ANY paper just for the amount of NEWS they serve up, let alone all the other things they serve ads for. Newspapers PAY for reporters to go places and research things and for printing presses, delivery boys, etc. and Google isn't really doing any of that. When you search for their content Google puts up ads for other people.
He's saying Google has a very fair engine, but that engine is also efficient and finds the content cut-n-pasted someplace else for free.... and Google makes a dime doing it! THAT is the problem publishers have. This is the same issue book sellers have as well. Google isn't really paying for the books they have on Book Search. Even Libraries are OK to publishers because they have to BUY materials the readers demand, and have to have enough copies per branch for users to share. Again, Google is "borrowing" a copy to scan and not using it "like a book" and again, Google is efficient and helps you find a "liberated" copy of the material somewhere other than the publisher.
The issue is that when you search for a news piece, Google make ad money FIRST right on the search page. How many times is Google being paid for just one page of search ads? "Go sell ads" on each news page is a bit disingenuous for Google to tell publishers because Google is the leader in SELLING ads on webpages. Google is getting a cut to FIND your page and another cut if you want to TRY for ad revenue. These are professional news agencies. Why shouldn't Google be chipping in a dime when it's search customers hit a page at a news site? They've already had "me" as a search advertising customer once, it's not really far to ask the news publishers to "gamble" they "might" get some revenue. Google's not doing a good job of respecting "official" channels of publishers, short of publishers hiring teams of people to search for copies of news articles not on their site (they have a copyright after all, it's not fair to copy it to your blog) and issuing DMCAs.
Again, the issue is Google because their not limited by geography AND they are the leading ad seller. The issue is how DO you stop Google from strangling all the individual papers doing reporting just like Microsoft did when it added all the little pieces to it's empire. It's a matter of who needs who more right now. Publishers are gearing up to put all their content behind paywalls to make Google wake up. Once they lock down AP and Reuters (and add those contract requirements to individual newspaper webpages) Google will be hard pressed to find news. I think we'd have to go thru a lot of pain before Google will start paying for stuff, and even then do we want Google to "own" reporters and editors too? Do you want Google CREATING the news content? Imagine the power Google has to re-write history while it's happening for whatever [non-evil] agenda they have...they already have more power of day-to-day information than the US government.
Actually, believe in "Santa" is fundamental to the very concept of Quantum physics.
The idea that something is acting because we can see it's effects [presents}, but we can't catch it and measure it without changing it [nobody has seen Santa] is a very high level of logical thinking at a wee age.
Most of the "christian" labels are owned by the Big 4 now anyway. The real question is why the good acts aren't being promoted more often. Reliant K had small success "crossing over" but why is it even called that now? Put too many "christian" songs on the CD and they don't even bother queuing it to stations. I think the biggest problem is the culture of "pop" music in "sex, drugs, and Rock & Roll" used as a tool of the publishers to keep artists on the road and not watching the books. Many of the Christian musicians refuse to play that game so that instantly the little "sandbox... ethics and the music industry don't really mix... but we already knew that.
Part of the issue too is that the culture is still shifting. There's a lot of push back if a station plays non-western music even. We are just now getting a few popular people like Seinfeld or Sandler that are Jewish and popular enough to get their holiday pieces aired in spite of it. A huge portion of the "political/religious" class is dreading the day some Hindu or Islamic holiday music gets put on the air. The US "right vs left" movement has removed religious discussion from public life more efficiently than even Stalin did in Soviet Russia [to borrow a bad joke].
My problem is that I do believe the Bible and if my kids were playing a game I would not want it "loosely based" on things. I'd imagine Hindus, Buddhists, etc would not really like their religious figures turned into game characters either... and that's why publishers won't touch it.
You mention C.S. Lewis, who was a heavy proponent of Allegory and fantasy in stories. I'm more like Tolkien in that I want my stories as "play" and my religion taken seriously. C.S. Lewis did a bit of disservice because many of his fantasy books are "too close" and people expect all religious elements to be like that. I always avoid the Star Wars "Force" debate with my Uncle because Star Wars is "play" with good guys and bad guys, it's not a "religion". But the same token not all religious imagery has to be viewed as "Christian vs. non-Christian". I don't think computer games quite have the level of play needed to do good "religious" experiments yet.
For historical perspective look at how the Church handled this in the Middle Ages. As the majority of folks couldn't read, religious tales were told thru statuary, stained glass, and story telling. By the 1200's especially after the Plagues, religious imagery was taken to extremes serving as folklore, and "science fiction" of the day. Debates about "angels on the head of a pin" were taken as morally "right" or "wrong" fighting arguments. The religion BECAME the imagery and the Church is STILL hung up on some of those things. One thing I don't like about SCA is that they really discourage playing in the religious aspects of the Middle Ages and religion was the defining thing of Western Europe from 700-1500. When it comes to religion in media and culture there is a lot to learn about how it was done [or not done] before in Western culture. I think that also colors how we look at things now. Because we want people that are part of a religion to understand what they believe. With so many things out there competing now there is no room for "playing AT church" like there was in the 50's and 60's where "everybody" was Christian.
I want one! Foxes are cute and smaller than dogs but clever like cats.
If they have bred them to be more behaved they would probably be good house pets for urban dwellers. Foxes are pretty adaptable anyway, living off the scraps of society for a few hundred years already. It's mostly people that keep them out of populated places. That's how man started taming dogs and cats.
The key with domesticated animals is that they don't typically do as well in the wild. If you look at something like American Mustangs that are the runaways they went "native" and are their own unique breed now. You do have some ecology issues, but in the case of the Mustangs, we killed off all the Buffalo all by ourselves.. the horses fill much of the same niche roaming the plains. The biggest problem with domesticated animals is that we people put up fences and displace wild animals over vast areas so the ones we like can live safely. Again, with the wild horses ranchers don't like them even on federal land where they are wildlife because they compete with steers for range.
While all people are not the same, who gets to decide what features are "important" or "better"? Right now we use the "market" system of allowing all the people to compete as equally as we can so that ability or even luck is the primary decider. As history shows BAD THINGS HAPPEN when somebody starts deciding what are "good" people and what are "extra" people. Yes, it still happens every day, but civilized people have chosen not to do that.
In reality that's how humans have evolved though. We tend to flock together in like groups. If somebody is too "different" they tend to get "pushed" out of that society and in the past migrated and started their own group from hardy people that struggled against the elements on their own. If anything, we're running out of places to go, people that "don't fit" can't exactly hop off the Earth just yet so that will actually slow human evolution. Although we do exchange individuals between nations so that the best of the best often meet around the world creating a new type of "global tribe".
I do think that it would be a clever experiment to try with people. We have about 100 years of good medical data now, where your parents and grandparents still have records on file to use for typing. I think if something like eHarmony was used to match people not just by personality (which is genetic) but also by genetics you could do this and people would probably even be happier with their mates and families. I think the problem is once a "selection" takes place for the next generation, is it really their fault? If you breed some to be workers, then don't provide the task you selected for them, who fixes it? If you selected somebody to be a "worker" versus somebody to be a "businessman" then how do you distribute wealth fairly if you know those people were not "created equal'. And again, you run into the "extra people" problem.
we don't get paid $50 per hour to build PCs from parts. It might actually be cheaper per box, but the company wants to be spending your limited time (=$$) on other things with more return.
parent clearly underestimates how poorly minimum wage theater kids treat 35mm film. Handling is at best "poor" in order to maintain film quality. Film falls off the camera on the floor all the time, gets stepped on, wrinkled, jammed in the projector, has frames cut out and gets taped back together.
IMAX is the exception because they demand better operators and that the film be handled better.. but with all the "regular" venues showing Imax-lite now I bet those films get tore up terrible.
With 4GB+ RAM and 4+ cores why not! ... the video cards now meet minimum SYSTEM requirements of only 2-3 years ago.
Having kids on meds I can see that the "normal" treatment is with pretty nasty stuff... Things like Ritalin are half-a-molecule away from hard illegal drugs. But those medicines are proven to work, even if they're harsh.
Being middle class with good insurance though we did exactly what the article talks about and the wife researched similar non-narcotic replacement drugs from discussing with local support groups and online... simply for the factor of being able to not have to get DEA prescriptions that had to be hand carried every month. The replacement drugs have fewer side effects because they are tailored to the underlying problems and not just hitting behavior with the big drug hammer... they are also VERY expensive, the co-pays with good insurance are steep.
A bottle of Ritalin is really cheap...almost $4 Walmart cheap... far less than my copay for better stuff, and medicade doesn't mind paying for all those checkups and visits to get a new script every month.
My opinion on the whole thing is that we as parents and schools are paying more attention to our kids... There's no more "factory jobs" out there that will feed a family like even 15 years ago. All kids are pushed to perform in ways I'm not asked to, and I'm attending college both on campus and/or online and work full time. Frankly I think that's overkill but "education" seems to think that everybody should be trying to go to Harvard rather than state school.
but you have to really understand what's going on. A program like this is to measure "influence"... so they now have leverage to keep people from publicly switching as they will lose their "influence discount" and have to start over at "retail price" if they want to "come back to the fold". This is about Microsoft not losing share to other players by squeezing the share it's already got. At an enterprise level that could be tens of thousands of dollars if they saw you reducing Windows desktop licenses but wanting to keep some Server and development tools for stuff yet-to-be-switched.
it's both... raise the "list retail" price as high as possible, then offer more people "influential discounts" back down to the price they paid before... and offer FEWER of them as you're "measuring" who is getting influence and who's not.
That's already the scheme in the Enterprise front... Fortune 500 companies pay far less "per program per seat" but they buy lots of seats... Microsoft keeps the prices lower for them because a company like Ford will have thousands of suppliers and dealers that will be forced to deal in compatible versions of documents and communications that have to pay up. As the company gets smaller they pay more and more because they don't have "volume" right down to all the employees that buy the most expensive retail versions so they can do work at home and look good.
But the deal is that's what they're selling "unlimited".
Like GrantRobertson pointed out, the metrics that the telco sells to users are monthly payments and an amount of bandwidth. ISPs drastically oversold...they're passing out 3, 5,7+ Mb pipes then complaining when people use them "full speed" more than an hour or two a day. That's what these artificial limits amount to.
If ISPs needed to reduce usage they could easily adjust the bandwidth plans to be more appropriate. Businesses pay $1000+ for 24x7 3MB pipe... ISPs need to adjust their user pools, but again by adjusting bandwidth, not connected services. My thought is to install smarter routers at homes so that you can have 2-3 hours a day of 5Mb service and the rest 1Mb, but not crank all day... of course rates would have to adjust. (downward as they're selling 5Mb all day now)
The real problem is that all the ISP/telco/cable operators WANT to install 10Mb pipes... I've noticed my video-on-demand service uses IP for delivery... operators just want to use the fat pipes to sell THEIR services, and exclude users from choosing their own on the internet. What will need to happen eventually is to divorce "data service" from "content" ... again... then we can build out one data wire to everybody and run the services we need.
What always gets missed on Slashdot is that we don't need 10Mb to everybody's house... we need 1Mb to everybody that has a phone line now, including people in the "country". I know a lot of people that would be more active online except they live "one mile" from DSL or cable drops.
I have a special place in heck for Epsons. The cartridge has no "printhead" parts, but requires nearly 20% of the ink to clean the heads.. hence when you have 6 colors you can literally use 4/5 of a cartridge in cleaning cycles.. and you can't use the scanner without valid "full" cartridges.
If I printed more, I'd probably use the "external tanks". where you have little tubes to draw ink right from the bottle outside the tank instead of little cartridges. That's how wide-format inkjet plotters work.
There's an HP model out there for business that does this.. the catch is that they will only RENT the printer for a fixed price per page.
it's discretionary as part of being an admin. After all, the school board and administrators COULD be sitting on folding chairs and card tables that could be easily re-purposed rather than they way nice office furniture and carpeting they get. If he was formally reprimanded for installing the program multiple times it would be a different story. Most employers have "three strikes" style write-up systems... for something this trivial that should have been followed.
The real issue of course is that IT people are usually "left alone in a closet" and nobody schedules Steering Committiees to review the software installs on a regular basis and management doesn't "have time" to audit what their admins are doing what their supposed to (i.e. what the steering committee didn't have time to set down).. or rather what management EXPECTS them to be doing. The best part of being in IT is being very independent with little supervision... the worst thing about being in IT is keeping things going behind the scenes without management knowing how hard you're working. Guy was told to "make it go" and he did that and a side project too. Unless they give the guy a good clear 6 months to clean up his mess or he blatantly refuses overreaction is out of line.