The Lisa was $10,000 in 1980s money. The Macintosh sold quite well, and that was in the days when Microsoft's most advanced product was MS-DOS 3. Oh, and Microsoft started out making BASIC interpreters for home microcomputers. That was in the late 70s, long after the "5 computer" era (the quote is from the 50s). Sounds like you need a history lesson or two.
Looking at GDPs is complete bullshit, since you are not looking at the cost structures of the respective societies. In America, most of your income goes towards mandatory expenses such as housing, transportation, food, healthcare, and taxes. Once you subtract those expenses, the amount of money you can actually spend can be extremely small or even negative, particularly if you make close to minimum wage. After all, the cheapest apartment you can find in a small midwestern city will be at least $250/month. I would be willing to wager that a similar apartment would be much cheaper in China. From my personal experience, someone with a $100/month income in, say, Russia can maintain roughly the same quality of life as an American who makes $7.00/hour. Housing and transportation expenses are very small, and food is much cheaper (often by a factor of 100 or so). Americans love to think that their quality of life is the best in the world, but that's certainly not true unless you are well above the poverty line (and 20-30% of Americans live below the poverty line).
For all I know, $100 a month in China is far better than $8/hour here. $8/hour is about what people working in electronics plants get paid. We are talking about completely unskilled labor here, like inserting resistors into boards and sticking two pieces together. I'm sure that it doesn't cost $500/month to rent an apartment in China.
How are they aimed at the same market? That's like saying the PS2 poached sales of DVD players. By the time the consoles finally come out and the supply chain issues get sorted out, standalone Blu-ray players will be $200 max, probably closer to $100. There is no reason they should cost 20x what a DVD player costs; it's the same basic technology and won't cost much more to make.
Well, it isn't like the standalone Blu-ray player will somehow damage Sony. They probably share most expensive components with the PS3, anyway. Not to mention, it doesn't matter whether you have a million standalone players or a million PS3s for market share / installed base purposes.
I'm waiting to see who will have the crappier graphics. The PS2 was powerful in theory, but in practice most games looked much worse than on the Xbox. The PS3 is very likely to continue this trend, with its multiple processors and poor development tools.
Thought crimes? Grow up. Just try writing a song about a boss you don't like, and see how long it will take for him/her to fire your butt. Same thing goes for racist comments. Out there in the real world, you have to be careful about what you say, how you say it, and who hears it. Otherwise, be prepared for consequences. Sounds like someone learned this lesson the hard way.
Not to mention, you are talking about a magnet school. Seriously, if you don't like it there, go somewhere else. I'm sure there are plenty of people on the waiting list.
Well, I was mainly referring to science/engineering work. If you are an engineer, you can either make something work or you can't. It does not matter a whole lot how well you can bullshit. It's unlikely to even get you hired, and it definitely won't make you last. Now, once you get into management and similar occupations, you can definitely use your BSing skills. But then, that's what managers get paid to do, anyway.
Not sure where you work, but most places don't rely on psychometrics to judge applicants. Just having short-term memory won't help you with a technical interview unless you can memorize the entire cirriculum. At work, there is a simple and 100% effective metric. You can either do something, or you can't. Not much of a gray area.
I wouldn't bother. The government or the school cannot force him to take the site down. The school could withhold his diploma, or proceed with disciplinary action -- that's most likely within their rights. If you really feel strongly about it, you could talk to a lawyer, but it's probably not worth the effort.
In fact, 64 bit OSs run much slower than 32-bit ones. After all, your programs and data grow to twice the size, so you effectively have half the RAM. I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. With Firefox, Thunderbird, and a couple of console windows open, it was consuming 950MB of RAM. The 32-bit version consumes maybe 550MB with the same apps open. Of course, apps are also much slower to load and take up more space on the hard drive. Unless you have >4GB of RAM, 32-bit is much faster. Applications rarely, if ever, use 64-bit integers, and floating point has always been double precision regardless of the "bitness" of the processor.
Why do schoolchildren need computers? Last I checked, students go to school to learn. Learning is something best accomplished without extra distractions. A computer is a major distraction. As far as electronic books: they are neither cheaper nor better than printed text. 95% of the cost of a textbook is the publisher's profit margin; it has nothing to do with the actual manufacturing costs.
In short, I think that computers and children should not be mixed. When I first started using computers around age 10, I stopped reading books and started playing games and screwing around on the Internet in my spare time. The only thing I got out of it is an Intenet addiction, and a complete inability to do mental math. It didn't help me the least bit. Computers are great tools for killing time; they are not so good for learning.
Yeah, but its graphics were the worst of its generation. Even the Dreamcast had much better graphics. The only reason the PS2 succeeded was Sony's superior marketing.
Actually, Vonage is one of the best VoIP providers out there. Of course, that says more about other VoIP providers than about Vonage -- the bar is not set high. In any case, the cheapo plastic SanDisk crap is not going to influence iPod sales in any meaningful way. Apple wins because it's player has the best UI, the best design, the best sound quality, the best accessories, and the best integration. If SanDisk wants to make cheap low-margin crap, that's their prerogative. They aren't going to make the iPod disappear by making cheap, crappy knockoffs.
Redhat didn't screw up. The free version was pretty rough, and wasn't really very appropriate for a commercial OS vendor to develop. I like the Fedora development model a lot more, and it actually makes sense to buy the Enterprise version of redhat now. Considering how important Redhat is to Linux development, any move that puts them in a better position is a good move.
The 512-sector limitation disappeared from LILO and most BIOSes about 5 years ago, so it's now a non-issue. Not entirely sure what your problems were, sounds like your machine is just way too old.
Are you joking? The company is in the red. They probably won't ever become profitable. They will have trouble attracting customers. Their service can be easily duplicated by almost anyone. Their competitors (phone and cable companies) provide their air supply (low-latency broadband). Can you see this working in the long-term? In my opinion, they will almost certainly be bankrupt in 5 years or less.
I don't think a laptop like this could possibly run OS X. That system is extremely resource-hungry and would need a lot of modifications to squeeze it onto such an underpowered machine. That's probably the reason they refused.
Of course, IBM seems to resist blackmail even when it would be cheaper, just because giving in to blackmail sets a lousy precedent....
There's a very good reason. I once saw a book in a used-book shop. The title was something like "How to make money by suing IBM", and it was published sometime in the mid-80s. I am not kidding. I'd imagine IBM gets quite a few lawsuits, and it rarely pays to just settle them. Many times, the plaintiff will be ordered to pay legal fees, anyhow.
I doubt the issue has anything to do with QoS. Voice is extremely sensitive to delays, and simply being too far from the Vonage server will be enough to kill any chance of getting a decent quality phone call. On the LAN, strict prioritization must be observed at every router to get decent quality. In general, I think VoIP over the Internet is a fad that will go away soon, and Vonage is going to be toast. I mean, let's see... the Internet is controlled primarily by phone companies -- they own the backbones. They are not going to put up with it, and some simple routing configuration changes they can easily implement can make the 'net unusable for VoIP.
Nope. The local franchisee owns the place. The local franchisee determines who to hire and how much to pay them. Not sure if McDonalds in particular is that way, but many franchises let the owner make all business decisions. The large corporation is there to provide advertising, supplies, and business advice. The whole point of a franchise is that the local owners are better-equipped to hire people and determine the pay scales than a large corporation.
Your other examples are rather horrible. A small construction contractor usually isn't known for good pay or good benefits. Quite often, they have to resort to hiring illegal workers and stuff like that. An accounting office does not usually employ anyone -- generally, it's set up as a partnership. A family-run restaurant doesn't pay its outside employees any better than any other restaurant, and usually offers no benefits.
However, here's a better example. An IT guy working for a small local company usually receives crappy pay and little or no benefits. An IT guy working for a large company generally does much better. Comparing unskilled labor is rather meaningless, because neither large nor small companies pay much above the minimum wage.
Not sure where the hell you are getting this from. Just so you know, large companies don't consist exclusively of retail stores. Most large companies treat their employees well and provide good benefits. Just ask anyone working at Microsoft, Google, IBM, or another large company. Of course, you rarely hear about the good employers in the media.
Small business is just that -- small. Most small businesses are too small to pay a decent wage and provide decent benefits. They rarely hire full-time employees and don't always treat their employees well. Have you seen gas station employeees or Burger King employees that were happy with their jobs? Burger King or McDonald's is a perfect example of a small business. Most of those restaurants are owned and operated by a small, local franchisee. I doubt any of their employees are particularly happy.
I never said it was a fair system, or that it was a good system. It just happens to work. Seems like you have trouble with that whole "reading comprehension" thing.
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The Lisa was $10,000 in 1980s money. The Macintosh sold quite well, and that was in the days when Microsoft's most advanced product was MS-DOS 3. Oh, and Microsoft started out making BASIC interpreters for home microcomputers. That was in the late 70s, long after the "5 computer" era (the quote is from the 50s). Sounds like you need a history lesson or two.
Looking at GDPs is complete bullshit, since you are not looking at the cost structures of the respective societies. In America, most of your income goes towards mandatory expenses such as housing, transportation, food, healthcare, and taxes. Once you subtract those expenses, the amount of money you can actually spend can be extremely small or even negative, particularly if you make close to minimum wage. After all, the cheapest apartment you can find in a small midwestern city will be at least $250/month. I would be willing to wager that a similar apartment would be much cheaper in China. From my personal experience, someone with a $100/month income in, say, Russia can maintain roughly the same quality of life as an American who makes $7.00/hour. Housing and transportation expenses are very small, and food is much cheaper (often by a factor of 100 or so). Americans love to think that their quality of life is the best in the world, but that's certainly not true unless you are well above the poverty line (and 20-30% of Americans live below the poverty line).
For all I know, $100 a month in China is far better than $8/hour here. $8/hour is about what people working in electronics plants get paid. We are talking about completely unskilled labor here, like inserting resistors into boards and sticking two pieces together. I'm sure that it doesn't cost $500/month to rent an apartment in China.
How are they aimed at the same market? That's like saying the PS2 poached sales of DVD players. By the time the consoles finally come out and the supply chain issues get sorted out, standalone Blu-ray players will be $200 max, probably closer to $100. There is no reason they should cost 20x what a DVD player costs; it's the same basic technology and won't cost much more to make.
Well, it isn't like the standalone Blu-ray player will somehow damage Sony. They probably share most expensive components with the PS3, anyway. Not to mention, it doesn't matter whether you have a million standalone players or a million PS3s for market share / installed base purposes.
I'm waiting to see who will have the crappier graphics. The PS2 was powerful in theory, but in practice most games looked much worse than on the Xbox. The PS3 is very likely to continue this trend, with its multiple processors and poor development tools.
Thought crimes? Grow up. Just try writing a song about a boss you don't like, and see how long it will take for him/her to fire your butt. Same thing goes for racist comments. Out there in the real world, you have to be careful about what you say, how you say it, and who hears it. Otherwise, be prepared for consequences. Sounds like someone learned this lesson the hard way.
Not to mention, you are talking about a magnet school. Seriously, if you don't like it there, go somewhere else. I'm sure there are plenty of people on the waiting list.
Well, I was mainly referring to science/engineering work. If you are an engineer, you can either make something work or you can't. It does not matter a whole lot how well you can bullshit. It's unlikely to even get you hired, and it definitely won't make you last. Now, once you get into management and similar occupations, you can definitely use your BSing skills. But then, that's what managers get paid to do, anyway.
Not sure where you work, but most places don't rely on psychometrics to judge applicants. Just having short-term memory won't help you with a technical interview unless you can memorize the entire cirriculum. At work, there is a simple and 100% effective metric. You can either do something, or you can't. Not much of a gray area.
I wouldn't bother. The government or the school cannot force him to take the site down. The school could withhold his diploma, or proceed with disciplinary action -- that's most likely within their rights. If you really feel strongly about it, you could talk to a lawyer, but it's probably not worth the effort.
In fact, 64 bit OSs run much slower than 32-bit ones. After all, your programs and data grow to twice the size, so you effectively have half the RAM. I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. With Firefox, Thunderbird, and a couple of console windows open, it was consuming 950MB of RAM. The 32-bit version consumes maybe 550MB with the same apps open. Of course, apps are also much slower to load and take up more space on the hard drive. Unless you have >4GB of RAM, 32-bit is much faster. Applications rarely, if ever, use 64-bit integers, and floating point has always been double precision regardless of the "bitness" of the processor.
Why do schoolchildren need computers? Last I checked, students go to school to learn. Learning is something best accomplished without extra distractions. A computer is a major distraction. As far as electronic books: they are neither cheaper nor better than printed text. 95% of the cost of a textbook is the publisher's profit margin; it has nothing to do with the actual manufacturing costs.
In short, I think that computers and children should not be mixed. When I first started using computers around age 10, I stopped reading books and started playing games and screwing around on the Internet in my spare time. The only thing I got out of it is an Intenet addiction, and a complete inability to do mental math. It didn't help me the least bit. Computers are great tools for killing time; they are not so good for learning.
Yeah, but its graphics were the worst of its generation. Even the Dreamcast had much better graphics. The only reason the PS2 succeeded was Sony's superior marketing.
Actually, Vonage is one of the best VoIP providers out there. Of course, that says more about other VoIP providers than about Vonage -- the bar is not set high. In any case, the cheapo plastic SanDisk crap is not going to influence iPod sales in any meaningful way. Apple wins because it's player has the best UI, the best design, the best sound quality, the best accessories, and the best integration. If SanDisk wants to make cheap low-margin crap, that's their prerogative. They aren't going to make the iPod disappear by making cheap, crappy knockoffs.
Redhat didn't screw up. The free version was pretty rough, and wasn't really very appropriate for a commercial OS vendor to develop. I like the Fedora development model a lot more, and it actually makes sense to buy the Enterprise version of redhat now. Considering how important Redhat is to Linux development, any move that puts them in a better position is a good move.
The 512-sector limitation disappeared from LILO and most BIOSes about 5 years ago, so it's now a non-issue. Not entirely sure what your problems were, sounds like your machine is just way too old.
Are you joking? The company is in the red. They probably won't ever become profitable. They will have trouble attracting customers. Their service can be easily duplicated by almost anyone. Their competitors (phone and cable companies) provide their air supply (low-latency broadband). Can you see this working in the long-term? In my opinion, they will almost certainly be bankrupt in 5 years or less.
E-mail marketing is spam. That's what spamcop.net is supposed to block. You are a spammer, so you need to stop bitching.
So a small, rural village in Keplakistan that has a few huts is going to open an Internet Cafe?
Yes. Usually it's just a room with computers and a network connection, that can be used for a nominal hourly fee. These exist and work quite well.
I don't think a laptop like this could possibly run OS X. That system is extremely resource-hungry and would need a lot of modifications to squeeze it onto such an underpowered machine. That's probably the reason they refused.
Of course, IBM seems to resist blackmail even when it would be cheaper, just because giving in to blackmail sets a lousy precedent....
There's a very good reason. I once saw a book in a used-book shop. The title was something like "How to make money by suing IBM", and it was published sometime in the mid-80s. I am not kidding. I'd imagine IBM gets quite a few lawsuits, and it rarely pays to just settle them. Many times, the plaintiff will be ordered to pay legal fees, anyhow.
I doubt the issue has anything to do with QoS. Voice is extremely sensitive to delays, and simply being too far from the Vonage server will be enough to kill any chance of getting a decent quality phone call. On the LAN, strict prioritization must be observed at every router to get decent quality. In general, I think VoIP over the Internet is a fad that will go away soon, and Vonage is going to be toast. I mean, let's see... the Internet is controlled primarily by phone companies -- they own the backbones. They are not going to put up with it, and some simple routing configuration changes they can easily implement can make the 'net unusable for VoIP.
Nope. The local franchisee owns the place. The local franchisee determines who to hire and how much to pay them. Not sure if McDonalds in particular is that way, but many franchises let the owner make all business decisions. The large corporation is there to provide advertising, supplies, and business advice. The whole point of a franchise is that the local owners are better-equipped to hire people and determine the pay scales than a large corporation.
Your other examples are rather horrible. A small construction contractor usually isn't known for good pay or good benefits. Quite often, they have to resort to hiring illegal workers and stuff like that. An accounting office does not usually employ anyone -- generally, it's set up as a partnership. A family-run restaurant doesn't pay its outside employees any better than any other restaurant, and usually offers no benefits.
However, here's a better example. An IT guy working for a small local company usually receives crappy pay and little or no benefits. An IT guy working for a large company generally does much better. Comparing unskilled labor is rather meaningless, because neither large nor small companies pay much above the minimum wage.
Not sure where the hell you are getting this from. Just so you know, large companies don't consist exclusively of retail stores. Most large companies treat their employees well and provide good benefits. Just ask anyone working at Microsoft, Google, IBM, or another large company. Of course, you rarely hear about the good employers in the media.
Small business is just that -- small. Most small businesses are too small to pay a decent wage and provide decent benefits. They rarely hire full-time employees and don't always treat their employees well. Have you seen gas station employeees or Burger King employees that were happy with their jobs? Burger King or McDonald's is a perfect example of a small business. Most of those restaurants are owned and operated by a small, local franchisee. I doubt any of their employees are particularly happy.
I never said it was a fair system, or that it was a good system. It just happens to work. Seems like you have trouble with that whole "reading comprehension" thing.