Basic service model. Most businesses in the world are service businesses. They earn their money by providing a service, helping people do something. It's only recently that the "intellectual property" invention has led people to believe that they can "invent" something and then sit back and charge monopoly rents and not do any real work.
As others have pointed out, the cost of the nano is not much more than the cost of the memory. The advantage of the SD memory card player is that you can upgrade the unit as memory capacity increases (it seems every few months prices drop and capacity increases). You can also have multiple cards for more music.
I have an MP3 player that's similar in size to the nano and is made of a kind of rubbery plastic that has resisted all scratches... still looks great after much abuse. BTW, this player only cost me $10.00 (after rebate of list price $29.00). The trick is that it doesn't have any memory. It uses SD cards so it can be updated with more memory easily. Sound is great quality. (It's hard to find an MP3 player with poor sound quality... the technology is so simple.) Nice display. No DRM.
I agree. Skype worked well and was reasonable it it's terms. I can only see ebay screwing it up. Time to start looking for another VOIP provider. Fortunately, I (and other users) are not locked in and it will be easy to switch when they start messing it up.
Cuba has a surplus of doctors. In spite of (or because of) a "one party" system, one of the things that Cuba does well is provide good health care for its people. Cuba regularly sends hundreds of doctors abroad (and yes, they speak english). I have encountered them in South Africa and countries in South America.
Cuba has basic health indicators that are as good as or better than the USA. This includes life expectancy, immunization (better than USA), infant mortality rate (better than USA), maternal mortality rate (better than USA).
This is a genuine offer of support from Cuba but we know the US will reject it for political reasons.
VBA (and other "power user" hacks) are an unseen danger to all companies. Most of these have been written by non-programmers, are not tested well, and are impossible to audit. I can guarantee that you'll find serious errors in every company.
From my point of view, it's much better to get rid of these power user hacks and replace them with proper applications. It's a big task but (similar to Y2K) worth it in the long run.
The government announced this morning that they had restored law and order. Obviously this is wrong. I guess they are trying to put a good face on a bad situation. Maybe they need to get the National Guard and their equipment back from Iraq before they can help out.
Hurricanes build up by drawing energy from warm water. Warmer water = stronger hurricane. Specifically warmer ocean water = more and stronger hurricanes. We've just started to see the effects of global warming. Get ready for much more.
I agree. The MS grammer checker is only useful if you've had less than a 6th grade education. Even then it provides so many useless notifications that it's too irritating to use.
As long as companies are willing to follow your logic, I'd like to sign up to receive a few cents per day for each employee of a medium size company. I can just bill them for some "protection" money and retire to some island.
I live in a town that is about 10 miles from the main east-west fiber optic link. (Along Interstate 80 in California.) However, I can't get Internet access by DSL or cable. Finally some local enterprising individual set up a WiFi antenna which is about 6 miles away across the lake. Finally high speed Internet access!!
Point is that even when close to the backbone, our "free enterprise" monopolies of the phone company and cable company aren't doing the job.
Actually, fair use allows you to share your books and CDs with others and keep a copy for yourself.
The RIAA has been trying to deny and destroy fair use. They've been successful in hounding people into submission and have never had a court test of this since they know they would loose.
>Well, he hasn't contributed much to IT other than rants in a long time.
I remember in 1996 he was predicting the "collapse of the Internet". In 1997 he had to literally eat his words. I guess he hasn't changed (or learned).
To me, bloat means useless code. I don't think anyone objects to bigger programs that actually do something useful. Bloat means adding features that are useless to most people. It also means adding features that interfere with use of the software. One of my biggest frustrations with later versions of MS Word, for example, it that I have to continually fight with it to get it to stop doing cute things with my text. Even when you turn off the "automatic" stuff, it still screws up my text. I worked for a company last year that used Word 97 as their corporate standard and it was much better than the bloated later versions.
Since you seemed to have missed my point, it was that the MS monopoly is the only thing that keeps the company alive, not innovation.
"Hm, they developed Word, Excel, and Powerpoint to their current forms."
I wouldn't call the current bloaded "everything and the kitchen sink" MS Office apps "innovative".
WinCE shoehorned a bloated Windows OS into a small form factor. The success they have had has been due to their market monopoly rather than any technical excellence.
Yes, competition has faded in the face of monopoly market power.
There's a famous story that Hitler was using the Norwegian heavy water plant as part of his atomic bomb development program. It was sabotaged by some Norwegian "terrorists" and made inoperable, dealing a (fatal) blow to Hitler's atomic bomb plans.
Fascist is when individuals/corporations control government to the detriment of the general population which is the current situation in the US.
Re:Private and public are not mutually exclusive
on
Open Source Molecules
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· Score: 1
I believe the problem here is that the ACS wants to eliminate their competition from the public sector.
In this case, taxpayers have already paid for this research and I think we should have access to the results and not have to pay a private monopoly again for the information.
... and, since the Tiger will only run on Mac brand x86 hardware that you buy from Apple, it will probably keep the price premium.
People will still make the choice of Mac vs. Windows for the pre-packaged box set and Apple will be more expensive. No different than the situation today.
Linux will always be cheaper and will keep getting better.
Slashdot Mirror
Basic service model. Most businesses in the world are service businesses. They earn their money by providing a service, helping people do something. It's only recently that the "intellectual property" invention has led people to believe that they can "invent" something and then sit back and charge monopoly rents and not do any real work.
(Thanks for calling me a genius!)
This is called a "Trio". It's the absolute cheapest MP3 player you can buy... and it sounds and works great.
I have an MP3 player that's similar in size to the nano and is made of a kind of rubbery plastic that has resisted all scratches... still looks great after much abuse. BTW, this player only cost me $10.00 (after rebate of list price $29.00). The trick is that it doesn't have any memory. It uses SD cards so it can be updated with more memory easily. Sound is great quality. (It's hard to find an MP3 player with poor sound quality... the technology is so simple.) Nice display. No DRM.
I agree. Skype worked well and was reasonable it it's terms. I can only see ebay screwing it up. Time to start looking for another VOIP provider. Fortunately, I (and other users) are not locked in and it will be easy to switch when they start messing it up.
Cuba has a surplus of doctors. In spite of (or because of) a "one party" system, one of the things that Cuba does well is provide good health care for its people. Cuba regularly sends hundreds of doctors abroad (and yes, they speak english). I have encountered them in South Africa and countries in South America.
Cuba has basic health indicators that are as good as or better than the USA. This includes life expectancy, immunization (better than USA), infant mortality rate (better than USA), maternal mortality rate (better than USA).
This is a genuine offer of support from Cuba but we know the US will reject it for political reasons.
From my point of view, it's much better to get rid of these power user hacks and replace them with proper applications. It's a big task but (similar to Y2K) worth it in the long run.
It looks like /. has been slashdotted (slashdotti?).
The government announced this morning that they had restored law and order. Obviously this is wrong. I guess they are trying to put a good face on a bad situation. Maybe they need to get the National Guard and their equipment back from Iraq before they can help out.
It's criminal negligence that our government took 5 days to get food and water (and law and order) to these people.
After all of the money that has gone to "Homeland Security", you'd think the government wouldn't have to ask for donations for a predicted disaster.
Hurricanes build up by drawing energy from warm water. Warmer water = stronger hurricane. Specifically warmer ocean water = more and stronger hurricanes. We've just started to see the effects of global warming. Get ready for much more.
I agree. The MS grammer checker is only useful if you've had less than a 6th grade education. Even then it provides so many useless notifications that it's too irritating to use.
As long as companies are willing to follow your logic, I'd like to sign up to receive a few cents per day for each employee of a medium size company. I can just bill them for some "protection" money and retire to some island.
Point is that even when close to the backbone, our "free enterprise" monopolies of the phone company and cable company aren't doing the job.
Actually, fair use allows you to share your books and CDs with others and keep a copy for yourself. The RIAA has been trying to deny and destroy fair use. They've been successful in hounding people into submission and have never had a court test of this since they know they would loose.
I was doing this five years ago with an ancient SMC wireless access point and a dialup modem. I can't believe this is "news" for any nerd.
I remember in 1996 he was predicting the "collapse of the Internet". In 1997 he had to literally eat his words. I guess he hasn't changed (or learned).
Since you seemed to have missed my point, it was that the MS monopoly is the only thing that keeps the company alive, not innovation.
I wouldn't call the current bloaded "everything and the kitchen sink" MS Office apps "innovative".
WinCE shoehorned a bloated Windows OS into a small form factor. The success they have had has been due to their market monopoly rather than any technical excellence.
Yes, competition has faded in the face of monopoly market power.
It takes a lot of chomping to digest MS software.
There's a famous story that Hitler was using the Norwegian heavy water plant as part of his atomic bomb development program. It was sabotaged by some Norwegian "terrorists" and made inoperable, dealing a (fatal) blow to Hitler's atomic bomb plans.
You might want to read the Wikipedia definitions of fascism and socialism to help clear up your confusion.
You should have called him a communist.
Fascist is when individuals/corporations control government to the detriment of the general population which is the current situation in the US.
In this case, taxpayers have already paid for this research and I think we should have access to the results and not have to pay a private monopoly again for the information.
People will still make the choice of Mac vs. Windows for the pre-packaged box set and Apple will be more expensive. No different than the situation today.
Linux will always be cheaper and will keep getting better.