This is the problem with libertarians living in America. They don't really understand what government is, and more importantly, what *our* government does for us.
The government is a protection racket. It's the mafia. Its a gang, just like the Bloods and the Crips. It's the toughest guy in town. That's the way it's been since 6,000 years ago when the first states formed. Ever since then, Kings and royalty have been fighting and conquering each other, building larger and larger states.
Now, this is where the libertarian chimes in and says "See? We are in total agreement! This is exactly why we need less government -- it's nothing but a power hungry gang!"
Wrong. We are finally at a point in history where the government, the toughest gang in town, *actually responds to the common person*. There are people in government who actually care about being fair and doing what's right, instead of just exercising power. When we start downsizing *democratic* government, other tough guys, such as the mafia, the KKK, or gangs such as the Bloods and Crips will assume that power vaccuum and tell people how to run their lives -- on pain of death. Corporations will have indentured servants and slaves. Black people will be lynched for looking at white women.
In order to stand up to the bad guys who will take advantage of us, we have to form our own gang. You on your own are not strong enough to stand up to the mafia when they start asking for protection money, or to a corporation when they start poisoning your drinking water. Of course, our gang that we form is corruptable, but it is better than the alternative. If you think a place without government is great, step into the middle of the Amazon where the average males' life span is 35 -- killed by revenge cycles. Or Khartoum, where people walk the city streets with Hyenas and Baboons on chains for personal protection.
When you start reducing legitimate democratic government, you have either corporations exploiting working people like in the US at the turn of the 20th century, or you have warlords running the place like many 3rd world countries around the world. Government isn't perfect, but it's *way* better than the alternative.
"...plutocrats funded the large nonprofit foundations so that they could fund leftists who were not oriented towards economic oriented leftism, but instead towards identity politics"
What is identity politics?
So what you're saying is that they set up these non-profit foundations to take the 'manpower' (voters, volunteers) etc from real leftism and turn it towards whatever identity politics is?
I doubt that they don't want to sell it to you. I think what happened is that they thought this was going to be a total flop and they were preparing to have these things sit around in a warehouse for a month. They were going to pull the plug on this project.
Lo and behold, demand is through the roof and Quick! get together a call center so we can take orders and Quick! get those things over here from Singapore so we can start shipping them and Quick! start producing more so that we can meet demand.
Well, as you know, haste makes waste. They do have their shipping and distribution center up and running, but not well. People haven't been trained, and they probably don't even have a procedure put together to train the people on. It's just a giant clusterfuck because they weren't prepared for the demand.
I understand that up until the last century, eating the body of a person who had died was not considered cannibalism in Siberia. However, killing someone in order to eat them was cannibalism, considered worse than plain murder, and was punishable.
What CompUSA did you buy this from? The ones in Columbus, Ohio are out of stock, according to the website. Also, the website doesn't allow online orders.
I pre-ordered the Nokia 770 back in November. My ship date was supposed to be the 14th of December, but around the 18th, still no 770 nor any email.
I called Nokia USA and they told me that my credit card company was rejecting my charge. So I call my credit card company to ask why they are rejecting it. They asked who was running the charge, and I answered "Nokia". Well, nobody named Nokia was trying to charge my card -- but there was another copmany with a generic counding name that was trying to charge my card, for the same amount as my 770. I call Nokia back to ask if they are charging under that name and they tell me yes. But now my order is delayed until January 10th.
All in all, they have way more demand then they anticipated, and they really don't have their act together with production, shipping, even charging people's cards properly.
However, I am glad that there has been a literally overwhelming response -- I have always wanted a true tablet computer, but I didn't want to shell out $2500 for a table "notebook" that really wasn't using a pen-based GUI. I'm an obsessive note-taker, and if I can take down notes or draw sketches directly into digital, hooray! I hope Nokia pursues this line and develops a reasonably priced tablet computer with an OS that is truly driven by the stylus.
I know I'm coming off as a pendantic dick, but my point is that *technically*, according to traditional economics, google is not a service business.
In economics, there are goods and services. A service is when someone does labor that you would otherwise do yourself. For instance, a barber, a cabbie, or a landscaper are all in the service industry. Even though they have equipment (scissors, a cab, a lawnmower), you are not paying them directly for their equipment. You are paying them to do the work. They do factor the cost of their equipment into the price of the service, but still, you are paying for them to do the work, not for their equipment.
If you're paying for anything other than someone actually doing a job for you, you're buying a good. So even if the salesperson drives up with the lawnmower and even turns it on and teaches you how to use it, they are still selling you something rather than prodiving you a service.
There is labor involved in selling a good, and there are goods involved in doing work. The difference is what the buyer is paying for. If you are paying for someone to do work, you are buying a service, regardless that the cost of maintenance and repair of the lawnmower being built into the price. If you are paying for anything other than someone's completion of a job or their time and effort, you are buying a good, no matter how much time and effort they put into procuring that good and getting it to you.
Google answers is an example of a service, because there is actually a google employee doing the work of looking up an answer for you -- and that's what you are paying for -- a person doing the work for you.
The google search appliance is obviously a good, even though there were services involved in its design, manufacturing, marketing & promotion, and shipping. But you are paying for the item, regardless of the services built into the cost of the item.
The search engine might be a little confusing, because it's almost like someone is doing work for you. But it's not a person, it's a giant cluster of servers. So, as long as it's not actually a google engineer *operating the google search engine for you* you are buying a good (financed via advertising). It's like a lawn-mower rental guy delivering the lawn mower to you -- as long as he doesn't hop on it and start mowing your lawn for you, it's a good. The google engineers create, maintain, and deliver the search engine to you, just like the lawn mower rental guy, but they don't actually operate it for you. Thus, it's a goods business, not a service. Tools, machines and computers can all do work for us, but from an economics perspective, they are goods, not services. A service is when a *person* does something for you.
Best Buy is not a goods business, because its employees are doing the shipping and distributing that its customers would otherwise be doing themselves it Best Buy wasn't around. They aren't really selling anything -- Best Buy is a service business, because its employees are doing work for their customers.
I'm no expert by any means, but I think the idea behind the ReiserFS is breaking down the FS paradigm from the file level to the line level.
There is the classic example from the Reiser website. If your password file gets hacked, you have to ditch the whole file if you're using traditional file systems. You only know whether or not the file's been changed. However, with the Reiser system, it can tell you *what line*, and thus which user/password, was changed.
That's just a taste of where you can go with the ReiserFS. There are other things coming down the pipe; check out the reiser website for a better idea of the new features that ReiserFS promises.
"The rental car business maintains and stores the car in a convenient location. They are doing work for you. Providing access to a good is a service."
Well, in that case, Best Buy is really a service company -- they store items for you before you are ready to come and pick them up. In fact, no one sells you goods; they just provide the service of storing it for you in a convenient location.
"What part of setting up a market for "placing an ad" makes it not a service? They are providing the advertising tools, they provide the tools to target your advertising, they can provide the customers who will view your ads."
If that's what Google were doing, then google would be in the advertising service industry. But google is providing a search engine. *That's* their business. Instead of selling it directly to customers, they have it financed through an advertising model, like a radio or TV station. By your argument, radio and TV companies aren't really entertainment companies, we just happen to get a few shows with our advertisements.
"Further, we've ignored so far the massive collection of data that Google has built up on websites and their linkage to each other. The software isn't very useful without that data. If Google is a "software" company because it writes software, then it's even more so a "data" company."
OK, so it's a software *and* data company. Are you about to tell me that data is not a good?
"So to return to the original point. Google may sell a minor amount of software, but that isn't it's core business. It maintains data on more than a billion websites. But selling that data isn't it's core business either. Instead, Google is selling services, access to this software, this data, and the people who use it. That is its core business."
Look, let me repeat myself: A service is work that somebody else does for you. That's my point. If someone is providing you with some kind of tool, machine or software which you in turn are using to do the work, they are not doing you a service. They are providing you a good with which you do the work. You said it yourself -- "The key parts of google infrastructure are rented not sold." -- legally, you can only rent *goods*, not labor. Software is a product, not a service.
"No, car rental places provide you access to a car. You can't sell the car. You don't own anything new. In a similar fashion, providing an interface to software you don't control is a service not a good."
OK, then we have to make a new category besides goods and service, because a service is when a *person* does some work instead of you doing it yourself, in exchange for other goods or services.
"Google's own mission statement as per their websites corporate overview states that they aim to "organise the worlds information". Their primary service is providing search functionality. These are services, not products. Google's revenue from these services is largely based around advertising."
That may be their mission statement, but that's not what they are doing right now. Their primary revenue stream is ads on their search pages. Like I said in another post, a car rental place is providing you a good, not a service. They give you a car, and it's up to you to operate it. Likewise, google provides you an interface to their search engine, it's up to you to operate it properly. In this example, the cab driver is providing a service. If a google employee actually did the searching for you, that would be a service.
Other revenue streams include services and also licensing software, but right now, that is not their main revenue stream.
Econ 101: A service is work that a *human being* does for you. If a machine or a computer or a tool does does work for you, the person who provides that machine, computer or tool is not doing you a service. They are providing a good for you. Even though the provisioning of the good might require the provisioner to do work to provide and maintain it, as long as they are not actually *operating* it, they are not providing you with a service.
A service is when a person does the work for you, like a tailor or a cabbie. If you are running the machine/computer/tool, you are not getting a service.
As long as the user actually enters the terms in the search box and hits the submit button, there is no google employee doing a service for the user.
"The fact that Google hire programmers who write code does not mean that Google are a software company. Millions of companies worldwide hire programmers to write code yet software is anything but their core business. By your line of reasoning, Ebay is also a software company." You are right. Companies have all sorts of employees. Google has accountants, but they are not an accounting business. MBNA has programmers, but they are not a software company.
You have to look at what the company is producing or providing. Google provides access to their proprietary search engine, just like a car rental place provides access to a vehicle. Ebay is a software company which provides access to a proprietary auction engine.
"Yes, Google do have other products which they sell - but these account for a much smaller portion of revenue."
"When I use Google to look for a website (its key tool), I don't get a search engine, I get a search. That is a service. "
That's like saying when you rent a car, you don't get a car, you get a ride. Which is wrong -- you get a car, or more precisely, use of the car. You don't have to drive it. A service is when someone does work for you -- like when you hire a cab driver to give you a ride. that's a service.
With google, you are getting a direct interface to their search engine. It's up to you to use it, or even let it sit there. You don't own googles' search enging when you use it, just like you don't own the rental car when you use it. But you are getting to use their search engine. A service is when *someone else actually does the work for you* -- like a cab driver, not a car rental. In google's example, if you were paying people do to the searches, that would be a service. So for example, Google Answers, where you pay a google employee to do the search for you (look up answers), is a service.
"If I place an ad, that too is a service."
How so? Can you then say that every business is a service?
A similar example[emphasis mine] is renting a car. You can argue that the car rental business didn't actually make the car, but there's several cases where the company is partly owned by a car manufacturer. That still doesn't mean that the car rental business is selling cars as its primary business."
So that's actually a dissimilar example. Google is like an automobile company that designs, manufactures, sells, leases, and rents their vehicles, and doesn't let anyone else sell or lease their vehicles. In the case of Ford, you have Ford who makes the cars, another company, the dealer, that sells them, and yet another company, Enterprise, that rents them. AFAIK there are no google franchisees or re-sellers.
Google is most certainly a software company, not an advertising company.
An advertising company hires sales & marketing people, and graphic designers. They create marketing campaigns and buy billboards, radio and TV spots for other companies.
Google is a software company. They hire programmers who write code. They don't sell that code directly to consumers, but they give it away. They make thier money buy having ads. While google does have a marketing staff, the product that the company actually churns out it is software.
It's like saying a radio station isn't really a radio station because they don't sell radio directly to the listeners. The radio station gives the content away, but you also have to put up with some advertising. You can argue that the marketing might have some bad influence on the content, but at the end of the day some entertaining content is pouring out of the transmitting tower. No one is oging to listen to an advertising-only station. Likewise, no one would do searches on google if they were only getting ads as results. People use google. and put up with its ads, because it's great software.
Google is a software company that supports itself by running ads on their software, which they give away for free. MS is a software company that sells its software wholesale to retailers or directly to the consumer.
You say that google is a serice company because it 'does searches'. Well, I would argue that you can also say that MS is service company because it 'does word proceesing' or 'does desktop windowing'.
Bottom line, they are both in the business of writing and delivering software.
Google and MS are software companies. All they need is a few programmers to write some software, and they can duplicate that software and minimal cost and sell it millions of times over.
IBM is a consulting, maintenance, and support business. If you're hired to consult for someone, you actually have to send people there. Problem is, people can only be at one place, or do one thing at a time. Unlike software, you can't copy or clone or consultants, or have them in two places at once. If you get a new support contract, you have to hire additional support staff. If you get a new maintenance contract, you have to hire additional maintainers.
IBM sells people's labor. If they sell additional product, they have to hire addtional people - the cost is almost directly proportional.
Google and MS sell software. If they sell more software, they just print up a few more copies, or purchase additional bandwidth for downloads. The additional costs are minimal.
I have to chime in here. I hate that stupid show with the happy meal characters. I have a lot of friends who watch it, and when I've sat down at watch it with them, I've never seen them laugh at it. The premise sounds like it could be funny, but it never is. Maybe it's meant to be surreal, but it really comes off more as a lousy attempt at humor rather than absurdity. It's just lame joke after lame joke. And when friends recount plot narratives, the idea seems like it could be funny (remember the time meatwad did...), but they don't actually laugh.
I can't believe the show is as popular as it is. I think it *could* be funny and a lot of people believe in it and are waiting for it to be funny. But it's not. Somehow it acquired some hipness and everybody thinks they have to watch it in order to be "with it".
That character Carl really could be funny, but he never does anything funny!
So in Canada, you vote for a party. Even if you ask a guy on the street "Who are you voting for?" and he answers "I'm voting for John Smith the Green" if the Green party wins, is there any legal obligation for them to put John Green up as the representative?
I guess that was a misconception I had about history -- it's solely about humans? I can see how that would be interesting. I think humans are hard-wired to think that stories about people are interesting.
But for stuff like natural history, such as the life cycle of a star or the origin or Earth -- most people think that's really boring, since there's no human drama involved. To them, it's a dry-dry-dry list of facts, regardless of how excited nerds get about learning something.
I guess if you view history as a narrative, then yes, it can be exiciting. I guess that would depend on the historian's skill as a writer and storyteller. However, as a scientific minded-person, I would tend to think that history (if you consider history something other than the glorius stories of kings and heroes) would be quite mind-numbing.
If you get off on factual details, regardless of how they are presented, then I guess history is exicitng anyways.
"Next we'll hear critics saying that "Lord of the Rings" is a "great piece of adult literature." It might be - to a kid. But go back and read it today. It'll put you to sleep."
LOTR is not just any literature. It's history, ok? HISTORY. It's not supposed to be entertaining, it's supposed to be informative.
It's the fucking HISTORY of another god-damned WORLD, OK? It's not a make-believe fairy-tale.
Slashdot Mirror
This is the problem with libertarians living in America. They don't really understand what government is, and more importantly, what *our* government does for us.
The government is a protection racket. It's the mafia. Its a gang, just like the Bloods and the Crips. It's the toughest guy in town. That's the way it's been since 6,000 years ago when the first states formed. Ever since then, Kings and royalty have been fighting and conquering each other, building larger and larger states.
Now, this is where the libertarian chimes in and says "See? We are in total agreement! This is exactly why we need less government -- it's nothing but a power hungry gang!"
Wrong. We are finally at a point in history where the government, the toughest gang in town, *actually responds to the common person*. There are people in government who actually care about being fair and doing what's right, instead of just exercising power. When we start downsizing *democratic* government, other tough guys, such as the mafia, the KKK, or gangs such as the Bloods and Crips will assume that power vaccuum and tell people how to run their lives -- on pain of death. Corporations will have indentured servants and slaves. Black people will be lynched for looking at white women.
In order to stand up to the bad guys who will take advantage of us, we have to form our own gang. You on your own are not strong enough to stand up to the mafia when they start asking for protection money, or to a corporation when they start poisoning your drinking water. Of course, our gang that we form is corruptable, but it is better than the alternative. If you think a place without government is great, step into the middle of the Amazon where the average males' life span is 35 -- killed by revenge cycles. Or Khartoum, where people walk the city streets with Hyenas and Baboons on chains for personal protection.
When you start reducing legitimate democratic government, you have either corporations exploiting working people like in the US at the turn of the 20th century, or you have warlords running the place like many 3rd world countries around the world. Government isn't perfect, but it's *way* better than the alternative.
"...plutocrats funded the large nonprofit foundations so that they could fund leftists who were not oriented towards economic oriented leftism, but instead towards identity politics"
What is identity politics?
So what you're saying is that they set up these non-profit foundations to take the 'manpower' (voters, volunteers) etc from real leftism and turn it towards whatever identity politics is?
I doubt that they don't want to sell it to you. I think what happened is that they thought this was going to be a total flop and they were preparing to have these things sit around in a warehouse for a month. They were going to pull the plug on this project.
Lo and behold, demand is through the roof and Quick! get together a call center so we can take orders and Quick! get those things over here from Singapore so we can start shipping them and Quick! start producing more so that we can meet demand.
Well, as you know, haste makes waste. They do have their shipping and distribution center up and running, but not well. People haven't been trained, and they probably don't even have a procedure put together to train the people on. It's just a giant clusterfuck because they weren't prepared for the demand.
I understand that up until the last century, eating the body of a person who had died was not considered cannibalism in Siberia. However, killing someone in order to eat them was cannibalism, considered worse than plain murder, and was punishable.
"unless by 'productivity' you mean 'wordpad'"
Maybe they mean notepad.
What CompUSA did you buy this from? The ones in Columbus, Ohio are out of stock, according to the website. Also, the website doesn't allow online orders.
I pre-ordered the Nokia 770 back in November. My ship date was supposed to be the 14th of December, but around the 18th, still no 770 nor any email.
I called Nokia USA and they told me that my credit card company was rejecting my charge. So I call my credit card company to ask why they are rejecting it. They asked who was running the charge, and I answered "Nokia". Well, nobody named Nokia was trying to charge my card -- but there was another copmany with a generic counding name that was trying to charge my card, for the same amount as my 770. I call Nokia back to ask if they are charging under that name and they tell me yes. But now my order is delayed until January 10th.
All in all, they have way more demand then they anticipated, and they really don't have their act together with production, shipping, even charging people's cards properly.
However, I am glad that there has been a literally overwhelming response -- I have always wanted a true tablet computer, but I didn't want to shell out $2500 for a table "notebook" that really wasn't using a pen-based GUI. I'm an obsessive note-taker, and if I can take down notes or draw sketches directly into digital, hooray! I hope Nokia pursues this line and develops a reasonably priced tablet computer with an OS that is truly driven by the stylus.
I know I'm coming off as a pendantic dick, but my point is that *technically*, according to traditional economics, google is not a service business.
In economics, there are goods and services. A service is when someone does labor that you would otherwise do yourself. For instance, a barber, a cabbie, or a landscaper are all in the service industry. Even though they have equipment (scissors, a cab, a lawnmower), you are not paying them directly for their equipment. You are paying them to do the work. They do factor the cost of their equipment into the price of the service, but still, you are paying for them to do the work, not for their equipment.
If you're paying for anything other than someone actually doing a job for you, you're buying a good. So even if the salesperson drives up with the lawnmower and even turns it on and teaches you how to use it, they are still selling you something rather than prodiving you a service.
There is labor involved in selling a good, and there are goods involved in doing work. The difference is what the buyer is paying for. If you are paying for someone to do work, you are buying a service, regardless that the cost of maintenance and repair of the lawnmower being built into the price. If you are paying for anything other than someone's completion of a job or their time and effort, you are buying a good, no matter how much time and effort they put into procuring that good and getting it to you.
Google answers is an example of a service, because there is actually a google employee doing the work of looking up an answer for you -- and that's what you are paying for -- a person doing the work for you.
The google search appliance is obviously a good, even though there were services involved in its design, manufacturing, marketing & promotion, and shipping. But you are paying for the item, regardless of the services built into the cost of the item.
The search engine might be a little confusing, because it's almost like someone is doing work for you. But it's not a person, it's a giant cluster of servers. So, as long as it's not actually a google engineer *operating the google search engine for you* you are buying a good (financed via advertising). It's like a lawn-mower rental guy delivering the lawn mower to you -- as long as he doesn't hop on it and start mowing your lawn for you, it's a good. The google engineers create, maintain, and deliver the search engine to you, just like the lawn mower rental guy, but they don't actually operate it for you. Thus, it's a goods business, not a service. Tools, machines and computers can all do work for us, but from an economics perspective, they are goods, not services. A service is when a *person* does something for you.
Well, then, every business is a service.
Best Buy is not a goods business, because its employees are doing the shipping and distributing that its customers would otherwise be doing themselves it Best Buy wasn't around. They aren't really selling anything -- Best Buy is a service business, because its employees are doing work for their customers.
I'm no expert by any means, but I think the idea behind the ReiserFS is breaking down the FS paradigm from the file level to the line level.
There is the classic example from the Reiser website. If your password file gets hacked, you have to ditch the whole file if you're using traditional file systems. You only know whether or not the file's been changed. However, with the Reiser system, it can tell you *what line*, and thus which user/password, was changed.
That's just a taste of where you can go with the ReiserFS. There are other things coming down the pipe; check out the reiser website for a better idea of the new features that ReiserFS promises.
"The rental car business maintains and stores the car in a convenient location. They are doing work for you. Providing access to a good is a service."
Well, in that case, Best Buy is really a service company -- they store items for you before you are ready to come and pick them up. In fact, no one sells you goods; they just provide the service of storing it for you in a convenient location.
"What part of setting up a market for "placing an ad" makes it not a service? They are providing the advertising tools, they provide the tools to target your advertising, they can provide the customers who will view your ads."
If that's what Google were doing, then google would be in the advertising service industry. But google is providing a search engine. *That's* their business. Instead of selling it directly to customers, they have it financed through an advertising model, like a radio or TV station. By your argument, radio and TV companies aren't really entertainment companies, we just happen to get a few shows with our advertisements.
"Further, we've ignored so far the massive collection of data that Google has built up on websites and their linkage to each other. The software isn't very useful without that data. If Google is a "software" company because it writes software, then it's even more so a "data" company."
OK, so it's a software *and* data company. Are you about to tell me that data is not a good?
"So to return to the original point. Google may sell a minor amount of software, but that isn't it's core business. It maintains data on more than a billion websites. But selling that data isn't it's core business either. Instead, Google is selling services, access to this software, this data, and the people who use it. That is its core business."
Look, let me repeat myself: A service is work that somebody else does for you. That's my point. If someone is providing you with some kind of tool, machine or software which you in turn are using to do the work, they are not doing you a service. They are providing you a good with which you do the work. You said it yourself -- "The key parts of google infrastructure are rented not sold." -- legally, you can only rent *goods*, not labor. Software is a product, not a service.
"No, car rental places provide you access to a car. You can't sell the car. You don't own anything new. In a similar fashion, providing an interface to software you don't control is a service not a good."
OK, then we have to make a new category besides goods and service, because a service is when a *person* does some work instead of you doing it yourself, in exchange for other goods or services.
"Google's own mission statement as per their websites corporate overview states that they aim to "organise the worlds information". Their primary service is providing search functionality. These are services, not products. Google's revenue from these services is largely based around advertising."
That may be their mission statement, but that's not what they are doing right now. Their primary revenue stream is ads on their search pages. Like I said in another post, a car rental place is providing you a good, not a service. They give you a car, and it's up to you to operate it. Likewise, google provides you an interface to their search engine, it's up to you to operate it properly. In this example, the cab driver is providing a service. If a google employee actually did the searching for you, that would be a service.
Other revenue streams include services and also licensing software, but right now, that is not their main revenue stream.
Econ 101: A service is work that a *human being* does for you. If a machine or a computer or a tool does does work for you, the person who provides that machine, computer or tool is not doing you a service. They are providing a good for you. Even though the provisioning of the good might require the provisioner to do work to provide and maintain it, as long as they are not actually *operating* it, they are not providing you with a service.
A service is when a person does the work for you, like a tailor or a cabbie. If you are running the machine/computer/tool, you are not getting a service.
As long as the user actually enters the terms in the search box and hits the submit button, there is no google employee doing a service for the user.
"The fact that Google hire programmers who write code does not mean that Google are a software company. Millions of companies worldwide hire programmers to write code yet software is anything but their core business. By your line of reasoning, Ebay is also a software company." You are right. Companies have all sorts of employees. Google has accountants, but they are not an accounting business. MBNA has programmers, but they are not a software company.
You have to look at what the company is producing or providing. Google provides access to their proprietary search engine, just like a car rental place provides access to a vehicle. Ebay is a software company which provides access to a proprietary auction engine.
"Yes, Google do have other products which they sell - but these account for a much smaller portion of revenue."
Agreed.
"Google doesn't sell software."
Google *does* sell sofware.
"When I use Google to look for a website (its key tool), I don't get a search engine, I get a search. That is a service. "
That's like saying when you rent a car, you don't get a car, you get a ride. Which is wrong -- you get a car, or more precisely, use of the car. You don't have to drive it. A service is when someone does work for you -- like when you hire a cab driver to give you a ride. that's a service.
With google, you are getting a direct interface to their search engine. It's up to you to use it, or even let it sit there. You don't own googles' search enging when you use it, just like you don't own the rental car when you use it. But you are getting to use their search engine. A service is when *someone else actually does the work for you* -- like a cab driver, not a car rental. In google's example, if you were paying people do to the searches, that would be a service. So for example, Google Answers, where you pay a google employee to do the search for you (look up answers), is a service.
"If I place an ad, that too is a service."
How so? Can you then say that every business is a service?
A similar example [emphasis mine] is renting a car. You can argue that the car rental business didn't actually make the car, but there's several cases where the company is partly owned by a car manufacturer. That still doesn't mean that the car rental business is selling cars as its primary business."
So that's actually a dissimilar example. Google is like an automobile company that designs, manufactures, sells, leases, and rents their vehicles, and doesn't let anyone else sell or lease their vehicles. In the case of Ford, you have Ford who makes the cars, another company, the dealer, that sells them, and yet another company, Enterprise, that rents them. AFAIK there are no google franchisees or re-sellers.
An advertising company hires sales & marketing people, and graphic designers. They create marketing campaigns and buy billboards, radio and TV spots for other companies.
Google is a software company. They hire programmers who write code. They don't sell that code directly to consumers, but they give it away. They make thier money buy having ads. While google does have a marketing staff, the product that the company actually churns out it is software.
It's like saying a radio station isn't really a radio station because they don't sell radio directly to the listeners. The radio station gives the content away, but you also have to put up with some advertising. You can argue that the marketing might have some bad influence on the content, but at the end of the day some entertaining content is pouring out of the transmitting tower. No one is oging to listen to an advertising-only station. Likewise, no one would do searches on google if they were only getting ads as results. People use google. and put up with its ads, because it's great software.
You say that google is a serice company because it 'does searches'. Well, I would argue that you can also say that MS is service company because it 'does word proceesing' or 'does desktop windowing'.
Bottom line, they are both in the business of writing and delivering software.
Google and MS are software companies. All they need is a few programmers to write some software, and they can duplicate that software and minimal cost and sell it millions of times over.
IBM is a consulting, maintenance, and support business. If you're hired to consult for someone, you actually have to send people there. Problem is, people can only be at one place, or do one thing at a time. Unlike software, you can't copy or clone or consultants, or have them in two places at once. If you get a new support contract, you have to hire additional support staff. If you get a new maintenance contract, you have to hire additional maintainers.
IBM sells people's labor. If they sell additional product, they have to hire addtional people - the cost is almost directly proportional.
Google and MS sell software. If they sell more software, they just print up a few more copies, or purchase additional bandwidth for downloads. The additional costs are minimal.
I have to chime in here. I hate that stupid show with the happy meal characters. I have a lot of friends who watch it, and when I've sat down at watch it with them, I've never seen them laugh at it. The premise sounds like it could be funny, but it never is. Maybe it's meant to be surreal, but it really comes off more as a lousy attempt at humor rather than absurdity. It's just lame joke after lame joke. And when friends recount plot narratives, the idea seems like it could be funny (remember the time meatwad did ...), but they don't actually laugh.
I can't believe the show is as popular as it is. I think it *could* be funny and a lot of people believe in it and are waiting for it to be funny. But it's not. Somehow it acquired some hipness and everybody thinks they have to watch it in order to be "with it".
That character Carl really could be funny, but he never does anything funny!
"He's a public icon so people in the opposing camp like to use him at the butt end of the joke. That's called moral. "
I think it's called morale.
Besides looking unprofessional, handwriting is of varying quality, and illegibility can affect delivery.
Some shipping companies won't accept handwritten addresses, because it's so easy to misread them.
Oh, now I get it. I forgot the part where in the Canadian system, you vote for a candidate, not the party. ;)
OK, I'm still confused -- What is a riding?
So in Canada, you vote for a party. Even if you ask a guy on the street "Who are you voting for?" and he answers "I'm voting for John Smith the Green" if the Green party wins, is there any legal obligation for them to put John Green up as the representative?
I guess that was a misconception I had about history -- it's solely about humans? I can see how that would be interesting. I think humans are hard-wired to think that stories about people are interesting.
But for stuff like natural history, such as the life cycle of a star or the origin or Earth -- most people think that's really boring, since there's no human drama involved. To them, it's a dry-dry-dry list of facts, regardless of how excited nerds get about learning something.
I guess if you view history as a narrative, then yes, it can be exiciting. I guess that would depend on the historian's skill as a writer and storyteller. However, as a scientific minded-person, I would tend to think that history (if you consider history something other than the glorius stories of kings and heroes) would be quite mind-numbing.
If you get off on factual details, regardless of how they are presented, then I guess history is exicitng anyways.
"Next we'll hear critics saying that "Lord of the Rings" is a "great piece of adult literature." It might be - to a kid. But go back and read it today. It'll put you to sleep."
LOTR is not just any literature. It's history, ok? HISTORY. It's not supposed to be entertaining, it's supposed to be informative.
It's the fucking HISTORY of another god-damned WORLD, OK? It's not a make-believe fairy-tale.
Sheesus.