Insurance companies (AH&L kind) lose money bigtime on premiums, even at the tremendous prices they charge today. They invest the premium money (after commissions and overhead) into stocks and bonds and whatnot. If it wasn't for that I doubt any would still be functioning except for the most wealthy clients, and those folks could just pay cash for any healthcare so the point would be moot. I am generally speaking but this is some true facts. If the economy tanks bad (housing bubble, derivatives, more energy whoopses,dollar goes south compared to a variety of other currencies, etc., what-ever),I expect to see quite a few of them go bankrupt in short order.
As it stands now,even before the baby boomers retire and place an even greater demand "on the system", the current medical/insurance scene is a huge wealth transference business. It is bankrupting families all over, even those who thought they they had "good" insurance. And going strictly by the numbers, it looks to be *highly* untenable within one to two decades. Yes, a ton of medical advances out there. Result is people live longer and it costs tons of loot, just boatloads for this to happen, so that means wealth transference on a large scale upstream, away from the workers/producers in general in the population. Add in private and governmental pension over exposure which is one of the top underreported and under realised economic problems we are facing..well...it just ain't looking good on a macro scale.
tinfoil hat - new and emerging odd "superbugs", perhaps some high level leet controllers wouldn't mind it getting "out of control" for a few years planet wide. Those of us into conspiracy fact and friction call it "The Great Cull" theory./tinfoil hat
...with DUI in ye olden days, because no matter how snookered you got, old dobbin knew the way home. If you could make it into the saddle, the rest was biological guidance system that could function quite well with little to no input from the pilot/driver/operator. The fuel source was environmentally friendly and sustainable as well, heh. Solar powered, intelligent and self replicating, something to be said for the "old ways".
In mining now they use embedded sensors to guide robotic vehicles (trucks I think) of the quite large size. Just some data I heard about, no link handy. Probably not very AI intense, just steering back and forth down an established road. I know in farming they have automated GPS enabled steering for doing large operations,you get very precise rows, etc in those huge farms of thousands of acres. You can see the ads for the devices/tractors/etc in the back of farm magazines.
As to the unarmed missile firing drones, one would imagine that a software tweak would make it go from human interaction-required to fire-at-will, say in some area where no "friendlies" were. They could set it on "if it's mechanical and moving destroy it" and just turn them loose in that area. That would seem possible right now. Maybe some AC will confirm or deny this capability.
Theoretically in your case, the government could step in, seize your land, pay you some chump change, and turn around and give it to the neighbor company for a toxic waste dump. The company next door pays larger taxes than you do, a few local commissioners see that, some other "consulting fees" change hands sub rosa, poof, you are SOL. Eminent domain property seizures have happened a lot, and are judged "legal" as long as there is some tenuous public benefit.
I would imagine some enterprising lawyers are already drooling over this legal concept when it comes to IP "products". It's only a short step away.
Say, you had large established company A with deep pockets that needed patent B from joe nobody in order to produce product C, and offered to set-up a factory in some locale. Perhaps they could persuade the governmental entity that if they seized the patent they needed and gave it to them that it would result in "more business and growth" for this community.
It could happen theoretically, property is prperty, seizure is seizure.
In every other business "experience", part of that "learning process" is covering your product with a minimal warranty, not a "nothing is my fault, take it or leave it, suckah" scene EULA like you get with software. This is the only industry that pushes a product that gets this totally free skate on quality. In essence you are saying that you can't offer even the bare minimum warranty a blender manufacturer offers, yet it's "professional".
People "in the industry" really can't see what joe consumers (dude in the article in this case, but call it joe consumers) are saying? Or People "in the industry" don't want to see that?
Give it away for free, share the source, swell, call it perpetual beta ware, slap that "it ain't my problem, it's YOURS" EULA on it. But sell it, err excuse me "license it to use", and you should have a minimal warranty of some kind, by law if not by volunteering one because you stand behind your product with more than soothing words and a shrug.
We got rid of "caveat emptor" in the pharmecutical industry when 99% of the medicines on the market were snakeoil, and they survived just *fine*, so maybe it's time to do the same with software products, products that the multi hundred billion a year industry receives *patents* on. Patents! Software is a mature industry now, it doesn't need the hand holding and training wheels like it needed when it first started out half a century ago.
Less releases of better quality? HELL YA! Sign me up! Cost more? Probably! Who cares? Would the end user be forced into buying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again if what they bought in the first place worked much better? Most likely! So in that case it would long run be cheaper. Less headaches for the end users, the customers? More than likely, things go smooth when stuff "just works". Better for society, economically and socially? Judgement call, but seems like it's worked for about every other industry, so...
And any shareholder can have an opinion on what is the best way to run a company. Some hold a very long term view, that by consistently "doing no evil", the company will last a long time and be even more profitable than doing everything they can to maximize profits in the "this quarter" mentality that so many other corporations have. In fact, perhaps more than a few people invested in google for that reason.
There are many institutional and private investors that now consider ethics and politics in their investment decisions and it's completely legal and normal and they contend it's a long range logical view to take. If you as a potential investor read that google had such a "do no evil" policy and it lead to your decision to invest cash when they went public, then you could make a case where they violated that if they started "doing evil", and perhaps file a complaint.
Funny story, friend of mine inherited a really nice portfolio. He divested all (to buy rental properties instead) except for enough shares in this or that company to go to the shareholder meetings and rail on issues about how the companies were run.
but you can get a tzero by ac propulsion that does pretty good performance wise if you are looking for some sportscar. Instead of MPG look at cost per mile instead with whatever you pay for electric now for charging.
...for Team TerraMax. I dig LARGE equipment, heh. But, the little VW that could, WHOOP!!
Maybe next year they'll make it interesting and allow SABOTAGE while the race is running! That would be a hoot, and make it more realistic for what DARPA wants.
if you could buy it pre loaded with the genre of your choice.
of course 10,000$ in advance would suck....
but the concept is interesting, you could go to the online store,start clicking what music you want at so much a gig,(whatever they work out) then order the player, it ships ready to rock (or jazz or whatever). No requirement to fill it up all at once, but a very decent selection could be made.
They'd obviously have to make better pricing arrangements (a buck a song in advance just wouldn't fly), but eventually I think the content providers will bingo to bulk and very very cheap sales are still sales, better than *no sale* and fight copying. If the content is loaded at the factory, bandwith costs are dramatically reduced so it could be offered cheaper, and costs to the content providers would theoretically be identical, so they would actually make more money, even if it meant they cut loose with more copies for much cheaper. And hassle to the consumer is really reduced, making happy and legal campers. I don't think at this time you could do it with individual songs easily or cheaply, but if you were presented with a choice like "10 gigs assorted metal" or "5 gigs assorted C&W" whatever and the price was reasonable enough people might go for it when ordering a new player.
Of course, I have no idea if anyone is even doing this now,selling preloaded units, I don't follow that portable music player scene all that much except a few articles I read here. I use a one dollar (full retail price at biglots) tiny FM only radio for my portable music when I am outside, and that is infrequent. When I work it's usually in a quite loud environment so I have to use a full noise cancelling over the ear headset. I tried it with earbuds for media content then the headset and it sorta works but not that well. probably need to just build my own into the comfortable noise reduction units first, so can cancel out the outside noise, and add the inside the headset content I want. Maybe, sounds like work though...
meh I am one cheap dood HAHAHAHA!.......been holding out for a very full featured pda or smartphone to hit 100$ or so before I get anything like that. Has to do everything, wireless net, media playback, cellphone,short range walkie talkie, simple computing tasks, etc and non ridiculous screen and keyboard size. It'll get there in a coupla years probably, judging by flashmemory improvements and better processors for gadgets.
...they gain amazing market leverage. They aren't cutting themselves off, they are guaranteeing profits and not even have to even think about exporting cash. Explanation: they have the industrial capacity to still EXPORT any and all formats,in any quantity, anywhere, to anyone, so they don't care about "formats" except it's a market. But, who will want to try and make a chinese standard disk and try to import it INTO china and expect to make a profit? Answer, no one. See, they cover their humongous domestic market, plus the rest of the planet. Win/Win for them, and guaranted to most always keep their rapidly expanding internal markets domesticaly driven. Yes, they import, and they mostly import machine tools to go ahead and setup more factories to build stuff, when it comes to durable goods, that or prototypes they can either license legally and clone or just heck with it, clone anyway. It's only taken them 25 or so years to go from a marginal player with a huge population to the worlds leading manufacturing nation, and all the indicators say this will continue until they are also the highest GDP.
They are long term strategic thinkers, they don't fool much with this quarters profit mentality. That's why they are out there signing 20 year energy deals or outright buying up the sources, along with strategic minerals.
I saw a variation on this once in meatspace. I was working a jewelry show. Up the elevator comes this security guard detail hauling a lockbox. A few minutes later, mixed in with the crowd coming in was a tiny old geezer carrying, yes, a shoebox. Both the guards and the old dude go to the same booth eventually. Inside the shoebox was 7 figures of stones, inside the lockbox with the guards was bupkis. I understand this scene gets changed a lot too (potential example, next time a young lady with a baby carriage maybe, whatever, maybe after that the stones come in with the decorative plants, etc), just the one time I saw that variation.
On his machines? Does he financially contribute to all the devs with all the apps? Donate to the kernel? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, I am forced to guess, but just conversationally speaking, he writes code and shared it freely,and I bet a nickle he's been using a lot of free code unrelated to nessus but just as deserving of support.
With that said, I would like a one cd distro (not 4 or 5 or 14 or on DVDs), a nice but not overly huge number of apps, and pay for it. Not a ton of money, but some, say 20 to 50 bucks, once a year release, tops. FOSS, but pay a reasonable fee, where all the loot received got divvied up between the distro packager and the app devs somehow, some formula perhaps. Maybe even select what I want from the vendor in advance (I want this desktop and this set of net apps and this other app and etc), it gets custom packaged as an iso and delivered,either download or a few dollars more snailmail and disk, allowing me to pay what I want for a "distro", and knowing that the payment got shared equally (to those who wanted it) with the devs and teams. I only get security updates for those apps for that years release then. Now, if you buy a distro, not much goes to the devs for the bulk of whatever is packaged, does it? with this idea, if I had chose to include nessus,in my custom package, he would have gotten my contribution towards his kitty. Multiple by thousands of people, it starts to add up. Better code gets more interest and purchasers obviously, so it's self regulating. Crapware and bloatware wouldn't garner as much interest, as it would cost you MUCH more. See, no fixed price, a floating price based on what YOU want and what has value to YOU, which also gives the devs incentive, as they can see what works and what doesn't. also make people want to contribute code to packages, to help out, because they would get a tiny slice then.
Think about how it is now, you'd have to go find all the paypal donations for a HUGE number of apps and various devs, etc. and then you would nickel yourself to irrelevant obscurity with the stoopid paypal fees if you wanted to tip them all. But the distro packager could do this as a good piece of his cut, and completely eliminate paypal, so the bulk of the money would actually go for "support".
There's got to be a way for the user community (who don't code much if any) to "give back" in an equitable manner.
Something like this anyway might be a possibility.
You can get quite a lot of good information from mainstream journals. The deal is, they do NOT connect the dots for you (usually), and frequently the juicier stuff is buried in the back pages. but it's there, just needs to be constantly looking and don't trust single sources.
That's why the net is good, you can read several versions from diverse places/regions and get a better handle on any given situation.
And some newsies get caught,publishing false info (created by themselves or acting as shills/FUD spreaders) and get punished by loss of jobs and reputation, etc. Hmm, recent examples, network news, Dan Rather using the forged documents (whether he knew or not), syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams caught feeding political propoganda as news, that thoroughly *weird* dude "Jeff Gannon" (if that is his real name) acting as a whitehouse talking points shill, and etc.
It is not perfect by any means, but the moral of the story is that they can and frequently do get caught. A lot will slip through, but the nature of lying is you have to keep lying, adding layers, eventually the liar slips up and it unravels.
That's the publics/readers job, to connect the dots and follow through. We are in a transition stage now with blogging and podcasting where the lines are getting hazier between journalism and...whatever it will evolve into.
How do ya figure it now? I just came back in and read the press release, google tool bar with java. Well, big deal. Really, it's anticlimactic. They say they will be "cooperating" whatever that means on Open Office (not Star Office). Is that close enough, or will you sell? The announcement leaves me sort of...blah. It is not earth shaking or anything. Of course, they could easily do a network office in the mysterious future, but why jump the shark with the announcement then? Garner interest for beta testers?
meh, I don't buy stocks, unless you count food and fuel, beans and bullets as stock, that and precious metals coin-age.
I'm a tangibles guy, listened to too many stories about the crash and the great depression from my older relatives to trust the casino, nor want to participate in it, I think it's more rigged than not. With my wallet I only understand tangibles. I love to theorize and play act with macro economics, but when push comes to shove I'm the most hibernating of bears...heh. I don't care other folks do it, but for me never had the interest.
Pretty funny, as a kid going to the 5 and dime store (when they existed), you could get a nice thick pack of actual paper stocks as novelties, all fulla fancy scrolled edges and whatnot. Funny to think of all the "investment" money that went to get them way back then.
That's my bet. When it comes to money or doing what is right, google will now take the money. They will right Taiwan off if it's a choice and placate the PLA (the real rulers of mainland China) and their besuited front men goons.. Inevitable since they went public. Same as every other public corporation out there, profits always come first.
The interesting question here is who in the two corporation consortium is going to be running what? Sun at the backend, Google upfront for marketing and deployment? Who will get the check, where will the suvbbscription cash go to? It's obvious that ad based is not going to fly for business use. So wih ads for joe consumer, without ads and pay for it for businessuses? Where's the money? Does Sun just want to recapture some mindshare?
Guess we'll find out this afternoon, sure is interesting though, sort of like what Netscape wanted way back in the day. And what Sun is pushing already with rent-a-CPU by the hour.
they have to be careful that the checks (and cash) stuffed in each pocket balance out. Can't have judges walking down the street listing to port, just isn't proper looking....
Robotics is being pushed as another manufacturing industry to provide jobs and keep the various economies stimulated. They have to find uses for them. You could replace "teacher" with some other occupation and have the same story. A robotic street sweeper for instance, or a light bulb changer, whatever. Politician. heh
At least that is my guess on the subject, that and robots are just considered cool, there's a lot more interest in the Asian nations than in the west for them apparently, and manufacturing in general terms is still considered a "good idea", whereas in the west it's marketing that garners the most interest and focus.
Slashdot Mirror
Insurance companies (AH&L kind) lose money bigtime on premiums, even at the tremendous prices they charge today. They invest the premium money (after commissions and overhead) into stocks and bonds and whatnot. If it wasn't for that I doubt any would still be functioning except for the most wealthy clients, and those folks could just pay cash for any healthcare so the point would be moot. I am generally speaking but this is some true facts. If the economy tanks bad (housing bubble, derivatives, more energy whoopses,dollar goes south compared to a variety of other currencies, etc., what-ever),I expect to see quite a few of them go bankrupt in short order.
/tinfoil hat
As it stands now,even before the baby boomers retire and place an even greater demand "on the system", the current medical/insurance scene is a huge wealth transference business. It is bankrupting families all over, even those who thought they they had "good" insurance. And going strictly by the numbers, it looks to be *highly* untenable within one to two decades. Yes, a ton of medical advances out there. Result is people live longer and it costs tons of loot, just boatloads for this to happen, so that means wealth transference on a large scale upstream, away from the workers/producers in general in the population. Add in private and governmental pension over exposure which is one of the top underreported and under realised economic problems we are facing..well...it just ain't looking good on a macro scale.
tinfoil hat - new and emerging odd "superbugs", perhaps some high level leet controllers wouldn't mind it getting "out of control" for a few years planet wide. Those of us into conspiracy fact and friction call it "The Great Cull" theory.
...with DUI in ye olden days, because no matter how snookered you got, old dobbin knew the way home. If you could make it into the saddle, the rest was biological guidance system that could function quite well with little to no input from the pilot/driver/operator. The fuel source was environmentally friendly and sustainable as well, heh. Solar powered, intelligent and self replicating, something to be said for the "old ways".
In mining now they use embedded sensors to guide robotic vehicles (trucks I think) of the quite large size. Just some data I heard about, no link handy. Probably not very AI intense, just steering back and forth down an established road. I know in farming they have automated GPS enabled steering for doing large operations,you get very precise rows, etc in those huge farms of thousands of acres. You can see the ads for the devices/tractors/etc in the back of farm magazines.
As to the unarmed missile firing drones, one would imagine that a software tweak would make it go from human interaction-required to fire-at-will, say in some area where no "friendlies" were. They could set it on "if it's mechanical and moving destroy it" and just turn them loose in that area. That would seem possible right now. Maybe some AC will confirm or deny this capability.
Theoretically in your case, the government could step in, seize your land, pay you some chump change, and turn around and give it to the neighbor company for a toxic waste dump. The company next door pays larger taxes than you do, a few local commissioners see that, some other "consulting fees" change hands sub rosa, poof, you are SOL. Eminent domain property seizures have happened a lot, and are judged "legal" as long as there is some tenuous public benefit.
I would imagine some enterprising lawyers are already drooling over this legal concept when it comes to IP "products". It's only a short step away.
Say, you had large established company A with deep pockets that needed patent B from joe nobody in order to produce product C, and offered to set-up a factory in some locale. Perhaps they could persuade the governmental entity that if they seized the patent they needed and gave it to them that it would result in "more business and growth" for this community.
It could happen theoretically, property is prperty, seizure is seizure.
In every other business "experience", part of that "learning process" is covering your product with a minimal warranty, not a "nothing is my fault, take it or leave it, suckah" scene EULA like you get with software. This is the only industry that pushes a product that gets this totally free skate on quality. In essence you are saying that you can't offer even the bare minimum warranty a blender manufacturer offers, yet it's "professional".
People "in the industry" really can't see what joe consumers (dude in the article in this case, but call it joe consumers) are saying? Or People "in the industry" don't want to see that?
Give it away for free, share the source, swell, call it perpetual beta ware, slap that "it ain't my problem, it's YOURS" EULA on it. But sell it, err excuse me "license it to use", and you should have a minimal warranty of some kind, by law if not by volunteering one because you stand behind your product with more than soothing words and a shrug.
We got rid of "caveat emptor" in the pharmecutical industry when 99% of the medicines on the market were snakeoil, and they survived just *fine*, so maybe it's time to do the same with software products, products that the multi hundred billion a year industry receives *patents* on. Patents! Software is a mature industry now, it doesn't need the hand holding and training wheels like it needed when it first started out half a century ago.
Less releases of better quality? HELL YA! Sign me up! Cost more? Probably! Who cares? Would the end user be forced into buying the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again if what they bought in the first place worked much better? Most likely! So in that case it would long run be cheaper. Less headaches for the end users, the customers? More than likely, things go smooth when stuff "just works". Better for society, economically and socially? Judgement call, but seems like it's worked for about every other industry, so...
And any shareholder can have an opinion on what is the best way to run a company. Some hold a very long term view, that by consistently "doing no evil", the company will last a long time and be even more profitable than doing everything they can to maximize profits in the "this quarter" mentality that so many other corporations have. In fact, perhaps more than a few people invested in google for that reason.
There are many institutional and private investors that now consider ethics and politics in their investment decisions and it's completely legal and normal and they contend it's a long range logical view to take. If you as a potential investor read that google had such a "do no evil" policy and it lead to your decision to invest cash when they went public, then you could make a case where they violated that if they started "doing evil", and perhaps file a complaint.
Funny story, friend of mine inherited a really nice portfolio. He divested all (to buy rental properties instead) except for enough shares in this or that company to go to the shareholder meetings and rail on issues about how the companies were run.
but you can get a tzero by ac propulsion that does pretty good performance wise if you are looking for some sportscar. Instead of MPG look at cost per mile instead with whatever you pay for electric now for charging.
e .htm
http://www.acpropulsion.com/tzero_pages/tzero_hom
Maybe next year they'll make it interesting and allow SABOTAGE while the race is running! That would be a hoot, and make it more realistic for what DARPA wants.
Why thank you very much for the corrections.
if you could buy it pre loaded with the genre of your choice.
of course 10,000$ in advance would suck....
but the concept is interesting, you could go to the online store,start clicking what music you want at so much a gig,(whatever they work out) then order the player, it ships ready to rock (or jazz or whatever). No requirement to fill it up all at once, but a very decent selection could be made.
They'd obviously have to make better pricing arrangements (a buck a song in advance just wouldn't fly), but eventually I think the content providers will bingo to bulk and very very cheap sales are still sales, better than *no sale* and fight copying. If the content is loaded at the factory, bandwith costs are dramatically reduced so it could be offered cheaper, and costs to the content providers would theoretically be identical, so they would actually make more money, even if it meant they cut loose with more copies for much cheaper. And hassle to the consumer is really reduced, making happy and legal campers. I don't think at this time you could do it with individual songs easily or cheaply, but if you were presented with a choice like "10 gigs assorted metal" or "5 gigs assorted C&W" whatever and the price was reasonable enough people might go for it when ordering a new player.
Of course, I have no idea if anyone is even doing this now,selling preloaded units, I don't follow that portable music player scene all that much except a few articles I read here. I use a one dollar (full retail price at biglots) tiny FM only radio for my portable music when I am outside, and that is infrequent. When I work it's usually in a quite loud environment so I have to use a full noise cancelling over the ear headset. I tried it with earbuds for media content then the headset and it sorta works but not that well. probably need to just build my own into the comfortable noise reduction units first, so can cancel out the outside noise, and add the inside the headset content I want. Maybe, sounds like work though...
meh I am one cheap dood HAHAHAHA!.......been holding out for a very full featured pda or smartphone to hit 100$ or so before I get anything like that. Has to do everything, wireless net, media playback, cellphone,short range walkie talkie, simple computing tasks, etc and non ridiculous screen and keyboard size. It'll get there in a coupla years probably, judging by flashmemory improvements and better processors for gadgets.
Browggle?
quick, grab the domain!
...they gain amazing market leverage. They aren't cutting themselves off, they are guaranteeing profits and not even have to even think about exporting cash. Explanation: they have the industrial capacity to still EXPORT any and all formats,in any quantity, anywhere, to anyone, so they don't care about "formats" except it's a market. But, who will want to try and make a chinese standard disk and try to import it INTO china and expect to make a profit? Answer, no one. See, they cover their humongous domestic market, plus the rest of the planet. Win/Win for them, and guaranted to most always keep their rapidly expanding internal markets domesticaly driven. Yes, they import, and they mostly import machine tools to go ahead and setup more factories to build stuff, when it comes to durable goods, that or prototypes they can either license legally and clone or just heck with it, clone anyway. It's only taken them 25 or so years to go from a marginal player with a huge population to the worlds leading manufacturing nation, and all the indicators say this will continue until they are also the highest GDP.
They are long term strategic thinkers, they don't fool much with this quarters profit mentality. That's why they are out there signing 20 year energy deals or outright buying up the sources, along with strategic minerals.
I saw a variation on this once in meatspace. I was working a jewelry show. Up the elevator comes this security guard detail hauling a lockbox. A few minutes later, mixed in with the crowd coming in was a tiny old geezer carrying, yes, a shoebox. Both the guards and the old dude go to the same booth eventually. Inside the shoebox was 7 figures of stones, inside the lockbox with the guards was bupkis. I understand this scene gets changed a lot too (potential example, next time a young lady with a baby carriage maybe, whatever, maybe after that the stones come in with the decorative plants, etc), just the one time I saw that variation.
I've never tried it, but Beatrix linux claims to be originally optimized for Via mini-itx mobos/cpus.
On his machines? Does he financially contribute to all the devs with all the apps? Donate to the kernel? Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't, I am forced to guess, but just conversationally speaking, he writes code and shared it freely,and I bet a nickle he's been using a lot of free code unrelated to nessus but just as deserving of support.
With that said, I would like a one cd distro (not 4 or 5 or 14 or on DVDs), a nice but not overly huge number of apps, and pay for it. Not a ton of money, but some, say 20 to 50 bucks, once a year release, tops. FOSS, but pay a reasonable fee, where all the loot received got divvied up between the distro packager and the app devs somehow, some formula perhaps. Maybe even select what I want from the vendor in advance (I want this desktop and this set of net apps and this other app and etc), it gets custom packaged as an iso and delivered,either download or a few dollars more snailmail and disk, allowing me to pay what I want for a "distro", and knowing that the payment got shared equally (to those who wanted it) with the devs and teams. I only get security updates for those apps for that years release then. Now, if you buy a distro, not much goes to the devs for the bulk of whatever is packaged, does it? with this idea, if I had chose to include nessus,in my custom package, he would have gotten my contribution towards his kitty. Multiple by thousands of people, it starts to add up. Better code gets more interest and purchasers obviously, so it's self regulating. Crapware and bloatware wouldn't garner as much interest, as it would cost you MUCH more. See, no fixed price, a floating price based on what YOU want and what has value to YOU, which also gives the devs incentive, as they can see what works and what doesn't. also make people want to contribute code to packages, to help out, because they would get a tiny slice then.
Think about how it is now, you'd have to go find all the paypal donations for a HUGE number of apps and various devs, etc. and then you would nickel yourself to irrelevant obscurity with the stoopid paypal fees if you wanted to tip them all. But the distro packager could do this as a good piece of his cut, and completely eliminate paypal, so the bulk of the money would actually go for "support".
There's got to be a way for the user community (who don't code much if any) to "give back" in an equitable manner.
Something like this anyway might be a possibility.
I like it. A variation on the "Samson Option".
Seems like it might be a good idea to have both now (and now that it is possible), local and net connected, for redundancy and convenience.
You can get quite a lot of good information from mainstream journals. The deal is, they do NOT connect the dots for you (usually), and frequently the juicier stuff is buried in the back pages. but it's there, just needs to be constantly looking and don't trust single sources.
...whatever it will evolve into.
That's why the net is good, you can read several versions from diverse places/regions and get a better handle on any given situation.
And some newsies get caught,publishing false info (created by themselves or acting as shills/FUD spreaders) and get punished by loss of jobs and reputation, etc. Hmm, recent examples, network news, Dan Rather using the forged documents (whether he knew or not), syndicated columnist Armstrong Williams caught feeding political propoganda as news, that thoroughly *weird* dude "Jeff Gannon" (if that is his real name) acting as a whitehouse talking points shill, and etc.
It is not perfect by any means, but the moral of the story is that they can and frequently do get caught. A lot will slip through, but the nature of lying is you have to keep lying, adding layers, eventually the liar slips up and it unravels.
That's the publics/readers job, to connect the dots and follow through. We are in a transition stage now with blogging and podcasting where the lines are getting hazier between journalism and
Fun times!
..but I notice I am unable to access Drudge today, first time I remember his site being down.
......when it comes to Palms the companies, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing?
Sounds like a GREAT US of A business plan!
How do ya figure it now? I just came back in and read the press release, google tool bar with java. Well, big deal. Really, it's anticlimactic. They say they will be "cooperating" whatever that means on Open Office (not Star Office). Is that close enough, or will you sell? The announcement leaves me sort of...blah. It is not earth shaking or anything. Of course, they could easily do a network office in the mysterious future, but why jump the shark with the announcement then? Garner interest for beta testers?
meh, I don't buy stocks, unless you count food and fuel, beans and bullets as stock, that and precious metals coin-age.
I'm a tangibles guy, listened to too many stories about the crash and the great depression from my older relatives to trust the casino, nor want to participate in it, I think it's more rigged than not. With my wallet I only understand tangibles. I love to theorize and play act with macro economics, but when push comes to shove I'm the most hibernating of bears...heh. I don't care other folks do it, but for me never had the interest.
Pretty funny, as a kid going to the 5 and dime store (when they existed), you could get a nice thick pack of actual paper stocks as novelties, all fulla fancy scrolled edges and whatnot. Funny to think of all the "investment" money that went to get them way back then.
That's my bet. When it comes to money or doing what is right, google will now take the money. They will right Taiwan off if it's a choice and placate the PLA (the real rulers of mainland China) and their besuited front men goons.. Inevitable since they went public. Same as every other public corporation out there, profits always come first.
The interesting question here is who in the two corporation consortium is going to be running what? Sun at the backend, Google upfront for marketing and deployment? Who will get the check, where will the suvbbscription cash go to? It's obvious that ad based is not going to fly for business use. So wih ads for joe consumer, without ads and pay for it for businessuses? Where's the money? Does Sun just want to recapture some mindshare?
Guess we'll find out this afternoon, sure is interesting though, sort of like what Netscape wanted way back in the day. And what Sun is pushing already with rent-a-CPU by the hour.
they have to be careful that the checks (and cash) stuffed in each pocket balance out. Can't have judges walking down the street listing to port, just isn't proper looking....
Robotics is being pushed as another manufacturing industry to provide jobs and keep the various economies stimulated. They have to find uses for them. You could replace "teacher" with some other occupation and have the same story. A robotic street sweeper for instance, or a light bulb changer, whatever. Politician. heh
At least that is my guess on the subject, that and robots are just considered cool, there's a lot more interest in the Asian nations than in the west for them apparently, and manufacturing in general terms is still considered a "good idea", whereas in the west it's marketing that garners the most interest and focus.