Would any tree-hugger care to explain for me their obvious willingness to overlook Foxconn's business practices and most importantly their treatment of employees just to support "Macs"?
I, for one, only use white-box no-name parts whose manufacturer cannot possibly be found, let alone pressured for better working conditions! That'll teach Apple!
On the other hand my US Dollar (The real kind, coined in 1901) is worth $28.00 in Federal Reserve "Notes"
Because it is made out of silver and has some collectable value. You could stack silver without all the nonsense about "condition" and still have a savings plan that, on balance, will match inflation. I'd use something a little more dense, like platinum or gold - but gold seems to be in some kind of bubble right now.
Making currency devalue over time has the advantage of discouraging people from holding it. It's supposed to replace barter, not be an investment in of itself. When it becomes an investment, it encourages hoarding and discourages economic activity. Even the little bit of silver that you have is sitting uselessly in a closet. At least with Bitcoins, there is nothing real being held back from the rest of humanity. If someone wants to hoard otherwise useless hash keys, it won't negatively effect industry in the same way that hoarding gold or other commodities does.
The point? While I do disagree with the horror that the War on Drugs has caused American society, many drugs that are illegal for recreational use simply cannot be legalized because the social problems they would create compared to the two we have to deal with now would be enormous.
Social problems? Like affluent people driving into impoverished areas ravaged by the drug trade and giving money to the people doing the shooting?
I think if you legalize heroine, you might have more addictions. But if you use the tax money for education and treatment, I wager you will ruin fewer lives on balance. And addiction crosses the socio-economic lines, so politically there will be more equity. Right now the poor bear the brunt of our country's drug policy.
To make matters even more insulting, they've copied the design of the icon this guy created for his own app.
In all fairness, the guy named his app "Wi-Fi Sync", which is pretty functional as far as naming goes - definitely not much creativity went into the name. His logo is the Apple toolbar wireless icon surrounded by the Apple toolbar sync icon, stylized a bit into an oval rather than a perfect circle. Again, pretty functional and not much to "steal". It doesn't surprise me that Apple would pick the same name, nor that their art department would come up with a similar logo given the name.
Sure they could. Never underestimate the power of fear and ignorance, my friend.
All fear and ignorance will accomplish is to prevent new plants from being built, thus extending the life of the old ones, perhaps making them more dangerous. We'll still be dependent on nuclear power, it will just be a bunch of 40+ year old plants instead of shiny new ones.
I didn't mean to imply that a salary would be 100k... but I'm sure that salary+benefits+insurance+taxes+other for a halfway competent IT guy would approach 100k.
But you have a good point about not needing a full-time employee.
You might be right, but you can't try to predict the future - just plan for it. Have a plan in place to throw antivirus on all your Macs. In the meantime, it probably wouldn't hurt to setup clam to run during some idle period.
Sorry - you are saying that Viri are easier to deal with if you buy expensive hardware? How does that work in your mind?
I'm just not very good with words. Macs are more expensive than commodity PCs. The "expensive hardware" I was referring to was the Mac.
If you have a user who is on a PC, and they get infected every month or so, you could buy that user a Mac and end the virus problem. Depending on how you do support, this might save you money over the long term.
So no, spending money won't mean that viruses are easier to deal with - but spending money on a Mac instead of a Windows PC will certainly decrease your virus threat. Ubuntu would be even more money-saving, if the need for Office isn't there.
I hadn't even considered resale value. I just bought a 5-year-old HP Core 2 Duo with ECC workstation for $150 on eBay. This computer probably cost north of $2k new. A similar 5-year-old Mac Pro would probably go for several hundred dollars more. They didn't sell a Core Duo version, but the Xeon version from the same year is going for about $800 on eBay.
So true. They've just driven everyone with a rooted phone to seek alternate sources of entertainment. I don't know what all the options are, but one of the easiest, cheapest, and most popular is "for free from the internet".
Media companies are hilarious. I can download full-sized Blu-Ray rips from the protocol that shall remain nameless on the day of release, but they are protecting the crappy Android quality movie files from the most savvy users.
"Total cost of ownership (TCO) for a Mac vs a comparable Wintel device over 3-4 years is actually lower!" Think about that."
I'm sure this varies drastically based on company size and requirements of the employees. If you were going high-end anyway, then the capital outlay difference is far lower. If the users are virus-magnets, then even expensive hardware may pay for itself in short order.
But for a big company with many lower-end users and the virus situation under control, it's hard for me to understand how TCO could be lower - though 3-4 years is a long time to make up a few hundred bucks.
But yeah, if I were setting up a bunch of new computers at a real estate office or something similar in scale, I might try Macs.
Battery life. I use two calculators (not as much as I did in the field), both HP models. One gets months out of a single set of AAA batteries. The other has had the same little button cell for a couple of years now.
Visible in sunlight. You can read the simple LCD display in the bright sun. If I'm outside working in the bright sun, a typical laptop is not going to work - even if it had infinite battery life.
Theft. No one has ever tried to grab my calculator. Laptops have to be watched with a keen eye, even at work.
I use MATLAB and Excel like crazy at work indoors, and no calculator would approach those tools - but I'm not sure what you have against calculators... they certainly beat the pants off of hauling a laptop and charger around all the time. A lot of people still work outside and on construction sites where lack of power, dirt, water, theft, and other factors make laptops a huge liability.
I guess I was thinking that the use of all e-currencies would be so similarly diversified that they wouldn't be too volatile compared to one another, but you got me thinking that if one big player - say OPEC - decided to use currency Y, then currency Y would move relative to X whenever demand for oil changed.
but there are a lot more individuals than corporations,
True, but I'd bet that every individual really taking advantage of current loopholes has at least one corporation. In other words, the number of entities that need to be watched wouldn't really change (or might even go down). Also, when a corporation screws with it's taxes it can get fined - sometimes someone will go to jail, usually not the owner(s). Individuals who evade taxes go to jail. That ought to be a bit more deterring to rich people.
Oh no, they would be very volatile based on demand relative to one another
Don't you think that they'd behave differently relative to one another compared to traditional currencies? Why would demand vary so much? With normal currencies it is because they are tied to national economies, but if these e-currencies become widely used in the world, they wouldn't be tied to any specific economy.
I think corporate tax is silly anyway. Just tax all income as income... capital gains, dividends, salary, benefits... and you won't need a corporate tax.
This would have the additional advantage of encouraging corporations to move to the US.
Corporate taxes only generate revenue in the $400 billion range. You could easily get this back with higher capital gains rates and deduction/loophole killing.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, turns out not so much.
Do you know something that we don't? Did they cut their licensing costs or not? Are they worse off than if they'd just paid Nokia in the first place?
Would any tree-hugger care to explain for me their obvious willingness to overlook Foxconn's business practices and most importantly their treatment of employees just to support "Macs"?
I, for one, only use white-box no-name parts whose manufacturer cannot possibly be found, let alone pressured for better working conditions! That'll teach Apple!
On the other hand my US Dollar (The real kind, coined in 1901) is worth $28.00 in Federal Reserve "Notes"
Because it is made out of silver and has some collectable value. You could stack silver without all the nonsense about "condition" and still have a savings plan that, on balance, will match inflation. I'd use something a little more dense, like platinum or gold - but gold seems to be in some kind of bubble right now.
Making currency devalue over time has the advantage of discouraging people from holding it. It's supposed to replace barter, not be an investment in of itself. When it becomes an investment, it encourages hoarding and discourages economic activity. Even the little bit of silver that you have is sitting uselessly in a closet. At least with Bitcoins, there is nothing real being held back from the rest of humanity. If someone wants to hoard otherwise useless hash keys, it won't negatively effect industry in the same way that hoarding gold or other commodities does.
Sigh, you do realize that the war on drugs has nothing to do with money laundering and various other shady services, right?
If we deprived organized crime of drug money, prostitution money, and gambling money, they'd be back to stealing trucks full of stereo equipment.
Much smaller operation.
The point? While I do disagree with the horror that the War on Drugs has caused American society, many drugs that are illegal for recreational use simply cannot be legalized because the social problems they would create compared to the two we have to deal with now would be enormous.
Social problems? Like affluent people driving into impoverished areas ravaged by the drug trade and giving money to the people doing the shooting?
I think if you legalize heroine, you might have more addictions. But if you use the tax money for education and treatment, I wager you will ruin fewer lives on balance. And addiction crosses the socio-economic lines, so politically there will be more equity. Right now the poor bear the brunt of our country's drug policy.
To make matters even more insulting, they've copied the design of the icon this guy created for his own app.
In all fairness, the guy named his app "Wi-Fi Sync", which is pretty functional as far as naming goes - definitely not much creativity went into the name. His logo is the Apple toolbar wireless icon surrounded by the Apple toolbar sync icon, stylized a bit into an oval rather than a perfect circle. Again, pretty functional and not much to "steal". It doesn't surprise me that Apple would pick the same name, nor that their art department would come up with a similar logo given the name.
Sure they could. Never underestimate the power of fear and ignorance, my friend.
All fear and ignorance will accomplish is to prevent new plants from being built, thus extending the life of the old ones, perhaps making them more dangerous. We'll still be dependent on nuclear power, it will just be a bunch of 40+ year old plants instead of shiny new ones.
I didn't mean to imply that a salary would be 100k... but I'm sure that salary+benefits+insurance+taxes+other for a halfway competent IT guy would approach 100k.
But you have a good point about not needing a full-time employee.
That is small, and I doubt you are counting benefits, insurance, 6% half of payroll taxes, etc.
Why? It's doing backups, and it's a full-fledged Unix machine.
Yeah, I'm sure a 12-person office has an extra 100k sitting around for an IT guy.
None of the current Mac trojans can be installed by a non-superuser. So the cost/time savings is there until an actual virus or worm emerges.
the honeymoon won't last thou
You might be right, but you can't try to predict the future - just plan for it. Have a plan in place to throw antivirus on all your Macs. In the meantime, it probably wouldn't hurt to setup clam to run during some idle period.
Sorry - you are saying that Viri are easier to deal with if you buy expensive hardware? How does that work in your mind?
I'm just not very good with words. Macs are more expensive than commodity PCs. The "expensive hardware" I was referring to was the Mac.
If you have a user who is on a PC, and they get infected every month or so, you could buy that user a Mac and end the virus problem. Depending on how you do support, this might save you money over the long term.
So no, spending money won't mean that viruses are easier to deal with - but spending money on a Mac instead of a Windows PC will certainly decrease your virus threat. Ubuntu would be even more money-saving, if the need for Office isn't there.
I hadn't even considered resale value. I just bought a 5-year-old HP Core 2 Duo with ECC workstation for $150 on eBay. This computer probably cost north of $2k new. A similar 5-year-old Mac Pro would probably go for several hundred dollars more. They didn't sell a Core Duo version, but the Xeon version from the same year is going for about $800 on eBay.
Just goes to show how, yet again....piracy wins!
So true. They've just driven everyone with a rooted phone to seek alternate sources of entertainment. I don't know what all the options are, but one of the easiest, cheapest, and most popular is "for free from the internet".
Media companies are hilarious. I can download full-sized Blu-Ray rips from the protocol that shall remain nameless on the day of release, but they are protecting the crappy Android quality movie files from the most savvy users.
"Total cost of ownership (TCO) for a Mac vs a comparable Wintel device over 3-4 years is actually lower!" Think about that."
I'm sure this varies drastically based on company size and requirements of the employees. If you were going high-end anyway, then the capital outlay difference is far lower. If the users are virus-magnets, then even expensive hardware may pay for itself in short order.
But for a big company with many lower-end users and the virus situation under control, it's hard for me to understand how TCO could be lower - though 3-4 years is a long time to make up a few hundred bucks.
But yeah, if I were setting up a bunch of new computers at a real estate office or something similar in scale, I might try Macs.
except for when you can't take that calculator into an exam.
For NCEES stuff, you can't use any nice calculator.
Given their list, I'd choose the HPs.
Fuck desktop calculators.
Battery life. I use two calculators (not as much as I did in the field), both HP models. One gets months out of a single set of AAA batteries. The other has had the same little button cell for a couple of years now.
Visible in sunlight. You can read the simple LCD display in the bright sun. If I'm outside working in the bright sun, a typical laptop is not going to work - even if it had infinite battery life.
Theft. No one has ever tried to grab my calculator. Laptops have to be watched with a keen eye, even at work.
I use MATLAB and Excel like crazy at work indoors, and no calculator would approach those tools - but I'm not sure what you have against calculators... they certainly beat the pants off of hauling a laptop and charger around all the time. A lot of people still work outside and on construction sites where lack of power, dirt, water, theft, and other factors make laptops a huge liability.
Yuppers, but we stood them short-side down and called them "portrait" displays: here.
I guess I was thinking that the use of all e-currencies would be so similarly diversified that they wouldn't be too volatile compared to one another, but you got me thinking that if one big player - say OPEC - decided to use currency Y, then currency Y would move relative to X whenever demand for oil changed.
but there are a lot more individuals than corporations,
True, but I'd bet that every individual really taking advantage of current loopholes has at least one corporation. In other words, the number of entities that need to be watched wouldn't really change (or might even go down). Also, when a corporation screws with it's taxes it can get fined - sometimes someone will go to jail, usually not the owner(s). Individuals who evade taxes go to jail. That ought to be a bit more deterring to rich people.
Oh no, they would be very volatile based on demand relative to one another
Don't you think that they'd behave differently relative to one another compared to traditional currencies? Why would demand vary so much? With normal currencies it is because they are tied to national economies, but if these e-currencies become widely used in the world, they wouldn't be tied to any specific economy.
I didn't know this was Romney's position, but I'm glad there is someone mainstream pushing for it.
Of course, I'm also advocating making up for the loss of revenue - I suspect he's not mentioning that.
I think corporate tax is silly anyway. Just tax all income as income... capital gains, dividends, salary, benefits... and you won't need a corporate tax.
This would have the additional advantage of encouraging corporations to move to the US.
Corporate taxes only generate revenue in the $400 billion range. You could easily get this back with higher capital gains rates and deduction/loophole killing.