Nah, the boomers were not the greatest generation -- their parents were.
You're right about their lifestyle though. The boomers just lived off all the hard work of the greatest generation and piled up all the debts that we now face in the future.
How can you make things better when your government is essentially bankrupt, your economy has just fallen off a cliff as you got elected, you are mired in two useless wars and you are beholden to tons of corporate interests that paid to get you elected?
I don't think anyone who was being realistic could think that Obama was really going to come in and suddenly everything would be sunshine and rainbows.
When the greatest generation put us on the moon NASA's budget reached 4.41% of the federal budget.
Now it is 0.60 percent.
Meanwhile the pockets of the rich have been filled, and the military industrial complex/financial industry/various other big corporations run the USA.
Obama really got handed a steaming bag of **** when he took office after good ole George. Just as all the tough decisions that had been put off until tomorrow for years on end started coming home to roost.
The Republicans should be so glad they lost that election because now, with everyone's short memory, they can blame all these problems on Obama and have a good chance next year. Nevermind that in our topsy turvy modern world, Conservative/Republican means "spend like drunken sailors who cares about fiscal responsibility, yahoo!!!" and Liberal/Democrat means "try and get a handle on things before our bonds reach junk status" and then take the fall for making the tough choices.
For my money, Nolan is one of the best directors working today (along with Aranofsky, Boyle, Soderberg, and Spielberg) and this may have been his finest movie to date, and his most impressive directing work specifically.
For my money Christopher Nolan is the best director today, period.
He has a technical mastery of his art but never lets the technical get in the way of the story.
He is also equally adept at arthouse pictures (Following, Memento) and blockbusters (Batman, Inception).
I've been a huge fan since Memento and he hasn't disappointed yet.
Even his "weaker" movies are good. (Insomnia for example - which on a second viewing recently I actually enjoyed Pacino's performance more)
Microsoft generally makes pretty good hardware and doing the whole package would give them a tight control over the integration.
The downside is you lose the ability to sell the OS to a bigger portion of the market at the outset.
I think as long as they control the hardware requirements and perhaps have an approval process so that they can do some QA on the phones made by 3rd parties that would be a happy medium for them.
Any serious investor knows that it is hard to grow a multi-billion dollar company at the same rate as a small and growing company.
Why do you think that Microsoft has been paying a dividend the last several years?
They are a mature company now and we aren't going to see the massive growth rates anymore simply because they are a BIG company.
This is the same reason Warren Buffett warned his investors that most likely Berkshire will beat the "average" growth of the stockmarket but that their big growing days (as a %) are more than likely over because of their sheer size.
Zune and Kin were a laughing stock, they're having to give away Windows ME (or whatever they're calling it these days) phones, they're paying people to use Bing, IE is losing market share, XBox has finally broken even just in time to start sinking more money into developing the next version. Hotmail is a has been, Silverlight is a wannabe, and C# /.NET is just about tying developers into Windows, not about attracting anyone who's currently using Java anywhere else.
I really can't think of any new revenue sources that have come along in the Ballmer era. If all he's doing is treading water, then they might as well pay peanuts to a chimp - it'll shriek and gibber and fling chairs just as well as Uncle Fester.
Zune and Kin were warmups for their new mobile launchs.
Xbox has finally broken even and has gone from nothing to the best console for revenue. And because of all those Xbox live subscription now they just need to sit back and keep doing what they are doing and make a pile of money off it. As far as the new generation of console.. Nintendo and Sony have to sink the same sort of resources into new ones as well so I'm not sure how that figures as a disadvantage to Microsoft.
If there have been no new revenue sources during Ballmers era then how do you explain Microsoft's revenue doubling in the last 8 years? I can tell you one product that has developed into a billion dollar business off the top of my head: Sharepoint.
I know everyone here is anti Microsoft but the fact is they are still a very viable company and they have the resources to get things wrong 5 times until they get the formula right and then they just keep going.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Despite what everyone on slashdot and idiot day traders say:
MSFT Revenue 2002: $28B Profit: $5B
MSFT Revenue 2010: $62B Profit: $18.7B
Yeah.. he's doing a horrible job. And obviously Microsoft can't do anything right and is only declining.
Seriously, how can anyone even begin to say that?
too successful for their own good
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
I think from the quality of the first couple of seasons and the hints at a larger story arch just beyond the horizon in each of those seasons.. they did have an idea of where they wanted to go with the story at first.
The problem is they became a massive hit, got renewed for a few seasons, and then made up the rest as they went along.
Season 6 basically disregarded almost everything that had happened previously and tacked on a completely separate ending.
Battlestar Galactica fell into the same trap even though they had a shorter run. Both degenerated into a bunch of symbolic quasi religious/spiritual nonsense.
Darklands. Freakin' great game. RPG, set in a medieval Germany where everything people at the time believed to exist does, in fact, exist. Very free form, but with two or three "main" quests you can go on (or not)--I won't say what they are, since discovering them is part of the fun. Pain-in-the-ass manual-based copy protection, so be sure to grab a PDF of the manual if you download it from an abandonware site or something.
Darklands was an amazing game for its time. The open ended sandbox type play was a rarity in those days. Also the character aging was an interesting thing to have to keep in mind while adventuring all around and gaining reputation.
I was really hopeful that the planned sequel would come out but the game didn't sell well enough to justify it.
Over 9 Billion in R&D spending during a recession is the long term thinking at Microsoft.
Everyone is excited about Windows 7 even if it is only because of the terrible reviews Vista got.
And everyone cares about what Microsoft does or we wouldn't be getting these articles every weak about how a company that grosses 50+ billion a year is irrelevant and dying and that their business model is antiquated.
I certainly find the viewpoint of the article very appealing - essentially that just being a manager isn't enough to enable you to manage anything you want. That you need to understand what your company does at a highly intimate level to really run it well.
That is a good point but I would say that since Steve Ballmer has been at Microsoft for DECADES he probably has a good idea of what the company does.
It would be one thing if he had parachuted in from a completely unrelated industry but he has been there almost since the beginning.
Xbox is clobbering the Wii and PS3 in profits now that Microsofts strategy is apparent. Just as what happened with PCs, the hardware is going to matter less and less. The software and connectivity is where the profits are going to lie.
Xbox Live is far and away the dominant service for this generation of game consoles and the nice thing for Microsoft is that it is "sticky" in that when a new gen of hardware comes out you'll be able to keep your avatar, achievements, downloads etc seamlessly. They are way ahead of the game but it has only become apparent in the last year as the Xbox Live numbers have started to get really up there.
It also gives them the possibility of end running around Apple because they have access to the TV and downloadable movies, songs, videos, etc. through Xbox Live.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have a horse in the race.
I actually think people that are polarized to either side are just deluding themselves.
Both of them are horrible.
In this case though, I really do think that Obama had his hands pretty clearly tied by the circumstances.
Nah, the boomers were not the greatest generation -- their parents were.
You're right about their lifestyle though. The boomers just lived off all the hard work of the greatest generation and piled up all the debts that we now face in the future.
I am Canadian, and I live in Canada, so I do in fact live in the best country in the universe. ;)
How can you make things better when your government is essentially bankrupt, your economy has just fallen off a cliff as you got elected, you are mired in two useless wars and you are beholden to tons of corporate interests that paid to get you elected?
I don't think anyone who was being realistic could think that Obama was really going to come in and suddenly everything would be sunshine and rainbows.
Yeah because all these budget problems and huge systemic deficits started in the past few years.
I mean I completely agree that people had hyped Obama up to an impossible standard but really..
When the greatest generation put us on the moon NASA's budget reached 4.41% of the federal budget.
Now it is 0.60 percent.
Meanwhile the pockets of the rich have been filled, and the military industrial complex/financial industry/various other big corporations run the USA.
Obama really got handed a steaming bag of **** when he took office after good ole George. Just as all the tough decisions that had been put off until tomorrow for years on end started coming home to roost.
The Republicans should be so glad they lost that election because now, with everyone's short memory, they can blame all these problems on Obama and have a good chance next year. Nevermind that in our topsy turvy modern world, Conservative/Republican means "spend like drunken sailors who cares about fiscal responsibility, yahoo!!!" and Liberal/Democrat means "try and get a handle on things before our bonds reach junk status" and then take the fall for making the tough choices.
Why does he need it to be economically viable?
If he really wanted to do it for some valid artistic reason or even because he needed something to do: he can spare a billion or two and get it done.
He isn't getting any younger. I mean how many yachts do you need, anyways?
This is the price of "free" services.
For my money, Nolan is one of the best directors working today (along with Aranofsky, Boyle, Soderberg, and Spielberg) and this may have been his finest movie to date, and his most impressive directing work specifically.
For my money Christopher Nolan is the best director today, period.
He has a technical mastery of his art but never lets the technical get in the way of the story.
He is also equally adept at arthouse pictures (Following, Memento) and blockbusters (Batman, Inception).
I've been a huge fan since Memento and he hasn't disappointed yet.
Even his "weaker" movies are good. (Insomnia for example - which on a second viewing recently I actually enjoyed Pacino's performance more)
Information wants to be free.
Copyright wasn't meant to allow people to make money off old work for ever.. get a job!
They didn't deprive you of your copy of the pictures so you haven't lost anything and they haven't stolen anything.
Did I forget any?
This just goes to show you how out of touch slashdotters are with what an actual business model is...
Microsoft is *very* successful.
Like triple Google successful.
I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree.
Microsoft generally makes pretty good hardware and doing the whole package would give them a tight control over the integration.
The downside is you lose the ability to sell the OS to a bigger portion of the market at the outset.
I think as long as they control the hardware requirements and perhaps have an approval process so that they can do some QA on the phones made by 3rd parties that would be a happy medium for them.
earnings went up together with profits, yet stock price went down.
If you invested $10,000 ten years ago and locked in at 8%,.
Who was giving you a locked in 8% ten years ago?
They are too busy collecting dividends to be furious.
And the market is speculatively undervaluing them.. it happens because the market is not rational.
Any serious investor knows that it is hard to grow a multi-billion dollar company at the same rate as a small and growing company.
Why do you think that Microsoft has been paying a dividend the last several years?
They are a mature company now and we aren't going to see the massive growth rates anymore simply because they are a BIG company.
This is the same reason Warren Buffett warned his investors that most likely Berkshire will beat the "average" growth of the stockmarket but that their big growing days (as a %) are more than likely over because of their sheer size.
Zune and Kin were a laughing stock, they're having to give away Windows ME (or whatever they're calling it these days) phones, they're paying people to use Bing, IE is losing market share, XBox has finally broken even just in time to start sinking more money into developing the next version. Hotmail is a has been, Silverlight is a wannabe, and C# / .NET is just about tying developers into Windows, not about attracting anyone who's currently using Java anywhere else.
I really can't think of any new revenue sources that have come along in the Ballmer era. If all he's doing is treading water, then they might as well pay peanuts to a chimp - it'll shriek and gibber and fling chairs just as well as Uncle Fester.
Zune and Kin were warmups for their new mobile launchs.
Xbox has finally broken even and has gone from nothing to the best console for revenue. And because of all those Xbox live subscription now they just need to sit back and keep doing what they are doing and make a pile of money off it. As far as the new generation of console.. Nintendo and Sony have to sink the same sort of resources into new ones as well so I'm not sure how that figures as a disadvantage to Microsoft.
If there have been no new revenue sources during Ballmers era then how do you explain Microsoft's revenue doubling in the last 8 years? I can tell you one product that has developed into a billion dollar business off the top of my head: Sharepoint.
I know everyone here is anti Microsoft but the fact is they are still a very viable company and they have the resources to get things wrong 5 times until they get the formula right and then they just keep going.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Despite what everyone on slashdot and idiot day traders say:
MSFT Revenue 2002: $28B Profit: $5B
MSFT Revenue 2010: $62B Profit: $18.7B
Yeah.. he's doing a horrible job. And obviously Microsoft can't do anything right and is only declining.
Seriously, how can anyone even begin to say that?
I think from the quality of the first couple of seasons and the hints at a larger story arch just beyond the horizon in each of those seasons.. they did have an idea of where they wanted to go with the story at first.
The problem is they became a massive hit, got renewed for a few seasons, and then made up the rest as they went along.
Season 6 basically disregarded almost everything that had happened previously and tacked on a completely separate ending.
Battlestar Galactica fell into the same trap even though they had a shorter run. Both degenerated into a bunch of symbolic quasi religious/spiritual nonsense.
I thought we hated copyright because it rewards people for too long now etc.
The company is not depriving anyone else of using the code so therefore there is no harm in it and no value lost etc etc etc
Funny how we want it both ways, huh?
Darklands. Freakin' great game. RPG, set in a medieval Germany where everything people at the time believed to exist does, in fact, exist. Very free form, but with two or three "main" quests you can go on (or not)--I won't say what they are, since discovering them is part of the fun. Pain-in-the-ass manual-based copy protection, so be sure to grab a PDF of the manual if you download it from an abandonware site or something.
Darklands was an amazing game for its time. The open ended sandbox type play was a rarity in those days. Also the character aging was an interesting thing to have to keep in mind while adventuring all around and gaining reputation.
I was really hopeful that the planned sequel would come out but the game didn't sell well enough to justify it.
Except that there has been no failure!
60 Billion > 23 Billion.
Over 9 Billion in R&D spending during a recession is the long term thinking at Microsoft.
Everyone is excited about Windows 7 even if it is only because of the terrible reviews Vista got.
And everyone cares about what Microsoft does or we wouldn't be getting these articles every weak about how a company that grosses 50+ billion a year is irrelevant and dying and that their business model is antiquated.
It is pretty funny actually.
I certainly find the viewpoint of the article very appealing - essentially that just being a manager isn't enough to enable you to manage anything you want. That you need to understand what your company does at a highly intimate level to really run it well.
That is a good point but I would say that since Steve Ballmer has been at Microsoft for DECADES he probably has a good idea of what the company does.
It would be one thing if he had parachuted in from a completely unrelated industry but he has been there almost since the beginning.
Xbox is clobbering the Wii and PS3 in profits now that Microsofts strategy is apparent. Just as what happened with PCs, the hardware is going to matter less and less. The software and connectivity is where the profits are going to lie.
Xbox Live is far and away the dominant service for this generation of game consoles and the nice thing for Microsoft is that it is "sticky" in that when a new gen of hardware comes out you'll be able to keep your avatar, achievements, downloads etc seamlessly. They are way ahead of the game but it has only become apparent in the last year as the Xbox Live numbers have started to get really up there.
It also gives them the possibility of end running around Apple because they have access to the TV and downloadable movies, songs, videos, etc. through Xbox Live.
If I'm not mistaken they actually had 60 billion in revenue last year before the recession hit.. maybe he is looking at the high point.