Sadly, that's mostly the case.
There is almost a feverish need for people - especially young people - to keep up with the latest trends, regardless of cost. Companies producing these goods are getting very good at producing the strongest pavlovian response from their customers for the least amount of expense.
True, my subtraction makes no sense.. time to lower the dose on my medication. The point still stands that in general, it's good news for MS, as revenue is up, and expenses are higher presumably due to marketing and R&D for the XBOX 360
TO put it more simply, Microsoft's total income from games, XBOX and, Home PC is higher by around $190 million, and profit is down by about $230 million from last year.
That's only around a $40 million net difference from last year, and I expect a lot of that is the cost of launching a new console.
If so, since it is very difficult to detect, what are its defining properties?
It's cold,
and err.. dark,
and umm...
oh yeah, it's matter
Re:Spam can't be forced out.
on
Spam is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Class Zero - How to recognise and differentiate between spam and legitimate advertising.
Cost of class: Free.
Brought to you by Microsoft, Pepsi and Crazie Charlie's Chicken Shed Restaurants Co Pty Ltd.
Re:Spam can't be forced out.
on
Spam is Dead
·
· Score: 1
Consider a newcomer to the internet, they have probably never used a PC before, and as yet, knowing how to "google" things, how to recognise spam etc., is not in our genetic knowledge, and they have not had time to acquire it.
The only way we could ensure noone buys spam, or at least, to minimise it is to require a license to use the internet, on an international scale. Seeing as that ain't gonna happen, and rightly so, marketers and scam-artists can safely rely on this demographic to provide their sales.
The funny thing about trusted computing is that it will allow trusted computing, not just for banks, commercial websites, but also for warez groups, p2p networks etc.
There are already many private warez/p2p groups, and with trusted computing identifying each user, they will be able to ensure that the wrong people don't get their foot in the door of these 'underground' networks.
It would be farily trivial to create an SMS-driven application that did this without any need for centralized networks or 'information gathering'. I'd imagine that a simple buddy list - a subset of your address book - would be notified via SMS whenever your phone changed cells, or entered into a certain 'zone' predefined by your carrier.
The buddy list could also be SMS driven , similar to IM clients that require your authorization before someone can add you to their buddy list. Of course this would require cooperation from many mobile phone vendors, and there's really not that much money in it (except increased SMS revenue).
As far as the big brother issue - just turn off your phone when you are not using it.. sheesh.
2 problems with this:
1)The DVD could have been intercepted in the production stage, so the recipients name is purely accidental/random.
2)The DVD could be intercepted at the delivery stage, which may at least tell you which postal office is ripping off the studio.
While having a dedicated DVD player solves these problems to some extent, it is only a matter of time before someone manages to crack the encryption or get hold of an original Cinea model to do the ripping.
FWIW, Sony Computer Entertainment is doing quite well. It's the consumer electronics division - the one that makes TV's stereos, etc. that's losing money and sacking 1000's of employees - mostly due from competition by cheaper brands like Panasonic, LG etc.
Good point, although I think the gateway service will remain a valid business model for a while yet there's services like VOIPMobile, VOIPEmergency Services that will not be simple end point connections over the internet, at least for the foreseeable future.
Popups are NOT cool. If I wanted to stay on the current page, I'd ctrl-click the link or right click and select 'Open in new tab'.
Otherwise, just show me the damn page, already!
That's a great idea, reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the earth on a global scale couldn't possiby have any unintended side effects. And even if it does, we'll just follow up by placing giant lighbulbs in orbit below the floating belt of debris, or build a giant vacuum-cleaner to clean up the mess.
Any legal costs will come directly off their bottom line. While it is tax deductible,it still impacts the earnings of the companies hiring the lawyers; albeit only a small percentage of their enormous combined sales income.
These guys are sysadmins, right? Not saying they are poor, but their annual income is probably less than that of the record-industry legal team's costs of going to the toilet.
Here's how this will pan out:
They will get sued and ordered to pay 50 gadzillion dollars, AND court costs.
The court will look at their income, and the lack of prior convictions, and order them to pay 20 bucks a week for the next 100 gadzillion years.
In the meantime, at least 42 new torrent sites will open to replace each one that has been shut down, and these will be progressively harder to shut down due to being physically hosted in (a) Russia (b) China (c) An Oil platform, and finally, (d) The moon.
Meanwhile our sysdamins have paid off the 20% of the court costs of the guy that brings in the suitcases for the lawyers. They are now old, but venerated figures in the piracy underground.
Who wins? No-one. The Records companies have lost heaps of money, our sysadmins have also lost heaps of money, the effect on global piracy was imperceptibly small, and the legal teams of both parties are sitting together on their company yacht, toasting their victory with pina coladas under the stars.
1. Create a script that archives your important files - if you can set it up to only 'refresh' archives, it will be much quicker thatn a full archive each day. Good formats are RAR, ZIP etc.
2. Run the above script and create the ouput file on a HDD.
3. Back up the file to a Firewire/USB2 connected external drive (200 Gb should suffice)
4. Store said drive in a fireproof safe.
When I was learning maths as school, only about 30% of the mark for any given question came from getting the correct answer. The other 70 percent came from showing that you understood the process of arriving at that answer. So if you showed your intermediate steps, made a stupid mistake and forgot to carry the one, you would get 7/10. If all you wrote was the correct answer, with no other calculations, you got 3/10. Whether you used a calculator or not was irrelevant. I did use the calculator, but only to check that my mental calculation was correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, that's mostly the case.
There is almost a feverish need for people - especially young people - to keep up with the latest trends, regardless of cost.
Companies producing these goods are getting very good at producing the strongest pavlovian response from their customers for the least amount of expense.
True, my subtraction makes no sense.. time to lower the dose on my medication. The point still stands that in general, it's good news for MS, as revenue is up, and expenses are higher presumably due to marketing and R&D for the XBOX 360
TO put it more simply, Microsoft's total income from games, XBOX and, Home PC is higher by around $190 million, and profit is down by about $230 million from last year. That's only around a $40 million net difference from last year, and I expect a lot of that is the cost of launching a new console.
I mean, most of that data is just redundant pairs of A-G C-T T-G etc...
I reckon you could zip it up and it'll fit on a couple of floppy disks.
If so, since it is very difficult to detect, what are its defining properties?
It's cold,
and err.. dark,
and umm...
oh yeah, it's matter
Class Zero - How to recognise and differentiate between spam and legitimate advertising. Cost of class: Free. Brought to you by Microsoft, Pepsi and Crazie Charlie's Chicken Shed Restaurants Co Pty Ltd.
Consider a newcomer to the internet, they have probably never used a PC before, and as yet, knowing how to "google" things, how to recognise spam etc., is not in our genetic knowledge, and they have not had time to acquire it.
The only way we could ensure noone buys spam, or at least, to minimise it is to require a license to use the internet, on an international scale. Seeing as that ain't gonna happen, and rightly so, marketers and scam-artists can safely rely on this demographic to provide their sales.
There are already many private warez/p2p groups, and with trusted computing identifying each user, they will be able to ensure that the wrong people don't get their foot in the door of these 'underground' networks.
I'm sure it's already patenented :) If not, consider this slashdot post to be prior art
The buddy list could also be SMS driven , similar to IM clients that require your authorization before someone can add you to their buddy list. Of course this would require cooperation from many mobile phone vendors, and there's really not that much money in it (except increased SMS revenue).
As far as the big brother issue - just turn off your phone when you are not using it.. sheesh.
Don't worry, mail sorting room employees know how to open a package and reseal it without obvious signs of tampering.
1)The DVD could have been intercepted in the production stage, so the recipients name is purely accidental/random.
2)The DVD could be intercepted at the delivery stage, which may at least tell you which postal office is ripping off the studio.
While having a dedicated DVD player solves these problems to some extent, it is only a matter of time before someone manages to crack the encryption or get hold of an original Cinea model to do the ripping.
FWIW, Sony Computer Entertainment is doing quite well. It's the consumer electronics division - the one that makes TV's stereos, etc. that's losing money and sacking 1000's of employees - mostly due from competition by cheaper brands like Panasonic, LG etc.
Good point, although I think the gateway service will remain a valid business model for a while yet there's services like VOIPMobile, VOIPEmergency Services that will not be simple end point connections over the internet, at least for the foreseeable future.
Hehe.. You made me chuckle aloud at work :)
Keep up the good work!
Popups are NOT cool. If I wanted to stay on the current page, I'd ctrl-click the link or right click and select 'Open in new tab'.
Otherwise, just show me the damn page, already!
That's a great idea, reducing the amount of sunlight hitting the earth on a global scale couldn't possiby have any unintended side effects.
And even if it does, we'll just follow up by placing giant lighbulbs in orbit below the floating belt of debris, or build a giant vacuum-cleaner to clean up the mess.
Any legal costs will come directly off their bottom line. While it is tax deductible,it still impacts the earnings of the companies hiring the lawyers; albeit only a small percentage of their enormous combined sales income.
Apparently, they are a kind of fish
"No-one" is the correct answer - Lawyers are not human. If I'd written "Who wins - Nothing" I'd have been incorrect.
Here's how this will pan out:
They will get sued and ordered to pay 50 gadzillion dollars, AND court costs.
The court will look at their income, and the lack of prior convictions, and order them to pay 20 bucks a week for the next 100 gadzillion years.
In the meantime, at least 42 new torrent sites will open to replace each one that has been shut down, and these will be progressively harder to shut down due to being physically hosted in
(a) Russia
(b) China
(c) An Oil platform, and finally,
(d) The moon.
Meanwhile our sysdamins have paid off the 20% of the court costs of the guy that brings in the suitcases for the lawyers. They are now old, but venerated figures in the piracy underground.
Who wins? No-one.
The Records companies have lost heaps of money, our sysadmins have also lost heaps of money, the effect on global piracy was imperceptibly small, and the legal teams of both parties are sitting together on their company yacht, toasting their victory with pina coladas under the stars.
1. Create a script that archives your important files - if you can set it up to only 'refresh' archives, it will be much quicker thatn a full archive each day. Good formats are RAR, ZIP etc. 2. Run the above script and create the ouput file on a HDD. 3. Back up the file to a Firewire/USB2 connected external drive (200 Gb should suffice) 4. Store said drive in a fireproof safe.
QC Shell>run DukeNukem
The end boss was really tough.
QC Shell>_
YOu're right, of course. Thankfully I'm neither a student nor an American, but I do feel sorry for those that are.
When I was learning maths as school, only about 30% of the mark for any given question came from getting the correct answer. The other 70 percent came from showing that you understood the process of arriving at that answer. So if you showed your intermediate steps, made a stupid mistake and forgot to carry the one, you would get 7/10. If all you wrote was the correct answer, with no other calculations, you got 3/10. Whether you used a calculator or not was irrelevant. I did use the calculator, but only to check that my mental calculation was correct.