Maybe it's time that Amazon accept being a blue chip company like Microsoft instead of a being a king of the jungle wonder stock like Google.
Once they do this, they're guaranteed to have relatively predicitable, boring earnings growth with no new innovative ways of earning money. With a P/E and PEG way above Microsoft's, there is sort of a baked-in expectation that Amazon will capitalize on its brand and its customers to grow into new markets and not be so predictable. So they'll be trying some stuff that won't be a sure bet, hoping that they'll find some big winners. But if they try nothing at all, and end up being valued the same way as MSFT, the stock is in for a 50% slide.
The rovers are designed to move, so with dust devils cleaning their solar panels I suspect they'll eventually die from mechanical breakdowns, not due to lack of power.
Except that right now, Spirit is parked on a South-facing slope, not moving due to lack of power. If solar power is inadequate to power a roving rover through Martian winter right near the equator, imagine how inadequate it would be near the poles. Yes, the rovers weren't intended to survive the winter, let alone rove during the winter, but we're allowed to dream about massive power sources.
Excel? Certainly MS bought PowerPoint back in the day, but I thought Excel was created by MS as a 1-2-3 competitor. Microsoft may not be creating substantially new applications, but they are writing most of their own software. If they had grown more by acquisition, they would have far more than the North Dakota campus from the Great Plains Software acquistion and the Bay Area campus from the PowerPoint acquisition. The great majority of their developers are in Redmond. However, by not being able to discern which parts of Office were purchased, and which home-grown, you make a better case for MS being a top-notch software integration company than a marketing company. The same claim cannot be made for the software stack of most other serial software acquirers.
Perhaps my power's cheap, relative to the rest of the state, although the additional fees make my real rate something like 9 or 10 cents per KWH anyways. Point was that the CVPS cow power surcharge isn't likely 100%, as some claimed.
Vermont has expensive electricity, and once the long-term HydroQuebec contracts expire, it will only be more so. Here in Burlington, I'm paying over 6 cents per KWH, without including other fees. CVPS probably has higher rates. I personally think this is a neater dairy subsidy than just making us all pay more for milk, but the problem is that it's just one farm. So go buy some artisan cheese and Ben and Jerries, too.
I agree, but pundits like to point out that GMail's share is still small relatively to other services like Yahoo. What I'd really like to see is the ACTIVE account growth at GMail versus competitors. It does seem that everyone looking for a primary web mail account uses GMail-- but do spammers? Do people signing up for tourney brackets or stock discussions on Yahoo technically get an email account there? I've had my Yahoo email since 1998 and have never used it as a primary account in those 8 years.
People also need to realize that a smash hit service takes TIME and reinvestment to grow.
Well, the new top10s may not be in the US, but they're both made with processors from the US. But yeah, whatever, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Reminds me of the "free digital rectal exam" offered on prostate screening day at the local hospital. On the evening news, the local female news anchor cheerfully recommended that all men go in for their free exam. I could've choked.
I still wonder if any poor guys went in and found that digital prostate exams are decidedly old tech.
oes your Infineon and Elpida RAM feel more expensive to you, the consumer, than your Micron or Hynix RAM? I'll give you a hint, it isn't...Infineon and Elpida are giving Rambus's fair share back to them out of their inflated profit margin without passing it on to you.
Uh, these are standard parts. Commodities. If they sold DRAM at a higher price, the would sell none at all. No one has mentioned "inflated profit margin" in regards to DRAM since the mid-90s. The DRAM business is brutal with low margins.
The FTC did nothing of the sort. The fines were prosecuted by the Justice Department against the manufacturers for price-fixing. Rambus's abuse of the standards process in order to get huge royalties for some rather unremarkable patents is a whole other story, and yes, they're getting away with it.
Did you ever think that you're swallowing Rambus FUD? I really don't care that the Dramurai got screwed in court, but Rambus conduct in standards bodies was less than admirable. And yes, the FTC lost its case alleging miscouduct by Rambus, but certainly the allegations are enough to draw the ire of any fan of open standards:
"Apr 04 FTC CC Appeal:
"The importance of this case justifies careful Commission review. The outcome will determine whether Rambus can continue to assert monopoly power, through its patents, over technologies incorporated in the supposedly open JEDEC standards that govern the worldwide DRAM memory chip industry. The royalties collected by Rambus would apply to virtually all DRAMs sold by the $20 billion memory industry. DRAM chips are used throughout the economy in products including personal computers, mainframe computers, consumer electronics products, and telecommunications routers and switches. Rambus has also sought royalties on memory controllers and other components that interface with DRAMs. Rambus estimates that these royalties could amount to $1-3 billion, a cost likely to be imposed on consumers. Of equal concern is the potential harm to the ability of JEDEC to continue to set open consensus-based standards. Members failure to participate in JEDEC in good faith or to observe the JEDEC patent disclosure policy could destroy the work of JEDEC because JEDEC will no longer have companies willing to join the work of creating standards. CX2384. The activities of other standard-setting organizations also are likely to be hurt. The Commission should correct the mistakes of law contained in the Initial Decision. Although the ALJ s erroneous interpretation of the scope of Section 5 is of utmost concern, his standards for causation and anticompetitive harm also could have serious implications if followed by other judges or courts and could set dangerous precedent if not corrected by the Commission. For the reasons set forth above, Complaint Counsel believe that the Commission should vacate the initial decision in this matter, substitute its own findings and decision holding that Rambus violated Section 5 of the FTC Act, and adopt the proposed Order."
I tend to agree with the FTC. I don't think that every manufacturer of an interface developed by a standards process should be paying royalties to leeches.
Assert patents against widespread technology, sue like crazy. I guess it's just good for the Microsoft execs that they were already fixing the price of web browsers at "free." If the memory companies had just decided to give away the chips, rather then make them cheap, would it be different? Perhaps they should have "bundled" them.
Re:Low yields on vital PS3 components
on
How the PS3 Hit $600
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· Score: 2, Informative
Yields this low would be a disaster. At this point we'd be reevaluating our wafer supply, going over our equipment for defects that would ruin the wafers, and going over our tests to make sure THEY actually worked.
Nobody really talks about it, but it appears that roughly 2/3 of processors actually work when the whole thing is done (counting wafer defects, test failures, assembly botches, and "DOA" burnin failures). This number varies with process size (60nm process would fit more processors onto a wafer than 90nm, thus increasing yield after wafer defects, increasing complexity and thus test failures and assembly errors (especially since pin count always goes up, always), and decreasing power requirements giving fewer burnouts at the lower power.)
Is this just an experiment in creative regurgitation of the three paragraphs about semiconductor manufacturing in your CS textbook? Wafer supply affecting yield? Defects in equipment? What the heck are you talking about? Everybody talks about yield in the foundry industry! What the hell is a "test failure" if not a manufacturing defect? Burn-in "failures" are hardly a problem-- they're GOOD unless there are too many. Every defect you catch in burn-in increases your shipped-product quality level. It's the test escapes that REALLY suck. Hopefully Sony won't end up testing shitty GDDR3 DRAM like MS did with the XBox-- there you have an instance of crappy test by the manufacturer. And for chrissakes, yields with newer process nodes like 65nm always start out lower than with mature nodes.
Anyways, if the yields still suck on the graphics processor, one can easily imagine heads rolling at TSMC. I'm guessing the chipsets are Sony's own issue.
My sarcam meter is moving, but I'm not sure if it's a false positive. Were you joking, or are you just a dumbass?
My asshole meter is redlining. Are you an asshole, or a complete asshole?
They're also going to be flying with changes that will allow them to detect if there was damage during launch that will cause another Columbia disaster. And if there is, there will be a campout up in the space station for awhile.
I think part of the confusion is that this circuit is proposed to replace the PLL. The "digital circuitry" referred to that is running at the PLL frequency is the PLL itself, using a bunch of mixed-signal magic to take an input clock and spit out a very specific frequency. This new thigamabob proposes to take a very-high frequency quartz oscillator as an input signal and divide it down to a specific frequency using some analog magic. Although to say that this PLL replacement avoids digital logic entirely would imply no rebuffering of reference oscillator or clock anywhere along the line...
I mean, we can send lots of RF energy through the air. Why can we not use that same energy to power the device as well as send it information? I can see where it would be a problem for something that requires lots of power, but for small devices this should be possible, no?
Dude, you just re-invented RFID tags! You'll make me smile next time I unlock the doors at work.
Slashdot Mirror
Price(SCOX) = (No. Active Claims/Original No. Claims) X $4.50?
Actually, Transhab was a pretty awesome concept. Lots more livable space for the same price.
Flagrantly violating Rule 1 since '93.
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profi
Perhaps my power's cheap, relative to the rest of the state, although the additional fees make my real rate something like 9 or 10 cents per KWH anyways. Point was that the CVPS cow power surcharge isn't likely 100%, as some claimed.
Vermont has expensive electricity, and once the long-term HydroQuebec contracts expire, it will only be more so. Here in Burlington, I'm paying over 6 cents per KWH, without including other fees. CVPS probably has higher rates. I personally think this is a neater dairy subsidy than just making us all pay more for milk, but the problem is that it's just one farm. So go buy some artisan cheese and Ben and Jerries, too.
People also need to realize that a smash hit service takes TIME and reinvestment to grow.
Basically the goal of each node is for the circuits to be twice as dense, so hopefully each design rule scales by 0.707.
Well, the new top10s may not be in the US, but they're both made with processors from the US. But yeah, whatever, the sky is falling, the sky is falling.
I still wonder if any poor guys went in and found that digital prostate exams are decidedly old tech.
The FTC did nothing of the sort. The fines were prosecuted by the Justice Department against the manufacturers for price-fixing. Rambus's abuse of the standards process in order to get huge royalties for some rather unremarkable patents is a whole other story, and yes, they're getting away with it.
Assert patents against widespread technology, sue like crazy. I guess it's just good for the Microsoft execs that they were already fixing the price of web browsers at "free." If the memory companies had just decided to give away the chips, rather then make them cheap, would it be different? Perhaps they should have "bundled" them.
Anyways, if the yields still suck on the graphics processor, one can easily imagine heads rolling at TSMC. I'm guessing the chipsets are Sony's own issue.
Pretty soon the spammers will be conducting unrestricted submarine attacks on civilian shipping in the North Atlantic.
My sarcam meter is moving, but I'm not sure if it's a false positive. Were you joking, or are you just a dumbass? My asshole meter is redlining. Are you an asshole, or a complete asshole?
Provide your users with instructions on how to install Firefox and Adblock. Then none of them will mind your ads. Or see them.
They're also going to be flying with changes that will allow them to detect if there was damage during launch that will cause another Columbia disaster. And if there is, there will be a campout up in the space station for awhile.
Just like with nine women you can have a baby in one month.
I think part of the confusion is that this circuit is proposed to replace the PLL. The "digital circuitry" referred to that is running at the PLL frequency is the PLL itself, using a bunch of mixed-signal magic to take an input clock and spit out a very specific frequency. This new thigamabob proposes to take a very-high frequency quartz oscillator as an input signal and divide it down to a specific frequency using some analog magic. Although to say that this PLL replacement avoids digital logic entirely would imply no rebuffering of reference oscillator or clock anywhere along the line...