Firefox is good. The plugins extend the browser hugely.
But I'm happy with Opera, be it for the faster responce I get on the same machine as I have Firefox installed on, the ability not to search for plug ins for whatever feature I need, 'it just works'
I just find Opera is faster at implementing standards, is more reliable with IE geared sites (don't like the fact, but I have to be pragmatic and deal with it as promoting interoperability is not what pays my bills), is more innovative (has important new features first and has them 'out of the box') and makes a good testing ground for my projects, and is all together very nice. And now it's free (as in beer).
Firefox is good. Opera is good too. Different priorities for different users, I don't have access to source code or the ability to contribute in the same way, but for me I'm fine with that. Both are far superior to IE's features, security and map for an interoperable internet in the future. Nuff said.
It was clearly stated as being based on various patterns.
Ah, but it said it was based on the stock market, so it could be at least in part random.
Is the stock market a random distribution or not? Well it depends on the frequency of observation - deciding if its random based on minute to minute observations is a lot different to year-to-year observations. It is generally accepted the stock market is not ~(0,1) but it is extremely difficult to show it is not random, if you can show that please let me know so I can make lots of money in a short time.
I absolutely hate stochastic modelling of the stock market, and 'freer' parametric modelling only a little less. But that's what most people roll with and isn't a bad tool to domonstrate the techniques.
It is worth noting that the stock market as a whole has extgremely low volatility at present. That means really really low day-to-day/hour-to-hour changes in stock prices. Implied volatility has lagged realised volatility for the last couple of years, by a little, but by any measure, Google have a higher volatility at the moment and don't relate much to stock market volatility. Present low volatility is unusual, it may well change. And a CAPM measure is limited to historic volatility (or semi implied volatility, which is dependent on historic volatility), lest the Flying Spaghetti Monster get his way.
Firstly, these are predominantly 'sell side' analysts. That means they do analysis to pass to their salesmen or customers to increase
their trading revenue/customer retention(attraction).
It is nice to have your cake and eat it. It is nice to provide reliable analysis based on facts. Plug the snippets of information you receive into a spreadsheet and
press the VBA button (because all such macros are in Excel, for better or for worse). You get a reliable forecast and lots of happy customers that compare your estimates
to others' and think you're good. Except eveyyone else is doing the same thing, or rather, playing the same game.
In Google's case, they play a different game. The analysts' spreadsheets don't work so well, in part because Google's business is slightly different, in part because Google take the approach to only report really important things, their methodology of re-evaluating guesses as Google's official
announcement approaches doesn't happen. They twiddle their thumbs and complain about being made to play a different game.
Now, I am somewhat sympathetic to them, and somewhat not. Variance of price is important in finance. Would you rather have a mean return of $5 per year with a variance throught
the year of $2 or with a variance of $1? We're talking ex-post variance here, as a predictor of your portfolio's ability at maintining value at that instant you're ready
to draw it down (or add more money to), not ex-ante picking over or underbought markets (and if you can, please let me know how so I can buy a tropical island with lots of native women;) instead of posting to Slashdot for fun).Ironically, while sales side companies want to make predictable prices and promote information disclosure, they benefit most from markets with higher volatilities (or volumes, but they're extremely linked in practice).
As variance is important, getting a steady newsflow is also important. But I'm also in favour of taking a long term view in finance: assessing the long term prospects
of a company. As such, as an investor in Google I'd not be happy if they were spending their finance department resources nit-picking every last daily cent so they can tell
the market something every day - focus on the big agenda and the long term outlook and make that the priority for the company.
So it is with balance. I have no sympathy for trading sales funded wings of Investment Banks/Brokerages coming up with useless ideas daily to
get more trading revenue (funded by people increasing trading), essentially creating news. But I also think steady prices are important, and if a signifant unpublicesed
fact comes to light at Google, they should disclose it to their owners (as is required by the SEC). How significant is significant? Well, large enough for their long term shareholders (pension funds, insurance funds) to get upset, and well above the level of news-for-the-sake-of-it salesmen.
GP: This introduction was made by the UK satelite TV channel Sky, although Rupert Murdoch owns both Sky and Fox. If this fil was really made by the makers of the simpsons would the cars drive on the left-hand side of the road as they do in this film?
And you quote from Bromley Times, a UK local paper.
GP says this was made in UK, you quote Bromley Times. In what way was the GP wrong?
These are all part of the "Golden Rule" which is a core part of Christianity, which was a core of traditional western culture.
But were not exclusive to Christianity, just as serfdom, slavery, prostitution and war were not exclusive to Christianity, or Western or most cultures.
So, is it true that Google isn't (officially) offering Gmail to Chinese internet users?
I use Gmail. I live in China. I can access Gmail using their webmail or POP3 services. Can also sign up for Gmail from within China. Most Google services are tied to google.com, opposed to google.co.uk or google.com.cn. I access mail from Gmail.com as I use the personalised homepage at google.com/ig.
The yield curve is not looking that great and historically we always have a recession soon after the fed stops raising rates.
Depends from your prespective. At the moment interest rates are low, as are credit spreads. Which means its a great time for companies to issue debt - lots of money for low interest costs (which are fixed p.a. to the issuer remember). So if I was a startup I'd now be visiting brokers and banks to luck in on this funding.
And the Fed stops raising rates because, er, they have no reason to because they expect a recession. Inflationary pressures receed in a recession (less economic activity relative to capacity) and the Fed has another interest rate objective of trying for maximum employment levels.
The longer term forecasts are for a sharp short recession in late 2006 to mid 2007 then 2 good years, then a very harsh longer recession from 2010 to 2011.
Ah, financial alchemy. A recession is two consecutive declines in GDP - people, on average, get poorer over a 6 month period, only the maddest hatter is predicting that for the 2006/7 period. That is quite different from a slowdown in growth. Now I don't think even 2011 is long term, but, Concesus Forecasts are the leading sources of forecasts. They don't actually forecast anything, rather every month they telephone/email economists and financial professionals from each major financial institution (think investment banks, brokerages, private sector economist shops), around 50 in total, and publish what each institution thought as well as various averages. While a marked slowdown in growth is expected, certainty of a recession is far from clear.
There are tons of articles on the "interest rate inversion"...
Oh come on. If you're talking 2s to 10s, its around 10 basis points which is basically nothing, mainly caused by institutional pension funds still re-allocating from equities to bonds since the end of millenium stock market bubble. Inversion could be a worry, but right now the curve is quite flat. If you lament at the state of tech journalism, spare a moment to consider financial journalism, "the yield curve is flat - all sleep easy" is quite different to "the yield curve is invested - coming recession", and which sells more papers/page views?
More worrying is the present low level of volatility (it can really only go up) and the low level of absolute yields (but the vast majority of the US is on fixed-rate mortgages). But shocks are unpredictable, so that's why they're called shocks, and that's why people should always be prudent.
It would be so dumb like charging for incoming *phone calls*, silly idea dropped by operators 15 years ago.
Not that silly. In many countries calls from home telephones are free. Calls to mobiles and whatnot are also free, indeed why not, I'm just calling a number. The mobile telephone recepient chooses to answer the call. Why not let them take the mobile network side of the call? It isn't dumb, it makes sense. Call to switch is free, when it reaches switch it is in the domain of the mobile telephone company. Charging for unsolicited texts, however, does not make sense as there is no option to recieve or decline them.
My main advise would be, if you're thinking about starting a business either find a market and go for that, create a market
(identify a (potential) need) or make something that could become hugely popular (sort of creating a market) like much Web 2.0
stuff. Have a lot of planning but don't let something hairbrained be eliminated if it makes a little sense, risk vs. reward, etc.
My my main advise is moot since you already have a product. I'm curious, did you do this for the passion (if so I give you kudos!), or what?
So... spread your product and its name (link to it on your Slashdot article submission)! Dual licencing seems to work for MySQL
pretty well, but that's not the only reason it worked for them, as they entered the web-serving market early and secured a
form of sticky monopoly. Bigger software houses are going for free (as in beer) distributions (MS Visual Studio/SQL Server, Oracle, and others).
Build up contacts - could you sell this project (not product) - if you released it in a GPL version could you sell out to
another company (who may want it as part of their project suite) so easily?
But really, what advantages does your project offer? TFS mentioned nothing other than it was a 'development tool', and there
are quite a few of them, and they cover quite a spectrum. Without posting some more specific info I have nothing more than
build up your market knowledge of potential customers and target them specifically (this product can do X for you in
Y situation or provide some more details - we're as much in the dark now as before you submitted the story(and if I
were a potential cstomer, indeed I may work for a company who is, I'm hardly going to mail a/. article submitter on the off-cahnce).
Well, if the underside section could be replaced, then it could have uses.
But how long for gravity to kick in? Nine feet in the contest, and 15 feet ability, are not useful for my coffee table or desk. If it could correct within 50cm, thus stopping the carpet from getting dirty, then it would be worthy.
Miso is used to make sauces, not sandwiches. It's a salty ingredient made through fermentation. Get your asian foods straight before you keep making yourself look like an ass.
And I believe the word you were looking for is 'umami', the supposed fifth taste, as salt should be far from the main taste in miso (soup, etc).
We'd love George Bush to throw himself off a tall building. The cnut.
Are you suggesting George Bush is related to King Cnut? "Crowned in the turmoil of war and conquest, Cnut quickly established an era of peace and prosperity."
This practise of giving earnings guidance is a game that has little or no benefit for the long term shareholder.
Yes and no. It, sort of, has no effect on the long term average price. And I have no sympathy for analysts playing guessing games and racing to get their estimates out.
But it does have an effect. It affects the average variance of the stock. If the long term investor is going to release stock one day, it is preferable to have a lower variance. For an investor to be indifferent between two stocks with an average price of $10, for 2 companies with pretty much the same long term business prospects, but one stock has 15% aveage variance and the other has 2% average variance, the investor would have to be completely risk neutral. Going for the higher variance stock means buying risk, which could be interesting for some investors, but more so the day traders.
Variance also impacts the pricing of options. And having a less discontinious price for the stock (i.e. the company smooths its earnings reports in terms of regular press releases) allows more reliable cross-correlations with the market and other factors so the long term investor can more reliably see whether they're exposed to various contagion risks or what would happen when correlation goes wrong (and correlations tend to work only for only a limited period of time, so short time span data is important).
Not releasing regular reports disadvantages average investors, which is to the advantage of an investor like Berkshire Hathaway, which takes a (usually late stage) private equity style approach to investing by taking a long term approach coupled with indepth analysis on each company.
It is interesting to contrast individual companies hesitant about giving out regular data, to central banks which decide interest rates going to pains to signal their future opinions and changes in those opinions. "We want the business of forecasting to be boring," the head of the Bank of England regularly says.
And if '.sigs' [sic] are turned off (like for all ACs and for readers preferring signal to noise/driving schools in Ireland(noise best defined, surely)) then get over yourself. You propel an arrogant self belief which, in terms of political systems, is best left untapped.
Look at what happened with records, and cds, video-tape, and DVDS.
I can play CDs on my DVD player (which is region free). I can also play my VCDs on it. I can buy a cassette deck for pennies, record deck too. Personally, I always found DVD way overrated, VHS offered better quality r.e. image bleeding and response (until the tapes stretched). I bought my DVD player for $20.
n the US there is plenty of unused fiber that covers the entire country.
Exactly.
TFS (Business and entertainment content worth billions of dollars now flows over ordinary ISP networks. Internet voice calls,) reminds me that you get what you pay for. A business, whose existence or business at least partially rested on the internet would pay for a reliable connection and make sure their customers got a reliable service. That then gets tiered down into the low cost/free offerings. This happens at present and will do more so in the future.
Market solutions, etc, but not in a hazy-dream simplistic Utopia that a free market will make everything cheap and easy to access (that only those with the most basic understanding of economics/business/analysis understand) but in a nitty-gritty auction of service quality, far more based in any realistic assessment of 'free markets' (limited present resources, time lag effects of implementation, ability to differentiate customers, oligopoly/auction on 'dark fibre' (only few firms can make it work for a profit - those with a national stretch with reasonable bandwidth needs and/or localised bandwidth bottlenecks)).
Everyone who buys it is reducing load on the download servers and mirrors
I download one copy for every copy i burn.
Those who actually offer some added value will sell better. This encourages Firefox development (in the same way that Red Hat, Mantiva, Novell, IBM and many others have contributed to Linux).
I only sell it to Microsoft employees who promise to burn every copy.
In many places, offering a product for sale implies a certain amount of warantee which cannot be disclaimed, on the part of the seller (lemon laws, etc). This gives consumers leverage by which to demand things like security updates, which further incents distributors to participate in Firefox development.
I tell them the security update warnings are spammers, and that I won't update it for them.
Many people in the world with very slow, noisy connections to the Internet cannot reasonably download something as large as Firefox.
I give them Opera.
For every dollar (or Euro or Pound) spent on Firefox CDs, there is more measurable sale of open source software.
Sales are unregistered with tax, etc, authorities.
Overseas sales will encourage better regionalization enhancements.
If someone from overseas orders a copy, I send them an empty box.
Since you can download it for free, those purchasing it are likely people who would NOT have used Firefox otherwise (perhaps they just don't trust free software, or perhaps they would not have come acorss it other than on a shelf).
To encourage sales, I have a large advert in my shop window stating that the MD5 sums on Mozilla's website are incorrect because Mozilla is an increasing target of hackers and they regularly hack the site and put malicious copies in the place of genuine copies. Only I have genuine copies, only I, only for $50.99.
I have too much time on mu hands, you insensitive clod!
I am dam sure; they are going to introduce paid web hosting (Ghosting).
Maybe. I think they could also boost their AdSense program quite a bit too. Many many bloggers now have Google ads, so why shouldn't non-blog homepages (what I think this caters for). Just automatically add, or make it really really easy for users to add, a Google AdSense list to their page, perhaps for what the user is interested in, says the links "This person (XXX.googlepages.com) is interested in YYY, click here for ZZZ retailers/further sources of information." As well as more estoric linking of interests - someone's blog, webpage, email (and websearches w/ cookies) - could tie up some nice targetted ads.
...we are currently working on a similar system based on wiki engine...
Do you have a site this is running on and people can try it out? IMHO one of Google's annoyances is that it puts out barely functional software, but while that software is lacking in features, they still put it out and it becomes one of their strengths. Get a prototype running, and even if it's basic it's good enough, and can be added to later, thus stealing a march on competition and locking into a philosophy at their websearch core, software should be constantly innovated upon and improved. Gmail, flickr, news, google.com/ig and others all being examples. It seems to work pretty well so far.
If you could make a public prototype (if the retail/individual consumer market is your target) and go head-to-head?!
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox is good. The plugins extend the browser hugely.
But I'm happy with Opera, be it for the faster responce I get on the same machine as I have Firefox installed on, the ability not to search for plug ins for whatever feature I need, 'it just works'
I just find Opera is faster at implementing standards, is more reliable with IE geared sites (don't like the fact, but I have to be pragmatic and deal with it as promoting interoperability is not what pays my bills), is more innovative (has important new features first and has them 'out of the box') and makes a good testing ground for my projects, and is all together very nice. And now it's free (as in beer).
Firefox is good. Opera is good too. Different priorities for different users, I don't have access to source code or the ability to contribute in the same way, but for me I'm fine with that. Both are far superior to IE's features, security and map for an interoperable internet in the future. Nuff said.
It was clearly stated as being based on various patterns.
Ah, but it said it was based on the stock market, so it could be at least in part random.
Is the stock market a random distribution or not? Well it depends on the frequency of observation - deciding if its random based on minute to minute observations is a lot different to year-to-year observations. It is generally accepted the stock market is not ~(0,1) but it is extremely difficult to show it is not random, if you can show that please let me know so I can make lots of money in a short time.
I absolutely hate stochastic modelling of the stock market, and 'freer' parametric modelling only a little less. But that's what most people roll with and isn't a bad tool to domonstrate the techniques.
It is worth noting that the stock market as a whole has extgremely low volatility at present. That means really really low day-to-day/hour-to-hour changes in stock prices. Implied volatility has lagged realised volatility for the last couple of years, by a little, but by any measure, Google have a higher volatility at the moment and don't relate much to stock market volatility. Present low volatility is unusual, it may well change. And a CAPM measure is limited to historic volatility (or semi implied volatility, which is dependent on historic volatility), lest the Flying Spaghetti Monster get his way.
Firstly, these are predominantly 'sell side' analysts. That means they do analysis to pass to their salesmen or customers to increase their trading revenue/customer retention(attraction).
;) instead of posting to Slashdot for fun).Ironically, while sales side companies want to make predictable prices and promote information disclosure, they benefit most from markets with higher volatilities (or volumes, but they're extremely linked in practice).
It is nice to have your cake and eat it. It is nice to provide reliable analysis based on facts. Plug the snippets of information you receive into a spreadsheet and press the VBA button (because all such macros are in Excel, for better or for worse). You get a reliable forecast and lots of happy customers that compare your estimates to others' and think you're good. Except eveyyone else is doing the same thing, or rather, playing the same game.
In Google's case, they play a different game. The analysts' spreadsheets don't work so well, in part because Google's business is slightly different, in part because Google take the approach to only report really important things, their methodology of re-evaluating guesses as Google's official announcement approaches doesn't happen. They twiddle their thumbs and complain about being made to play a different game.
Now, I am somewhat sympathetic to them, and somewhat not. Variance of price is important in finance. Would you rather have a mean return of $5 per year with a variance throught the year of $2 or with a variance of $1? We're talking ex-post variance here, as a predictor of your portfolio's ability at maintining value at that instant you're ready to draw it down (or add more money to), not ex-ante picking over or underbought markets (and if you can, please let me know how so I can buy a tropical island with lots of native women
As variance is important, getting a steady newsflow is also important. But I'm also in favour of taking a long term view in finance: assessing the long term prospects of a company. As such, as an investor in Google I'd not be happy if they were spending their finance department resources nit-picking every last daily cent so they can tell the market something every day - focus on the big agenda and the long term outlook and make that the priority for the company.
So it is with balance. I have no sympathy for trading sales funded wings of Investment Banks/Brokerages coming up with useless ideas daily to get more trading revenue (funded by people increasing trading), essentially creating news. But I also think steady prices are important, and if a signifant unpublicesed fact comes to light at Google, they should disclose it to their owners (as is required by the SEC). How significant is significant? Well, large enough for their long term shareholders (pension funds, insurance funds) to get upset, and well above the level of news-for-the-sake-of-it salesmen.
'Only old people in Corea', I think you are intending.
Why wrong?
GP: This introduction was made by the UK satelite TV channel Sky, although Rupert Murdoch owns both Sky and Fox. If this fil was really made by the makers of the simpsons would the cars drive on the left-hand side of the road as they do in this film?
And you quote from Bromley Times, a UK local paper.
GP says this was made in UK, you quote Bromley Times. In what way was the GP wrong?
Try using the left mouse button.
Which one?
These are all part of the "Golden Rule" which is a core part of Christianity, which was a core of traditional western culture.
But were not exclusive to Christianity, just as serfdom, slavery, prostitution and war were not exclusive to Christianity, or Western or most cultures.
So, is it true that Google isn't (officially) offering Gmail to Chinese internet users?
I use Gmail. I live in China. I can access Gmail using their webmail or POP3 services. Can also sign up for Gmail from within China. Most Google services are tied to google.com, opposed to google.co.uk or google.com.cn. I access mail from Gmail.com as I use the personalised homepage at google.com/ig.
I can confirm you heard wrong.
The yield curve is not looking that great and historically we always have a recession soon after the fed stops raising rates.
Depends from your prespective. At the moment interest rates are low, as are credit spreads. Which means its a great time for companies to issue debt - lots of money for low interest costs (which are fixed p.a. to the issuer remember). So if I was a startup I'd now be visiting brokers and banks to luck in on this funding.
And the Fed stops raising rates because, er, they have no reason to because they expect a recession. Inflationary pressures receed in a recession (less economic activity relative to capacity) and the Fed has another interest rate objective of trying for maximum employment levels.
The longer term forecasts are for a sharp short recession in late 2006 to mid 2007 then 2 good years, then a very harsh longer recession from 2010 to 2011.
Ah, financial alchemy. A recession is two consecutive declines in GDP - people, on average, get poorer over a 6 month period, only the maddest hatter is predicting that for the 2006/7 period. That is quite different from a slowdown in growth. Now I don't think even 2011 is long term, but, Concesus Forecasts are the leading sources of forecasts. They don't actually forecast anything, rather every month they telephone/email economists and financial professionals from each major financial institution (think investment banks, brokerages, private sector economist shops), around 50 in total, and publish what each institution thought as well as various averages. While a marked slowdown in growth is expected, certainty of a recession is far from clear.
There are tons of articles on the "interest rate inversion"...
Oh come on. If you're talking 2s to 10s, its around 10 basis points which is basically nothing, mainly caused by institutional pension funds still re-allocating from equities to bonds since the end of millenium stock market bubble. Inversion could be a worry, but right now the curve is quite flat. If you lament at the state of tech journalism, spare a moment to consider financial journalism, "the yield curve is flat - all sleep easy" is quite different to "the yield curve is invested - coming recession", and which sells more papers/page views?
More worrying is the present low level of volatility (it can really only go up) and the low level of absolute yields (but the vast majority of the US is on fixed-rate mortgages). But shocks are unpredictable, so that's why they're called shocks, and that's why people should always be prudent.
It would be so dumb like charging for incoming *phone calls*, silly idea dropped by operators 15 years ago.
Not that silly. In many countries calls from home telephones are free. Calls to mobiles and whatnot are also free, indeed why not, I'm just calling a number. The mobile telephone recepient chooses to answer the call. Why not let them take the mobile network side of the call? It isn't dumb, it makes sense. Call to switch is free, when it reaches switch it is in the domain of the mobile telephone company. Charging for unsolicited texts, however, does not make sense as there is no option to recieve or decline them.
Some perspectives here.
/. article submitter on the off-cahnce).
My main advise would be, if you're thinking about starting a business either find a market and go for that, create a market (identify a (potential) need) or make something that could become hugely popular (sort of creating a market) like much Web 2.0 stuff. Have a lot of planning but don't let something hairbrained be eliminated if it makes a little sense, risk vs. reward, etc.
My my main advise is moot since you already have a product. I'm curious, did you do this for the passion (if so I give you kudos!), or what?
So... spread your product and its name (link to it on your Slashdot article submission)! Dual licencing seems to work for MySQL pretty well, but that's not the only reason it worked for them, as they entered the web-serving market early and secured a form of sticky monopoly. Bigger software houses are going for free (as in beer) distributions (MS Visual Studio/SQL Server, Oracle, and others).
Build up contacts - could you sell this project (not product) - if you released it in a GPL version could you sell out to another company (who may want it as part of their project suite) so easily?
But really, what advantages does your project offer? TFS mentioned nothing other than it was a 'development tool', and there are quite a few of them, and they cover quite a spectrum. Without posting some more specific info I have nothing more than build up your market knowledge of potential customers and target them specifically (this product can do X for you in Y situation or provide some more details - we're as much in the dark now as before you submitted the story(and if I were a potential cstomer, indeed I may work for a company who is, I'm hardly going to mail a
Good luck!
substance doesn't need to break to absorb energy.
That substance, in this case, is ceramic.
Well, if the underside section could be replaced, then it could have uses.
But how long for gravity to kick in? Nine feet in the contest, and 15 feet ability, are not useful for my coffee table or desk. If it could correct within 50cm, thus stopping the carpet from getting dirty, then it would be worthy.
I believe the GP was being funny.
Miso is used to make sauces, not sandwiches. It's a salty ingredient made through fermentation. Get your asian foods straight before you keep making yourself look like an ass.
And I believe the word you were looking for is 'umami', the supposed fifth taste, as salt should be far from the main taste in miso (soup, etc).
We'd love George Bush to throw himself off a tall building. The cnut.
Are you suggesting George Bush is related to King Cnut? "Crowned in the turmoil of war and conquest, Cnut quickly established an era of peace and prosperity."
This practise of giving earnings guidance is a game that has little or no benefit for the long term shareholder.
Yes and no. It, sort of, has no effect on the long term average price. And I have no sympathy for analysts playing guessing games and racing to get their estimates out.
But it does have an effect. It affects the average variance of the stock. If the long term investor is going to release stock one day, it is preferable to have a lower variance. For an investor to be indifferent between two stocks with an average price of $10, for 2 companies with pretty much the same long term business prospects, but one stock has 15% aveage variance and the other has 2% average variance, the investor would have to be completely risk neutral. Going for the higher variance stock means buying risk, which could be interesting for some investors, but more so the day traders.
Variance also impacts the pricing of options. And having a less discontinious price for the stock (i.e. the company smooths its earnings reports in terms of regular press releases) allows more reliable cross-correlations with the market and other factors so the long term investor can more reliably see whether they're exposed to various contagion risks or what would happen when correlation goes wrong (and correlations tend to work only for only a limited period of time, so short time span data is important).
Not releasing regular reports disadvantages average investors, which is to the advantage of an investor like Berkshire Hathaway, which takes a (usually late stage) private equity style approach to investing by taking a long term approach coupled with indepth analysis on each company.
It is interesting to contrast individual companies hesitant about giving out regular data, to central banks which decide interest rates going to pains to signal their future opinions and changes in those opinions. "We want the business of forecasting to be boring," the head of the Bank of England regularly says.
And if '.sigs' [sic] are turned off (like for all ACs and for readers preferring signal to noise/driving schools in Ireland(noise best defined, surely)) then get over yourself. You propel an arrogant self belief which, in terms of political systems, is best left untapped.
As Irish, I do believe you are descended from the Vikings who kicked Ireland's Celtic butt.
Look at what happened with records, and cds, video-tape, and DVDS.
I can play CDs on my DVD player (which is region free). I can also play my VCDs on it. I can buy a cassette deck for pennies, record deck too. Personally, I always found DVD way overrated, VHS offered better quality r.e. image bleeding and response (until the tapes stretched). I bought my DVD player for $20.
n the US there is plenty of unused fiber that covers the entire country.
Exactly.
TFS (Business and entertainment content worth billions of dollars now flows over ordinary ISP networks. Internet voice calls,) reminds me that you get what you pay for. A business, whose existence or business at least partially rested on the internet would pay for a reliable connection and make sure their customers got a reliable service. That then gets tiered down into the low cost/free offerings. This happens at present and will do more so in the future.
Market solutions, etc, but not in a hazy-dream simplistic Utopia that a free market will make everything cheap and easy to access (that only those with the most basic understanding of economics/business/analysis understand) but in a nitty-gritty auction of service quality, far more based in any realistic assessment of 'free markets' (limited present resources, time lag effects of implementation, ability to differentiate customers, oligopoly/auction on 'dark fibre' (only few firms can make it work for a profit - those with a national stretch with reasonable bandwidth needs and/or localised bandwidth bottlenecks)).
Hehe,
Everyone who buys it is reducing load on the download servers and mirrors
I download one copy for every copy i burn.
Those who actually offer some added value will sell better. This encourages Firefox development (in the same way that Red Hat, Mantiva, Novell, IBM and many others have contributed to Linux).
I only sell it to Microsoft employees who promise to burn every copy.
In many places, offering a product for sale implies a certain amount of warantee which cannot be disclaimed, on the part of the seller (lemon laws, etc). This gives consumers leverage by which to demand things like security updates, which further incents distributors to participate in Firefox development.
I tell them the security update warnings are spammers, and that I won't update it for them.
Many people in the world with very slow, noisy connections to the Internet cannot reasonably download something as large as Firefox.
I give them Opera.
For every dollar (or Euro or Pound) spent on Firefox CDs, there is more measurable sale of open source software.
Sales are unregistered with tax, etc, authorities.
Overseas sales will encourage better regionalization enhancements.
If someone from overseas orders a copy, I send them an empty box.
Since you can download it for free, those purchasing it are likely people who would NOT have used Firefox otherwise (perhaps they just don't trust free software, or perhaps they would not have come acorss it other than on a shelf).
To encourage sales, I have a large advert in my shop window stating that the MD5 sums on Mozilla's website are incorrect because Mozilla is an increasing target of hackers and they regularly hack the site and put malicious copies in the place of genuine copies. Only I have genuine copies, only I, only for $50.99.
I have too much time on mu hands, you insensitive clod!
I am dam sure; they are going to introduce paid web hosting (Ghosting).
Maybe. I think they could also boost their AdSense program quite a bit too. Many many bloggers now have Google ads, so why shouldn't non-blog homepages (what I think this caters for). Just automatically add, or make it really really easy for users to add, a Google AdSense list to their page, perhaps for what the user is interested in, says the links "This person (XXX.googlepages.com) is interested in YYY, click here for ZZZ retailers/further sources of information." As well as more estoric linking of interests - someone's blog, webpage, email (and websearches w/ cookies) - could tie up some nice targetted ads.
...we are currently working on a similar system based on wiki engine...
Do you have a site this is running on and people can try it out? IMHO one of Google's annoyances is that it puts out barely functional software, but while that software is lacking in features, they still put it out and it becomes one of their strengths. Get a prototype running, and even if it's basic it's good enough, and can be added to later, thus stealing a march on competition and locking into a philosophy at their websearch core, software should be constantly innovated upon and improved. Gmail, flickr, news, google.com/ig and others all being examples. It seems to work pretty well so far.
If you could make a public prototype (if the retail/individual consumer market is your target) and go head-to-head?!