Think about the timeline. You'll spend less than 5 minutes in Google's site. You'll spend the remaining time (hours? this is heavy reading we're talking about) looking at Yahoo content.
Of course Yahoo would prefer that you went to them in the first place, but Yahoo is still getting the lion's share of the loot in this scenario.
If you wait until Jan. 1st of next year (in the US), the federal government will give you a fat tax credit with the purchase of a hybrid vehicle. This changes the financial equation considerably.
My understanding is the tax credit won't cover the full incremental cost of moving up to a hybrid, but is usually more than half of it.
For some reason, whenever we geeks think of voting fraud we think of electronic fraud or hackers.
But even in places that have e-voting, most of the actual fraud occurring is the old-fashioned kind: show me your paper stub that proves you voted for me, and here is $5. Paperless voting sounds scary, but would actually probably reduce real fraud.
(a) Use a router with QoS... prioritize VOIP traffic and deprioritize everything else.
(b) Yes and yes. Most VOIP providers like Vonage will give you an adapter that can directly connect to the internet, which means you don't need the computer. But to use Skype you need to go through the computer.
Do both. That's what we did. We canceled our SBC local service, but left one "911" phone (a non-electrical, non-cordless type) attached to the POTS network. 911 is still available even if you don't have service. All of our other phones use VOIP for a very low fee.
chances of successful SCOTUS filibuster with the new Senate - very small
Bush agenda - Social Security reform (small chance of success), health care reform (nothing meaningful), litigation reform (nothing that will pass muster with the courts), more tax cuts (large chance of success)
There is nothing offensive in his comment. Ballmer runs a business. Businesses exist to make money. If there is no money to be made in a given market, then a rational business avoids that market. This has nothing to do with selfishness because it's just dollars and cents. If MS was a charity or non-profit, then your comments might make sense.
Is it smart business to look the other way while your software is being pirated by the lower end? The answer is.... depends. How will someone who has grown up poor, accustomed to pirating all of their software without any guilt whatsoever, going to change their purchasing behavior if they do move to the higher end? If Microsoft suspects most such people will continue to pirate their software, then it is a rational business decision to fight that piracy. So they lower their prices down to a feasible level, and insist users pay to get a valid license. Maybe their price/feature options aren't yet appealing to this low-end market... if so, they'll lower the price further. All dollars and cents. Nothing selfish. You're trying to make Ballmer into some villain, but I don't see it.
I disagree. First of all, most gamers will perceive the DS as an enhanced old product as well... they'll simply think it's a version of the GBA with an additional screen. In short, an anomaly. You would expect sales of something perceived as "anomalous" to ramp up very slowly, picking up only after consumers figure out how an additional screen can benefit gameplay. So if I'm Nintendo, I would take this as terrific news.
In addition, the PSONE sold very well after it was introduced, despite the fact that it, too, was just another version of the original Playstation.
There are millions and millions of AIDS cases and genocide in Sudan and massive rape and slavery, and you are worried about some silly comments on Slashdot??!! Unbelievable!
Imagine if you could simply just IM the car in front of you. Type (or speak, or something) in the license number in your auto IM client, and say "you just cut me off, you !@$^#$^@^%!" Now THAT would be fun....
Internet connectivity + GPS navigation + local Google searching could be interesting. This is already old school stuff for cell phones and PDAs, of course. I wonder how they'll convince consumers this isn't just a car+PDA?
What about social networking? i.e. enter the license plate number of the car in front of me and see if he/she is on Friendster (or equivalent)? Tell that a**hole who just cut me off something unprintable via IM?
Or, better yet, go read yesterday's post about Mozilla security holes. Then you can flame, bash, and troll MS while at least feeling a little guilty about it.
There are quite a few intelligent people (more than you would suspect) who read Slashdot regularly BUT don't subscribe to the anti-MS vitriol that runs so rampant here. (Indeed, it's almost a certainty that the vast majority of hits to Slashdot pages are coming from browsers running on Windows. And probably many of us, myself included, work for a company that produces proprietary software.) I enjoy reading 90% of the comments on here, but roll my eyes with disgust at all the patently false, anti-MS posts that somehow get modded as +5 funny when they should be -1 Troll.
It's a huge insult to the FOSS contributors to suggest it's all a reactionary movement. Indeed, the early days of Linux suggests it was geek enthusiasm for UNIX combined with cost-cutting market economics that drove early adopters. It's really hard to believe that in an alternate universe, without MS, a similar populist-driven software movement wouldn't have occurred.
I played the demo with a Radeon 8500 in lowest-quality mode. It was an overall positive experience, actually. The frame rate held up ok most of the time, never "good" of course, but only rarely was it so bad as to cause disorientation. Kudos to id for making a good engine even for us bottom-dwellers.
Admittedly, the rest of my system is more up-to-date, with AMD64 and 512MB RAM.
Actually, only a tiny fraction of all the dollar-denominated "money" in the US is represented by hard currency. Most of it is now represented by bits and bytes only.
Why would you want to put the telephone adapter on the internet side? The newer routers (including the fabulous WRT54G) can already do QoS, and probably a better job at that.
Also, you can use just about any adapter on the market with either VOIP provider, in either configuration (with a little work). I have the Vonage adapter on the router (with QoS) side of the network and have had no quality issues.
You would think the pr0n industry would run kicking and screaming in the opposite direction from HD.
Skin defects (moles, acne, etc.) are easy to hide in low-res, and the babes seem perfect. Put them in HD, and it becomes a lot harder to make the skin blemishes disappear while maintaining that natural look. I'm not even sure modern cosmetics is capable of this, and you probably need some combination of cosmetics + video-editing to make it work well. This is probably too much for most low-budget pr0n shops.
Slashdot Mirror
A small step forward for intelligent design, and a giant leap backwards for intelligence.
Of course Yahoo would prefer that you went to them in the first place, but Yahoo is still getting the lion's share of the loot in this scenario.
And replace "We all" with "Most of us". I for one am roughly equally happy with the search results from both engines.
If you wait until Jan. 1st of next year (in the US), the federal government will give you a fat tax credit with the purchase of a hybrid vehicle. This changes the financial equation considerably. My understanding is the tax credit won't cover the full incremental cost of moving up to a hybrid, but is usually more than half of it.
But even in places that have e-voting, most of the actual fraud occurring is the old-fashioned kind: show me your paper stub that proves you voted for me, and here is $5. Paperless voting sounds scary, but would actually probably reduce real fraud.
(b) Yes and yes. Most VOIP providers like Vonage will give you an adapter that can directly connect to the internet, which means you don't need the computer. But to use Skype you need to go through the computer.
We go from 3 flavors of Windows XP to 7 of Vista.
And then we go from 7 MS divisions down to 3.
strange
I would gladly trade some of that extra bandwidth for better responsiveness.
Do both. That's what we did. We canceled our SBC local service, but left one "911" phone (a non-electrical, non-cordless type) attached to the POTS network. 911 is still available even if you don't have service. All of our other phones use VOIP for a very low fee.
Condy Rice - find a new job
Colin Powell - might stay (I hope not)
Tommy Thompson - see ya
replacements? (shudder)
SCOTUS changes - 2 to 3
chances of successful SCOTUS filibuster with the new Senate - very small
Bush agenda - Social Security reform (small chance of success), health care reform (nothing meaningful), litigation reform (nothing that will pass muster with the courts), more tax cuts (large chance of success)
Iraq - more of the same
War on Terror - becomes next War on Drugs
My comment was a parody of parent, but the parent was removed (even worse than being trolled).
Is it smart business to look the other way while your software is being pirated by the lower end? The answer is.... depends. How will someone who has grown up poor, accustomed to pirating all of their software without any guilt whatsoever, going to change their purchasing behavior if they do move to the higher end? If Microsoft suspects most such people will continue to pirate their software, then it is a rational business decision to fight that piracy. So they lower their prices down to a feasible level, and insist users pay to get a valid license. Maybe their price/feature options aren't yet appealing to this low-end market... if so, they'll lower the price further. All dollars and cents. Nothing selfish. You're trying to make Ballmer into some villain, but I don't see it.
In addition, the PSONE sold very well after it was introduced, despite the fact that it, too, was just another version of the original Playstation.
There are millions and millions of AIDS cases and genocide in Sudan and massive rape and slavery, and you are worried about some silly comments on Slashdot??!! Unbelievable!
Imagine if you could simply just IM the car in front of you. Type (or speak, or something) in the license number in your auto IM client, and say "you just cut me off, you !@$^#$^@^%!" Now THAT would be fun....
What about social networking? i.e. enter the license plate number of the car in front of me and see if he/she is on Friendster (or equivalent)? Tell that a**hole who just cut me off something unprintable via IM?
Or, better yet, go read yesterday's post about Mozilla security holes. Then you can flame, bash, and troll MS while at least feeling a little guilty about it.
There are quite a few intelligent people (more than you would suspect) who read Slashdot regularly BUT don't subscribe to the anti-MS vitriol that runs so rampant here. (Indeed, it's almost a certainty that the vast majority of hits to Slashdot pages are coming from browsers running on Windows. And probably many of us, myself included, work for a company that produces proprietary software.) I enjoy reading 90% of the comments on here, but roll my eyes with disgust at all the patently false, anti-MS posts that somehow get modded as +5 funny when they should be -1 Troll.
It's a huge insult to the FOSS contributors to suggest it's all a reactionary movement. Indeed, the early days of Linux suggests it was geek enthusiasm for UNIX combined with cost-cutting market economics that drove early adopters. It's really hard to believe that in an alternate universe, without MS, a similar populist-driven software movement wouldn't have occurred.
Admittedly, the rest of my system is more up-to-date, with AMD64 and 512MB RAM.
Actually, only a tiny fraction of all the dollar-denominated "money" in the US is represented by hard currency. Most of it is now represented by bits and bytes only.
Also, you can use just about any adapter on the market with either VOIP provider, in either configuration (with a little work). I have the Vonage adapter on the router (with QoS) side of the network and have had no quality issues.
Read the capital letters.
You would think the pr0n industry would run kicking and screaming in the opposite direction from HD. Skin defects (moles, acne, etc.) are easy to hide in low-res, and the babes seem perfect. Put them in HD, and it becomes a lot harder to make the skin blemishes disappear while maintaining that natural look. I'm not even sure modern cosmetics is capable of this, and you probably need some combination of cosmetics + video-editing to make it work well. This is probably too much for most low-budget pr0n shops.