It's not that ridiculous, although I admit a buy out seems crazed. MS has crap for networking, their best hope is to partner with another evil empire like AT&T, and judging by their presence at SuperCom and other telecom circuits, that's not something they're oblivious to.
In the telecom world there's a big push to capitalize (i.e. lock down, control and charge) on further use of the internet and home networking. It's a big but subtle threat to the free world, but it's on many telecom equipment makers agenda's, and Cisco is no different. A console would be a powerful tool, although I suspect it is too niche to really hit home. TiVO is far more likely.
Unless we get a more big business unfriendly government in place soon, these sorts of crazy sounding partnerships aren't as insane as they should be.
And EQ1 kept a lot of the type of people who would enjoy EQ2. If WoW didn't exist I'd have stayed with EQ1, EQ2 had absolutely nothing to offer anyone who already invested the insane hours required to max an EQ character.
You can make similar arguments about computers. Most of the ICs are physically made overseas, even if the company owning them or designing them is in the US or Europe (assuming the designs aren't outsourced as well, and they quite often are). If the ICs aren't the printed circuit boards almost certainly are, and the assembly of all of the above with it. That's just the HW, some argue the least important aspect of a computer. Chinese/Indian workers are also paid very well in their country, although their wages seem like peanuts in western money.
In the end lower cost seems to beat higher quality in most industries (except medicine, maybe). I think that's misleading though, because companies known for making high quality products do tend to do comparitively well if the reputation gets out. The problem is how to know if a product (or its support) is high quality, it's really hard to tell. It's easy to tell what's cheaper, but quality is very subjective. Even exec's can't agree. Dell for example insists it makes very high quality products because it has a very low field failure rate. Apple loyalists say no way, even though their systems fail more often (by percentage). Who is right, and how can it be measured? That's why the LCD wins, and it's sad. Worse, companies who develop the rep for high quality one year tend to change the formula the next to get higher margins. Customers get burnt and decide to just go with what's cheap.
In both cases popular trends aren't in our best interests and "market forces" are driving the wrong behavior.
I think they chose "B", except that the hiring is in India. I'm not aware of call center closings in the US, in my experience those are mostly allocated to corporate purchases. I'm not saying that I agree with their policy, but their competitors are doing the same. Unless either a) the US government finds a way to discourage this activity or b) customers express a strong interest in only buying american products supported by american citizens (they haven't, see the auto industry), everyone in any industry that can will outsource, outsource, outsource. Anyone that doesn't goes out of business or has a hard time getting funding.
They CAN be fun, if you have the time, and you like guilds. If you just liked the solo quests and fun content of the lower levels though, they haven't added much of anything worth playing.
Amen, I'd like to see 35-60 be as much fun and play exactly the same way levels 1-35 played. I barely play the game anymore due to the lack of content that just my wife and I can play (and enjoy). Yeah you can get to 60 with what's there, but it's not any fun.
I'm happy for the guilds and all those who like to raid, but I did it in EverQuest, it was fun, but I'm not willing to do it anymore.
There's some usefulness in it, particularly for Linux. One long standing problem has been the millions of possible configurations a standard PC has, while a Mac tends to have only a few slight variants. This could benefit people trying to make "Linux On The Desktop".
In reality, the opposite is more important, getting OS X on vanilla PCs. That may help turn the tide slightly against Microsoft enough to get something like competition on both hardware and software products.
Presumably you can still use other services, but you'll have to have the PCMCIA or USB2 external modems. I don't think Dell or anyone else can dictate to the phone companies how their network SHOULD be set up, although it's clearly broken. Uncle Sam (or whatever the UK equivalent is) can do that but consumers aren't screaming loudly enough.
I like mine too, but: - The games are too expensive - The UMD format pisses me off: I already have DVD's, I don't want to buy the same movie twice - The lack of USB storage support infuriates me...I refuse to buy yet another memory device
So while it's a great piece of hardware, and there's lots I can do with it, from Sony's perspective there's no way they can make money from me, they've priced themselves out of the game.
I cannot fund researchers to develop a cure for cancer without R&D money. I can fund them with investment from various sources, but most will want their investment back, with interest. I can't make it back if I have to subsequently compete on manufacturing and organizational costs with competitors once it is available. I can't rely on another company with a widget I don't have to share their data with me, nor can I necessarily share my data, as my investors would sue me. The best we can do is have our employees talk around the issue with various papers and forums.
I can't rely on the public domain, because this knowledge is pretty specialized and requires some pretty expensive equipment, apparatus and environments. Further it will require extensive testing before I'll even be allowed to think about trying it on humans.
Software patents, I agree with you. They're essentially free to develop and deploy, what small costs exists there I think are more or less equivalent to copying & clean rooming a new product. For almost anything else, there are real tangible costs, and not a great deal of fair collaboration. While I long for the utopia where people go to professions because they enjoy them, work because they enjoy it, and never have to worry about paying for dinner, that is not yet upon us. Until then, we need patents. We DO need them to serve the purpose that they were intended for, NOT for corporate olympics.
I can't agree to that. If I sunk $20M (or more in many cases) into developing a new technology, only to have a competitor duplicate it and release it on the market, I'd lose my investment and go under. I've got $20M in debt, and can't sell for more than cost + a small margin, while he has no (or very little) debt and does the same.
The problems we're all seeing with patents are people using them as weapons with no intent to develop on their own, excessive duration on patents actually stifling innovation particularly in computers/electronics which very small time to markets, and the most obvious glut of worthless patents. It seems like small changes could fix most of those problems, but maybe a bigger change is required for the last one.
Lazy was a poor choice of word. There's entirely too much information flowing across our faces daily for us to take time on all of it. Credit card apps are straight forward, probably college kids are too naive to realize 0% interest is temporary.
There's a bigger problem than literacy if credit card interest is a problem for college kids. Someone ought to take them aside and tell them carrying a balance is always a bad thing, for emergencies only. If you find yourself carrying a balance more than a month, you need to make a change.
Facism is on both sides of the political spectrum and it's always wrong.
On the other hand, I knew more than a few college professors who attempted to use their position to promote far right/left politics based on very one sided arguments. If this person is in earnest trying to oust professors engaged in that activity, good for him. School is for learning facts, at least real school is, people in the liberal arts are on their own.
Thus leading one to wonder if college students lack literacy, or are simply too lazy to read everything that comes across their face.
It's not rocket science, but you do have to read through some pretty small fine print to get to the truth.
I don't think I'm seeing the slippery slope, although I'm not educated on all the different crimes & situations where juveniles are being tried as an adult these days. The ones I am aware of do not upset me. Violent crimes, for example, there is no excuse for, the laws there won't change with any amount of voting. Only the youngest of children will not understand the cause/effect of violence. Non-violent crimes I think are another matter, and I probably agree with you, which is to say I don't think charging children as an adult is acceptable although repeat offenders do need consistently harder spankings.
I don't see a bad message or one that would encourage bad behavior.
It costs a lot to lay fiber, or you'd be right. Worse there's all sorts of laws and regulations about where you may and may not lay it.
That part however may be manageable to a reasonably wealthy group. Getting it to everyone's house however is probably impossible. The last mile is very difficult to reach, and that is the part the Bell's are exploiting. Of course, that's the part they are already robbing price wise, so they have absolutely no grounds to say they're not being paid.
Only in certain cases. And that's not quite a fair comparison. Those kids broke serious laws, and are being tried as adults usually because they did something extremely bad (or something not so bad, many times). Their own bad choice is what makes them criminals. Child pornography laws are not about criminalizing the children, it's about stopping child pornography; stopping the people who create it, and effectively killing the market for it by criminalizing those who buy it.
The reason it's a crime that it is easy for adults to force or bribe the minor into pornography, something that will last forever and be used against them. There are so many ways it could be exploited, and many more ways when it would cause real damage to the children. The only choice is to make it difficult to do and profit from.
The part I think you're getting at is that having naked pictures of a 16yo is different than having naked pictures of an 8yo. Slapping the salami to one is probably not 'wrong', while the other is a sign of something that may be dangerous. Although you may not be a pervert, you would be charged like one if caught. Many agree, including me. Somehow we manage to carry on in light of this oppression.
I hate to say it but I would guess most of the time it's not because you're black, it's because you're in technology. This describes almost every day of my life and I'm white. Take this website for example, someone makes a deep and insightful comment about quantum physics that actually advances our collective understanding, and three people will make comments that add no value but correct him on little details. "No fair, you got to be the smart guy today! That's my job!" I think it's a characteristic of the profession more than racial bias.
Don't underestimate the Bell's, they've been around a real long time, in one form or another, and are very influential in the government. They'll prove to be at least as difficult as media companies, if not more because they ultimately don't worry much about sales, they're guaranteed. Network interruptions don't hurt them, they get paid regardless, but they hurt Google.
All Google has is public support, which in large enough numbers has historically beaten the Bells (albeit slowly), but it took a real long time.
Google has other options, one of which is to relay money they're paying someone else on to us, the consumer. In fact this is a lot easier and no skin off their back.
If Apple went to AMD, they would instantly become AMD's biggest customer
That can't be right, AMD sells into HP, IBM, and pretty much everyone but Dell's computers, and we all think Dell will see the light soon. Any of those outsell Apple. I'd bet retail processor sales even outsell Apple. Capacity is easy, particularly as Apple is going to commit to one and only device (for now).
The fact is you won't know why they chose Intel because anyone who does know can't talk about it. I'm not implying that it is necessarily something unethical, just unannounced and lawyerized.
Slashdot Mirror
But Bill saves ALLLLLL his receipts.
It's not that ridiculous, although I admit a buy out seems crazed. MS has crap for networking, their best hope is to partner with another evil empire like AT&T, and judging by their presence at SuperCom and other telecom circuits, that's not something they're oblivious to.
In the telecom world there's a big push to capitalize (i.e. lock down, control and charge) on further use of the internet and home networking. It's a big but subtle threat to the free world, but it's on many telecom equipment makers agenda's, and Cisco is no different. A console would be a powerful tool, although I suspect it is too niche to really hit home. TiVO is far more likely.
Unless we get a more big business unfriendly government in place soon, these sorts of crazy sounding partnerships aren't as insane as they should be.
And EQ1 kept a lot of the type of people who would enjoy EQ2. If WoW didn't exist I'd have stayed with EQ1, EQ2 had absolutely nothing to offer anyone who already invested the insane hours required to max an EQ character.
You can make similar arguments about computers. Most of the ICs are physically made overseas, even if the company owning them or designing them is in the US or Europe (assuming the designs aren't outsourced as well, and they quite often are). If the ICs aren't the printed circuit boards almost certainly are, and the assembly of all of the above with it. That's just the HW, some argue the least important aspect of a computer. Chinese/Indian workers are also paid very well in their country, although their wages seem like peanuts in western money.
In the end lower cost seems to beat higher quality in most industries (except medicine, maybe). I think that's misleading though, because companies known for making high quality products do tend to do comparitively well if the reputation gets out. The problem is how to know if a product (or its support) is high quality, it's really hard to tell. It's easy to tell what's cheaper, but quality is very subjective. Even exec's can't agree. Dell for example insists it makes very high quality products because it has a very low field failure rate. Apple loyalists say no way, even though their systems fail more often (by percentage). Who is right, and how can it be measured? That's why the LCD wins, and it's sad. Worse, companies who develop the rep for high quality one year tend to change the formula the next to get higher margins. Customers get burnt and decide to just go with what's cheap.
In both cases popular trends aren't in our best interests and "market forces" are driving the wrong behavior.
I think they chose "B", except that the hiring is in India. I'm not aware of call center closings in the US, in my experience those are mostly allocated to corporate purchases. I'm not saying that I agree with their policy, but their competitors are doing the same. Unless either a) the US government finds a way to discourage this activity or b) customers express a strong interest in only buying american products supported by american citizens (they haven't, see the auto industry), everyone in any industry that can will outsource, outsource, outsource. Anyone that doesn't goes out of business or has a hard time getting funding.
I think Dell understood that as "People are frustrated with wait times and queue's" rather than "People are frustrated with bad english".
They CAN be fun, if you have the time, and you like guilds. If you just liked the solo quests and fun content of the lower levels though, they haven't added much of anything worth playing.
Amen, I'd like to see 35-60 be as much fun and play exactly the same way levels 1-35 played. I barely play the game anymore due to the lack of content that just my wife and I can play (and enjoy). Yeah you can get to 60 with what's there, but it's not any fun.
I'm happy for the guilds and all those who like to raid, but I did it in EverQuest, it was fun, but I'm not willing to do it anymore.
I don't think there's anything wrong with lying to a government bent on doing evil.
There's some usefulness in it, particularly for Linux. One long standing problem has been the millions of possible configurations a standard PC has, while a Mac tends to have only a few slight variants. This could benefit people trying to make "Linux On The Desktop".
In reality, the opposite is more important, getting OS X on vanilla PCs. That may help turn the tide slightly against Microsoft enough to get something like competition on both hardware and software products.
Presumably you can still use other services, but you'll have to have the PCMCIA or USB2 external modems. I don't think Dell or anyone else can dictate to the phone companies how their network SHOULD be set up, although it's clearly broken. Uncle Sam (or whatever the UK equivalent is) can do that but consumers aren't screaming loudly enough.
I like mine too, but:
- The games are too expensive
- The UMD format pisses me off: I already have DVD's, I don't want to buy the same movie twice
- The lack of USB storage support infuriates me...I refuse to buy yet another memory device
So while it's a great piece of hardware, and there's lots I can do with it, from Sony's perspective there's no way they can make money from me, they've priced themselves out of the game.
But still, it's a damn nice toy.
I cannot fund researchers to develop a cure for cancer without R&D money. I can fund them with investment from various sources, but most will want their investment back, with interest. I can't make it back if I have to subsequently compete on manufacturing and organizational costs with competitors once it is available. I can't rely on another company with a widget I don't have to share their data with me, nor can I necessarily share my data, as my investors would sue me. The best we can do is have our employees talk around the issue with various papers and forums.
I can't rely on the public domain, because this knowledge is pretty specialized and requires some pretty expensive equipment, apparatus and environments. Further it will require extensive testing before I'll even be allowed to think about trying it on humans.
Software patents, I agree with you. They're essentially free to develop and deploy, what small costs exists there I think are more or less equivalent to copying & clean rooming a new product. For almost anything else, there are real tangible costs, and not a great deal of fair collaboration. While I long for the utopia where people go to professions because they enjoy them, work because they enjoy it, and never have to worry about paying for dinner, that is not yet upon us. Until then, we need patents. We DO need them to serve the purpose that they were intended for, NOT for corporate olympics.
I can't agree to that. If I sunk $20M (or more in many cases) into developing a new technology, only to have a competitor duplicate it and release it on the market, I'd lose my investment and go under. I've got $20M in debt, and can't sell for more than cost + a small margin, while he has no (or very little) debt and does the same.
The problems we're all seeing with patents are people using them as weapons with no intent to develop on their own, excessive duration on patents actually stifling innovation particularly in computers/electronics which very small time to markets, and the most obvious glut of worthless patents. It seems like small changes could fix most of those problems, but maybe a bigger change is required for the last one.
Mod this guy -1 Redundant, IE7 IS the exploit.
Lazy was a poor choice of word. There's entirely too much information flowing across our faces daily for us to take time on all of it. Credit card apps are straight forward, probably college kids are too naive to realize 0% interest is temporary.
There's a bigger problem than literacy if credit card interest is a problem for college kids. Someone ought to take them aside and tell them carrying a balance is always a bad thing, for emergencies only. If you find yourself carrying a balance more than a month, you need to make a change.
Facism is on both sides of the political spectrum and it's always wrong.
On the other hand, I knew more than a few college professors who attempted to use their position to promote far right/left politics based on very one sided arguments. If this person is in earnest trying to oust professors engaged in that activity, good for him. School is for learning facts, at least real school is, people in the liberal arts are on their own.
Thus leading one to wonder if college students lack literacy, or are simply too lazy to read everything that comes across their face. It's not rocket science, but you do have to read through some pretty small fine print to get to the truth.
I don't think I'm seeing the slippery slope, although I'm not educated on all the different crimes & situations where juveniles are being tried as an adult these days. The ones I am aware of do not upset me. Violent crimes, for example, there is no excuse for, the laws there won't change with any amount of voting. Only the youngest of children will not understand the cause/effect of violence. Non-violent crimes I think are another matter, and I probably agree with you, which is to say I don't think charging children as an adult is acceptable although repeat offenders do need consistently harder spankings. I don't see a bad message or one that would encourage bad behavior.
It costs a lot to lay fiber, or you'd be right. Worse there's all sorts of laws and regulations about where you may and may not lay it. That part however may be manageable to a reasonably wealthy group. Getting it to everyone's house however is probably impossible. The last mile is very difficult to reach, and that is the part the Bell's are exploiting. Of course, that's the part they are already robbing price wise, so they have absolutely no grounds to say they're not being paid.
Only in certain cases. And that's not quite a fair comparison. Those kids broke serious laws, and are being tried as adults usually because they did something extremely bad (or something not so bad, many times). Their own bad choice is what makes them criminals. Child pornography laws are not about criminalizing the children, it's about stopping child pornography; stopping the people who create it, and effectively killing the market for it by criminalizing those who buy it.
The reason it's a crime that it is easy for adults to force or bribe the minor into pornography, something that will last forever and be used against them. There are so many ways it could be exploited, and many more ways when it would cause real damage to the children. The only choice is to make it difficult to do and profit from.
The part I think you're getting at is that having naked pictures of a 16yo is different than having naked pictures of an 8yo. Slapping the salami to one is probably not 'wrong', while the other is a sign of something that may be dangerous. Although you may not be a pervert, you would be charged like one if caught. Many agree, including me. Somehow we manage to carry on in light of this oppression.
I hate to say it but I would guess most of the time it's not because you're black, it's because you're in technology. This describes almost every day of my life and I'm white. Take this website for example, someone makes a deep and insightful comment about quantum physics that actually advances our collective understanding, and three people will make comments that add no value but correct him on little details. "No fair, you got to be the smart guy today! That's my job!" I think it's a characteristic of the profession more than racial bias.
Don't underestimate the Bell's, they've been around a real long time, in one form or another, and are very influential in the government. They'll prove to be at least as difficult as media companies, if not more because they ultimately don't worry much about sales, they're guaranteed. Network interruptions don't hurt them, they get paid regardless, but they hurt Google.
All Google has is public support, which in large enough numbers has historically beaten the Bells (albeit slowly), but it took a real long time.
Google has other options, one of which is to relay money they're paying someone else on to us, the consumer. In fact this is a lot easier and no skin off their back.
That can't be right, AMD sells into HP, IBM, and pretty much everyone but Dell's computers, and we all think Dell will see the light soon. Any of those outsell Apple. I'd bet retail processor sales even outsell Apple. Capacity is easy, particularly as Apple is going to commit to one and only device (for now).
The fact is you won't know why they chose Intel because anyone who does know can't talk about it. I'm not implying that it is necessarily something unethical, just unannounced and lawyerized.