hmmm... I don't know. Do you have any numbers on precipitation in the center of the pacific ocean? I don't recall seeing any rain there either. But seriously... no precipitation for 10,000 years? It's a) nice to know somebody's been keeping track *that long* and b) it's kinda weird to see a place made mostly of *ice* and covered with *snow* running for "dry".:)
And on a side note, the Atacama desert is beautiful when it rains. Lots of really hardy seeds live in the desert, and when it rains the desert blooms with all these pretty flowers... quite a sight. (google for "desierto florido").
The data is "somewhat inaccurate" *BUT* you want people to use it as the do-all end-all of consumer evaluation? Heh. Fat chance. Who guarantees the database is not full of this guy's issues with the companies that set the sensor off? (New coke was a *good* idea... how could you drop it? Let's see how you like being corporate depleted uranium!). I really dislike this "dumbing down" of the consumer... people trusting the device could be tricked into believing bad things of good companies and vice-versa.
Some product of the wrong company will give a high reading, and then this guy will be in a lot of trouble. He's going to get sued so hard his ancestors will be liable for damages!
I *hate* statistic massaging figureheads. Like that trained monkey we have for president here in Chile, who justified the outrageous price of the new passports saying that it's a price on par with what a passport costs in US or in Europe. I'd gladly go and bitch-slap him while yelling "HELLO! 1/4 of the per capita income than the US or Europe!".
5% sounds tiny. I wonder how much percent for 1 crash a day computers, or how many computers are that 5% (5% sure sounds better than 1e10000:) Are only registered windows clients counted, or are the hordes of pirated windows installs included?
Not as cheap as someone oversees. What is considered good money in India wouldn't be a living wage in Silicon Valley, or in most of the United States.
Too true... while workers in the US might work cheaper while telecommuting instead of going to the office, they will need a salary that allows them to live, wich means a salary that let's them live paying US cost-of-living. For example, here in Chile a computer engineer (computer engineering in this country (at least in the Universidad de Chile) is more or less like a MsC in Computer Science, six years of studying everything from advanced calculus to economics to algorithms to AI to BD to Software Engineering to OS to...) goes out, fresh out of school, to earn about US$12k or 14k a year. Sounds like peanuts in the USA, but here it allows you to rent a place, pay your bills, buy your food, and car payments. Low cost of living where you are hiring means your workers will be satisfied for less. In no way you are ripping them off. I know *I* would be too happy with a US$24k/year job:)
You can split the pay of one US worker and use it to hire more people, wich are capable of doing the work of that one US worker and more. It's only a matter of sending someone here to do face-to-face interviews so they can pick the ones who REALLY speak english.
You mean there are *other* platforms other than windows?;)
(yes, it should have been "cross-platform (nudge x2, wink x2)" instead of cross-platform. It is funny, though, the fact that now you have nothing to envy from WinXP if you use WinME... freedom and equality of bugs, across all windows versions:)
Har Har Har! Yeah, they'll indemnify up to the price you paid for DirectX...
You have to give M$ some credit though... finally, a security flaw where you don't have to care if you are using Win95a, win98blah, Win2k, Win2k SP1e92, WinXP, WinYP, whatever. A *cross-platform* security issue, if you will.;)
Yes, but phone companies usually have a monopoly of the phone market, so they can torture us with this "micropayment" and get away with it, because it is very rare the place where enough companies can provide telephone infrastructure.
On the good part: the control of the contents is in the hands of the clients, not the sponsors. Better content will win. They liberate us of the danger of bad subscriptions... lots of times one can tell whether the site sucks or not in a couple of clicks, and what now would be a US$20 subscription could be a couple of micropayments. They also would liberate us of the "subscriber-only" links that appear around here:)
But: nice to see how you manage to get the transaction overhead below the US$0.01, although this can be done with "virtual credit accounts". And while supporters can argue that we already use micropayments, like for water and electricity, there's a little detail that gets no airtime: most of the things that work on micropayments are monopolies or cartels. Remember dial-up internet? Pay as you use? Once flat-fee came into the block, pay per use went out fast... as the flat-fee guy rakes in the money.
Other issue that can be seen with micropaymentes is the fact that they clutter our surfing experience. There is, your previously unencumbered surfing now is awash with little transactions. Plus the confusion factor: the idea is to embed the micropayments into the links, so that it is automatic. So, you have this link that a) has you assess if it's worth to click that link and at the same time b) tells you it costs so little that it's nothing.
This working scheme that tries to save everything *but* the user's time doesn't sound so hot to me. Add to that de aggregation/disaggregation of products: is the newspaper worth a buck? is each article worth five cents? and so on... the pricing isn't clear anymore, when you had your newspaper for a dollar.
So, in my opinion, while having control of content in the hands of the customers and getting rid of subscriptions is fine, I think there's a lot to be fixed in the current schema of micropayments...
Then there's the perfectly legal way of buying through proxies, each buying 4%... then approach the victim with all the consolidated holding.
(one too many wall street thrillers read...:)
Well, that someone would have to prove it in a court of law. I can't go to jail for saying that I murdered x, y or z if there's no corpse of x,y or z to be found, or proof that I did. Of course, IANAL, though I'm marrying one soon:)
The problem is, people tend to see Apple computers and cheap DIY x86 computers as equivalent. I wouldn't sneer at a guy that has a 2003 BMW because his car cost 10x more than my '99 Hyundai. I would think "damn it's nice to be able to afford a luxury car!". Likewise, it would be nice to be able to buy a luxury computer. Apple offers top-notch hardware and a great OS, and is priced with that in mind. My el cheapo homemade computer has "somewhat decent" hardware, and a great OS that is a bit "not all that" when it comes to desktop (debian unstable).
*I* for one wouldn't mind owning one of those G5's.:)
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hmmm... I don't know. Do you have any numbers on precipitation in the center of the pacific ocean? I don't recall seeing any rain there either. But seriously... no precipitation for 10,000 years? It's a) nice to know somebody's been keeping track *that long* and b) it's kinda weird to see a place made mostly of *ice* and covered with *snow* running for "dry". :)
And on a side note, the Atacama desert is beautiful when it rains. Lots of really hardy seeds live in the desert, and when it rains the desert blooms with all these pretty flowers... quite a sight. (google for "desierto florido").
The data is "somewhat inaccurate" *BUT* you want people to use it as the do-all end-all of consumer evaluation? Heh. Fat chance. Who guarantees the database is not full of this guy's issues with the companies that set the sensor off? (New coke was a *good* idea... how could you drop it? Let's see how you like being corporate depleted uranium!). I really dislike this "dumbing down" of the consumer... people trusting the device could be tricked into believing bad things of good companies and vice-versa.
Some product of the wrong company will give a high reading, and then this guy will be in a lot of trouble. He's going to get sued so hard his ancestors will be liable for damages!
I *hate* statistic massaging figureheads. Like that trained monkey we have for president here in Chile, who justified the outrageous price of the new passports saying that it's a price on par with what a passport costs in US or in Europe. I'd gladly go and bitch-slap him while yelling "HELLO! 1/4 of the per capita income than the US or Europe!".
5% sounds tiny. I wonder how much percent for 1 crash a day computers, or how many computers are that 5% (5% sure sounds better than 1e10000 :) Are only registered windows clients counted, or are the hordes of pirated windows installs included?
Not as cheap as someone oversees. What is considered good money in India wouldn't be a living wage in Silicon Valley, or in most of the United States.
Too true... while workers in the US might work cheaper while telecommuting instead of going to the office, they will need a salary that allows them to live, wich means a salary that let's them live paying US cost-of-living. For example, here in Chile a computer engineer (computer engineering in this country (at least in the Universidad de Chile) is more or less like a MsC in Computer Science, six years of studying everything from advanced calculus to economics to algorithms to AI to BD to Software Engineering to OS to...) goes out, fresh out of school, to earn about US$12k or 14k a year. Sounds like peanuts in the USA, but here it allows you to rent a place, pay your bills, buy your food, and car payments. Low cost of living where you are hiring means your workers will be satisfied for less. In no way you are ripping them off. I know *I* would be too happy with a US$24k/year job :)
You can split the pay of one US worker and use it to hire more people, wich are capable of doing the work of that one US worker and more. It's only a matter of sending someone here to do face-to-face interviews so they can pick the ones who REALLY speak english.
What?
You mean there are *other* platforms other than windows? ;)
(yes, it should have been "cross-platform (nudge x2, wink x2)" instead of cross-platform. It is funny, though, the fact that now you have nothing to envy from WinXP if you use WinME... freedom and equality of bugs, across all windows versions :)
Har Har Har! Yeah, they'll indemnify up to the price you paid for DirectX...
You have to give M$ some credit though... finally, a security flaw where you don't have to care if you are using Win95a, win98blah, Win2k, Win2k SP1e92, WinXP, WinYP, whatever. A *cross-platform* security issue, if you will. ;)
Yes, but phone companies usually have a monopoly of the phone market, so they can torture us with this "micropayment" and get away with it, because it is very rare the place where enough companies can provide telephone infrastructure.
On the good part: the control of the contents is in the hands of the clients, not the sponsors. Better content will win. They liberate us of the danger of bad subscriptions... lots of times one can tell whether the site sucks or not in a couple of clicks, and what now would be a US$20 subscription could be a couple of micropayments. They also would liberate us of the "subscriber-only" links that appear around here :)
But: nice to see how you manage to get the transaction overhead below the US$0.01, although this can be done with "virtual credit accounts". And while supporters can argue that we already use micropayments, like for water and electricity, there's a little detail that gets no airtime: most of the things that work on micropayments are monopolies or cartels. Remember dial-up internet? Pay as you use? Once flat-fee came into the block, pay per use went out fast... as the flat-fee guy rakes in the money.
Other issue that can be seen with micropaymentes is the fact that they clutter our surfing experience. There is, your previously unencumbered surfing now is awash with little transactions. Plus the confusion factor: the idea is to embed the micropayments into the links, so that it is automatic. So, you have this link that a) has you assess if it's worth to click that link and at the same time b) tells you it costs so little that it's nothing.
This working scheme that tries to save everything *but* the user's time doesn't sound so hot to me. Add to that de aggregation/disaggregation of products: is the newspaper worth a buck? is each article worth five cents? and so on... the pricing isn't clear anymore, when you had your newspaper for a dollar.
So, in my opinion, while having control of content in the hands of the customers and getting rid of subscriptions is fine, I think there's a lot to be fixed in the current schema of micropayments...
Then there's the perfectly legal way of buying through proxies, each buying 4%... then approach the victim with all the consolidated holding. (one too many wall street thrillers read... :)
Well, that someone would have to prove it in a court of law. I can't go to jail for saying that I murdered x, y or z if there's no corpse of x,y or z to be found, or proof that I did. Of course, IANAL, though I'm marrying one soon :)
The problem is, people tend to see Apple computers and cheap DIY x86 computers as equivalent. I wouldn't sneer at a guy that has a 2003 BMW because his car cost 10x more than my '99 Hyundai. I would think "damn it's nice to be able to afford a luxury car!". Likewise, it would be nice to be able to buy a luxury computer.
:)
Apple offers top-notch hardware and a great OS, and is priced with that in mind. My el cheapo homemade computer has "somewhat decent" hardware, and a great OS that is a bit "not all that" when it comes to desktop (debian unstable).
*I* for one wouldn't mind owning one of those G5's.
Bah, UT2k3 runs even better on linux than it does on windows... plus it doesn't reboot my machine 20% of the time like the windows version does.