The school I attend has a fairly good record in sports, which translates into substantial revenue from merchandizing, selling rights to televise games, etc. It would be interesting to look at the numbers, but I believe some sports make money. Now, whether or not there is a net profit once all sports are taken into account is questionable, but if this were the case, sports wouldn't be so useless after all.
I still don't watch the games though...
With recent trends demonstrating that MS is at least trying to better itself as far as quality and long-overdue technical changes are concerned, I must admit to having developed a modicum of respect for it.
But AOL? AOL has never, and has never seriously tried to produce anything other than pure unadulterated crap. AOL's IM survives only because it has a monopoly on the most valuable IM asset: human capital. People are too lazy to switch (not that the other common IM alternatives are exemplary either).
It's as if MS has a corporate team tasked with screwing things up (SCO funding mess anyone?), and a technical team tasked with fixing what has always been screwed up, which would be, well, most of what they produce.
With all the problems I have with the VIA chipset in my current PC, I'd hesitate before buying a laptop with their motherboard/processor. I'd much rather see nvidia get around to that nForce mobile chipset-- but that probably wouldnt be targeting the low price side of the market.
Nuts like Rumsfeld would rather have nasa working on ways to shoot each others' spacecraft down. I'd worry that given the current administration, a space race wouldn't have exploration as a goal (or even a wanted side-effect).
If companies realize how bad their ads really are, perhaps they'll come up with better ones; although, I'll still skip all of them.
The only damage I forsee is if companies refuse to buy ads on the programs/stations I watch because "viewers of this type of programming don't view enough ads."
Slashdot Mirror
The school I attend has a fairly good record in sports, which translates into substantial revenue from merchandizing, selling rights to televise games, etc. It would be interesting to look at the numbers, but I believe some sports make money. Now, whether or not there is a net profit once all sports are taken into account is questionable, but if this were the case, sports wouldn't be so useless after all. I still don't watch the games though...
With recent trends demonstrating that MS is at least trying to better itself as far as quality and long-overdue technical changes are concerned, I must admit to having developed a modicum of respect for it.
But AOL? AOL has never, and has never seriously tried to produce anything other than pure unadulterated crap. AOL's IM survives only because it has a monopoly on the most valuable IM asset: human capital. People are too lazy to switch (not that the other common IM alternatives are exemplary either).
It's as if MS has a corporate team tasked with screwing things up (SCO funding mess anyone?), and a technical team tasked with fixing what has always been screwed up, which would be, well, most of what they produce.
Of course, the screenshots are /.ed already. A machine brought to its knees by Longhorn without even having it installed!
With all the problems I have with the VIA chipset in my current PC, I'd hesitate before buying a laptop with their motherboard/processor. I'd much rather see nvidia get around to that nForce mobile chipset-- but that probably wouldnt be targeting the low price side of the market.
Nuts like Rumsfeld would rather have nasa working on ways to shoot each others' spacecraft down. I'd worry that given the current administration, a space race wouldn't have exploration as a goal (or even a wanted side-effect).
If companies realize how bad their ads really are, perhaps they'll come up with better ones; although, I'll still skip all of them.
The only damage I forsee is if companies refuse to buy ads on the programs/stations I watch because "viewers of this type of programming don't view enough ads."