What you describe is barter trading, which is something that neither of our societies have engaged in for a long time.
Wow, you can tell which side you are on. To give a less biased descriptions of captialism, it is a system in which everything is owned by individuals and trade occurs based on supply and demand. All those other things are opinions (not to say I disagree or anything, but they are just that).
Democracy, on the other hand, is a system under which each individual has one vote (his/her own). That is the only right specifically guaranteed by Democracy.
That fact may be true, but nonetheless the government needs to have some roles, and a good government in a democracy has the responsibility of providing the basic necessities. This may involve some socialism where a capitalist attitude, i.e. the market forces, would otherwise leave sections of the population with nothing. It is actually in a capitalist economy's best interest to have government spending. And how could government spend money but in a socialist context, being as it's the peoples' money they spend.
You would probably argue that all social programs are bad because they interfere with market forces. Well, picture this: Education is privatized and only left to market forces. Due to the cost, after 2 generations, only about 1/3 of the population of country X is educated. This represents a horrible reduction in the educated work force, so there will be little R&D, and the country will fall behind the markets in the global economy. To make matters worse, these people who are educated will be the richest 1/3 of the population. Incredibly rich people tend to not only stop working, but they also tend to have less babies, so perhaps in 4 or 5 generations, demand for education will lower, reducing the cost, but by then country X has no productive capacity, and all of the aspirations of the bottom 1/3 (the ones that are left), are gone. How does that work for society? or do you expect private industries will subsidize the education of less affluent people?
In fact, any commodity would be suitable as a backing for currency.
Yes, sure, as long as people want gold...what if nobody will accept gold in exchange for anything? Gold would become worthless. The only thing that gives any currency value is the perception that it has value (and thus people will take it). Try to give the pizza boy a bit of gold next time, he probably won't take it.
You also mention what you claim is the legitimate role of Government in a Democracy. You describe a socialistic system.
I'm no political science major here but I believe a democracy needs to find a proper balance between socialist and capitalist. What you describe is strictly capitalist...I do not believe "democracy" really has anything to do with socialist or capitalist...it just happens that most democracies use a primarily capitalist approach.
Actually, to me anyways, this blackout was just an excuse to take it easy for a few days, have a few beers, and just chill in the summer heat. Many people were inconvenienced, having to sleep at the subway station or airport, but I think, in general, most people had this same attitude. People in Toronto, from what I hear, actually got out and met their neighbours. They went and partied outside, it was great.
Some people, in Ontario, still do not have power back, and several of the plants are still not running (due to the time it takes to start them), and yet, you see electronic billboards lit up in Toronto, everyone's running air conditioning, as if nothing happened. We shall see what happens I guess.
The bottom line is a couple of words taken from the cover of the best book in the world: Don't Panic.
Other technology infrastructure types have shown that market forces result in greater availability, not less.
you mean like phone service? since they've privatized phone service in Ontario I have yet to see any improvements on rural lines. It costs WAY too much to lay lines over such a large area, and there aren't enough people to provide the necessary returns. The same would be true for electricity.
Electricity generation and distribution has been privatized in Ontario (albeit only one company "owns" the infrastructure: Hydro One) and as I understand it many of the states affected by this blackout have a similar system in place. Hydro One has not increased generation capacity significantly in recent years, and it has several nuclear plants down for maintenance right now...I have no idea what's going on in the US system.
Note that this did not help (though I won't suggest it hurt just yet). I think once the Ohio system went down we basically saw a simple case of overload on the rest of the system, which took things down. The overload was partially due to a lot of use -- it was a HOT day, but also due to a lack of generation.
What *should* have happened is bits of the grid should have been shut off, but instead the plants went down, causing a cascading effect. Note that this is all conjecture on my part as I don't have all the facts I'm sure.
Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value
Is it? What makes gold of value where fiat money has none? Gold is just a mineral, paper money is just paper, most money is nothing but numbers on a computer. Gold hasn't backed anything or had any "value" for a large number of years now (except as a commodity), sorry to burst your bubble my friend.
Also, what about water, etc? Seems to me that like water, electricity has become a basic necessity. Yes, it is possible to live without, but probably over 99% of people use electricity on a daily basis and cannot function without it. Roads, education, and (in Canada) health care all fall into this category too. The role of the government in a democracy is, among other things, to provide the basic necessities so they are available to everyone at a fair price. For a government to not have regulations and some control over the electricity distribution system would simply be negligence imho.
Think about the difference between going around Canada and going around the southern tip of South America
Why not just go through the Panama Canal? seems like a good middle ground and hey, it was built just for that!
Yeah, sure we Canadians would benefit from boats being able to go through our waters, but then, don't you think that the lack of ice and fresh water would have a severe negative impact on our economy and quality of life?
Yes, I believe the human influence on global warming is blown out of proportion. This, in Southern Ontario has, by far, not been the hottest summer with temps averaging around 24C (a guess), now that's not to say the globe is not actually warming, but it's no reason to panic. I also believe we should be good to the Earth that is so good to us -- stop polluting, promote energy efficiency in homes and cars, etc... but to suggest that we are intentionally polluting the environment for economic gain is ludicrous! When the economy is measured, they try to account for the environment, but since the economy measures numbers it's rather difficult... you try to attach a dollar figure to environmental issues (among other things)
Oh please! First of all, there is no true solid evidence of global warming. The temperature of the Earth has always gone in cycles. As evidence, look at the multiple ice ages in the books. We are looking at but a tiny snapshot in the history of the Earth. Sure it may be a bit warmer (though I'd like to point out that, here at least, this summer has been far from the hottest), but that may be perfectly normal for all we know.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating pollution, I'm simply saying a report that suggests the north pole will have lost all its ice by the next century is going to influence politicians, you're sadly mistaken, especially when this report suggests that all those negative side effects people talk about (flooding, etc...) will not happen.
Seems to me, there are a lot of different dialects of English. There's the British English, US English, Australian English, NZ English, (I could go on for a while here), all influenced by different social factors.
Canadian English, for example, seems to be primarily based on the British English, with a fair bit of US English influence, and even some Quebec French mixed in there. Incidentally, Quebec French is significantly different from the French spoken in France, and yet, most people can figure out what's being said.
I say, should we really care how variables are spelled as long as we get the point across? If I say flavour, and some American eejit has written flavor, I think we will both know what's going on, n'est-ce pas?
Alternatively we invent a NEW language for programming; one that has exactly one dialect and one correct usage. That'd remove all the confusion, especially if we went ahead and translated all previous code, keywords in programming languages, etc.... There's probably no language on the planet that meets this criteria yet, so we'd all have to learn a new language, but hey, that would be WAY easier than dealing with petty spelling differences, wouldn't it?
I agree...FOX has to be THE worst network for scheduling consistency. The only thing you know for sure is when Simpsons is, well, except when they move it to 7:00 so they can show a movie at 8...between that and the endless commercials, it's ridiculous.
FOX has some really good shows, and some really lousy shows, unfortunately they seem to focus more on pumping out a lot of lousy shows rather than focusing on the really good ones. Simpsons has taken a significant downturn in the last few years (since reality tv came out...coincidence? maybe). They seem to have gotten better this last season, but seasons 12 and 13 were really quite pathetic. They've also had several really good shows (imho) that they just didn't care about and dropped because nobody was watching or whatever -- except it was impossible to tell when the shows would be on...no wonder. Futurama and Family Guy both fit into this category.
Let's just hope they don't blow it with their next good idea...and enough with the reality crap people! If I wanted reality, I'd go out...TV is supposed to be a break from reality.
I wonder if the bending has any affect on the material, such as increasing/decreasing the angle of incidence of the volume being stressed? What about creating distortions in the material, etc.? What do you think?
To spell it out for those that have no optics knowledge. Brewster's angle (which depends on the relative index of refraction of the two materials involved) is the minimun amgle at which all of the light will be reflected. If the light hits the coating at an angle smaller than this (from the perpendicular), it'll go through into the plastic coating. This means not only signal loss, but heating. Heat and stress tend to change the indices of refraction, thereby changing the Brewster's angle...which in turn can cause more signal loss, and so on. THAT is why bends in optical cables is so bad.
With non-optical cables it's not as critical, but a minimum bend radius will prevent breaking/wear/impedence, a totally different problem with the same end result.
I'm sure lots of companies are started by waterloo grads, not all of which hire coops...fortunately Mike Lazaridis decided to give quite a lot back to the university...that plus it's cheap labour what with the gov't paying half the salary:-)
1. You have no idea what a BlackBerry is, do you?
2. Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean it's useless.
3. That was an incredibly selfish thing to say.
I am sure that Handspring and Good Technology, companies that have felt RIM's legal wrath in the past, are happy to see RIM get a little taste of its own medicine.
Except that RIM actually DEVELOPS their products...there's a difference imho, so it's not a taste of their own medicine...it's a whole new and not-so-flavourful medicine
of course if you look at the last week or so it's gone UP over $9....what of a $3.16 loss? Actually, the gains have to do with rumours that they'll be bought out.
yes, that's the big joke around university of waterloo (right beside RIM headquarters, they hire a good number of coop students).
I say this is garbage. If you actually read the patents that they're "infringing" on, they're very vague and simplistic. It would be impossible NOT to infringe on these patents with any sort of digital text messaging system.
Also, NTP has no intention of implementing any of this technology, after all, it's not what they do. Sure, a fine makes sense I suppose, NTP did get there first and perhaps they deserve to make some $$$ out of the deal, but an injunction??? Seems to me that the tech sector has been having enough trouble as it is lately, and any innovation that is actually useful would be welcomed. Or perhaps it's because it's a Canadian product...I dare not speculate that the U.S. would unfairly block a Canadian product *ahem* beef *ahem* soft-wood lumber *ahem*
It's companies like NTP that are keeping us from going places. Who was it that patented the conversation? Seems to me the patent laws need some serious review, not only in the U.S., but everywhere.
So what do YOU think should be the minimum wage? $15/hour? Think of the inflation that would cause, not to mention the businesses that collapse. You seem to have the free market economy confused with a social program. Social programs are designed to help the less fortunate, NOT businesses.
One great way to get a free taste of the music is concerts like this one. Whatever happend to these? I mean, this one will have almost half a million people at it today! What better way to get a cheap taste of quality music?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a ROLLING STONES concert to attend. Sorry, I'm just so psyched.
I'm fully aware of the correct usage. I just can't type. I hardly see how pointing out a silly grammatical typo contributes to the argument. You're one of those people that likes to interrupt others during arguments with irrelevant facts aren't you?
I'm not implying they deservere to be paid less, I'm saying they're WILLING to work for less. Big difference. I'm also not saying that they're uneducated. I'm saying that WalMart doesn't need to pay for educated people. If someone quits, it takes like half a day to train the next person that comes along. Making 7 bucks an hour is, quite frankly to a lot of people, far better than making 0 dollars an hour.
Why would they need to spend big bucks paying employees? How much education do you think it takes to stand there and smile, and perhaps run an item over a scanner? I'd say, well, 2nd grade.
WalMart's big success is due to it's second-to-none computerized inventory system. Nobody got there before them and nobody did it better. This allowed them to save money, sell for less, and become the biggest retailer in North America. It also gave them the pricing power to tell anybody to bugger off if the price is too high.
It may not seem right to hire people for so little, but hey, if you quit, there's somebody waiting on the doorstep that'll take the $7/hour. Supply and Demand my friends.
I personally don't shop at WalMart, but it has nothing to do with morality. Zellers is closer and I like what they sell (for the most part). If I happen to be near a WalMart, I have no qualms about going into it, but I am not what most would consider a fan of the place. I am, however, impressed with their success as a corporation from a small handful of stores in some backwoods communities to the greatest retailer in NA in such a short time. That is impressive folks.
As far as the Made in China products. Well, I have a set of cheap Rayovac NiMH batteries that last for over 130 pictures (with flash) in my digital camera and take about 5-6 hours to charge. I'm quite happy with the product and yes, it's made in China. So what? Does that make me a bad person? What about the Beijing Olympics? are we supposed to not watch them 'cuz they're in China?
How true. I seriously can't scroll any more w/o the scroll wheel. Doesn't matter if I'm in Windows or Linux...it's truly a great invention and no software UI will ever replace it again.
On another note, soon to be added to the list of Microsoft's greatest blunders is: Sitting on so much money! They seriously need to come up with something to do with that cash. Look what happened to IBM when they tried to live off the interest of their cash hoardes. They let Microsoft creep up:-(
actually, a googol is 10^100, not 10E+100, since that's 10 x 10^100 = 10^101
but otherwise, so what? There are a lot of devices out there considering the entire world, and there are a lot of IP ranges that are wasted on ISPs/companies that don't use them all at once, and on specific ranges reserved for personal use.
perhaps if we reorganized we could come up with a lot more to hold us for a while, but if *everything* eventually has an IP address, I can envisage running out in the not too distant future.
They have 90% market share, and their #1 priority is holding onto it, not innovating.
Now, see, I disagree. Any company should strive for innovation. What the U.S. economy, and the tech sector as a whole could use right now is some good innovation and less of this focus on national security crap (which doesn't give you guys very many sustainable jobs).
For example, look at what IBM did back in the day. They were THE computer company. They had it all. They decided to stop innovating and just invested their money, living off the interest. What happened? They missed DOS, they let M$ build up and now look at the way things are. As soon as you stop innovating, your company might as well shut down imho. M$ seems to already be making the same mistake as IBM did...just look at the amount of money it has just sitting there, doing nothing. Watch out Bill, I certainly hope you have future plans...you can't just sit there on your heaps of money and expect to rule the software world forever.
Frankly I'm sick of hearing "we shouldn't be innovative, let's just work with what we have and maybe fix a bug here and there." It's that attitude that's not only keeping thousands of you Yankees out of work, but it's also making it increasingly less likely I'll find a good job when I graduate from university.
P.S. If anybody knows Bill's secret plans for his money horde, I'm all ears:-)
Where I was working in the winter (co-op job), I was working on a JSP web application. One primary goal was to write all the html, css, and (where necessary, but as little as possible) JavaScript to be fully standards compliant. We realized that most of our users would use IE and, in those cases if IE is in use, we screwed up the pages so they'd look the same, but everyone else would get the correct page. It meant that there was a fair bit of redundant code, but it meant we didn't leave anyone out in the cold and that those using standards-compliant browsers could get good, solid, code. IE users wouldn't notice a difference if they suddenly switched to, say, Mozilla (except for a couple of minor improvements).
I realize this isn't the focus of most companies, but, well, it *should* be. IE is not great. It's good enough that users don't get fed up (yet) and move to something else (but barely). This is probably due largely to convenience and/or lack of knowledge (I hear a lot of ppl refer to IE as "the internet", as in "open up the internet").
If IE is to fall we need two things: Developers willing to put the extra effort in to work in both IE and standardized browsers (so they don't piss off their current IE users), and education to the masses about what else is out there and why it's better.
Slashdot Mirror
Easy solution...they shut down half the eastern seaboard and Ontario...oh wait, they were calling that a blackout...
Wow, you can tell which side you are on. To give a less biased descriptions of captialism, it is a system in which everything is owned by individuals and trade occurs based on supply and demand. All those other things are opinions (not to say I disagree or anything, but they are just that).
Democracy, on the other hand, is a system under which each individual has one vote (his/her own). That is the only right specifically guaranteed by Democracy.
That fact may be true, but nonetheless the government needs to have some roles, and a good government in a democracy has the responsibility of providing the basic necessities. This may involve some socialism where a capitalist attitude, i.e. the market forces, would otherwise leave sections of the population with nothing. It is actually in a capitalist economy's best interest to have government spending. And how could government spend money but in a socialist context, being as it's the peoples' money they spend.
You would probably argue that all social programs are bad because they interfere with market forces. Well, picture this: Education is privatized and only left to market forces. Due to the cost, after 2 generations, only about 1/3 of the population of country X is educated. This represents a horrible reduction in the educated work force, so there will be little R&D, and the country will fall behind the markets in the global economy. To make matters worse, these people who are educated will be the richest 1/3 of the population. Incredibly rich people tend to not only stop working, but they also tend to have less babies, so perhaps in 4 or 5 generations, demand for education will lower, reducing the cost, but by then country X has no productive capacity, and all of the aspirations of the bottom 1/3 (the ones that are left), are gone. How does that work for society? or do you expect private industries will subsidize the education of less affluent people?
Yes, sure, as long as people want gold...what if nobody will accept gold in exchange for anything? Gold would become worthless. The only thing that gives any currency value is the perception that it has value (and thus people will take it). Try to give the pizza boy a bit of gold next time, he probably won't take it.
You also mention what you claim is the legitimate role of Government in a Democracy. You describe a socialistic system.
I'm no political science major here but I believe a democracy needs to find a proper balance between socialist and capitalist. What you describe is strictly capitalist...I do not believe "democracy" really has anything to do with socialist or capitalist...it just happens that most democracies use a primarily capitalist approach.
Some people, in Ontario, still do not have power back, and several of the plants are still not running (due to the time it takes to start them), and yet, you see electronic billboards lit up in Toronto, everyone's running air conditioning, as if nothing happened. We shall see what happens I guess.
The bottom line is a couple of words taken from the cover of the best book in the world: Don't Panic.
you mean like phone service? since they've privatized phone service in Ontario I have yet to see any improvements on rural lines. It costs WAY too much to lay lines over such a large area, and there aren't enough people to provide the necessary returns. The same would be true for electricity.
Electricity generation and distribution has been privatized in Ontario (albeit only one company "owns" the infrastructure: Hydro One) and as I understand it many of the states affected by this blackout have a similar system in place. Hydro One has not increased generation capacity significantly in recent years, and it has several nuclear plants down for maintenance right now...I have no idea what's going on in the US system.
Note that this did not help (though I won't suggest it hurt just yet). I think once the Ohio system went down we basically saw a simple case of overload on the rest of the system, which took things down. The overload was partially due to a lot of use -- it was a HOT day, but also due to a lack of generation.
What *should* have happened is bits of the grid should have been shut off, but instead the plants went down, causing a cascading effect. Note that this is all conjecture on my part as I don't have all the facts I'm sure.
Money is a *very* special case, and I'd be happy to liberalize the printing of money if that meant the dollars would have to be backed by something, rather than paper fiat-money. I wouldn't care who stamped my coin of actual gold, I know it's of value
Is it? What makes gold of value where fiat money has none? Gold is just a mineral, paper money is just paper, most money is nothing but numbers on a computer. Gold hasn't backed anything or had any "value" for a large number of years now (except as a commodity), sorry to burst your bubble my friend.
Also, what about water, etc? Seems to me that like water, electricity has become a basic necessity. Yes, it is possible to live without, but probably over 99% of people use electricity on a daily basis and cannot function without it. Roads, education, and (in Canada) health care all fall into this category too. The role of the government in a democracy is, among other things, to provide the basic necessities so they are available to everyone at a fair price. For a government to not have regulations and some control over the electricity distribution system would simply be negligence imho.
Why not just go through the Panama Canal? seems like a good middle ground and hey, it was built just for that!
Yeah, sure we Canadians would benefit from boats being able to go through our waters, but then, don't you think that the lack of ice and fresh water would have a severe negative impact on our economy and quality of life?
Yes, I believe the human influence on global warming is blown out of proportion. This, in Southern Ontario has, by far, not been the hottest summer with temps averaging around 24C (a guess), now that's not to say the globe is not actually warming, but it's no reason to panic. I also believe we should be good to the Earth that is so good to us -- stop polluting, promote energy efficiency in homes and cars, etc... but to suggest that we are intentionally polluting the environment for economic gain is ludicrous! When the economy is measured, they try to account for the environment, but since the economy measures numbers it's rather difficult... you try to attach a dollar figure to environmental issues (among other things)
Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating pollution, I'm simply saying a report that suggests the north pole will have lost all its ice by the next century is going to influence politicians, you're sadly mistaken, especially when this report suggests that all those negative side effects people talk about (flooding, etc...) will not happen.
"Sounds like Springfield's got a discipline problem"
"Yeah, maybe that's why we beat them in football nearly half the time"
nineteenth percent of all people know that
Canadian English, for example, seems to be primarily based on the British English, with a fair bit of US English influence, and even some Quebec French mixed in there. Incidentally, Quebec French is significantly different from the French spoken in France, and yet, most people can figure out what's being said.
I say, should we really care how variables are spelled as long as we get the point across? If I say flavour, and some American eejit has written flavor, I think we will both know what's going on, n'est-ce pas?
Alternatively we invent a NEW language for programming; one that has exactly one dialect and one correct usage. That'd remove all the confusion, especially if we went ahead and translated all previous code, keywords in programming languages, etc.... There's probably no language on the planet that meets this criteria yet, so we'd all have to learn a new language, but hey, that would be WAY easier than dealing with petty spelling differences, wouldn't it?
FOX has some really good shows, and some really lousy shows, unfortunately they seem to focus more on pumping out a lot of lousy shows rather than focusing on the really good ones. Simpsons has taken a significant downturn in the last few years (since reality tv came out...coincidence? maybe). They seem to have gotten better this last season, but seasons 12 and 13 were really quite pathetic. They've also had several really good shows (imho) that they just didn't care about and dropped because nobody was watching or whatever -- except it was impossible to tell when the shows would be on...no wonder. Futurama and Family Guy both fit into this category.
Let's just hope they don't blow it with their next good idea...and enough with the reality crap people! If I wanted reality, I'd go out...TV is supposed to be a break from reality.
To spell it out for those that have no optics knowledge. Brewster's angle (which depends on the relative index of refraction of the two materials involved) is the minimun amgle at which all of the light will be reflected. If the light hits the coating at an angle smaller than this (from the perpendicular), it'll go through into the plastic coating. This means not only signal loss, but heating. Heat and stress tend to change the indices of refraction, thereby changing the Brewster's angle...which in turn can cause more signal loss, and so on. THAT is why bends in optical cables is so bad.
With non-optical cables it's not as critical, but a minimum bend radius will prevent breaking/wear/impedence, a totally different problem with the same end result.
I'm sure lots of companies are started by waterloo grads, not all of which hire coops...fortunately Mike Lazaridis decided to give quite a lot back to the university...that plus it's cheap labour what with the gov't paying half the salary :-)
1. You have no idea what a BlackBerry is, do you? 2. Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean it's useless. 3. That was an incredibly selfish thing to say.
Except that RIM actually DEVELOPS their products...there's a difference imho, so it's not a taste of their own medicine...it's a whole new and not-so-flavourful medicine
of course if you look at the last week or so it's gone UP over $9....what of a $3.16 loss? Actually, the gains have to do with rumours that they'll be bought out.
I say this is garbage. If you actually read the patents that they're "infringing" on, they're very vague and simplistic. It would be impossible NOT to infringe on these patents with any sort of digital text messaging system.
Also, NTP has no intention of implementing any of this technology, after all, it's not what they do. Sure, a fine makes sense I suppose, NTP did get there first and perhaps they deserve to make some $$$ out of the deal, but an injunction??? Seems to me that the tech sector has been having enough trouble as it is lately, and any innovation that is actually useful would be welcomed. Or perhaps it's because it's a Canadian product...I dare not speculate that the U.S. would unfairly block a Canadian product *ahem* beef *ahem* soft-wood lumber *ahem*
It's companies like NTP that are keeping us from going places. Who was it that patented the conversation? Seems to me the patent laws need some serious review, not only in the U.S., but everywhere.
So what do YOU think should be the minimum wage? $15/hour? Think of the inflation that would cause, not to mention the businesses that collapse. You seem to have the free market economy confused with a social program. Social programs are designed to help the less fortunate, NOT businesses.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a ROLLING STONES concert to attend. Sorry, I'm just so psyched.
I'm not implying they deservere to be paid less, I'm saying they're WILLING to work for less. Big difference. I'm also not saying that they're uneducated. I'm saying that WalMart doesn't need to pay for educated people. If someone quits, it takes like half a day to train the next person that comes along. Making 7 bucks an hour is, quite frankly to a lot of people, far better than making 0 dollars an hour.
WalMart's big success is due to it's second-to-none computerized inventory system. Nobody got there before them and nobody did it better. This allowed them to save money, sell for less, and become the biggest retailer in North America. It also gave them the pricing power to tell anybody to bugger off if the price is too high.
It may not seem right to hire people for so little, but hey, if you quit, there's somebody waiting on the doorstep that'll take the $7/hour. Supply and Demand my friends.
I personally don't shop at WalMart, but it has nothing to do with morality. Zellers is closer and I like what they sell (for the most part). If I happen to be near a WalMart, I have no qualms about going into it, but I am not what most would consider a fan of the place. I am, however, impressed with their success as a corporation from a small handful of stores in some backwoods communities to the greatest retailer in NA in such a short time. That is impressive folks.
As far as the Made in China products. Well, I have a set of cheap Rayovac NiMH batteries that last for over 130 pictures (with flash) in my digital camera and take about 5-6 hours to charge. I'm quite happy with the product and yes, it's made in China. So what? Does that make me a bad person? What about the Beijing Olympics? are we supposed to not watch them 'cuz they're in China?
On another note, soon to be added to the list of Microsoft's greatest blunders is: Sitting on so much money! They seriously need to come up with something to do with that cash. Look what happened to IBM when they tried to live off the interest of their cash hoardes. They let Microsoft creep up :-(
but otherwise, so what? There are a lot of devices out there considering the entire world, and there are a lot of IP ranges that are wasted on ISPs/companies that don't use them all at once, and on specific ranges reserved for personal use.
perhaps if we reorganized we could come up with a lot more to hold us for a while, but if *everything* eventually has an IP address, I can envisage running out in the not too distant future.
Now, see, I disagree. Any company should strive for innovation. What the U.S. economy, and the tech sector as a whole could use right now is some good innovation and less of this focus on national security crap (which doesn't give you guys very many sustainable jobs).
For example, look at what IBM did back in the day. They were THE computer company. They had it all. They decided to stop innovating and just invested their money, living off the interest. What happened? They missed DOS, they let M$ build up and now look at the way things are. As soon as you stop innovating, your company might as well shut down imho. M$ seems to already be making the same mistake as IBM did...just look at the amount of money it has just sitting there, doing nothing. Watch out Bill, I certainly hope you have future plans...you can't just sit there on your heaps of money and expect to rule the software world forever.
Frankly I'm sick of hearing "we shouldn't be innovative, let's just work with what we have and maybe fix a bug here and there." It's that attitude that's not only keeping thousands of you Yankees out of work, but it's also making it increasingly less likely I'll find a good job when I graduate from university.
P.S. If anybody knows Bill's secret plans for his money horde, I'm all ears :-)
I realize this isn't the focus of most companies, but, well, it *should* be. IE is not great. It's good enough that users don't get fed up (yet) and move to something else (but barely). This is probably due largely to convenience and/or lack of knowledge (I hear a lot of ppl refer to IE as "the internet", as in "open up the internet").
If IE is to fall we need two things: Developers willing to put the extra effort in to work in both IE and standardized browsers (so they don't piss off their current IE users), and education to the masses about what else is out there and why it's better.