Somehow I don't think Dell is afraid of the mighty Claria(Gator) legal department. Properly supporting users' systems would be more important to Dell than fending off a couple of nuisance lawsuits from fly by night spyware companies. For this reason, I think Dell probably does have some sort of behind the scenes agreement with some spyware producers.
It might have been illegal, but I can't say it was undeserved. May Rambus die a painful death. Perhaps the government's track record on dealing with anti trust issues lately will actually be a good thing in this case.
Since certain computer hardware has become such a commodity, with so many manufacturers competing primarily on lowest price, its hard for a lot of them to stay in business very long. Prices are bid really low due to competition, companies go bust since they can't realistically make it at that price, supply gets tight and prices go up. Then the cycle repeats. The only way I see this changing is for companies to not be stupid enough to sell large amounts of their product at rock bottom prices just to get the deal. But I think companies will always do this because its just too tempting.
You're thinking of capital gains taxes, which are actually about 28%. Not quite as bad as half, but it still sucks to have to pay taxes on something that is 'free'.
I agree that the primary purpose of higher education should be for the student to become well rounded and to learn fundamentals so they may later teach themselves new technologies. However, schools do need to provide students with some practical, real world knowledge in order to make them employable. The fact is, employers hire someone to do a specific task. Whether they should do this or not is up for debate, but its what they do. The well rounded thinker with a lot of theoretical knowledge who has no real experience in any particular area will be at a huge disadvantage compared to someone who can say "I programmed in C++ and Java for 3 years". In order for a CS/CIS curriculum to properly prepare a student for the working world, there needs to be a mix of theoretical education in fundamentals along with practical, trade school type of skills.
This is a problem that is found in many math classes at large state universities. The classes are taught by professors that are at the school to do research, and have no desire to teach first year calculus to undergrads. Its just something they have to do while they're trying to work their way up to full professor. So they do a terrible job and don't really take the class seriously, knowing that it won't matter in the grand scheme of things. Worse, some of these professors feel their job is to weed out as many first year students as they can, so there is no real instruction going on in the class. The only students that really succeed at math in U.S. schools are the ones that have the desire and ability to teach themselves.
It would be nice if they were this honest about it. Then one of their rivals can offer 'no spam' email accounts. People would choose their email provider based on spam policies, among other things. Sometimes the free market really is a very useful thing.
If the demand for private schools, and the funding to go along with that demand, were to increase, wouldn't that make it a lot more financially feasible to operate a private school? And if that were the case, wouldn't more people start schools who would have previously been unable to? What you described could very easily happen in the short term, but long term, I think more churches and other organizations would start new schools. Its difficult, but I know of several churches in my area that have recently opened their own schools. And its not necessarily limited to churches. Private corporations could get into the school business, too. With parents controlling where their kids attend school, anyone running a school would have a strong incentive to make it perform well.
You didn't answer the question. When you spend $100 million developing some new device and as soon as it hits the market, someone reverse engineers it and send the specs off to Taiwan to make generic devices, how will you make any return on your investment? You might have to charge $1000 for the thing just to recover R&D and pay for the cost of manufacturing. The bootleg version could be made for a lot less and sold for, say, $300. Who would pay for your $1000 product when they could get the same thing for $300? The only way you could protect yourself from financial ruin in this case is to not make the thing to begin with. There is no avoiding this reality.
Not anymore. Copyrights have been granted a 25 year extension just about every 25 years. At the rate we've been going, the Disney copyrights will be permanent.
An Indian advertising executive quoted in the article feels that this practice of making a lot of money clicking on ads is unethical. Why? The people are being paid to do exactly what they are doing. The ones interviewed for this article were not using any kind of script or other automated click simulator. This is the downside of massive, untargeted advertising. You never know who you're going to reach or if your message is the slightest bit effective.
How do school vouchers only aid the rich? Last I checked, they enabled the non-rich to send their kids to something other than a failing public school. If the failing school loses enough students that they lose their funding and have to shut down, good riddance. Kids should not be condemned to failing schools just because some union employees need jobs. I feel really bad for good teachers who are passionate about kids learning. They really have an uphill battle in many aspects, but it simply does not help kids to shuffle them through inadequate schools and then give them a meaningless diploma.
Hopefully the smart thinking MBA (I crack myself up) will remember that too much advertising will destroy the effectiveness of their loss leading wifi service. If people are willing to come into Starbucks and buy some overpriced coffee knowing that it will be worth it so they can get on the internet, they'll stop doing this once the ads become too intrusive and/or annoying. Then Starbucks has lost this service as a competitive advantage and coffee sales suffer as a result. This should motivate them to find a point where advertising is making money for them, but not annoying the customer too much.
As a side note, some stores have already taken in store advertising to an annoying extreme. Last week, I left Foot Locker without buying anything because they have very loud advertisements playing on their in store PA system that are for things not even related to shoes. Normally I would tune out something like this, but the thumping rap music in the commercials was too much to deal with. Will the accounting people think of this when they notice that sales are falling?
That's fine. As long as you don't mind nobody ever inventing anything that requires a significant amount of research and development. How could an inventor justify spending a lot of time and money on some high tech device only to have people rip it off and start making generic version of it as soon as it hits the market? There would be no return on investment possible. The majority of patents are filed to protect legitimate inventions, not just to shake people down for money from using obvious ideas.
There's nothing unfair about it. The merchant knows what the terms are and they are free to not take credit cards if they object. Sure, their sales might suffer, but that's the price you pay for more exposure.
I haven't heard them claim Made in USA since Sam died. This is probably why. But many people still percieve Wal Mart to sell American products just because they did at one time. Now, it seems like they go out of the way to buy nothing domestic.
Translation: the government has the right to bear arms. Is this really what the founders had in mind? The national guard is NOT what they were talking about.
The best chance for survival that Sun has is to boot McNealy out, which they should have done about 3 years ago. This man's ego will run the company right into the dirt. When they should have been coming up with viable ways to embrace and/or compete with Linux, they instead rely on anti-trust suits, more proprietary lock-in, Java Desktop, and other crap that will never work in the long run. A new CEO just might be able to breathe some life into this dying company, but it might be too late.
If somebody figured out how to build 'economy cars' that could go 200MPH and looked cool, I bet Ferrari's sales would suffer. The demand for high powered Sun hardware and Solaris is not what it used to be before Linux was developed to the point that it is today.
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Somehow I don't think Dell is afraid of the mighty Claria(Gator) legal department. Properly supporting users' systems would be more important to Dell than fending off a couple of nuisance lawsuits from fly by night spyware companies. For this reason, I think Dell probably does have some sort of behind the scenes agreement with some spyware producers.
It might have been illegal, but I can't say it was undeserved. May Rambus die a painful death. Perhaps the government's track record on dealing with anti trust issues lately will actually be a good thing in this case.
Since certain computer hardware has become such a commodity, with so many manufacturers competing primarily on lowest price, its hard for a lot of them to stay in business very long. Prices are bid really low due to competition, companies go bust since they can't realistically make it at that price, supply gets tight and prices go up. Then the cycle repeats. The only way I see this changing is for companies to not be stupid enough to sell large amounts of their product at rock bottom prices just to get the deal. But I think companies will always do this because its just too tempting.
And now for the real challenge: a vacant street parking space within 5 blocks of Wrigley Field. They would be guaranteed not to find that!
You're thinking of capital gains taxes, which are actually about 28%. Not quite as bad as half, but it still sucks to have to pay taxes on something that is 'free'.
Don't forget my favorite SCO arguments of all time: The GPL is unconstitutional, and free software helps the terrorists!
That's great. Even the traders now think this stock is such a joke they're putting in lowball bids just for fun.
I agree that the primary purpose of higher education should be for the student to become well rounded and to learn fundamentals so they may later teach themselves new technologies. However, schools do need to provide students with some practical, real world knowledge in order to make them employable. The fact is, employers hire someone to do a specific task. Whether they should do this or not is up for debate, but its what they do. The well rounded thinker with a lot of theoretical knowledge who has no real experience in any particular area will be at a huge disadvantage compared to someone who can say "I programmed in C++ and Java for 3 years". In order for a CS/CIS curriculum to properly prepare a student for the working world, there needs to be a mix of theoretical education in fundamentals along with practical, trade school type of skills.
This is a problem that is found in many math classes at large state universities. The classes are taught by professors that are at the school to do research, and have no desire to teach first year calculus to undergrads. Its just something they have to do while they're trying to work their way up to full professor. So they do a terrible job and don't really take the class seriously, knowing that it won't matter in the grand scheme of things. Worse, some of these professors feel their job is to weed out as many first year students as they can, so there is no real instruction going on in the class. The only students that really succeed at math in U.S. schools are the ones that have the desire and ability to teach themselves.
It would be nice if they were this honest about it. Then one of their rivals can offer 'no spam' email accounts. People would choose their email provider based on spam policies, among other things. Sometimes the free market really is a very useful thing.
If the demand for private schools, and the funding to go along with that demand, were to increase, wouldn't that make it a lot more financially feasible to operate a private school? And if that were the case, wouldn't more people start schools who would have previously been unable to? What you described could very easily happen in the short term, but long term, I think more churches and other organizations would start new schools. Its difficult, but I know of several churches in my area that have recently opened their own schools. And its not necessarily limited to churches. Private corporations could get into the school business, too. With parents controlling where their kids attend school, anyone running a school would have a strong incentive to make it perform well.
You didn't answer the question. When you spend $100 million developing some new device and as soon as it hits the market, someone reverse engineers it and send the specs off to Taiwan to make generic devices, how will you make any return on your investment? You might have to charge $1000 for the thing just to recover R&D and pay for the cost of manufacturing. The bootleg version could be made for a lot less and sold for, say, $300. Who would pay for your $1000 product when they could get the same thing for $300? The only way you could protect yourself from financial ruin in this case is to not make the thing to begin with. There is no avoiding this reality.
Not anymore. Copyrights have been granted a 25 year extension just about every 25 years. At the rate we've been going, the Disney copyrights will be permanent.
An Indian advertising executive quoted in the article feels that this practice of making a lot of money clicking on ads is unethical. Why? The people are being paid to do exactly what they are doing. The ones interviewed for this article were not using any kind of script or other automated click simulator. This is the downside of massive, untargeted advertising. You never know who you're going to reach or if your message is the slightest bit effective.
How do school vouchers only aid the rich? Last I checked, they enabled the non-rich to send their kids to something other than a failing public school. If the failing school loses enough students that they lose their funding and have to shut down, good riddance. Kids should not be condemned to failing schools just because some union employees need jobs. I feel really bad for good teachers who are passionate about kids learning. They really have an uphill battle in many aspects, but it simply does not help kids to shuffle them through inadequate schools and then give them a meaningless diploma.
Hopefully the smart thinking MBA (I crack myself up) will remember that too much advertising will destroy the effectiveness of their loss leading wifi service. If people are willing to come into Starbucks and buy some overpriced coffee knowing that it will be worth it so they can get on the internet, they'll stop doing this once the ads become too intrusive and/or annoying. Then Starbucks has lost this service as a competitive advantage and coffee sales suffer as a result. This should motivate them to find a point where advertising is making money for them, but not annoying the customer too much.
As a side note, some stores have already taken in store advertising to an annoying extreme. Last week, I left Foot Locker without buying anything because they have very loud advertisements playing on their in store PA system that are for things not even related to shoes. Normally I would tune out something like this, but the thumping rap music in the commercials was too much to deal with. Will the accounting people think of this when they notice that sales are falling?
That's fine. As long as you don't mind nobody ever inventing anything that requires a significant amount of research and development. How could an inventor justify spending a lot of time and money on some high tech device only to have people rip it off and start making generic version of it as soon as it hits the market? There would be no return on investment possible. The majority of patents are filed to protect legitimate inventions, not just to shake people down for money from using obvious ideas.
There's nothing unfair about it. The merchant knows what the terms are and they are free to not take credit cards if they object. Sure, their sales might suffer, but that's the price you pay for more exposure.
I haven't heard them claim Made in USA since Sam died. This is probably why. But many people still percieve Wal Mart to sell American products just because they did at one time. Now, it seems like they go out of the way to buy nothing domestic.
Translation: the government has the right to bear arms. Is this really what the founders had in mind? The national guard is NOT what they were talking about.
Racing stripes != extra horsepower.
The best chance for survival that Sun has is to boot McNealy out, which they should have done about 3 years ago. This man's ego will run the company right into the dirt. When they should have been coming up with viable ways to embrace and/or compete with Linux, they instead rely on anti-trust suits, more proprietary lock-in, Java Desktop, and other crap that will never work in the long run. A new CEO just might be able to breathe some life into this dying company, but it might be too late.
If somebody figured out how to build 'economy cars' that could go 200MPH and looked cool, I bet Ferrari's sales would suffer. The demand for high powered Sun hardware and Solaris is not what it used to be before Linux was developed to the point that it is today.
Crap. This is what happens when you don't use preview. Trying again:
The McDonalds Monopoly game was rigged.
The McDonalds Monopoly game was riggedA, which is why you never heard about any giveaways. The people who "won" were insiders from the company that ran the games and they most definitely did not want any publicity.