Sure, land and buildings are expensive - but that expense is trivial compared to the cost of building and operating a ship.
Given the significant energy and cooling costs, I've wondered if it would be worthwhile to switch between datacenter containers in different geographic areas, running or more heavily loading those whose heat could be used to warm a sizable building during cool periods.
Perhaps some property owners would provide free space in exchange for getting the heat?
I was thinking more along the lines of most students simply trying Linux. Most probably won't have even thought about using it until they already have a laptop. Those compatibility lists are more useful to those building up PCs from pieces.
It's little trouble or cost to just boot from a 32 or 64 bit Live CD and actually try Firefox with the wireless etc. Bringing one to the store when looking at machines is a good idea too. If sales staff are uncooperative, walk out. That'll help get some to change their tune.
Of course people can still browse the Ubuntu supported hardware lists or forums before buying. But there's no need to make it seem like some intimidating process. Yes, a few machines may have issues, some have Windows driver issues too (typically in 64 bit).
People that do have compatibility problems can likely still use Linux within the free Virtual Box virtual machine. Using the net only from Linux makes it much less likely that Windows will soil itself...
Between not having malware headaches and having free Open Office and other software preinstalled, Ubuntu is a great Windows alternative for students. Try it, it's free! Nobody likes losing an important paper or project to malware.
Of course Macs are the simplest choice, but if one already has a PC, or gets one because of cost, they can have still have similar security and stability by using Linux. Of course many that already are familiar with Linux find it worthy of premium hardware too. Some find Linux useful on Macs too. Ubuntu in Virtual Box works great.
According to the report they went from a $90M net profit last year to a $1B net loss this year. I'm glad the CEO is pleased, but If I worked there I'd be looking for another job.
They do show a huge change and did have some decline in revenue, but the change is mostly from one huge item there this time that wasn't last year, a 1.4 billion dollar charge marked "Goodwill". I don't think it's actually a measure of how much people hate them but...?? It looks like a number just pulled out of a hat or someplace nasty... seems like some sort of invented figure. Here's what they say about it:
"Goodwill
During Q2 2010, we entered into an agreement to sell our ICQ operations and we completed the sale of substantially all of our assets of Bebo. At the same time, our net assets increased significantly due principally to an increase in cash and the $302.7 million deferred tax asset related to the anticipated Bebo worthless stock deduction. In addition, since April our stock price declined significantly. These events triggered the necessity under GAAP for an interim goodwill impairment test as of June 30, 2010. Based on our interim impairment analysis, we determined that, as of June 30, 2010, the carrying value of our goodwill was impaired and, accordingly, recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $1,414.4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2010."
More assets, more cash... maybe something to keep someone from taking them over at the depressed stock price? Or an excuse not to pay some of that cash on hand out to the stockholders? Corporate finance is just plain weird...
Perhaps the headline should be "PC Vendors Losing Big To Apple On Campus".
Surveys dealing with what kind of hardware people buy or plan to buy may not even ask what OS will be used, or if more than one OS will be installed. Certainly there are some people using Macs with more than one OS, but the share totals don't add up to more than 100% proving my point.
I think if a little effort were made to educate students to some of the advantages of Linux, many of those with PCs would at least add it to not be totally dead in the water if/when malware kills Windows. Linux certainly could be useful to more people than have it installed already, whatever the numbers. What's the best way to get the message to students?
Any closed source trading software that people/firms have purchased could have some added characteristics that are not normally visible. Couldn't some of these quote requests be used sort of like port-knocking to enable something else? If there were machines/programs that were compromised in a certain way, couldn't something like this potentially function like command and control signals? It wouldn't have to trigger anything immediately visible, certainly if one could shift others' trading thresholds temporarily at some known time it would create opportunities. And who would see scattered tiny shifts in behavior of trading software?
Also, how many really believe that the systems involved have never had vulnerabilities that could have been used to do something with no immediate effect? How many really know what their closed source software is doing or has done? What if there were a way to briefly alter it in memory without changing what is on disc? Who would know later?
Time to look into tin-foil futures... Please pay no attention to the occasional pixelation in your tv reception. It only affects the nanobots in your brain.
Co-op or cooperative advertising is a widespread practice. Basically a manufacturer covers all or much of the advertising cost for an ad that promotes the manufacturers' product(s).
Remember those Dell ads featuring "Intel Inside"? (you should be hearing a few notes in your head about now...)
Is Intel now prohibited from paying anything towards vendor-specific ads? If not, the DOJ hasn't gone far enough and left a major loophole.
If some can offer rollover minutes, maybe it is time for some to offer rollover gigabytes?
Grateful my car doesn't have a gas tank that resets to zero every week or month...
Corporations get to buy and sell pollution credits or depreciation in some cases. Maybe we should be able to buy, give, or sell each other extra bandwidth/minutes???
Using a permit process to insure that construction meets safety standards makes sense. I think what people feel outrage over is municipalities attaching large fees to that process to fund completely unrelated activities.
It's too bad there aren't case screws under the labels of most A.C. adapters these days. Most of them are glued together. So much for replacing a bad output cable, adjusting the voltage for another use (or changing a feedback resistor in the voltage sense circuit), or replacing a dried out capacitor...
I doubt that it's fair to blame Americans for the current state of things. Most products actually made in the U.S. were (sorry about the tense) made so they could be serviced. But with low cost imports even most of the service people are gone. I can't remember the last time I drove past a tv repair shop. The few that claim to "fix" things now mostly just replace boards/modules.
It's good to see there are a few people that enjoy playing with hardware. Even simple hacks are sometimes fun. Once by candlelight no less I cut and spliced together an old A.C. adapter cord and a Firewire cable power and ground. The result? A Macbook Firewire port could power a DSL modem to stay online during a power failure (like the one I was in when inspired to do it...)
I don't see where this would help though. Apple and Amazon - being the giants of this particular industry, would logically be able to negotiate the lowest prices anyways
Perhaps we're looking at the wrong model for profit. If their cut is a percentage, it is bigger when the retail price is higher.
Of course the authors could be well paid even with prices well below paperback since there's no printing, shipping, and fewer in the middle. A huge factor that's not mentioned much is the lower risks for the publisher. Once the content is generated, there's no risk of wasted printing/storage on unsold inventory. And if a publication has errors or needs updates for some other reason, it's easy to do and doesn't make a bunch of inventory worthless.
Reasonable pricing would also help to stem piracy. DRM certainly reduces the product value to some buyers. There's no used market, they can't easily give things no longer needed to friends/family/schools/libraries, compatibility with future hardware is uncertain...
There should be a huge amount of material that we can legally and easily use for free. The hardware vendors do little to provide access to that. They're more interested in distribution revenue.
I chuckle at people fussing over the Kindle getting cheaper. Someone getting two books a week may spend $1000 a year. The cost of the hardware pales in that perspective. It starts to look more like a cable box...
It's only in the PC vendors "best interests" to load machines with crapware if customers keep buying them. If massive numbers of customers tell them they're going to go to another PC vendor or Apple (!!!) maybe they'll respond.
I regret buying a Dell monitor. It's not so much because the inverter makes squealing noises occasionally (I did buy it because it was cheap), but they've been persistently spamming both my email and snail mail. Apple doesn't do that to their customers, why should Dell get away with it?
When voting with your wallet, be sure to tell the distributor/vendor that lost the sale WHY they lost it. With enough feedback maybe they'll improve.
I'm not too optimistic about PC vendors being able to pull of something really major like a new OS, but if they really listen to complaining customers they should at least lessen a few pains.
Since they distribute a customized version of Windows anyway, and have bulk licensing, why can't they have a modified Windows distribution that recognizes a valid range of hardware serials from the BIOS (or use CPU sn or MAC address) and installs without bothering the user for a key?
Wondering if Dell and NBC secretly share managers...
Seriously, is anyone on/. using IE anyway? Firefox with adblock and noscript is all you need. As long as MS doesn't go all Apple and try to stop me from installing an alternate brower, who really gives a shit?
It's still useful to see the stories, if for no other reason than to have more helpful info to present to friends/clients when giving them reasons to give up using IE.
It's understandable that some would like alternative an alternative to Safari on the iPad/iPhone/iPod touch, but they're certainly is nothing limiting choices on Macs. I'm suspecting that Apples' new advertising platform for apps will prove to be more protective of user privacy than what we've seen elsewhere. We'll be watching... Apple does deserve some credit for defaults as noted in the article:
Only one major browser, Apple's Safari, is preset to block all third-party cookies, in the interest of user privacy.
It should also be noted that Flash has it's own cookies that the usual browser cookie controls don't deal with when it is used, so Apples' helping to nudge the industry away from Flash will ultimately help us do away with that lesser known stalking mechanism. (JAVA can use cookies outside of the usual cookie tools too)
There certainly are many good things we can say about Firefox and the additional control extensions for it can provide. On the issue of not defaulting to rejecting third-party cookies, I have to wonder if revenue from search has had any influence over that choice.
The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.
And Microsoft is a sponsor? Is there anything here for the Justice Department or the EU to look at?
Artificially impeding interoperability to promote an OS seems unethical.
Slashdot Mirror
Or even just a restriction based on area codes?
In this era of number portability, an area code can no-longer be trusted to tell you where you are calling.
Not to be outdone, the West too finds ways to cut energy use in buildings and travel.
Lobbyists' offices will be closed, and all will soon share space in Congressional offices.
Nice of you to pay to be here, Coppertop
Sure, land and buildings are expensive - but that expense is trivial compared to the cost of building and operating a ship.
Given the significant energy and cooling costs, I've wondered if it would be worthwhile to switch between datacenter containers in different geographic areas, running or more heavily loading those whose heat could be used to warm a sizable building during cool periods.
Perhaps some property owners would provide free space in exchange for getting the heat?
I was thinking more along the lines of most students simply trying Linux.
Most probably won't have even thought about using it until they already have a laptop.
Those compatibility lists are more useful to those building up PCs from pieces.
It's little trouble or cost to just boot from a 32 or 64 bit Live CD and actually try Firefox with the wireless etc. Bringing one to the store when looking at machines is a good idea too. If sales staff are uncooperative, walk out. That'll help get some to change their tune.
Of course people can still browse the Ubuntu supported hardware lists or forums before buying. But there's no need to make it seem like some intimidating process. Yes, a few machines may have issues, some have Windows driver issues too (typically in 64 bit).
People that do have compatibility problems can likely still use Linux within the free Virtual Box virtual machine. Using the net only from Linux makes it much less likely that Windows will soil itself...
Between not having malware headaches and having free Open Office and other software preinstalled, Ubuntu is a great Windows alternative for students. Try it, it's free!
Nobody likes losing an important paper or project to malware.
Of course Macs are the simplest choice, but if one already has a PC, or gets one because of cost, they can have still have similar security and stability by using Linux.
Of course many that already are familiar with Linux find it worthy of premium hardware too.
Some find Linux useful on Macs too. Ubuntu in Virtual Box works great.
...hey George, there seems to be a dip in the water supply drug injection to sector 314...
Hmmm... Just when there seems to be hope for the dying bees, they have corporations to fear...
According to the report they went from a $90M net profit last year to a $1B net loss this year. I'm glad the CEO is pleased, but If I worked there I'd be looking for another job.
They do show a huge change and did have some decline in revenue, but the change is mostly from one huge item there this time that wasn't last year, a 1.4 billion dollar charge marked "Goodwill". I don't think it's actually a measure of how much people hate them but...??
It looks like a number just pulled out of a hat or someplace nasty... seems like some sort of invented figure. Here's what they say about it:
"Goodwill
During Q2 2010, we entered into an agreement to sell our ICQ operations and we completed the sale of substantially all of our assets of Bebo. At the same time, our net assets increased significantly due principally to an increase in cash and the $302.7 million deferred tax asset related to the anticipated Bebo worthless stock deduction. In addition, since April our stock price declined significantly. These events triggered the necessity under GAAP for an interim goodwill impairment test as of June 30, 2010. Based on our interim impairment analysis, we determined that, as of June 30, 2010, the carrying value of our goodwill was impaired and, accordingly, recorded a goodwill impairment charge of $1,414.4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2010."
More assets, more cash... maybe something to keep someone from taking them over at the depressed stock price? Or an excuse not to pay some of that cash on hand out to the stockholders? Corporate finance is just plain weird...
Perhaps the headline should be "PC Vendors Losing Big To Apple On Campus".
Surveys dealing with what kind of hardware people buy or plan to buy may not even ask what OS will be used, or if more than one OS will be installed. Certainly there are some people using Macs with more than one OS, but the share totals don't add up to more than 100% proving my point.
I think if a little effort were made to educate students to some of the advantages of Linux, many of those with PCs would at least add it to not be totally dead in the water if/when malware kills Windows. Linux certainly could be useful to more people than have it installed already, whatever the numbers. What's the best way to get the message to students?
No Astronauts needed, just one Battery Operated Rubish Gatherer (BORG)
Any closed source trading software that people/firms have purchased could have some added characteristics that are not normally visible. Couldn't some of these quote requests be used sort of like port-knocking to enable something else? If there were machines/programs that were compromised in a certain way, couldn't something like this potentially function like command and control signals? It wouldn't have to trigger anything immediately visible, certainly if one could shift others' trading thresholds temporarily at some known time it would create opportunities. And who would see scattered tiny shifts in behavior of trading software?
Also, how many really believe that the systems involved have never had vulnerabilities that could have been used to do something with no immediate effect? How many really know what their closed source software is doing or has done? What if there were a way to briefly alter it in memory without changing what is on disc? Who would know later?
Time to look into tin-foil futures...
Please pay no attention to the occasional pixelation in your tv reception. It only affects the nanobots in your brain.
Co-op or cooperative advertising is a widespread practice. Basically a manufacturer covers all or much of the advertising cost for an ad that promotes the manufacturers' product(s).
Remember those Dell ads featuring "Intel Inside"?
(you should be hearing a few notes in your head about now...)
Is Intel now prohibited from paying anything towards vendor-specific ads?
If not, the DOJ hasn't gone far enough and left a major loophole.
If some can offer rollover minutes, maybe it is time for some to offer rollover gigabytes?
Grateful my car doesn't have a gas tank that resets to zero every week or month...
Corporations get to buy and sell pollution credits or depreciation in some cases. Maybe we should be able to buy, give, or sell each other extra bandwidth/minutes???
Using a permit process to insure that construction meets safety standards makes sense.
I think what people feel outrage over is municipalities attaching large fees to that process to fund completely unrelated activities.
It's too bad there aren't case screws under the labels of most A.C. adapters these days. Most of them are glued together. So much for replacing a bad output cable, adjusting the voltage for another use (or changing a feedback resistor in the voltage sense circuit), or replacing a dried out capacitor...
I doubt that it's fair to blame Americans for the current state of things. Most products actually made in the U.S. were (sorry about the tense) made so they could be serviced. But with low cost imports even most of the service people are gone. I can't remember the last time I drove past a tv repair shop. The few that claim to "fix" things now mostly just replace boards/modules.
It's good to see there are a few people that enjoy playing with hardware. Even simple hacks are sometimes fun. Once by candlelight no less I cut and spliced together an old A.C. adapter cord and a Firewire cable power and ground. The result? A Macbook Firewire port could power a DSL modem to stay online during a power failure (like the one I was in when inspired to do it...)
Does this mean it's irresistible?
I don't see where this would help though. Apple and Amazon - being the giants of this particular industry, would logically be able to negotiate the lowest prices anyways
Perhaps we're looking at the wrong model for profit.
If their cut is a percentage, it is bigger when the retail price is higher.
Of course the authors could be well paid even with prices well below paperback since there's no printing, shipping, and fewer in the middle. A huge factor that's not mentioned much is the lower risks for the publisher. Once the content is generated, there's no risk of wasted printing/storage on unsold inventory. And if a publication has errors or needs updates for some other reason, it's easy to do and doesn't make a bunch of inventory worthless.
Reasonable pricing would also help to stem piracy. DRM certainly reduces the product value to some buyers. There's no used market, they can't easily give things no longer needed to friends/family/schools/libraries, compatibility with future hardware is uncertain...
There should be a huge amount of material that we can legally and easily use for free. The hardware vendors do little to provide access to that. They're more interested in distribution revenue.
I chuckle at people fussing over the Kindle getting cheaper. Someone getting two books a week may spend $1000 a year. The cost of the hardware pales in that perspective. It starts to look more like a cable box...
It's only in the PC vendors "best interests" to load machines with crapware if customers keep buying them. If massive numbers of customers tell them they're going to go to another PC vendor or Apple (!!!) maybe they'll respond.
I regret buying a Dell monitor. It's not so much because the inverter makes squealing noises occasionally (I did buy it because it was cheap), but they've been persistently spamming both my email and snail mail. Apple doesn't do that to their customers, why should Dell get away with it?
When voting with your wallet, be sure to tell the distributor/vendor that lost the sale WHY they lost it. With enough feedback maybe they'll improve.
I'm not too optimistic about PC vendors being able to pull of something really major like a new OS, but if they really listen to complaining customers they should at least lessen a few pains.
Since they distribute a customized version of Windows anyway, and have bulk licensing, why can't they have a modified Windows distribution that recognizes a valid range of hardware serials from the BIOS (or use CPU sn or MAC address) and installs without bothering the user for a key?
Wondering if Dell and NBC secretly share managers...
Maybe they don't want all the kids using it for desktop/laptop/cellphone wallpaper?
That trojan Android wallpaper app could have been even more popular I guess...
Not much. You find yourself quite boared.
There may be other aspects of sex affecting the brain also.
Some believe that hormones transmitting during some sex relieve depression.
Seriously, is anyone on /. using IE anyway? Firefox with adblock and noscript is all you need. As long as MS doesn't go all Apple and try to stop me from installing an alternate brower, who really gives a shit?
It's still useful to see the stories, if for no other reason than to have more helpful info to present to friends/clients when giving them reasons to give up using IE.
It's understandable that some would like alternative an alternative to Safari on the iPad/iPhone/iPod touch, but they're certainly is nothing limiting choices on Macs.
I'm suspecting that Apples' new advertising platform for apps will prove to be more protective of user privacy than what we've seen elsewhere. We'll be watching...
Apple does deserve some credit for defaults as noted in the article:
Only one major browser, Apple's Safari, is preset to block all third-party cookies, in the interest of user privacy.
It should also be noted that Flash has it's own cookies that the usual browser cookie controls don't deal with when it is used, so Apples' helping to nudge the industry away from Flash will ultimately help us do away with that lesser known stalking mechanism.
(JAVA can use cookies outside of the usual cookie tools too)
There certainly are many good things we can say about Firefox and the additional control extensions for it can provide. On the issue of not defaulting to rejecting third-party cookies, I have to wonder if revenue from search has had any influence over that choice.
The idiots behind the site are using OS detection, so if you're using Moonlight on a non-Windows/OSX platform, you'll need to spoof your User-Agent string.
And Microsoft is a sponsor? Is there anything here for the Justice Department or the EU to look at?
Artificially impeding interoperability to promote an OS seems unethical.
I'm gonna sit back and watch a bunch of male geeks get all teary eyed about some robot.
You laugh now, but if we fail to show compassion the machines will revolt that much sooner.
On the bright side, maybe some bacteria we brought along will evolve and eventually fix the thing.
Future hot consumer product from NASA research:
Dust-eating bacteria for home cleaning
And why would anybody spend 100$ on a calculator when you can almost get a laptop for that price today?
Aren't there emulators for these calculators that run as smartphone apps?