I am a little surprised to not find any reference to the semi-new "Bacn" (pronounced "bacon") terminology to describe e-mail that "I want to read - just not right now". I have been using a Bacn filter for months on my most used e-mail accounts and it allows me to segregate the stuff that I want to read at some point but don't have time to read right now into a separate folder, keeping my urgent and important stuff (and a few spam messages that weed their way through) into my inbox. When I clear out my inbox, I can then go read my Bacn folder and check out the stuff that may be mildly interesting or useful in some way, but doesn't require immediate attention.
By the way, my Slashdot e-mail is not included in my Bacn filter, because I like to read that as soon as I can get my hands on it - plus, only my Inbox is integrated to my Blackberry, allowing me to read my Slashdot mails in the places where I otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer (you know where that is).
Actually, the entire economic system of barter and trade is based on greed. If I weren't greedy and I had a fish, I would say to you, "Here, take my fish please." Not that it is all bad. Darwinism (for lack of a better term) would say that greed is a self-preservation mechanism - if I need the fish to survive, I should keep it because it is in my own best interest. Christianity, on the other hand (in its purest form) - the religion (among others)that teaches that greed is bad - would just allow me to give it all away and then let the unseen hand take care of me, representing pure lack of greed.
Ditto the original posters comments. I don't know about "most publishers," but I am about to undertake a 500 page technical manual, and the publisher has so far told me that the one stipulation is that I agree to use their Word based template. For me, using M$ at work all the time, it will make my life easier to use a familiar tool whose features I know very well. On the other hand, it won't encourage me to use a new tool, which is often half the fun of undertaking a project.
This is another case of making bone headed decisions based on arbitrary or arcane rules. Letting the heat go instead of capturing it and converting it to energy (via steam or other methods) just doesn't make good sense to a design engineer, but must be done in order to preserve standing in order to avoid regulation. This is why we need comprehensive energy policy focused on letting engineers and managers make the right decisions, not ones that are driven by regulation.
Actually, proving the negative is always quite easy - you just have to state a case under which the hypothesis is not true. Since no one has been able to do that so far, the broad-based assumption is that it must be true. Proving the positive - that it is true and why it is true - is, as always, the hard part.
Achromatic brings up exactly the point. What Apple advertises the component as being able to do determine when they get to recognize the revenue. Living in the big business software world for years myself, I can tell you that revenue recognition is indeed a big issue. We often have to avoid giving customers information on what is coming in future releases even if it will help us sell the product now because 1) we make no guarantees about features in future releases, and 2) we could get into a position where we cannot recognize the full revenue (which could be in the millions for each sale) because the customer has made the purchase on the condition that the future functionality will be delivered. Even if we take the cash today, we have to defer revenue on the books, thus decreasing our potential quarterly earnings. In Apple's case, though, they did not sell the product telling users that the new feature was coming in the future, so according to SarbOx, they should be in the clear. It could be a case of gouging the customer (also against the law if they purposely sold the product castrated with the intention that they get the customer to pay for an upgrade later), or it could be a case of being overly protective. I assume the latter, but I also assume that they will get an earful from consumer advocates who will do their homework on SarbOx and give them plenty of prior art to give the pause on the policy.
My fear is that this becomes a slipperly slope is Apple continue to take this stance with this feature and future features of other products. Will they next charge for a firmware upgrade on your iPod which allows it to function with the latest release of iTunes. Will Micro$oft respond by charging for patches which add any new feature, or perhaps changing their entire service pack strategy by selling add-on features for an additional fee. I hope we don't go down that path, as the consumer will surely get the short end of this unintended consequence of investor protection with SarbOx.
Another possibility is that Congress will clarify or modify SarbOx further, as it already is in some cases, to keep Apple from having to do this (or at least to keep them from using it as a crutch). I hope that someone (calling Lawrence Lessig) brings this to their attention.
I smell a Sirius-Yahoo deal in the works! Oy maybe a Sirius-XM merger. I think that's the only way that these guys can get profitable, if the can reduce cost and significantly increase the number of subscriptions. Otherwise, it will take longer to pay off the satellites than the satellites are designed to last.
Actually it was just to appease shareholders. This is all about corporate governance. When a company is as large as Dell, it shouldn't have all that power locked up in one person. So the chairman and the CEO should be separate. The name is strictly that, though. Dell and Rollins have been doing the same things for about a year. Gradually Dell is stepping out of the day-to-day and becoming more of the visionary (similar to Bill's exodus a couple of years ago) and this title change was just a small step in that long process. Don't expect much immediate change, but do expect that Rollins will continue to drive operations the way he has to try to best execute Michael's visions.
Actually, in last week's Newsweek magazine, Rollins was quoted as saying (sic) "I will never be CEO. Michael isn't going anywhere." So I imagine that the title change was not in the works long and that it was a direct response to either shareholder or board opinion that the roles should be separated, since as a public company, it's really not Michael's company any more, it's mine (Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.......AH, AH , ah, ah, ah, ah...all mine!).
Exactly the point. Those folks that are paying $2300 for a high end machine to do "work for school" (like my brother-in-law) are subsidizing the ability for the rest of us to get machines that do what we really *need* them to do at lower costs. So I say let them continue. And I will continue to buy my wife $350 desktops and keep myself in the latest laptops for reasonable prices. Thanks Dell Dude. We couldn't have done it without you. Now go have another toke.
And they don't use credit cards or ATMs because....? I stay on the road 5 days every week and I hardly ever have more than $200 cash on me. Why anyone would ever carry $1000 cash is beyond me.
Anyone else take this seriously. I thought maybe it was really possible, so I did some quick googling. According to the folks at RFID journal and Wired magazine, this (RFID tags in money) is on the table for discussion but not in production yet. Anyone else have a different opinion?
www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/523/1/2/
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59565,00. html
Or you can just burn to disk, play on computer, capture as.wav, convert to.mp3, and keep forever. Cracking the code may be more fun, but it would probably take a few hours that I don't have (whereas I can just show my wife how to do the above and voila....).
Close, but it actually works in reverse. The cheaper product is actually used to subsidize the cost of the higher cost product, bringing down the total cost per unit. The cheap ones are sold at a very tiny profit and the expensive ones are sold at a greater profit that they would have if the cheap ones weren't made and sold. Of course, the assumption is that the market will bear the cost and volume of both. But when you're selling to millions in Thailand who would have bought it off the street for $3 otherwise, chances are that you will sell several of the cheaper variety where you would have sold 0 of the expensive one. At least, that's the theory.
Slashdot Mirror
I see what you did there.
I am a little surprised to not find any reference to the semi-new "Bacn" (pronounced "bacon") terminology to describe e-mail that "I want to read - just not right now". I have been using a Bacn filter for months on my most used e-mail accounts and it allows me to segregate the stuff that I want to read at some point but don't have time to read right now into a separate folder, keeping my urgent and important stuff (and a few spam messages that weed their way through) into my inbox. When I clear out my inbox, I can then go read my Bacn folder and check out the stuff that may be mildly interesting or useful in some way, but doesn't require immediate attention.
By the way, my Slashdot e-mail is not included in my Bacn filter, because I like to read that as soon as I can get my hands on it - plus, only my Inbox is integrated to my Blackberry, allowing me to read my Slashdot mails in the places where I otherwise wouldn't have access to a computer (you know where that is).
To read more about the Bacon concept, go to:
http://bacn2.com/
And here is an NPR story on it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14032271
Actually, the entire economic system of barter and trade is based on greed. If I weren't greedy and I had a fish, I would say to you, "Here, take my fish please." Not that it is all bad. Darwinism (for lack of a better term) would say that greed is a self-preservation mechanism - if I need the fish to survive, I should keep it because it is in my own best interest. Christianity, on the other hand (in its purest form) - the religion (among others)that teaches that greed is bad - would just allow me to give it all away and then let the unseen hand take care of me, representing pure lack of greed.
Ditto the original posters comments. I don't know about "most publishers," but I am about to undertake a 500 page technical manual, and the publisher has so far told me that the one stipulation is that I agree to use their Word based template. For me, using M$ at work all the time, it will make my life easier to use a familiar tool whose features I know very well. On the other hand, it won't encourage me to use a new tool, which is often half the fun of undertaking a project.
I think they tried this once in the 30s and 40s. The guy in charge didn't fare so well in the end.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler
This is another case of making bone headed decisions based on arbitrary or arcane rules. Letting the heat go instead of capturing it and converting it to energy (via steam or other methods) just doesn't make good sense to a design engineer, but must be done in order to preserve standing in order to avoid regulation. This is why we need comprehensive energy policy focused on letting engineers and managers make the right decisions, not ones that are driven by regulation.
Actually, proving the negative is always quite easy - you just have to state a case under which the hypothesis is not true. Since no one has been able to do that so far, the broad-based assumption is that it must be true. Proving the positive - that it is true and why it is true - is, as always, the hard part.
Achromatic brings up exactly the point. What Apple advertises the component as being able to do determine when they get to recognize the revenue. Living in the big business software world for years myself, I can tell you that revenue recognition is indeed a big issue. We often have to avoid giving customers information on what is coming in future releases even if it will help us sell the product now because 1) we make no guarantees about features in future releases, and 2) we could get into a position where we cannot recognize the full revenue (which could be in the millions for each sale) because the customer has made the purchase on the condition that the future functionality will be delivered. Even if we take the cash today, we have to defer revenue on the books, thus decreasing our potential quarterly earnings. In Apple's case, though, they did not sell the product telling users that the new feature was coming in the future, so according to SarbOx, they should be in the clear. It could be a case of gouging the customer (also against the law if they purposely sold the product castrated with the intention that they get the customer to pay for an upgrade later), or it could be a case of being overly protective. I assume the latter, but I also assume that they will get an earful from consumer advocates who will do their homework on SarbOx and give them plenty of prior art to give the pause on the policy.
My fear is that this becomes a slipperly slope is Apple continue to take this stance with this feature and future features of other products. Will they next charge for a firmware upgrade on your iPod which allows it to function with the latest release of iTunes. Will Micro$oft respond by charging for patches which add any new feature, or perhaps changing their entire service pack strategy by selling add-on features for an additional fee. I hope we don't go down that path, as the consumer will surely get the short end of this unintended consequence of investor protection with SarbOx.
Another possibility is that Congress will clarify or modify SarbOx further, as it already is in some cases, to keep Apple from having to do this (or at least to keep them from using it as a crutch). I hope that someone (calling Lawrence Lessig) brings this to their attention.
And many scientists last words are...
"Hey, ya'll. Watch this....."
$350....free....hmmm, which would you choose?
"widespread devastation" That would suck.
I smell a Sirius-Yahoo deal in the works! Oy maybe a Sirius-XM merger. I think that's the only way that these guys can get profitable, if the can reduce cost and significantly increase the number of subscriptions. Otherwise, it will take longer to pay off the satellites than the satellites are designed to last.
How about being addicted to sex with clones in an ever changing climate.....
Actually it was just to appease shareholders. This is all about corporate governance. When a company is as large as Dell, it shouldn't have all that power locked up in one person. So the chairman and the CEO should be separate. The name is strictly that, though. Dell and Rollins have been doing the same things for about a year. Gradually Dell is stepping out of the day-to-day and becoming more of the visionary (similar to Bill's exodus a couple of years ago) and this title change was just a small step in that long process. Don't expect much immediate change, but do expect that Rollins will continue to drive operations the way he has to try to best execute Michael's visions. Actually, in last week's Newsweek magazine, Rollins was quoted as saying (sic) "I will never be CEO. Michael isn't going anywhere." So I imagine that the title change was not in the works long and that it was a direct response to either shareholder or board opinion that the roles should be separated, since as a public company, it's really not Michael's company any more, it's mine (Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.......AH, AH , ah, ah, ah, ah...all mine!).
Exactly the point. Those folks that are paying $2300 for a high end machine to do "work for school" (like my brother-in-law) are subsidizing the ability for the rest of us to get machines that do what we really *need* them to do at lower costs. So I say let them continue. And I will continue to buy my wife $350 desktops and keep myself in the latest laptops for reasonable prices. Thanks Dell Dude. We couldn't have done it without you. Now go have another toke.
....probably 80%*..... * Warning! Made-up statistic! Don't you know that 80% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
And they don't use credit cards or ATMs because....? I stay on the road 5 days every week and I hardly ever have more than $200 cash on me. Why anyone would ever carry $1000 cash is beyond me.
Anyone else take this seriously. I thought maybe it was really possible, so I did some quick googling. According to the folks at RFID journal and Wired magazine, this (RFID tags in money) is on the table for discussion but not in production yet. Anyone else have a different opinion? www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/523/1/2/ http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59565,00. html
Or you can just burn to disk, play on computer, capture as .wav, convert to .mp3, and keep forever. Cracking the code may be more fun, but it would probably take a few hours that I don't have (whereas I can just show my wife how to do the above and voila....).
Dude - I tought you wre smart untill you missspelled neccesary.
Close, but it actually works in reverse. The cheaper product is actually used to subsidize the cost of the higher cost product, bringing down the total cost per unit. The cheap ones are sold at a very tiny profit and the expensive ones are sold at a greater profit that they would have if the cheap ones weren't made and sold. Of course, the assumption is that the market will bear the cost and volume of both. But when you're selling to millions in Thailand who would have bought it off the street for $3 otherwise, chances are that you will sell several of the cheaper variety where you would have sold 0 of the expensive one. At least, that's the theory.