That means the first thing that you did stupid, is chose the way you elect:)
Actually for it's time the way president were elected, via the electoral college, was needed. Some states were more rural while other were more urban with large populations. If the president was elected by popular vote then urban centers would control who was elected president. This is no longer true though, today cities could be either Democrat or Republican, or split. I will say though that I think the passing of the Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President, was a mistake. Before it's passage every candidate ran for president. Then in congress the electoral college would vote. If there were more than 2 candidates the candidate with the lowest vote count would be dropped then another vote taken. Eventually when there were only 2 candidates left the final vote would be for who would be president, with the loser becoming vice president. Of course this "robs" political parties of their power so they pushed to have president and vice president run as a team.
Me, I'd rather amend the constitution again. This amendment would repeal the 12th amendment, and would abolish the electoral college. Voters would vote directly for president, with every candidate running for president. Using one of the Condorcet methods of voting the winner would become president and runner up the vp.
Honestly, I think Linux is a good thing because it keeps Microsoft on its toes. I mean, if there was no Linux, there would probably really be no more operating system development out of Microsoft at all and they'd just take their money and run with it. But I wouldn't say that Microsoft doesn't invent anything, because in my mind, I think Linux is behind Vista for the desktop at this point and I see that gap getting wider, rather than narrower.
Microsoft doesn't invent anything, all it does is make improvements. And it wouldn't do those if there wasn't competition. Look at Internet Explorer, IE 6 was released on August 27, 2001. It wasn't until Firefox was released and taking market share from MS when MS released IE 7, 5 years later, on October 18, 2006. IE 8 only took a few months afterwards before it entered public beta testing.
But you don't want to be the cheap provider. Companies don't care much about costs, someone needs to spent his budget. The cost argument is stupid. If you can get the source, that solution is better.
Hopefully RSN I'll be starting my own business and cost is a big issue for me. My business? Photography. I am on disability and can't afford to spend thousands of dollars for software. So instead of spending more than $700 to buy Photoshop I'll try CinePaint first, then only if I find out I need Photoshop and can afford it then I'll buy it. For running the business I'll look for open source software such as CRM, accounting, and a database. If I can't find what I want I'll take open source software and try to modify it so it will do what I want.
Now if I'm going to modify source code then I'd like to be sure I can close the source with an eye to sell said program(s) to other photographers. With BSD software I can do that but I can't with GPL software.
No, but in case the closed source fork is more to a specific users liking (which is very probable), it'll limit that users freedom. With GPL-licenses there's no risk like that, and I think that a pretty good argument for GPL-style licenses and against BSD-style licenses.
Yea, but there's two different freedoms. There's the freedom of the programmer, which BSD style licenses guaranty, and there's the GPL which guaranties the freedom of the user. So the question becomes who's freedom is more important, the programmer or the user? As a user I like the GPL but as a programmer I'd prefer BSD licenses.
As for general attitudes, the US is generally more business friendly where as europeans tend to put people first.
I don 't think Europe puts people first. From what I heard, and watched in the news when the youth were rioting in France. It was hard for an employer to fire someone. That's not people friendly, if an employer can't easily fire someone then they aren't likely to hire either. And small businesses can't stay in business long if they can't fire people who can't, won't, or will only do their jobs slowly. When the government in France passed a law making it easier for employers to fire employees there were massive riots by the youth.
Longer work hours lead to more productivity
Put to a point maybe, but go past that point and you run into the law of Diminishing returns.
the state should not be people's nanny
That's right, the state should not be a nanny.
If on the other hand you agree with: Work should be distrubuted evenly, workhours should allow for enough free time to have a social life outside work and the state should together with employers and unions supervise that work hours are reasonable.
You should do that without government.
To contrast, I seen americans working ordinary jobs for no extra pay doing 80 hours a week without question
It's their choice. If they don't want to do that then they don't have to. Even if their employer is holding a gun to their head they don't need to do it. Free choice allows them to walk away from the job. It may not be a choice they like but it is a choice. Me, I see Americans who can start their own businesses instead of working for a PHB. I also see where an American can come from bottom rung of the economic ladder and climb up it. Heck one of the US's presidential candidates, Obama, is doing that.
But the simplest thing might be that buying MS is supporting MS
I bought my last Microsoft product more than 8 years ago. When it came to getting a new laptop I bought a MacBook Pro.
I can just use the GIMP to do my photo touch ups and other editing.
I tried GIMP years ago when I had Windows but found it seriously lacking. So I tried out Paint Shop Pro. Now that I have a Mac I'll try CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP. Because colour bit depth is important to me I consider it better than GIMP. Whereas GIMP only has 8 bit colour depths CinePaint has 16. Which brings up something I don't like about the GIMP developers. A programmer submitted code to the project that had 16 bit colour depth, several years ago, but they refused to use it. So he, or she I don't know who is was, forked GIMP. Many years later GIMP still only has 8 bit colour depths while movie studios work with CinePaint.
I used Photoshop a few years ago, and the interface was sleeker than the GIMP
Have you tried GIMPshop? It's interface was designed to be more like Photoshop.
the true reason people use software, what works best. In the US at least (the only place I have experience), the main reason people use a particular piece of software is that it works better than the alternative.
From my observations in the US there are at least 3 large reasons people use a specific program. One is the perception that it's the only choice, there are no alternatives. Another is that because it's so well known and used it must be the best. The third is that the software comes preinstalled. In large organizations bulk licensing can be cheap. But there's also inertia as well as the PHBs.
People are leaving Windows for Macs, which are more closed and somewhat more expensive, because "they just work better".
After buying and using Windows PCs for more than 10 years I finally switched to Macs when I got my MacBook Pro. And unlike what you say it wasn't more expensive. Before I bought it I compared it's price to the prices of Windows laptops that were configured close to the MBP. Laptops from OEMs like HP cost about the same. But one laptop, from Dell, was $200 more.
My Mac is also more open than a Windows laptop. I can use the same external hardware on it as a Windows person can use on their laptop. For software not only can I use Mac software but I can also use Linux and Windows software. However with Windows most of the software that will run is Windows software. With some effort a person may be able to get Linux software to run but the only way to run OS X software is to run OS X. This applies to Linux as well, however you can run Windows software in Linux.
Overall a Mac will run more software than Linux will and Linux runs more than Windows does. Heck, if you want to get right down to it, my Mac will even run Linux and Windows. Try to get a Linux, or a Windows, PC to run OS X.
Your hardworking, salt of the earth capitalists have really contributed a lot of positive things to your society. Hmmm, USD 10 billion a day in Iraq or USD 700 billion to bail out Wall St etc
Not all of us American supported war, nor do we all support bailing out Wall Street.
but not a dime for affordale socialised medicine...
Two of the biggest health insurance programs are US government run, Medicaid and Medicare. Some states and local governments also have their own socialized health programs.
So you replaced one proprietary system with vendor lock-in with another?
I'm not locked into anything. If I want to I can install Ubuntu, which I was planning on at first, or another Linux distro. I'm typing this in a Firefox tab. My office suite is NeoOffice, the original native Mac port of Open Office. I also have other open source programs installed. Because I installed Fink and MacPorts I can install a lot of software for Linux. I can install Debian packages using.deb or apt-get as well as packages using Redhat's.rpm. And if I need to, though I haven't yet, I can get and install Cross Over for Macs so I can run Windows software.
Fact is is a Mac can run more software than any other OS/hardware combination. And don't try to say Macs are more expensive either. Macs have not been more expensive than Windows PCs in years. Actually before I got mine, I compared it's price to prices of Windows laptops that had similar configurations. Most OEM PC were about the same price, though some cost more. Dell's was about $200 more.
Hardware wise my laptop isn't any more vender lockin than a Windows laptop either. I'm still using the same router I got for my Windows PC, then used with my Linux PC, and am now using with my Mac. My Epson scanner works fine with it as does my Iomega external drives and my Canon printer.
But, as said, is basically Microsoft saying that they cannot think of any investment, enterprise, new product, etc that is worth its salt, for using that money. Which is all well and good, of course, only a bit disappointing.
Except this is an investment. Those who sale shares get money and those who hold see an increase in the vaule of their shares.
But with competition from non-Windows PCs (both Macs and Acer/Dells running Linux) and from alternative server software (open source servers, which power more web servers than Windows Server), Microsoft is now finding its air supply getting cut off while its proprietary business model is poisoned by the insidiously opportunistic spread of open source.
Actually Microsoft's server market share is growing absolutely and in terms of market share. According to Geekpedia Linux's server markiet share is plummeting. Microsoft's consumer market share is what's declining, more are buying Macs and Linux. However the consumer market is growing itself.
Microsoft is fundamentally screwed.
Not quite, Microsoft isn't down much from it's peak.
I can think of two reasons:
- They buy the stocks now when they are low, because hey think the stock will go up and then they can sell them with profit.
- They buy the stocks to get the price up (and then sell them with profit).
Except Microsoft is buying back stocks over 5 years not all at once. I think a better reason Microsoft is buying back stocks is because MS pays employees in part with stocks, employees get stock options. There's only two ways Microsoft can do that, either give employees stocks Microsoft already owns or can buy or by issuing more stocks. Issuing more stocks though dilutes the value of the stocks already issued.
Personally I would not risk my money on their shares. Firefox is eating their bread, OpenOffice is eating their butter and people are getting more and more aware of Linux. Not to mention iPod and Wii beating their other products.
I'm no supporter of Microsoft but they aren't about to stop making a profit any time soon. Unless MS does a massive fuckup MS will remain profitable for many years to come. While they are loosing marketshare to Apple and Linux the overall market is growing.
Because Microsoft isn't an investment bank. And that's a good thing with Wall Street going down the tubes.
Doesn't make sense to me, come on you stockmarket guys, explain the rationale.
Microsoft has expertise in software not the stockmarket. Now if they want to Bill and Steve could hire financial experts and start their own investment bank but that's not MS's strength.
Yes... well those splits definitely destroy value.
Over an extended period stock splits increase market value. Say X's stock sells for $100 then does a 2 for 1 split. Within months the sales price may be $60, a $20 increase.
Buy-backs are also a bit of a value destructor too so don't bank on it.
Buy-backs are an attempt to keep the value in a stock. When a corporation announces buy-back, if I were a stockholder I'd be worried the board is expecting hard tymes so I may unload the shares I own. There is one other reason a corporation will buy back stocks, if they are concerned someone will try to gain control of the company. Buying back stocks removes stocks from the market and may increase the cost of the remaining stocks making it more expensive to gain control.
Common sense should tell you that Microsoft's days of being a growth stock are well behind it. Do not stay married to the stock.
Sure, if you only care for growth sell the stocks. But if you're nearing retirement then you want to shift your investments to income producing investments.
Playing the stock market as an average individual is a fools game.
Shifting investments is playing the game. A solid method of investing is using Dollar cost averaging, consistently investing money periodically.
Down in the business law section of that page (you know, the part pertinent to the discussion) we find this definition:
What page? I provided two kinks. Pertinent? Maybe to you but not to me. eBay has plenty o f competition and therefore is not a monopoly.
If we go back to my original post, which you obviously didn't read, we have this:
I read it, then in reply I provided a link to the definition of monopoly. A "board game", eBay is not a board game. "exclusive control or possession of something", eBay does not have exclusive control or possession of auctions. A "market in which there are many buyers but only one seller", eBay has many buyer and sellers, and there are other online auctions with more buyers and sellers as well.
Nowhere did I say Ebay is "illegal", just that they hold a commanding market position
A commanding market position is not a monopoly though.
and need to prevented from making anti-competitive moves.
Seriously though, my MacBook Pro is one of the best Windows machines I've ever used, simply because the hardware support is dead simple. The drivers are solid, and I can download them from one place.
Macs may be the best Windows PC but all installing Windows does is install crapware. After buying and using Windows PCs for more than 10 years I finally got too aggravated with them and bought the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on last year.
Actually from an investment position it's a good idea to by MS stock. If MS follows through and buy back some of it's stock the stock price should rise. You may then make enough to buy a Mac.
You're right. Though I have Leopard I see no reason to install it.
This happens the first time I launch every single application I download or receive as a mail attachment, and as I mentioned, quite a few things that aren't even applications.
I'm glad I didn't install Leopard then. However I may get a new Mac, which Leopard will be installed on, by the end of the year.
I suggest you read, and learn, the definition of "monopoly". eBay is not a monopoly. However even if it were, being a monopoly isn't illegal. What is illegal is to use a monopoly position to use that position anticompetitively. eBay compeats with other on online auction services and doesn't try to block others from compeating. At least I have not heard of any such attempts, do you have any references to any accusations or lawsuits saying they do?
It's absurd to suggest otherwise.
What's absurd it to improperly use a word. Get a dictionary and look up word definitions sometime.
But in most cases, it's easy to determine what the right thing is, but the programmers just take the lazy way out.
Case in point: Mac OS X pops up a scary box the first time you try to run an app that you downloaded off the internet.
The Mac you use must be different than mine, I don't get scary boxes. What I do get, when I click on something to install it, is a box asking for an admin's name and password.
So far so good. Except the implementation completely sucks. I get that warning when I intentionally double-click a downloaded app in the Finder. I get that warning when I open a freshly downloaded.php file in a text editor. I get the warning when I open a downloaded.html file for the first time. It's completely stupid.
The closest I've come to something like that is once in a while instead of Firefox showing an image Preview is launch to show it in. I'm using Firefox Firefox 2.0.0.6 though and if I use Firefox 3 instead that might not happen.
Think of how dumb the average person is, and realize half of them are dumber than that
Everytime I think about that I laugh...and die a little inside.
What's funny, or sad depending on how you look at it, is that half of the people aren't dumber than the average person. It's not the average where half are under and half over, the median is the point where half are over and half under.
Popups should reveal the cryptic stuff only when a debug flag is set, which defaults to off in end-user builds of the software. In all other cases there should be something like "$APPNAME has crashed due to a bug. Please report the contents of $APP_DATADIR/crashlogs/$DATE.txt to us as http://domain/crashes [domain]. [OK]". The user should always know what the thing that just happened means for him, not what exactly happened. If someone really wants to know the details he can take the config file and add a line saying "Errors = verbose" or something like that.
The errors I got did that, when Firefox crashed a popup popped up in OS X telling me Firefox suffered an error and asked if I wanted to report it to Apple and the Firefox developers. It could then send a log of what happened.
The actual text was "The instruction at '0x77f41d24 referenced memory at '0x595c2a4c.' The memory could not be 'read.' Click OK to terminate program." You're right, this is not "basically" (or even remotely close to) the text in Ars's little joke screenshot or what was posted in the summary.
Slashdot Mirror
That means the first thing that you did stupid, is chose the way you elect :)
Actually for it's time the way president were elected, via the electoral college, was needed. Some states were more rural while other were more urban with large populations. If the president was elected by popular vote then urban centers would control who was elected president. This is no longer true though, today cities could be either Democrat or Republican, or split. I will say though that I think the passing of the Amendment 12 - Choosing the President, Vice-President, was a mistake. Before it's passage every candidate ran for president. Then in congress the electoral college would vote. If there were more than 2 candidates the candidate with the lowest vote count would be dropped then another vote taken. Eventually when there were only 2 candidates left the final vote would be for who would be president, with the loser becoming vice president. Of course this "robs" political parties of their power so they pushed to have president and vice president run as a team.
Me, I'd rather amend the constitution again. This amendment would repeal the 12th amendment, and would abolish the electoral college. Voters would vote directly for president, with every candidate running for president. Using one of the Condorcet methods of voting the winner would become president and runner up the vp.
For voting itself, paper ballots or e-voting, I propose something like the machines used in India. "Indian EVM compared with Diebold". "The Bombay Ballot".
Falcon
Honestly, I think Linux is a good thing because it keeps Microsoft on its toes. I mean, if there was no Linux, there would probably really be no more operating system development out of Microsoft at all and they'd just take their money and run with it. But I wouldn't say that Microsoft doesn't invent anything, because in my mind, I think Linux is behind Vista for the desktop at this point and I see that gap getting wider, rather than narrower.
Microsoft doesn't invent anything, all it does is make improvements. And it wouldn't do those if there wasn't competition. Look at Internet Explorer, IE 6 was released on August 27, 2001. It wasn't until Firefox was released and taking market share from MS when MS released IE 7, 5 years later, on October 18, 2006. IE 8 only took a few months afterwards before it entered public beta testing.
Falcon
But you don't want to be the cheap provider. Companies don't care much about costs, someone needs to spent his budget. The cost argument is stupid. If you can get the source, that solution is better.
Hopefully RSN I'll be starting my own business and cost is a big issue for me. My business? Photography. I am on disability and can't afford to spend thousands of dollars for software. So instead of spending more than $700 to buy Photoshop I'll try CinePaint first, then only if I find out I need Photoshop and can afford it then I'll buy it. For running the business I'll look for open source software such as CRM, accounting, and a database. If I can't find what I want I'll take open source software and try to modify it so it will do what I want.
Now if I'm going to modify source code then I'd like to be sure I can close the source with an eye to sell said program(s) to other photographers. With BSD software I can do that but I can't with GPL software.
Falcon
No, but in case the closed source fork is more to a specific users liking (which is very probable), it'll limit that users freedom. With GPL-licenses there's no risk like that, and I think that a pretty good argument for GPL-style licenses and against BSD-style licenses.
Yea, but there's two different freedoms. There's the freedom of the programmer, which BSD style licenses guaranty, and there's the GPL which guaranties the freedom of the user. So the question becomes who's freedom is more important, the programmer or the user? As a user I like the GPL but as a programmer I'd prefer BSD licenses.
Falcon
As for general attitudes, the US is generally more business friendly where as europeans tend to put people first.
I don 't think Europe puts people first. From what I heard, and watched in the news when the youth were rioting in France. It was hard for an employer to fire someone. That's not people friendly, if an employer can't easily fire someone then they aren't likely to hire either. And small businesses can't stay in business long if they can't fire people who can't, won't, or will only do their jobs slowly. When the government in France passed a law making it easier for employers to fire employees there were massive riots by the youth.
Longer work hours lead to more productivity
Put to a point maybe, but go past that point and you run into the law of Diminishing returns.
the state should not be people's nanny
That's right, the state should not be a nanny.
If on the other hand you agree with: Work should be distrubuted evenly, workhours should allow for enough free time to have a social life outside work and the state should together with employers and unions supervise that work hours are reasonable.
You should do that without government.
To contrast, I seen americans working ordinary jobs for no extra pay doing 80 hours a week without question
It's their choice. If they don't want to do that then they don't have to. Even if their employer is holding a gun to their head they don't need to do it. Free choice allows them to walk away from the job. It may not be a choice they like but it is a choice. Me, I see Americans who can start their own businesses instead of working for a PHB. I also see where an American can come from bottom rung of the economic ladder and climb up it. Heck one of the US's presidential candidates, Obama, is doing that.
But the simplest thing might be that buying MS is supporting MS
I bought my last Microsoft product more than 8 years ago. When it came to getting a new laptop I bought a MacBook Pro.
Falcon
I can just use the GIMP to do my photo touch ups and other editing.
I tried GIMP years ago when I had Windows but found it seriously lacking. So I tried out Paint Shop Pro. Now that I have a Mac I'll try CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP. Because colour bit depth is important to me I consider it better than GIMP. Whereas GIMP only has 8 bit colour depths CinePaint has 16. Which brings up something I don't like about the GIMP developers. A programmer submitted code to the project that had 16 bit colour depth, several years ago, but they refused to use it. So he, or she I don't know who is was, forked GIMP. Many years later GIMP still only has 8 bit colour depths while movie studios work with CinePaint.
I used Photoshop a few years ago, and the interface was sleeker than the GIMP
Have you tried GIMPshop? It's interface was designed to be more like Photoshop.
Falcon
the true reason people use software, what works best. In the US at least (the only place I have experience), the main reason people use a particular piece of software is that it works better than the alternative.
From my observations in the US there are at least 3 large reasons people use a specific program. One is the perception that it's the only choice, there are no alternatives. Another is that because it's so well known and used it must be the best. The third is that the software comes preinstalled. In large organizations bulk licensing can be cheap. But there's also inertia as well as the PHBs.
People are leaving Windows for Macs, which are more closed and somewhat more expensive, because "they just work better".
After buying and using Windows PCs for more than 10 years I finally switched to Macs when I got my MacBook Pro. And unlike what you say it wasn't more expensive. Before I bought it I compared it's price to the prices of Windows laptops that were configured close to the MBP. Laptops from OEMs like HP cost about the same. But one laptop, from Dell, was $200 more.
My Mac is also more open than a Windows laptop. I can use the same external hardware on it as a Windows person can use on their laptop. For software not only can I use Mac software but I can also use Linux and Windows software. However with Windows most of the software that will run is Windows software. With some effort a person may be able to get Linux software to run but the only way to run OS X software is to run OS X. This applies to Linux as well, however you can run Windows software in Linux.
Overall a Mac will run more software than Linux will and Linux runs more than Windows does. Heck, if you want to get right down to it, my Mac will even run Linux and Windows. Try to get a Linux, or a Windows, PC to run OS X.
Are we Americans really this stupid on this many levels?
We elected Bush. Twice. Yeah, I'd say we are. Ugh.
Actually Gore, got more popular votes than Bush did in 2000. Bush got more votes than Kerry did in 2004 though.
Falcon
Your hardworking, salt of the earth capitalists have really contributed a lot of positive things to your society. Hmmm, USD 10 billion a day in Iraq or USD 700 billion to bail out Wall St etc
Not all of us American supported war, nor do we all support bailing out Wall Street.
but not a dime for affordale socialised medicine...
Two of the biggest health insurance programs are US government run, Medicaid and Medicare. Some states and local governments also have their own socialized health programs.
Falcon
So you replaced one proprietary system with vendor lock-in with another?
I'm not locked into anything. If I want to I can install Ubuntu, which I was planning on at first, or another Linux distro. I'm typing this in a Firefox tab. My office suite is NeoOffice, the original native Mac port of Open Office. I also have other open source programs installed. Because I installed Fink and MacPorts I can install a lot of software for Linux. I can install Debian packages using .deb or apt-get as well as packages using Redhat's .rpm. And if I need to, though I haven't yet, I can get and install Cross Over for Macs so I can run Windows software.
Fact is is a Mac can run more software than any other OS/hardware combination. And don't try to say Macs are more expensive either. Macs have not been more expensive than Windows PCs in years. Actually before I got mine, I compared it's price to prices of Windows laptops that had similar configurations. Most OEM PC were about the same price, though some cost more. Dell's was about $200 more.
Hardware wise my laptop isn't any more vender lockin than a Windows laptop either. I'm still using the same router I got for my Windows PC, then used with my Linux PC, and am now using with my Mac. My Epson scanner works fine with it as does my Iomega external drives and my Canon printer.
Falcon
But, as said, is basically Microsoft saying that they cannot think of any investment, enterprise, new product, etc that is worth its salt, for using that money. Which is all well and good, of course, only a bit disappointing.
Except this is an investment. Those who sale shares get money and those who hold see an increase in the vaule of their shares.
Falcon
Much of you say may be true but Microsoft is still growing.
Falcon
But with competition from non-Windows PCs (both Macs and Acer/Dells running Linux) and from alternative server software (open source servers, which power more web servers than Windows Server), Microsoft is now finding its air supply getting cut off while its proprietary business model is poisoned by the insidiously opportunistic spread of open source.
Actually Microsoft's server market share is growing absolutely and in terms of market share. According to Geekpedia Linux's server markiet share is plummeting. Microsoft's consumer market share is what's declining, more are buying Macs and Linux. However the consumer market is growing itself.
Microsoft is fundamentally screwed.
Not quite, Microsoft isn't down much from it's peak.
Falcon
I can think of two reasons:
- They buy the stocks now when they are low, because hey think the stock will go up and then they can sell them with profit.
- They buy the stocks to get the price up (and then sell them with profit).
Except Microsoft is buying back stocks over 5 years not all at once. I think a better reason Microsoft is buying back stocks is because MS pays employees in part with stocks, employees get stock options. There's only two ways Microsoft can do that, either give employees stocks Microsoft already owns or can buy or by issuing more stocks. Issuing more stocks though dilutes the value of the stocks already issued.
Personally I would not risk my money on their shares. Firefox is eating their bread, OpenOffice is eating their butter and people are getting more and more aware of Linux. Not to mention iPod and Wii beating their other products.
I'm no supporter of Microsoft but they aren't about to stop making a profit any time soon. Unless MS does a massive fuckup MS will remain profitable for many years to come. While they are loosing marketshare to Apple and Linux the overall market is growing.
Falcon
Because Microsoft isn't an investment bank. And that's a good thing with Wall Street going down the tubes.
Doesn't make sense to me, come on you stockmarket guys, explain the rationale.
Microsoft has expertise in software not the stockmarket. Now if they want to Bill and Steve could hire financial experts and start their own investment bank but that's not MS's strength.
Falcon
Yes... well those splits definitely destroy value.
Over an extended period stock splits increase market value. Say X's stock sells for $100 then does a 2 for 1 split. Within months the sales price may be $60, a $20 increase.
Buy-backs are also a bit of a value destructor too so don't bank on it.
Buy-backs are an attempt to keep the value in a stock. When a corporation announces buy-back, if I were a stockholder I'd be worried the board is expecting hard tymes so I may unload the shares I own. There is one other reason a corporation will buy back stocks, if they are concerned someone will try to gain control of the company. Buying back stocks removes stocks from the market and may increase the cost of the remaining stocks making it more expensive to gain control.
Common sense should tell you that Microsoft's days of being a growth stock are well behind it. Do not stay married to the stock.
Sure, if you only care for growth sell the stocks. But if you're nearing retirement then you want to shift your investments to income producing investments.
Playing the stock market as an average individual is a fools game.
Shifting investments is playing the game. A solid method of investing is using Dollar cost averaging, consistently investing money periodically.
Falcon
Down in the business law section of that page (you know, the part pertinent to the discussion) we find this definition:
What page? I provided two kinks. Pertinent? Maybe to you but not to me. eBay has plenty o f competition and therefore is not a monopoly.
If we go back to my original post, which you obviously didn't read, we have this:
I read it, then in reply I provided a link to the definition of monopoly. A "board game", eBay is not a board game. "exclusive control or possession of something", eBay does not have exclusive control or possession of auctions. A "market in which there are many buyers but only one seller", eBay has many buyer and sellers, and there are other online auctions with more buyers and sellers as well.
Nowhere did I say Ebay is "illegal", just that they hold a commanding market position
A commanding market position is not a monopoly though.
and need to prevented from making anti-competitive moves.
Agreed. But more regulations are not needed. There are already anticompetitive and antitrust laws on the books. Actually a hero of conservatives, Republican President Teddy Roosevelt was a fine "trust buster" and dissolved 40 monopoly corporations (according to the wiki article).
Did you even read the /. summary?
Unlike most /.ers, perhaps you're one, I not only read summaries I actually read the articles linked to. Did you read the article?
Falcon
Seriously though, my MacBook Pro is one of the best Windows machines I've ever used, simply because the hardware support is dead simple. The drivers are solid, and I can download them from one place.
Macs may be the best Windows PC but all installing Windows does is install crapware. After buying and using Windows PCs for more than 10 years I finally got too aggravated with them and bought the MacBook Pro I'm typing this on last year.
Falcon
...a mac. right now.
Actually from an investment position it's a good idea to by MS stock. If MS follows through and buy back some of it's stock the stock price should rise. You may then make enough to buy a Mac.
Falcon
You're right. Though I have Leopard I see no reason to install it.
This happens the first time I launch every single application I download or receive as a mail attachment, and as I mentioned, quite a few things that aren't even applications.
I'm glad I didn't install Leopard then. However I may get a new Mac, which Leopard will be installed on, by the end of the year.
Fslcon
Because they control the online auction market.
I suggest you read, and learn, the definition of "monopoly". eBay is not a monopoly. However even if it were, being a monopoly isn't illegal. What is illegal is to use a monopoly position to use that position anticompetitively. eBay compeats with other on online auction services and doesn't try to block others from compeating. At least I have not heard of any such attempts, do you have any references to any accusations or lawsuits saying they do?
It's absurd to suggest otherwise.
What's absurd it to improperly use a word. Get a dictionary and look up word definitions sometime.
Faclon
But in most cases, it's easy to determine what the right thing is, but the programmers just take the lazy way out.
Case in point: Mac OS X pops up a scary box the first time you try to run an app that you downloaded off the internet.
The Mac you use must be different than mine, I don't get scary boxes. What I do get, when I click on something to install it, is a box asking for an admin's name and password.
So far so good. Except the implementation completely sucks. I get that warning when I intentionally double-click a downloaded app in the Finder. I get that warning when I open a freshly downloaded .php file in a text editor. I get the warning when I open a downloaded .html file for the first time. It's completely stupid.
The closest I've come to something like that is once in a while instead of Firefox showing an image Preview is launch to show it in. I'm using Firefox Firefox 2.0.0.6 though and if I use Firefox 3 instead that might not happen.
Falcon
To the late great Carlin.
Think of how dumb the average person is, and realize half of them are dumber than that
Everytime I think about that I laugh...and die a little inside.
What's funny, or sad depending on how you look at it, is that half of the people aren't dumber than the average person. It's not the average where half are under and half over, the median is the point where half are over and half under.
Falcon
Popups should reveal the cryptic stuff only when a debug flag is set, which defaults to off in end-user builds of the software. In all other cases there should be something like "$APPNAME has crashed due to a bug. Please report the contents of $APP_DATADIR/crashlogs/$DATE.txt to us as http://domain/crashes [domain]. [OK]". The user should always know what the thing that just happened means for him, not what exactly happened. If someone really wants to know the details he can take the config file and add a line saying "Errors = verbose" or something like that.
The errors I got did that, when Firefox crashed a popup popped up in OS X telling me Firefox suffered an error and asked if I wanted to report it to Apple and the Firefox developers. It could then send a log of what happened.
Falcon
The actual text was "The instruction at '0x77f41d24 referenced memory at '0x595c2a4c.' The memory could not be 'read.' Click OK to terminate program." You're right, this is not "basically" (or even remotely close to) the text in Ars's little joke screenshot or what was posted in the summary.
According to ScienceDaily, "Fake Popup Warnings Fool Internet Users Even After Repeated Mistakes", there were popups that said different things. Some were "Windows operating system warnings" whereas others were fakes.
Falcon