Yes, but it should be. In this country, unless you live in a major city, it is almost impossible to live without the ability to drive. Our society has evolved to where nearly everyone has to commute some distance to work - even if it is a couple miles it's impractical for most of us to walk or bicycle to work. I know a few people that have lost their licenses to DUIs, but most of them continue to drive. How else are they supposed to stay employed and pay their bills.
This argument comes up all the time here and it irritates me. I wish we all had a magic subway that stopped at everyone's house and delivered them to wherever they wanted to go so we didn't have to drive most of the time. The bottom line is the operation of a motor vehicle and the ability to move about your city/state/country are currently tied directly to the "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" writtena about in the Declaration of Independence.
I agree completely. I find it unbelievable how the attitude about drugs have changed in the last 40 years. I watched a show on history channel about the evolution of drug laws in the US. In the 50s it was accepted for housewives to take a hit of speed before their husbands got home so they could be perky and happy. Now we live in a society where you are a total social outcast if you do meth.
On top of that, I have the theory that most people who would be addicted to drugs already are. How much is the social/legal/moral pressure really stopping people from using drugs. They are everywhere, and I now many many college students that use them recreationally. I think many people in this country would be shocked if they new what little Jenny and Johnny are doing at that fancy school Mom and Dad pay all the money for. Everyone thinks that the drug 'problem' is a low-income inner city thing - but the truth is there are a significant number of kids from happy suburban upbringings that are using that monthly check from Daddy to do some Crack.
What on earth does making informed decisions have to do with advertising?
From a consumer's point of view, how else am I going to find out that you make product X and how great it is. I can't compare your product X with Sally's product X if you don't advertise and tell me you have it.
People are down on advertising in general, but think of how difficult it would be to buy ANYTHING if you had no idea what the product was and where to get it. Personally I think it will be at Bad Thing if this precedent of not allowing Google to sell advertisements based on trademarked keywords. I often go to Google and put in a leading brand name of a particular product to find competitors. It's a good way to find competitive products and purchase the one that I think is best.
Re:what about plotting waypoints on the map?
on
Mapping Google Maps
·
· Score: 1
Actually I've thought of this. Someone should setup a site where we can all submit pictures of our houses/streets. Aggregate it all together and you can get a picture of any street in the world. That would be slick.
Of course, then I started calculating bandwidth, storage and maintenance costs and decided it wasn't worth it to me.
Funny. No, my thinking is if the people that these machines are going to can't afford to buy a full priced computer, they probably can't afford to have it fixed all of the time either. If all of the laptops puke in 6 months we won't be any further along than we are now.
OTOH, this may be a big plot by Dell and HP. Send cheap laptops to other countries, get everyone hooked on internet porn, when the cheap machines break they will have to buy new high priced machines to feed their addiction.
Hopefully the "quality" of the components will be good. I wouldn't anticipate that the machines would be fast or powerful, but they better be rugged and dependable if they are going to ship to third-world countries. It will be a wasted effort if the machines are just broken all of the time.
only the buyers that don't upgrade see them - and Microsoft wouldn't get money from them anyway...
But that's not exactly true. There are many users out there that did not see any reason to upgrade to XP, but may be interested by the time longhorn is on the scene. If the upgrade path is too difficult, buyers in that situation may start looking for alternatives.
Personally I've found Windows 2000 to be a good workstation OS, and have not upgraded any in-house users to XP. There hasn't been a need, we don't have the budget to upgrade everyone and it's easier to maintain an office with only one desktop OS.
It would be interesting to see some numbers on estimated number of Win 2000 machines out there vs. Win XP. It would also be interesting to see actual sales numbers for Windows OS versions back to 95 that weren't skewed by the number of new consumer PCs that were shipped with an OS.
No matter what I anticipate that the longhorn release and Microsoft's handling/marketing of it will be pivotal to the future success of Microsoft.
Interesting. If this is true, couldn't it be that the 'stupid large corporations' will have an option to switch to Linux because they are going to have to retrain everyone to use Longhorn anyway?
Looks like a catch22 for Microsoft to me. If they make Longhorn too much like XP no one updates. If they make it too different and it breaks stuff anyway, no one updates or converts to Linux. Not a great position to be in for Microsoft.
...attempt to keeping growing in a market that is starting to die.
Where do you get this information? From everything I can tell the market is going gangbusters. Everybody is selling everything on Ebay. Eventually it may reach a saturation point where everyone has sold all of the crap out of their basement, but until then I see no end in sight.
I have bought quite a few things on ebay - ranging across the spectrum. I have NEVER failed to recieve anything I purchased. Some things have taken longer than anticipated, and some things have cost more to ship than I had hoped, but I have not had a seller lie to me or commit fraud. I know some do, but many of those are easily spotted.
Ebay provides a fantastic service. Are there things I don't like? Sure. Do people lose money from fraud and bad buyers? Sure. Every business ever run has lost money due to fraud and poor customers. It's just a risk you take when dealing with other people - some of them are dishonest. Do you think the average store doesn't have shoplifters? Nothing is ever 100%, but Ebay protects buyers and sellers the best it can without limiting functionality and making the system difficult to use.
... networks will get into the act and throw the copy bit on for a major network show. They'll do this to "defend" their coveted timeslot...
You are right, this will probably happen. Personally I think it's insane - this whole timeslot BS. There are several shows that I would watch, but the timeslot doesn't fit into my schedule, or I don't remember. (Amazingly enough I won't let my life revolve around a stupid TV show)
Personally, as for my own experience, I'm currently very addicted to Lost, but I wouldn't be if I couldn't have downloaded the episodes I missed from bt. As a result, if I'm available, I will watch it when it broadcasts. If not, I can download and keep up with it. The "Big Three" networks are constantly losing market share, you would think they could figure out that we aren't reallly interested in sitting in front of our TVs at the time they perscribe every week and watch horrible shows with too many commercials - or worse yet, watch reruns of shows we've already reaarranged our lives to watch.
The world is changing. Thirty years ago everyone was happy to tune in to "All in the Family" or "Sanford & Son" at it's designated time slot. Now we live in an on-demand world. Everyone expects to do what they want when they want. Network TV (just like the RIAA and MPAA) are falling behind the times. They will eventually pay for it if they attempt to make everyone an automaton again and lock everyone back in to their designated timeslots.
Microsoft should read this article. Sure they have unstoppable vision and play to win, but they lose way more than they win.
They have 3 or 4 areas where their products are dominant (operating system, word processor, spreadsheet, etc..) and those areas are impressive, but what about all the areas where they have commited tremendous amounts of resources just to get minimal market share or fall flat on their face. For every product they have been successful at there are dozens that have less than optimal market penetration (xbox, IIS) or are losing ground (IE). Ten years ago, when there wasn't a competitor in sight, they could have focused on building the best operating system possible. Instead every release was overpriced, unstable and characterized by new shiny buttons. Now OSX, linux and Open Office are serious competition in their primary markets. They will have to regain some focus and dump some of the waste to survive long term.
Gates and company were in the right place at the right time, that's why their products are successful. There have been many companies just as ruthless that are now just memories.
Now there's a money making dating site. Randomly put a couple together and run them through the one hour test. Go through enough people eventually you will find someone that will stick with you. Can't believe eharmony isn't on this bandwagon yet.
I had a Palm VII for a couple years - company supplied it. Totally stable, a little big, and batteries were a pain to replace all of the time. Decided I wanted to upgrade a m500 style. Found an IBM C500 on ebay for really cheap (like you said, just a m500 painted black). I have had more stability and battery problems with it than I ever did on my VII. Twice in the last few months the battery has been totally dead. The first time I lost a couple weeks worth of data. Couldn't get the USB connector to work under Linux - then discovered it stopped working under Windows. Appearantly this is a common problem with the m500 series.
I think PDA's in general need to be smaller, have more battery life and CHEAPER. Personally I will not spend $400+ on a PDA, especially when it could be a real piece of junk. Give me some basic functionality, a good amount of storage, excellent stablility and the thickness of a piece of paper and I might buy one. I think most of the hard core PDA users aren't going to upgrade from a unit that's getting the job done to an unknown unless there are MAJOR improvments, or the unit is inexpensive.
Actually, I shouldn't say they suck, but for some reason they seem to put their shows on really bad time slots and the ones I might watch I don't actually ever get to see.
I have satellite TV, live in the Mountain time zone, and the UPN channels I get are based out of Boston. Enterprise is always on at 6:00pm - about the time I get home from work.
Recently saw the posting about UPN ending the series, so pulled some episodes of bt. Haven't watched many of them, got tied up in the first season of 24 on dvd and bsg, but did like the ones I've seen. Too bad, it's a great premise. I hate to see a show with great potential get cancel because of bad timeslots, bad writing and bad promotion.
The family member thing seems silly to me anyway - living in the same house or not. I could easily just have a friend order something for me (or order something for my friends). Look the item up, shoot an email to the designated Amazon orderer and drop by said orderer's house two days later.
Biggest problem I see with this is it wouldn't be much use to me. I generally use Amazon for music and books (although it seems that I'm currently in the majority). The last few items I have bought were in the new & used section and are shipped from the individuals listing the items - so I never get Amazon's cool shipping deals.
Corporations primary purpose is to make money. That does not mean that they cannot be good or evil. Companys are controlled by boards and managers. Some managers are ruthless and will cross any moral boundary to achieve their goal of making money for their shareholders. Others are more benevolent, paying fair wages, giving back to the community, sponsoring scholarships, conducting fair and legal business practices.
Of course these degrees of good and evil are variable, just like they are in people. For example, you might not be a mass murder, but you may download pirated music. Are you perfectly good, probabably not (at least in the eyes of the law). Are you bettter than Ted Bundy? You betcha.
As we have seen in the last few years, many corporations that do NOT exist to make money for their shareholders (i.e. non-profit corporations) can still be evil - promising to send money for tsunami relief, but actually skimming 80% off the top to pay their employees. In my book, that's evil. Again, there are also many non-profits that only take what's required to get the job done, and do some fantastic work in disaster areas.
You must judge a corporation just like you would judge an individual. We may all have similar motives, but the way we achieve our goals can have a profound effect on the way others interact with us.
Slashdot Mirror
But driving is not a right.
Yes, but it should be. In this country, unless you live in a major city, it is almost impossible to live without the ability to drive. Our society has evolved to where nearly everyone has to commute some distance to work - even if it is a couple miles it's impractical for most of us to walk or bicycle to work. I know a few people that have lost their licenses to DUIs, but most of them continue to drive. How else are they supposed to stay employed and pay their bills.
This argument comes up all the time here and it irritates me. I wish we all had a magic subway that stopped at everyone's house and delivered them to wherever they wanted to go so we didn't have to drive most of the time. The bottom line is the operation of a motor vehicle and the ability to move about your city/state/country are currently tied directly to the "Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" writtena about in the Declaration of Independence.
Republican - a boot grinding a human face into the dirt, forever.
Democrat - put a pillow between the boot and the face.
Actually -
Democrat - Pick your pocket so they can buy the pillow before putting the boot in your face.
It's so sad that it's always Republican vs. Democrat. Why can't it simply be the People vs. the Government - the way it should be.
I agree completely. I find it unbelievable how the attitude about drugs have changed in the last 40 years. I watched a show on history channel about the evolution of drug laws in the US. In the 50s it was accepted for housewives to take a hit of speed before their husbands got home so they could be perky and happy. Now we live in a society where you are a total social outcast if you do meth.
On top of that, I have the theory that most people who would be addicted to drugs already are. How much is the social/legal/moral pressure really stopping people from using drugs. They are everywhere, and I now many many college students that use them recreationally. I think many people in this country would be shocked if they new what little Jenny and Johnny are doing at that fancy school Mom and Dad pay all the money for. Everyone thinks that the drug 'problem' is a low-income inner city thing - but the truth is there are a significant number of kids from happy suburban upbringings that are using that monthly check from Daddy to do some Crack.
What on earth does making informed decisions have to do with advertising?
From a consumer's point of view, how else am I going to find out that you make product X and how great it is. I can't compare your product X with Sally's product X if you don't advertise and tell me you have it.
People are down on advertising in general, but think of how difficult it would be to buy ANYTHING if you had no idea what the product was and where to get it. Personally I think it will be at Bad Thing if this precedent of not allowing Google to sell advertisements based on trademarked keywords. I often go to Google and put in a leading brand name of a particular product to find competitors. It's a good way to find competitive products and purchase the one that I think is best.
Nope, wrong. It's all about funny/scary robots!!
Actually I've thought of this. Someone should setup a site where we can all submit pictures of our houses/streets. Aggregate it all together and you can get a picture of any street in the world. That would be slick.
Of course, then I started calculating bandwidth, storage and maintenance costs and decided it wasn't worth it to me.
Funny. No, my thinking is if the people that these machines are going to can't afford to buy a full priced computer, they probably can't afford to have it fixed all of the time either. If all of the laptops puke in 6 months we won't be any further along than we are now.
OTOH, this may be a big plot by Dell and HP. Send cheap laptops to other countries, get everyone hooked on internet porn, when the cheap machines break they will have to buy new high priced machines to feed their addiction.
Hopefully the "quality" of the components will be good. I wouldn't anticipate that the machines would be fast or powerful, but they better be rugged and dependable if they are going to ship to third-world countries. It will be a wasted effort if the machines are just broken all of the time.
only the buyers that don't upgrade see them - and Microsoft wouldn't get money from them anyway...
But that's not exactly true. There are many users out there that did not see any reason to upgrade to XP, but may be interested by the time longhorn is on the scene. If the upgrade path is too difficult, buyers in that situation may start looking for alternatives.
Personally I've found Windows 2000 to be a good workstation OS, and have not upgraded any in-house users to XP. There hasn't been a need, we don't have the budget to upgrade everyone and it's easier to maintain an office with only one desktop OS.
It would be interesting to see some numbers on estimated number of Win 2000 machines out there vs. Win XP. It would also be interesting to see actual sales numbers for Windows OS versions back to 95 that weren't skewed by the number of new consumer PCs that were shipped with an OS.
No matter what I anticipate that the longhorn release and Microsoft's handling/marketing of it will be pivotal to the future success of Microsoft.
Interesting. If this is true, couldn't it be that the 'stupid large corporations' will have an option to switch to Linux because they are going to have to retrain everyone to use Longhorn anyway?
Looks like a catch22 for Microsoft to me. If they make Longhorn too much like XP no one updates. If they make it too different and it breaks stuff anyway, no one updates or converts to Linux. Not a great position to be in for Microsoft.
...attempt to keeping growing in a market that is starting to die.
Where do you get this information? From everything I can tell the market is going gangbusters. Everybody is selling everything on Ebay. Eventually it may reach a saturation point where everyone has sold all of the crap out of their basement, but until then I see no end in sight.
I have bought quite a few things on ebay - ranging across the spectrum. I have NEVER failed to recieve anything I purchased. Some things have taken longer than anticipated, and some things have cost more to ship than I had hoped, but I have not had a seller lie to me or commit fraud. I know some do, but many of those are easily spotted.
Ebay provides a fantastic service. Are there things I don't like? Sure. Do people lose money from fraud and bad buyers? Sure. Every business ever run has lost money due to fraud and poor customers. It's just a risk you take when dealing with other people - some of them are dishonest. Do you think the average store doesn't have shoplifters? Nothing is ever 100%, but Ebay protects buyers and sellers the best it can without limiting functionality and making the system difficult to use.
OK, am I the only one that thinks smittenedkitten is not a good name for any 83 year-old woman (shudder).
... networks will get into the act and throw the copy bit on for a major network show. They'll do this to "defend" their coveted timeslot...
You are right, this will probably happen. Personally I think it's insane - this whole timeslot BS. There are several shows that I would watch, but the timeslot doesn't fit into my schedule, or I don't remember. (Amazingly enough I won't let my life revolve around a stupid TV show)
Personally, as for my own experience, I'm currently very addicted to Lost, but I wouldn't be if I couldn't have downloaded the episodes I missed from bt. As a result, if I'm available, I will watch it when it broadcasts. If not, I can download and keep up with it. The "Big Three" networks are constantly losing market share, you would think they could figure out that we aren't reallly interested in sitting in front of our TVs at the time they perscribe every week and watch horrible shows with too many commercials - or worse yet, watch reruns of shows we've already reaarranged our lives to watch.
The world is changing. Thirty years ago everyone was happy to tune in to "All in the Family" or "Sanford & Son" at it's designated time slot. Now we live in an on-demand world. Everyone expects to do what they want when they want. Network TV (just like the RIAA and MPAA) are falling behind the times. They will eventually pay for it if they attempt to make everyone an automaton again and lock everyone back in to their designated timeslots.
So why they heck did they stop with the 'secret seasoning'. Switching from lard was a big deal, could have kept the seasoning secret.
They look like us now.
Microsoft should read this article. Sure they have unstoppable vision and play to win, but they lose way more than they win.
They have 3 or 4 areas where their products are dominant (operating system, word processor, spreadsheet, etc..) and those areas are impressive, but what about all the areas where they have commited tremendous amounts of resources just to get minimal market share or fall flat on their face. For every product they have been successful at there are dozens that have less than optimal market penetration (xbox, IIS) or are losing ground (IE). Ten years ago, when there wasn't a competitor in sight, they could have focused on building the best operating system possible. Instead every release was overpriced, unstable and characterized by new shiny buttons. Now OSX, linux and Open Office are serious competition in their primary markets. They will have to regain some focus and dump some of the waste to survive long term.
Gates and company were in the right place at the right time, that's why their products are successful. There have been many companies just as ruthless that are now just memories.
Now there's a money making dating site. Randomly put a couple together and run them through the one hour test. Go through enough people eventually you will find someone that will stick with you. Can't believe eharmony isn't on this bandwagon yet.
Or check their page rank and see what google thinks of them there.
In the future, we'll have smart cards...or perhaps even an embedded chip
Or maybe a mark on our forehead and right hand
I had a Palm VII for a couple years - company supplied it. Totally stable, a little big, and batteries were a pain to replace all of the time. Decided I wanted to upgrade a m500 style. Found an IBM C500 on ebay for really cheap (like you said, just a m500 painted black). I have had more stability and battery problems with it than I ever did on my VII. Twice in the last few months the battery has been totally dead. The first time I lost a couple weeks worth of data. Couldn't get the USB connector to work under Linux - then discovered it stopped working under Windows. Appearantly this is a common problem with the m500 series.
I think PDA's in general need to be smaller, have more battery life and CHEAPER. Personally I will not spend $400+ on a PDA, especially when it could be a real piece of junk. Give me some basic functionality, a good amount of storage, excellent stablility and the thickness of a piece of paper and I might buy one. I think most of the hard core PDA users aren't going to upgrade from a unit that's getting the job done to an unknown unless there are MAJOR improvments, or the unit is inexpensive.
Actually, I shouldn't say they suck, but for some reason they seem to put their shows on really bad time slots and the ones I might watch I don't actually ever get to see.
I have satellite TV, live in the Mountain time zone, and the UPN channels I get are based out of Boston. Enterprise is always on at 6:00pm - about the time I get home from work.
Recently saw the posting about UPN ending the series, so pulled some episodes of bt. Haven't watched many of them, got tied up in the first season of 24 on dvd and bsg, but did like the ones I've seen. Too bad, it's a great premise. I hate to see a show with great potential get cancel because of bad timeslots, bad writing and bad promotion.
Of course, if you can screw them by getting everyone in your dorm to abuse their $79 shipping promotion, then that's OK.
The family member thing seems silly to me anyway - living in the same house or not. I could easily just have a friend order something for me (or order something for my friends). Look the item up, shoot an email to the designated Amazon orderer and drop by said orderer's house two days later.
Biggest problem I see with this is it wouldn't be much use to me. I generally use Amazon for music and books (although it seems that I'm currently in the majority). The last few items I have bought were in the new & used section and are shipped from the individuals listing the items - so I never get Amazon's cool shipping deals.
Corporations primary purpose is to make money. That does not mean that they cannot be good or evil. Companys are controlled by boards and managers. Some managers are ruthless and will cross any moral boundary to achieve their goal of making money for their shareholders. Others are more benevolent, paying fair wages, giving back to the community, sponsoring scholarships, conducting fair and legal business practices.
Of course these degrees of good and evil are variable, just like they are in people. For example, you might not be a mass murder, but you may download pirated music. Are you perfectly good, probabably not (at least in the eyes of the law). Are you bettter than Ted Bundy? You betcha.
As we have seen in the last few years, many corporations that do NOT exist to make money for their shareholders (i.e. non-profit corporations) can still be evil - promising to send money for tsunami relief, but actually skimming 80% off the top to pay their employees. In my book, that's evil. Again, there are also many non-profits that only take what's required to get the job done, and do some fantastic work in disaster areas.
You must judge a corporation just like you would judge an individual. We may all have similar motives, but the way we achieve our goals can have a profound effect on the way others interact with us.