New York runs on Red Hat, London runs on.NET and MSSQL but already had some boo-boo's with it (out of personal experience: MS SQL clusters nor.NET performs well when the host's CPU peaks out), Mumbai and Hong Kong seems to run on some homebrew software on a Unix-like system, Tokyo is currently handled by a Fujitsu-built engine but will be replaced soon probably again by something proprietary.
Usually the basis of stock exchanges are Unix since mainframes don't come with Windows and converting the old programs (which could be cobbled together with COBOL, C, C++ and shell scripting (no kidding)) to a new platform would be a pain in the butt (unless you get Microsoft itself to build it for you as in the case of London). Linux is the cheap alternative since it's very similar to Unix and performance wise very predictable and stable (even under high load) however most exchanges don't go the cheap route and get something totally custom built on top of an expensive mainframe Unix.
Some e-mail applications already do. Apple's Mail has it built-in, Thunderbird I believe has a plugin for it. Of course you could always do like me and just bounce it at the server.
Toy Story is not really realistic. It's just an enhanced cartoon. A better example would be Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4747223420939375550)
Anything that grows too large is bound to become inefficient. I work at a place where each department is ran as a private company (which is a very effective way of doing stuff). The small departments like mine with maybe 20 people are very efficient in all regards although they have a slight overhead (you only need 1 IT person for about 100 people, so each department having their own IT person is a bit expensive).
The large departments (>500 people) on the other hand are very inefficient. The largest 2 departments (central IT (~500 people) which handles 2 e-mail clusters, general network connectivity, directory services, a helpdesk and a small datacenter and central facilities (~1500 people) for repairs and renovations) are also the most expensive departments and stuff never gets done. They're not allowed to make a profit so everything is calculated to cover operational costs. However $800 to install 2 ethernet cables from one floor to the other and a wall plate and then reconfigure a switch to enable a trunk is a bit over the top for me. Facilities charges $70 just to come and check out a temperature alarm.
As soon as you need a document routed through more than 2 people to get approval for something you're too big and inefficient. The same goes with the government, there are just too many incompetent people to manage and too few competent people in charge. Then to approve something documents have to go back and forth hundreds of times and become so bloated that the weirdest things get approved.
Yes it is. This is similar to a judge in the USA that is a member of the RIAA and then goes in the courtroom to judge Virgin v. Thomas. It doesn't matter how high your involvement is. Apparently one of the lawyers IS his co-worker for certain things. That would be the same as you being a judge and in your off-time you work at a small company (which isn't illegal) and then you have to judge on a private matter between that company and somebody that has a beef with your company (for whatever reason) and the (hot) gal you go drinking coffee with once in a while is the lawyer representing the company you work at. IANAL but it seems that this would be grounds for a mistrial in the US.
$10! Where do you live? Here it's easily $12 or $15 once you figure in the taxes. The drinks are $5 for a small, $7 for a medium and $9 for a large. A 'movie meal' (large drink with popcorn or nachos) is $15.
You're right for the most part, but the part about the current and the future I think you got slightly wrong (imho). Currently what's driving newer computers and better this-and-that is 1) entertainment value, 2) flashiness (can I carry it, does it look good) and 3) price (not only initial but also energy and maintenance). People these days seem to want (or have been told they want) HD-quality, real-time, realistic and accelerated interfaces to just about anything.
Personal video chat is also one of the reasons (the bigger the picture the better), very realistic (as far as audiovisual goes) games and even Flash games. The next thing I think that's going to drive hardware is free web-based software that relies heavily on client-side processing as well as an increased demand to work remotely and collaborate in real time. Even something as simple as high speed data links will require something better than what we have, you can currently saturate a desktop processor without pushing the gigabit limit. Imagine what we will need to push 10 Gigabit around or high-speed wireless. As I said, client-side processing is going to replace current server-side processing for a lot of web applications in order to reduce costs in the data center (push a static document and ask jQuery and XQuery to do the rest). If developers don't start pushing the processing away, the cost to keep those apps running will be more than what they can earn on the side.
As far as I am concerned, I don't want desktop development to stop because of a saturated "good enough" market. I'm one of those geeks that just got a couple of 8-core Nehalem for data processing and visualization in imaging research. In the past (when customers didn't need all that flashy 3d visualization) you would have to rely on SGI to make you a $15k machine in order to process something in a week. Now we buy 3 8-core Nehalems workstations and an 8-core Nehalem server for that which can each do it in less than a day.
No one is saying otherwise; we can safely assume that Amazon understands the supply/demand curves, has researched the market, and plans on recouping its costs plus some profit - in other words, has priced the Kindle as optimally as it can.
As far as I know all this marketing research and optimization of price points is like looking in a magic glass ball and having a crapshoot at a price point. If it's a hot product, something people really want or something that's hyped enough, some people will buy it no matter what. If you lower the price point however, more people will consider buying it. If they currently sold out of Kindle's they can try increasing production (with the cost that it brings) and hope the current price keeps buyers coming. If buyers stop coming, they lower the price so there's another run on the product to sell out the stock. If that exercise makes them more money than costs, they will most likely do it.
Another thing you have to keep in mind is what the lower cost would bring as a side effect. Currently the product is fairly high priced (I won't buy it until it's at least 50% of it's current price). This keeps competitors at bay since the competitor would most likely want to make a product that's cheaper/better in order to pull customers away. However by keeping the price point this high, they might be trying to warn others: this is an expensive product to develop. As soon as the new product hits the market and gains traction, Amazon will drop the prices in order to out price the competitors which makes it harder for them to recoup development and production costs.
And finally there is the monopoly part. Amazon basically has a monopoly on the e-book reader market. They can keep the price high, there is hardly any other product that offers the same and is well integrated with an online bookstore.
As a Belgian living in the US, I have to agree with this. Some stores here in the US (Wegmans, Tops) recently have gotten Belgian 'good beers' like Leffe (Dubbel and Triple), Duvel, Westmalle, Maredsous and Lambic as well as the 'bar-beers' like Hoegaarden and Stella Artois. My wife who doesn't like beer at all, likes the Framboise Lambic since it tastes similar to (but is heavier to digest than) a wine cooler. However beers in Belgium are even more varied and if you go to the good bars you can sometimes pick from up to 300 brands in stock.
German beer is for the most part sour which I don't like (although Bock is acceptable) and the British can't drink after 10 and their beer isn't cold. The Irish have very good beer (draughts, stouts and lagers like Guinness, Kilkenny). Finland might have good beers but last time I was over there they seem to charge over EUR 15 for a bottle which I didn't want to pay.
I'm not sure if you want to be swapping electrolytes at a 'charging station'. Ever gone to a gas station and they had the hose leak? I know gas stations where that has been the case for at least 6 months, nobody is fixing it. Then there are the gas stations where the ground has to be sanitized after one of those large containers has sprung a leak, a preventable problem to begin with and regulations have required the container to be inside some type of enclosure for the last few years so you can imagine how long some of them have been there. Electrolytes are usually more corrosive than current gasoline products and will break down plastic and metal alike in a matter of months.
Imagine the current gas station practices generating the same problems with lithium where even a small leak could become explosive. Other materials are also toxic, have 'explosive' features or are generally bad for the environment (usually worse than gas).
Actually, I think the exact opposite happened. Back when Gates was in control you had at least halfway working products (and the reason of Windows ME imho was mainly because they tried to squeeze out one more 9x version for monetary gain and nobody was really interested in the project because NT was coming to the desktop anyway).
Gates was more focused on marketing than technology though and that's what got them in the current position in the first place. Ballmer is more focused on income (keeping the monopoly and selling more licenses to increase lock-in) than anything else as you can see with the recent licensing models for netbooks, SharePoint and 3rd world countries. I think Vista was more because of Ballmer than because of Gates. At the time Vista started, Gates was already working his way out and dedicating time to his philanthropy. Windows 7 imho is just Vista SP3 or "what Vista should've been but we had to release something fast in order to counter Mac OS X".
The company itself has never been about technology at the core. It always either steals or buys the best from elsewhere (DOS, OS/2, VMS,...) and makes it 'just good enough' to sell a boxed products and then makes marketing or licensing sell it.
All they need is a decent cover for these things and it will work just fine. Solid state electronics these days are already near indestructible except for the LCD. Protect that and you're fine, they have leather holders with a hard flap that work great for under $15
Well, let me give you a comment on that. This is a quote from L. Ron Hubbard's OT3 with my comments interwoven:
1. Check for any BTs (E-meter, theta perceptics, intention, pressure areas, telepathy is HOW) on and in:
Body surface (WHERE) Body inside In thetan's space (Approx. 40' X 60') On thetan 2. Run Incident 2, then Incident 1, until BT(s) have gone and are released. Then, check for additional Incidents 1's and 2's until dry (on the meter).
-- Is there any scientific proof that this e-meter actually works? Is there any independent study that proves these claims? How do I build an e-meter?
3. Return to Step 2, to find new ones to run. Use ruds while running if necessary. There is an effort to stop and hurry on Incident 1.
-- This doesn't even make sense. Is it asking you to keep repeating the same procedure? If you're charging for it isn't it just a matter of having to keep paying them. How come the first run doesn't just work? Is the Step 2 flawed in some way?
4. When complete, exact date and run both of the incidents on self.
-- It seems to be infectious (whatever the problem might be). Again, is there some way you can test the passing over of the problem from the one being administered to the one administering.
5. If a bog, do Millazo Pack. Write down some 'mutual associations'. Re each one on this list, FIND THE INCIDENT THAT MADE THEM ONE, and run that. Then, run OT III, Incident 2 and 1 after that cluster is broken up. Occasionally, BTs will have an incident that made them one other then Incident 2, thus this action.
INCIDENT 2: Dates approx. 75 million years ago, earth years, location, Earth, named TEEGEEACK at that time (meaning planet of sorrow), involved 33 planets of this sector, each with populations of 80 - 200 BILLION PER PLANET. XENU, the ruler, and 'Renegades' decided to solve overpopulation as follows, but was halted and XENU placed in a mountain trap after over 5 years of war.
Incident 2 Patter: DETERMINE IF A LOYAL OFFICER, RESIDENT OF EARTH, or FROM ANOTHER PLANET. If the latter two, start at their being picked up and shot and if from another planet, frozen in an ice cube, transported (flying saucer), taken to mountain, a volcano always, H BOMB EXPLOSION, TERRIFIC WINDS, EFFORT TO ORIENT, MAGNETIC STRIP UP FROM CENTER OF VOLCANO OR DOWN FROM AN AIRPLANE, EFFORT TO GET OFF AND FIND REST OF SELF, PROTEST, BEING PULLED ON STRIP, VISUAL DISPLAY OF INSTRUCTION BY A 'GO TO THE PILOT', WHO SAYS 'HE'S MOCKING IT UP'.
-- Is it difficult to write continuous, understandable English or what? Even so, how does this measure up against other theories that say that residents from other planets might not ever be able to reach us?
Incident 1: Dates 4 QUADRILLION YEARS AGO (which is 15 zeros or 4,000 trillion years ago).
-- According to nuclear physics, wouldn't all matter have decayed by then? At least the sun would've died out several times.
Incident 1 Patter: LOUD SNAP, WAVES OF LIGHT, HORSES DRAWING CHARIOT RIGHT TO LEFT, CHERUB COMES OUT, BLOWS HORN, COMES CLOSE, SHATTERING SERIES OF SNAPS, CHERUB FADES, RETREATS, BLACK MASS IS DUMPED ON THE THETAN.
-- This sounds very apocalyptic. Is it possible that the one experiencing it might have other issues like multiple personalities? I believe this is all very weird to me. It's hardly understandable to the one that wrote it. It's like writing code without any comments.
Volcano List
Note: These were the most common locations. 600 other volcanoes did and do exist, which I did not list.
You clear up that a BT is a body thetan, The instructions are self explanatory, Basically, the reason they are doing this is to where they won't be confused with hundreds of different thoughts so that they can have some peace and quiet, and so they won't be other-determined. After they have run all these remnants of folks out by telepathic auditing on them, they attain the state of freedom from overwhelm and a return of full self determinism. One cleans off those 4 ar
There is a difference between a virus, a worm and a trojan. A trojan is something that comes with another program, usually called spyware, adware or any other type of ware that was installed without the real purpose being announced or unknown to the user usually also hidden from a superficial admin inspection. Examples of this are the Sony Rootkit, this rootkit and there have been Unix rootkits before Windows even existed. It's basically a program that can do bad things which the user gave permission to install but didn't know it's hidden purpose. An SSH client could be called a Trojan if somebody installed it as part of another program without the user knowing it. Anyone claiming their system is safe from that is deluded.
Then there are the worms. Worms usually are ran when the user clicks somewhere or opens an attachment or are spread on vulnerable machines. Worms also self-replicate to other computers unlike trojans. A worm CAN download a trojan in order to make the machine accessible. A worm however unlike a rootkit is not "installed" in the common usage of the word. They execute code automatically without the user knowing about it. All the user knows is that it ran (not installed) some program which the user presumed exited. Worms can live exclusively in userland (they run as the user who received the worm whether that be a real life user or a service) and use exploits to escalate their privileges. Examples are the Morris worm (for Unix), I Love You, Storm, Slammer,... Most recent 'virusses' should be classified worms. Some of them have exploited things like Outlook where a user only needed to open the e-mail in order to have the machine automatically replicate the thing to their address book. That's also where Windows got it's bad rap from because Windows ran so many network-accessible services as a privileged user that were ultimately unnecessary. Even Conficker exploits such a problem and requires no user interaction whatsoever.
Virusses are also a catch-all phrase for all of the above but 'pure'/'real' virusses basically attach themselves to 'known good' programs and get executed (before or after) the program runs. They replicate themselves by attaching themselves to other programs or even scripts and sometimes try to hide themselves by being polymorphic or encrypted. Not a lot of recent threats are real virusses since they replicate too slow. They were big in the DOS-period where all programs had free reign over memory ranges and could overwrite each others memory. These days they are usually academic of nature and again, exist for all platforms. The problem with a virus is for it to be small enough to go unnoticed and be able to execute and do bad to other programs even when the program they attach to changes.
Per-address would be kind of difficult since people move. Per-person would require at least SSN or something else that individualizes a person which is a major privacy issue. You don't want your tax man (or even your tax attorney in case you have a problem) to know you spent $100 at buttplugs.com .
Also: each state is independent from the other states. If I live in one state I don't have to report my taxes to all 52 states stating I earned or spent $0 in their states, that would be very expensive for both consumer and states. It would make it necessary for all those little vendors to get knowledge of 52 state tax laws and 52 different ways of filing these statements. If you ever had the privilege of filing taxes in 2 states (I have) + federal you would know how much fun it is. I used a professional tax service and they had to send it out to an office in that state in order to know what forms had to be filed and what had to be filed. Then I get a little note from the states tax office that I didn't have to file it in the first place.
Here in New York State (as in most northern provinces of the US) you can buy a 1500-2000 sqft house for ~60k. I live in a city as well. A 400 sqft. cottage (what we call a barn) the Amish will do for you under 10k.
Well, the fact of the matter is: Mac comes with just about everything. Non-linear video editing, photo editing and organizers and they're very powerful. The systems you buy at BestBuy or any other shop are kinda bare compared to that just to keep the costs down. If you have to include a comparable video editing package on Windows you'll add easily $200-500 and Adobe's Photoshop Elements or something comparable is also at least a $100.
I have to support systems in a corporate setting and I have everything here from Dell to IBM to HP to Fujitsu-Siemens including Apple. I like so much better to deal with Apple for support. If they notice you know what you're doing, they'll just quit reading their script and send you on to either an engineer or somebody to arrange for a repair or replacement part. And the package with the new hardware comes in the next day with FedEx or UPS, you put in the old hardware, rip of a sticker and while the delivery guy is still standing there you give it back. Dell especially can have you on the line literally for hours and you're still not past an indian guy reading scripts and the hardware comes in on a weekly schedule even though we have (had - cancelled after several horror-stories) 'gold' support. The Apple server systems have next-day (usually same-day) on-site support for at least 1 year or 3 years when you buy the extended warranty package. IBM and HP have similar support but you need to pay them a lot more money (we pay IBM several 1000's per year for that type of support on just a single system)
Look around in your own housing market to see the average price of a 'used' house (it's ~50k-150k around here). If really necessary, you'll have to do 25k in renovations coming to ~75k-175k. Then ask a contractor or architect to build you a new one. Just a small house here runs in the 200k (you have to buy the ground and pay the state, architect and contractors) and a larger house can cost 300-400k.
There is also the Macbook White for 999 and the Macbook Alu for 1299. If you are really cheap, you can also go to their "Refurb" or "Clearance" page and you can get things other people sent back or the previous model for a very good price (and yes, they are tested and inspected so you don't get the crap somebody else destroyed). If you go to school or college or work for the government or an educational institution you usually get a discount too.
The problem is that we currently pay enough for the ISP to be able to afford a decent unlimited plan. The fact that we pay for a 5 Mbps plan but only get 512 kbps is not our fault but their problem for not upgrading capacity. With what we pay right now (and TWC has a monopoly in my neighborhood) they should be able to afford fiber to the premises and then they want to cap our current half-a-megabit connection too?
Well, a lot of "FOSS" distro's have tools for that built-in and they are quite good (eg. RedHat distro or Webmin). I have FOSS experience but not specifically with Postfix or Cyrus. However the frontend tools were very simple for me to use.
If you want really simple and you can afford it, get a Mac OS X Server, those tools (although on the simplistic side) are very, very easy. I would say easier than anything else I've ever seen. However you might want to install webmin or go under the hood for the more advanced stuff.
Yes, with Calendar Server you can enter appointments somewhere and it will automatically update on every device you got connected to the calendar. There are also implementations that keep Calendars in IMAP folders although you would have to use the same (or at least compatible) software on desktop and mobile devices.
You can get push e-mail with IMAP, it's called IMAP IDLE. A lot of "push" services work in a similar way. Somehow the connection is kept open and the server sends a small packet when there's new mail. Bandwidth usage is minimal and implementation cheap and simple. I wouldn't be surprised if Exchange uses the same protocol but somehow encapsulates it into a proprietary layer (like they do with Kerberos and LDAP for AD)
Windows SBS is not the same as a dedicated Exchange box. Although the implementation depends largely on the administrator I think. Either way it can be done, Ubuntu doesn't have to pay CAL's though.
The time tables here kill me. 2 days for a freakin' e-mail server? Get any decent Linux distro and you can do it in 2 hours including spam and antivirus checking. You want calendaring: Darwin Calendar Server, another 2 hours (if that long).
On the other hand, mail stores can be huge without even crashing anything. I have currently in the proximity of 500GB but I know of installations with several terabytes all administered by 1 or 2 admins.
The place I work at has several departments each doing their own thing. I currently manage a Postfix and Calendaring install on a single box for about 150 users by myself while also doing everything else for the rest of the department. The functionality is identical to the Exchange setup and it's down maybe 10 minutes a month for updates and patches.
Another department has a huge Exchange cluster (a rack of blades) to manage maybe 1500 users (only 10 times as much), they need a freaking appliance for spam/virus filtering and 5 full-time Exchange admins. That thing (although being a cluster) is every month at least 2 hours down (patching and updating) and every week there is some type of notice e-mail about some data store being down or migrated or moved and x-number of users being unable to use it during that maintenance.
Like the Baby Bell's? We don't need anyone interfering with the current position of a company. If it's a monopoly, let it be, if it's failing, let it fail. Splitting it up will only have the same managers running the same crappy companies that only exist because of the government. After a while they'll just combine again and all the good intentions of those splitting it up will be undone.
Let the car manufacturers plainly do what they're going to do and let any other company (existing or otherwise) come up with a competitive alternative. Toyota doesn't seem to fail nor Hyundai or any of the other 'japanese' car manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
New York runs on Red Hat, London runs on .NET and MSSQL but already had some boo-boo's with it (out of personal experience: MS SQL clusters nor .NET performs well when the host's CPU peaks out), Mumbai and Hong Kong seems to run on some homebrew software on a Unix-like system, Tokyo is currently handled by a Fujitsu-built engine but will be replaced soon probably again by something proprietary.
Usually the basis of stock exchanges are Unix since mainframes don't come with Windows and converting the old programs (which could be cobbled together with COBOL, C, C++ and shell scripting (no kidding)) to a new platform would be a pain in the butt (unless you get Microsoft itself to build it for you as in the case of London). Linux is the cheap alternative since it's very similar to Unix and performance wise very predictable and stable (even under high load) however most exchanges don't go the cheap route and get something totally custom built on top of an expensive mainframe Unix.
Some e-mail applications already do. Apple's Mail has it built-in, Thunderbird I believe has a plugin for it. Of course you could always do like me and just bounce it at the server.
Toy Story is not really realistic. It's just an enhanced cartoon. A better example would be Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4747223420939375550)
Anything that grows too large is bound to become inefficient. I work at a place where each department is ran as a private company (which is a very effective way of doing stuff). The small departments like mine with maybe 20 people are very efficient in all regards although they have a slight overhead (you only need 1 IT person for about 100 people, so each department having their own IT person is a bit expensive).
The large departments (>500 people) on the other hand are very inefficient. The largest 2 departments (central IT (~500 people) which handles 2 e-mail clusters, general network connectivity, directory services, a helpdesk and a small datacenter and central facilities (~1500 people) for repairs and renovations) are also the most expensive departments and stuff never gets done. They're not allowed to make a profit so everything is calculated to cover operational costs. However $800 to install 2 ethernet cables from one floor to the other and a wall plate and then reconfigure a switch to enable a trunk is a bit over the top for me. Facilities charges $70 just to come and check out a temperature alarm.
As soon as you need a document routed through more than 2 people to get approval for something you're too big and inefficient. The same goes with the government, there are just too many incompetent people to manage and too few competent people in charge. Then to approve something documents have to go back and forth hundreds of times and become so bloated that the weirdest things get approved.
Yes it is. This is similar to a judge in the USA that is a member of the RIAA and then goes in the courtroom to judge Virgin v. Thomas. It doesn't matter how high your involvement is. Apparently one of the lawyers IS his co-worker for certain things. That would be the same as you being a judge and in your off-time you work at a small company (which isn't illegal) and then you have to judge on a private matter between that company and somebody that has a beef with your company (for whatever reason) and the (hot) gal you go drinking coffee with once in a while is the lawyer representing the company you work at. IANAL but it seems that this would be grounds for a mistrial in the US.
$10! Where do you live? Here it's easily $12 or $15 once you figure in the taxes. The drinks are $5 for a small, $7 for a medium and $9 for a large. A 'movie meal' (large drink with popcorn or nachos) is $15.
You're right for the most part, but the part about the current and the future I think you got slightly wrong (imho). Currently what's driving newer computers and better this-and-that is 1) entertainment value, 2) flashiness (can I carry it, does it look good) and 3) price (not only initial but also energy and maintenance). People these days seem to want (or have been told they want) HD-quality, real-time, realistic and accelerated interfaces to just about anything.
Personal video chat is also one of the reasons (the bigger the picture the better), very realistic (as far as audiovisual goes) games and even Flash games. The next thing I think that's going to drive hardware is free web-based software that relies heavily on client-side processing as well as an increased demand to work remotely and collaborate in real time. Even something as simple as high speed data links will require something better than what we have, you can currently saturate a desktop processor without pushing the gigabit limit. Imagine what we will need to push 10 Gigabit around or high-speed wireless. As I said, client-side processing is going to replace current server-side processing for a lot of web applications in order to reduce costs in the data center (push a static document and ask jQuery and XQuery to do the rest). If developers don't start pushing the processing away, the cost to keep those apps running will be more than what they can earn on the side.
As far as I am concerned, I don't want desktop development to stop because of a saturated "good enough" market. I'm one of those geeks that just got a couple of 8-core Nehalem for data processing and visualization in imaging research. In the past (when customers didn't need all that flashy 3d visualization) you would have to rely on SGI to make you a $15k machine in order to process something in a week. Now we buy 3 8-core Nehalems workstations and an 8-core Nehalem server for that which can each do it in less than a day.
No one is saying otherwise; we can safely assume that Amazon understands the supply/demand curves, has researched the market, and plans on recouping its costs plus some profit - in other words, has priced the Kindle as optimally as it can.
As far as I know all this marketing research and optimization of price points is like looking in a magic glass ball and having a crapshoot at a price point. If it's a hot product, something people really want or something that's hyped enough, some people will buy it no matter what. If you lower the price point however, more people will consider buying it. If they currently sold out of Kindle's they can try increasing production (with the cost that it brings) and hope the current price keeps buyers coming. If buyers stop coming, they lower the price so there's another run on the product to sell out the stock. If that exercise makes them more money than costs, they will most likely do it.
Another thing you have to keep in mind is what the lower cost would bring as a side effect. Currently the product is fairly high priced (I won't buy it until it's at least 50% of it's current price). This keeps competitors at bay since the competitor would most likely want to make a product that's cheaper/better in order to pull customers away. However by keeping the price point this high, they might be trying to warn others: this is an expensive product to develop. As soon as the new product hits the market and gains traction, Amazon will drop the prices in order to out price the competitors which makes it harder for them to recoup development and production costs.
And finally there is the monopoly part. Amazon basically has a monopoly on the e-book reader market. They can keep the price high, there is hardly any other product that offers the same and is well integrated with an online bookstore.
As a Belgian living in the US, I have to agree with this. Some stores here in the US (Wegmans, Tops) recently have gotten Belgian 'good beers' like Leffe (Dubbel and Triple), Duvel, Westmalle, Maredsous and Lambic as well as the 'bar-beers' like Hoegaarden and Stella Artois. My wife who doesn't like beer at all, likes the Framboise Lambic since it tastes similar to (but is heavier to digest than) a wine cooler. However beers in Belgium are even more varied and if you go to the good bars you can sometimes pick from up to 300 brands in stock.
German beer is for the most part sour which I don't like (although Bock is acceptable) and the British can't drink after 10 and their beer isn't cold. The Irish have very good beer (draughts, stouts and lagers like Guinness, Kilkenny). Finland might have good beers but last time I was over there they seem to charge over EUR 15 for a bottle which I didn't want to pay.
I'm not sure if you want to be swapping electrolytes at a 'charging station'. Ever gone to a gas station and they had the hose leak? I know gas stations where that has been the case for at least 6 months, nobody is fixing it. Then there are the gas stations where the ground has to be sanitized after one of those large containers has sprung a leak, a preventable problem to begin with and regulations have required the container to be inside some type of enclosure for the last few years so you can imagine how long some of them have been there. Electrolytes are usually more corrosive than current gasoline products and will break down plastic and metal alike in a matter of months.
Imagine the current gas station practices generating the same problems with lithium where even a small leak could become explosive. Other materials are also toxic, have 'explosive' features or are generally bad for the environment (usually worse than gas).
Actually, I think the exact opposite happened. Back when Gates was in control you had at least halfway working products (and the reason of Windows ME imho was mainly because they tried to squeeze out one more 9x version for monetary gain and nobody was really interested in the project because NT was coming to the desktop anyway).
Gates was more focused on marketing than technology though and that's what got them in the current position in the first place. Ballmer is more focused on income (keeping the monopoly and selling more licenses to increase lock-in) than anything else as you can see with the recent licensing models for netbooks, SharePoint and 3rd world countries. I think Vista was more because of Ballmer than because of Gates. At the time Vista started, Gates was already working his way out and dedicating time to his philanthropy. Windows 7 imho is just Vista SP3 or "what Vista should've been but we had to release something fast in order to counter Mac OS X".
The company itself has never been about technology at the core. It always either steals or buys the best from elsewhere (DOS, OS/2, VMS, ...) and makes it 'just good enough' to sell a boxed products and then makes marketing or licensing sell it.
All they need is a decent cover for these things and it will work just fine. Solid state electronics these days are already near indestructible except for the LCD. Protect that and you're fine, they have leather holders with a hard flap that work great for under $15
Well, let me give you a comment on that. This is a quote from L. Ron Hubbard's OT3 with my comments interwoven:
1. Check for any BTs (E-meter, theta perceptics, intention, pressure areas, telepathy is HOW) on and in:
Body surface (WHERE)
Body inside
In thetan's space (Approx. 40' X 60')
On thetan
2. Run Incident 2, then Incident 1, until BT(s) have gone and are released. Then, check for additional Incidents 1's and 2's until dry (on the meter).
-- Is there any scientific proof that this e-meter actually works? Is there any independent study that proves these claims? How do I build an e-meter?
3. Return to Step 2, to find new ones to run. Use ruds while running if necessary. There is an effort to stop and hurry on Incident 1.
-- This doesn't even make sense. Is it asking you to keep repeating the same procedure? If you're charging for it isn't it just a matter of having to keep paying them. How come the first run doesn't just work? Is the Step 2 flawed in some way?
4. When complete, exact date and run both of the incidents on self.
-- It seems to be infectious (whatever the problem might be). Again, is there some way you can test the passing over of the problem from the one being administered to the one administering.
5. If a bog, do Millazo Pack. Write down some 'mutual associations'. Re each one on this list, FIND THE INCIDENT THAT MADE THEM ONE, and run that. Then, run OT III, Incident 2 and 1 after that cluster is broken up. Occasionally, BTs will have an incident that made them one other then Incident 2, thus this action.
INCIDENT 2: Dates approx. 75 million years ago, earth years, location, Earth, named TEEGEEACK at that time (meaning planet of sorrow), involved 33 planets of this sector, each with populations of 80 - 200 BILLION PER PLANET. XENU, the ruler, and 'Renegades' decided to solve overpopulation as follows, but was halted and XENU placed in a mountain trap after over 5 years of war.
Incident 2 Patter: DETERMINE IF A LOYAL OFFICER, RESIDENT OF EARTH, or FROM ANOTHER PLANET. If the latter two, start at their being picked up and shot and if from another planet, frozen in an ice cube, transported (flying saucer), taken to mountain, a volcano always, H BOMB EXPLOSION, TERRIFIC WINDS, EFFORT TO ORIENT, MAGNETIC STRIP UP FROM CENTER OF VOLCANO OR DOWN FROM AN AIRPLANE, EFFORT TO GET OFF AND FIND REST OF SELF, PROTEST, BEING PULLED ON STRIP, VISUAL DISPLAY OF INSTRUCTION BY A 'GO TO THE PILOT', WHO SAYS 'HE'S MOCKING IT UP'.
-- Is it difficult to write continuous, understandable English or what? Even so, how does this measure up against other theories that say that residents from other planets might not ever be able to reach us?
Incident 1: Dates 4 QUADRILLION YEARS AGO (which is 15 zeros or 4,000 trillion years ago).
-- According to nuclear physics, wouldn't all matter have decayed by then? At least the sun would've died out several times.
Incident 1 Patter: LOUD SNAP, WAVES OF LIGHT, HORSES DRAWING CHARIOT RIGHT TO LEFT, CHERUB COMES OUT, BLOWS HORN, COMES CLOSE, SHATTERING SERIES OF SNAPS, CHERUB FADES, RETREATS, BLACK MASS IS DUMPED ON THE THETAN.
-- This sounds very apocalyptic. Is it possible that the one experiencing it might have other issues like multiple personalities? I believe this is all very weird to me. It's hardly understandable to the one that wrote it. It's like writing code without any comments.
Volcano List
Note: These were the most common locations. 600 other volcanoes did and do exist, which I did not list.
You clear up that a BT is a body thetan, The instructions are self explanatory, Basically, the reason they are doing this is to where they won't be confused with hundreds of different thoughts so that they can have some peace and quiet, and so they won't be other-determined. After they have run all these remnants of folks out by telepathic auditing on them, they attain the state of freedom from overwhelm and a return of full self determinism. One cleans off those 4 ar
There is a difference between a virus, a worm and a trojan. A trojan is something that comes with another program, usually called spyware, adware or any other type of ware that was installed without the real purpose being announced or unknown to the user usually also hidden from a superficial admin inspection. Examples of this are the Sony Rootkit, this rootkit and there have been Unix rootkits before Windows even existed. It's basically a program that can do bad things which the user gave permission to install but didn't know it's hidden purpose. An SSH client could be called a Trojan if somebody installed it as part of another program without the user knowing it. Anyone claiming their system is safe from that is deluded.
Then there are the worms. Worms usually are ran when the user clicks somewhere or opens an attachment or are spread on vulnerable machines. Worms also self-replicate to other computers unlike trojans. A worm CAN download a trojan in order to make the machine accessible. A worm however unlike a rootkit is not "installed" in the common usage of the word. They execute code automatically without the user knowing about it. All the user knows is that it ran (not installed) some program which the user presumed exited. Worms can live exclusively in userland (they run as the user who received the worm whether that be a real life user or a service) and use exploits to escalate their privileges. Examples are the Morris worm (for Unix), I Love You, Storm, Slammer, ... Most recent 'virusses' should be classified worms. Some of them have exploited things like Outlook where a user only needed to open the e-mail in order to have the machine automatically replicate the thing to their address book. That's also where Windows got it's bad rap from because Windows ran so many network-accessible services as a privileged user that were ultimately unnecessary. Even Conficker exploits such a problem and requires no user interaction whatsoever.
Virusses are also a catch-all phrase for all of the above but 'pure'/'real' virusses basically attach themselves to 'known good' programs and get executed (before or after) the program runs. They replicate themselves by attaching themselves to other programs or even scripts and sometimes try to hide themselves by being polymorphic or encrypted. Not a lot of recent threats are real virusses since they replicate too slow. They were big in the DOS-period where all programs had free reign over memory ranges and could overwrite each others memory. These days they are usually academic of nature and again, exist for all platforms. The problem with a virus is for it to be small enough to go unnoticed and be able to execute and do bad to other programs even when the program they attach to changes.
Is it me or does that picture look like a melted 'pleasure device' on fire?
Per-address would be kind of difficult since people move.
Per-person would require at least SSN or something else that individualizes a person which is a major privacy issue. You don't want your tax man (or even your tax attorney in case you have a problem) to know you spent $100 at buttplugs.com .
Also: each state is independent from the other states. If I live in one state I don't have to report my taxes to all 52 states stating I earned or spent $0 in their states, that would be very expensive for both consumer and states. It would make it necessary for all those little vendors to get knowledge of 52 state tax laws and 52 different ways of filing these statements. If you ever had the privilege of filing taxes in 2 states (I have) + federal you would know how much fun it is. I used a professional tax service and they had to send it out to an office in that state in order to know what forms had to be filed and what had to be filed. Then I get a little note from the states tax office that I didn't have to file it in the first place.
Here in New York State (as in most northern provinces of the US) you can buy a 1500-2000 sqft house for ~60k. I live in a city as well. A 400 sqft. cottage (what we call a barn) the Amish will do for you under 10k.
Well, the fact of the matter is: Mac comes with just about everything. Non-linear video editing, photo editing and organizers and they're very powerful. The systems you buy at BestBuy or any other shop are kinda bare compared to that just to keep the costs down. If you have to include a comparable video editing package on Windows you'll add easily $200-500 and Adobe's Photoshop Elements or something comparable is also at least a $100.
I have to support systems in a corporate setting and I have everything here from Dell to IBM to HP to Fujitsu-Siemens including Apple. I like so much better to deal with Apple for support. If they notice you know what you're doing, they'll just quit reading their script and send you on to either an engineer or somebody to arrange for a repair or replacement part. And the package with the new hardware comes in the next day with FedEx or UPS, you put in the old hardware, rip of a sticker and while the delivery guy is still standing there you give it back. Dell especially can have you on the line literally for hours and you're still not past an indian guy reading scripts and the hardware comes in on a weekly schedule even though we have (had - cancelled after several horror-stories) 'gold' support. The Apple server systems have next-day (usually same-day) on-site support for at least 1 year or 3 years when you buy the extended warranty package. IBM and HP have similar support but you need to pay them a lot more money (we pay IBM several 1000's per year for that type of support on just a single system)
Look around in your own housing market to see the average price of a 'used' house (it's ~50k-150k around here). If really necessary, you'll have to do 25k in renovations coming to ~75k-175k. Then ask a contractor or architect to build you a new one. Just a small house here runs in the 200k (you have to buy the ground and pay the state, architect and contractors) and a larger house can cost 300-400k.
There is also the Macbook White for 999 and the Macbook Alu for 1299. If you are really cheap, you can also go to their "Refurb" or "Clearance" page and you can get things other people sent back or the previous model for a very good price (and yes, they are tested and inspected so you don't get the crap somebody else destroyed). If you go to school or college or work for the government or an educational institution you usually get a discount too.
I already explained it once here: https://rcbi.rochester.edu/weblog/vanooste/2009/04/03/AwordtotheTWCRoadRunnermarke.html
The problem is that we currently pay enough for the ISP to be able to afford a decent unlimited plan. The fact that we pay for a 5 Mbps plan but only get 512 kbps is not our fault but their problem for not upgrading capacity. With what we pay right now (and TWC has a monopoly in my neighborhood) they should be able to afford fiber to the premises and then they want to cap our current half-a-megabit connection too?
Well, a lot of "FOSS" distro's have tools for that built-in and they are quite good (eg. RedHat distro or Webmin). I have FOSS experience but not specifically with Postfix or Cyrus. However the frontend tools were very simple for me to use.
If you want really simple and you can afford it, get a Mac OS X Server, those tools (although on the simplistic side) are very, very easy. I would say easier than anything else I've ever seen. However you might want to install webmin or go under the hood for the more advanced stuff.
Yes, with Calendar Server you can enter appointments somewhere and it will automatically update on every device you got connected to the calendar. There are also implementations that keep Calendars in IMAP folders although you would have to use the same (or at least compatible) software on desktop and mobile devices.
You can get push e-mail with IMAP, it's called IMAP IDLE. A lot of "push" services work in a similar way. Somehow the connection is kept open and the server sends a small packet when there's new mail. Bandwidth usage is minimal and implementation cheap and simple. I wouldn't be surprised if Exchange uses the same protocol but somehow encapsulates it into a proprietary layer (like they do with Kerberos and LDAP for AD)
Windows SBS is not the same as a dedicated Exchange box. Although the implementation depends largely on the administrator I think. Either way it can be done, Ubuntu doesn't have to pay CAL's though.
The time tables here kill me. 2 days for a freakin' e-mail server? Get any decent Linux distro and you can do it in 2 hours including spam and antivirus checking. You want calendaring: Darwin Calendar Server, another 2 hours (if that long).
On the other hand, mail stores can be huge without even crashing anything. I have currently in the proximity of 500GB but I know of installations with several terabytes all administered by 1 or 2 admins.
The place I work at has several departments each doing their own thing. I currently manage a Postfix and Calendaring install on a single box for about 150 users by myself while also doing everything else for the rest of the department. The functionality is identical to the Exchange setup and it's down maybe 10 minutes a month for updates and patches.
Another department has a huge Exchange cluster (a rack of blades) to manage maybe 1500 users (only 10 times as much), they need a freaking appliance for spam/virus filtering and 5 full-time Exchange admins. That thing (although being a cluster) is every month at least 2 hours down (patching and updating) and every week there is some type of notice e-mail about some data store being down or migrated or moved and x-number of users being unable to use it during that maintenance.
Like the Baby Bell's? We don't need anyone interfering with the current position of a company. If it's a monopoly, let it be, if it's failing, let it fail. Splitting it up will only have the same managers running the same crappy companies that only exist because of the government. After a while they'll just combine again and all the good intentions of those splitting it up will be undone.
Let the car manufacturers plainly do what they're going to do and let any other company (existing or otherwise) come up with a competitive alternative. Toyota doesn't seem to fail nor Hyundai or any of the other 'japanese' car manufacturers.