... and I don't speak swedish, I can't make any famous comments like RTFA and find out that this is probably an example of someone making exaggerated claims on the original article.
To put it simply, intellectual property laws, if written properly, are meant to protect the little guy. As they are written in the US, they primarily benefit large corporations who have the deep pockets to prosecute offenders. If there were absolutely no IP laws, then the big corporations again win, by simply crushing the competition with their power and wealth.
But that's the great thing about a government that lets into its governing body different minority parties, it spurs discussion by bringing in new points of view. Maybe they will be able to pull back some of those laws and achieve a balance. Just don't think anarchy will come 6 months after a few reps are elected because that would be a ridiculous expectation of any government.
Now that 90 Mhz of spectrum which wasn't interfering with anything anyway is no longer interfering with the cell phone spectrum which wasn't being interfered with, perhaps we can write more laws reducing interference in things previously not interfered with? Oh wait... we already have the PATRIOT act.
I can't tell if any of these games were on last years list, but the Avernum and Geneforge game lines by Spiderweb Software deserve honorable mentions. I live for these games! The game play is excellent, the development of characters is fun, and the plot and background of the games are the most original I've ever seen in fantasy RPGs. Jeff Vogel spent time creating whole new worlds. Hats off to Jeff! I salute you with Demonslayer raised high!
You'd be surprised at the number of sites out there which effectively charge subscribers to download videos and pictures of ugly people. If you can think of a kink, someone most likely has it. The ugly people kink was exploited a long time ago.
You are forgetting Monty Python. Monty Python blows simpsons out of the water. It's older and has stood the test of time. It also has fewer over all episodes than the simpsons and therefore less material to work with and yet still as memorable and rewatchable.
If you're a 4th century roman citizen, you are going to have a tough time with a tank. A modern American might have a tough time too, but they are more likely to have been exposed to cars and computers and whatnot and have a greater chance to pick it up quicker than the roman citizen. Both of them will still have to be trained.
That's your point, but that's NOT the point of the article!
Take that same roman citizen, and train them in the use of a BMW. Now ask them which one they will remember more easily after they are forced to walk around without either for 2 months. Chances are they'll remember more about driving a BMW.
The point is not so much useability as it is reusability. I consider myself a pretty intelligent computer user, but I have to constantly go back to manuals and look things up to remember commands and programs. GIMP doesn't immediately invoke any devices in my memory to recall that application on demand at a later date. Photoshop instantly makes me think of images. 5 seconds later I find out it's for photo editing. I can stick that in my long term memory and remember it for later much more easily. This is how the average user thinks.
Linux geeks are going to be spending 99% of their time memorizing programs and commands that they use every day and they have to realize not everyone is going to see the world the same way they do. Shortening the word copy to cp helps the advanced linux user save typing but for less advanced users it's easier to remember the word COPY because it makes sense to a wider range of people.
... how does one market different levels of broadband speed? The answer is that companies are already becoming very savvy at it and realizing that not everyone needs this screaming fast speed yet. Cable is the undisputed winner in speed to the general populace, but DSL is quickly becoming the low cost alternative.
DSL's price for 768kbps has already dropped to $15-$20 in many areas, which means that DSL will begin to replace dialup. Dialup may never completely die for a while longer, because DSL still can't reach certain areas, but it should be enough to kill off many of the national ISPs.
Higher end broadband will be of interest to those who either really need it, or are just terribly excited about having the status symbol of having a faster connection.
Comcast upgraded their systems from 3.0 Mbps to 6.0 and I barely noticed anything. Hopefully I'll be able to switch one day to another provider not because of better speed, but because of lower cost, as the only reason I have comcast is that I can't get DSL or fiber to my house yet.
First of all, why do Americans have to get so high and mighty about Europe's anti-Nazi laws? Every time I hear someone go off on a law like this it's like a European gets their foot chopped off when they utter the word "Hitler" or "Nazi."
I really can't speak for any of these laws, but what I can say is that just because such a law exists doesn't mean it's all that bad, even if it seems counter to our own constitution. Our own constitution at times seems flawed, in that the right to bear arms is felt by some to be completely unnecessary and constantly misinterpreted by modern governments.
And what's worse is that people think that free speech in America means being able to say racist and ethnic slurs so that no law is created that might on the off chance prevent someone from actually uttering the word "nigger" or "dirty jew" in a sentence that is not meant as a racist slur but in an intelligent adult discussion about the evils of racism.
My Major problem with racism and racist fucks is that to me it's really a form of slander or libel, except you are doing it against an entire race. You can't publically call someone a baby killer, so why the fuck can these people in America call Blacks and Jews baby killers?
In an ideal world you have evolving government and changing laws. There's no reason to think a democratically elected government cannot craft legislation that put forms of racist language on the level of libel.
And how does this relate to Nazism? That's the whole point. Europe witnessed the horrors of Hitler first hand and up front. The US has these weird rose colored glasses on at times. We agree Hitler was a bad guy, but we preserve our right to free speech because we should be able to say absolutely anything we want at all times. However, maybe if we stopped allowing whites to publically slur other races sooner, we could have ended segregation sooner, prevented Japanese Americans from being sent to internment camps, and prevented our own ethnic crimes from being committed in Tuskeegee.
You can't cry fire in a crowded theater, you can't call Bush a baby killer without proof, and you should not be able to go onto a radio show and say blacks and jews are causing an increase in crime and disease and should be thrown in jails.
...the most underwhelming and boring recorded interview for a product ever. She has no stage presence, he has no personality, and I couldn't stand how slow it was going before I shut it off before the presentation. Show the damn toys already!
And what's worse? They played that stupid car commercial twice and you can't fast forward in the window. Stupid commercial, stupid car, stupid people!
I'm going to grab a needie and beat you all with it! GRRRRRRR!
Monopolies have EVERYTHING to do with Marketshare.
A monopoly is a company that has an overwhelming marketshare or dominance in one particular market. By having a monopoly, you have abilities open to you that you would otherwise not have. For example, if you had a monopoly on oil, you can charge almost any price for gasoline and airline fuel and not have to worry about your customers going to a competitor. They could also put additives into the gasoline so that car makers who didn't make cars the way they wanted them to would break down and make those cars "incompatible" with their gasoline. These are hypotheticals, but the point is that
A monopoly has control over a market and thus breaks the nature of proper competitive capitalism. How can a monopoly have control over something if it doesn't sell something????? And you were modded insightful?
Therefore when a company is declared a monopoly, new rules are applied to them, or they are forced to break up so they become competitive. That is what a monopoly is.
I've never seen so many references to Hitler in one Slashdot article, and yet the discussion rages on! Stop breaking this extremely important law before the universe disappears and is replaced by something even more bizzare and inexplicable!!!
Exactly how does one research an article on goatse.cx? I don't mean what resources do you look up, I mean how does one stomach it? And how does one keep that from appearing on their tech writing resume?
"My latest wiki contributions include identifying the person who took the picture for goatse.cx."
If you read the article, the article describes how the lab experiment is simply about people who had to recognize specific colors and shapes. It was easy when someone had to simply declare the color they saw. But it took more time to recognise both the color and shape of an object. The experiment simply measured when you had two factors to worry about, it took more time for your brain to process and respond.
And somehow they take the fantastic leap from a lab experiment involving shapes to cell phone usage in cars? Give me a break! There is a very thin thread which might link those two facts, but again it's thin. The fact that the scientist said that smells of either an over eager or political scientist trying to get their name in the papers.
The larger a company is, the less it competes on quality and innovation, and the more it competes on price and muscle. Smaller companies are more agile and can change more quickly.
My personal opinion is that Icahn is pushing this for simply financial reasons. Quite simply, Time Warner has money making divisions, and others are dead weight that should jettisoned. By splitting them up, an investor ends up with some kind of stock split amongst the resulting companies. They then sell off the loser stocks and put that money back into the good portions. This would be a great way to kill off AOL once and for all. AOL is the only division I know of that's dead weight, but there could be others. I'm really just guessing here. MY point is that Icahn is doing this for money reasons. It's the only reason why he would, and neither the article nor the submitter make any mention of this, which is extremely short sighted.
However, regardless of the financial motivations, I completely support a break up of any company as large as this, purely because it benefits consumers with competition. Also, while a merger usually ends up in "eliminating redunancies" in jobs, a break up will usually put those "redundancies" back and open up at least a few new jobs to fill.
No brainer really... get the sledgehammers out and start breaking!
One of the biggest things I loved about B5 was that this is the first Sci fi show I could remember in a long time that copious amounts of sarcasm, quips, snide insults, clever philosophy, and unique circumstances. JMS tried to do something new, and that's what sci fi fans want. Your hard core sci fi fan doesn't want what they saw before and they want something edgy with good dialog, good plot, and a healthy dose of snark. Before B5, the snide sarcasm was something left for the last 3 minutes of a Star Trek episode.
Have you noticed just how much snark made it's way into original sci fi series these days? B5 started it. SG1 made it a sci-fi standard. Joss with buffy/firefly turned it into a fine art worthy of hanging in the l'ouvre, if one could hang such things. Even Andromeda, which is an okay sci fi series, still has loads of snark. Snark and sarcasm are the highest forms of humor (I feel) and require intelligence and attention span to get. US TV executives of major networks shoot for the lowest common denominator and these are not traits most Americans have.
Simple, the longer you can play Mario and Zelda on NES, the less you are tempted to play a new version or Mario or Zelda on Super NES, N64, GameCube, or Revolution. If your NES breaks, instead of buying a clone, you have to buy the latest and greatest. If you buy the latest and greatest, quite often you have to buy all new games. That's changing with the revolution which has promised backward compatibility with Gamecube, and PS2 is backward compatible with PS1. But Gamecube isn't anywhere near compatible with NES of course.
Like all technology companies, they are simply protecting their upgrade revenue stream.
The main difference between intelligent design and Religion is that intelligent design is being packaged in a way to pass itself off as science. The vatican admits what religion is, and is perfectly willing to say that Evolution is science. They then say that God gave man science, and established the rules of science, and acknowledge that this belief is creationism. There's a clear line between evolution and creationism there.
Intelligent design is in fact trying to blur those lines so children ask the wrong questions about Evolution. Questioning an established theory is great, as long as you ask the right questions.
This one dispels the myth that the US has absolutely no control over the internet:
One of the most cherished myths of cyberspace is that the Internet is totally decentralized and inherently uncontrollable. Like all myths, this one is based on a bit of truth and a heavy dose of wishful thinking. It is true that compared with the century-old telephone system, the Internet is a paragon of deregulation and decentralization. In four critical areas, however, it requires oversight and coordination in order to operate smoothly. Together, these areas constitute the "domain name system" of addresses, with which users navigate the Internet and send e-mail.
I.E. some tech in the United States is pulling switches and levers and managing and replacing computers to make sure a critical part of the internet works.
Here's a great blurb that refers to ICANN, who it reports to, and the problems it has:
As many developing countries woke to the Internet's importance, it struck them as outrageous that the Internet was essentially run by a nonprofit corporation whose 15-person board of directors was accountable to the attorney general of the state of California and under the authority of the U.S. government. Even the U.S. Congress criticized it, hauling the group into tense hearings regularly.
Basically, ICANN reports to the US government. More proof of who has power over the internet.
And here is what truly scares other countries:
Watching the United States go to war in Iraq despite global opposition, these diplomats saw ICANN as yet another example of American unilateralism. What would prevent Washington, they argued, from one day choosing, say, to knock Iran off the Internet by simply deleting its two-letter moniker, ".ir," from the domain name system? Surely the Internet ought to be managed by the international community rather than a single nation.
I mean c'mon people! This has nothing to do with the grandiose idea that the internet is free to everyone and everything is going along just and any idealistic crap. This is about other countries in the world getting scared shitless that a country which they don't trust. Good old fashioned internation diplomacy of protecting themselves.
And in this case they are protecting themselves from someone who scares them. Our president went to war in Iraq when the majority of the world thought it was a bad idea. And we elected the crackpot! Right now Bush is in South America trying to set up a free trade zone in the americas. The conference has huge protests outside slamming Bush as a whacko and denouncing the conference as something that will hurt south america. Depending on what you think of the conference, it's clear to me those people don't trust Bush.
Our voting process put him in power! The voting system of the US, with whatever flaws you think it has, put him in power! The rest of the world looks at each and every single American and now says "I don't trust Bush, and I don't trust your voting system to put someone into place I can trust." So what are they going to do? They are going to protect their own interests. Just like we claim to have done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In this post I'm not going to go into the details of why Bush is not trusted, but sufficit to say he isn't. I will say with issues like this and others Bush has the worst foreign policy. With an attitude like this, Bush is basically saying "Fuck you all, I'm not listening." That's what he did in Iraq, and now he's doing it with the internet. Any good diplomat will tell you that you don't do that, even if you have Nuclear Weapons. The fact is we in fact have an even stronger weapon than a nuclear weapon, it's call the internet. It could destroy an economy with just a few lines of code. The world wants that weapon out of American hands.
I'm a US citizen and I'm scared for other countries that this could affect. I do support the idea, from a sympathetic viewpoint, of giving up control of the major points that
As many threads have already noted, the percentages are misleading because Dell's total amount of profit is larger than Apples total profit. Dell's 4th quarter profit for 2005 was 667 million while Apple's was 430 Million.
Okay, Dell's revenue is higher, but it's not that much higher. Also, Dell's profitability is falling while Apple's is rising. Del's profit was 749 million last year. I think it's premature to rub anything in Dell's face but I do think that even thought they are percentages, they are significant. The percentage is even more significant since Dell's revenue and expenses over all are higher than Apple's. This means that they are more severely effected by slimming margins.
The article might be premature, and it's most likely hype, but there is a valid point here, and that is 8 years ago Dell wrote off Apple, and now Apple is trending up, while Dell is trending down.
Making all the "do you want a whole grape or a slick of a watermelon" analogies you want, but If the watermelon slice is dried out and sour, and the grape is perfectly ripe, I'll take the grape. (see I can make analogies too!)
Slashdot Mirror
... and I don't speak swedish, I can't make any famous comments like RTFA and find out that this is probably an example of someone making exaggerated claims on the original article.
To put it simply, intellectual property laws, if written properly, are meant to protect the little guy. As they are written in the US, they primarily benefit large corporations who have the deep pockets to prosecute offenders. If there were absolutely no IP laws, then the big corporations again win, by simply crushing the competition with their power and wealth.
But that's the great thing about a government that lets into its governing body different minority parties, it spurs discussion by bringing in new points of view. Maybe they will be able to pull back some of those laws and achieve a balance. Just don't think anarchy will come 6 months after a few reps are elected because that would be a ridiculous expectation of any government.
Now that 90 Mhz of spectrum which wasn't interfering with anything anyway is no longer interfering with the cell phone spectrum which wasn't being interfered with, perhaps we can write more laws reducing interference in things previously not interfered with? Oh wait... we already have the PATRIOT act.
I can't tell if any of these games were on last years list, but the Avernum and Geneforge game lines by Spiderweb Software deserve honorable mentions. I live for these games! The game play is excellent, the development of characters is fun, and the plot and background of the games are the most original I've ever seen in fantasy RPGs. Jeff Vogel spent time creating whole new worlds. Hats off to Jeff! I salute you with Demonslayer raised high!
You'd be surprised at the number of sites out there which effectively charge subscribers to download videos and pictures of ugly people. If you can think of a kink, someone most likely has it. The ugly people kink was exploited a long time ago.
You are forgetting Monty Python. Monty Python blows simpsons out of the water. It's older and has stood the test of time. It also has fewer over all episodes than the simpsons and therefore less material to work with and yet still as memorable and rewatchable.
Well I didn't say anything about del vs rm did I?
You've completely missed the point.
If you're a 4th century roman citizen, you are going to have a tough time with a tank. A modern American might have a tough time too, but they are more likely to have been exposed to cars and computers and whatnot and have a greater chance to pick it up quicker than the roman citizen. Both of them will still have to be trained.
That's your point, but that's NOT the point of the article!
Take that same roman citizen, and train them in the use of a BMW. Now ask them which one they will remember more easily after they are forced to walk around without either for 2 months. Chances are they'll remember more about driving a BMW.
The point is not so much useability as it is reusability. I consider myself a pretty intelligent computer user, but I have to constantly go back to manuals and look things up to remember commands and programs. GIMP doesn't immediately invoke any devices in my memory to recall that application on demand at a later date. Photoshop instantly makes me think of images. 5 seconds later I find out it's for photo editing. I can stick that in my long term memory and remember it for later much more easily. This is how the average user thinks.
Linux geeks are going to be spending 99% of their time memorizing programs and commands that they use every day and they have to realize not everyone is going to see the world the same way they do. Shortening the word copy to cp helps the advanced linux user save typing but for less advanced users it's easier to remember the word COPY because it makes sense to a wider range of people.
... how does one market different levels of broadband speed? The answer is that companies are already becoming very savvy at it and realizing that not everyone needs this screaming fast speed yet. Cable is the undisputed winner in speed to the general populace, but DSL is quickly becoming the low cost alternative.
DSL's price for 768kbps has already dropped to $15-$20 in many areas, which means that DSL will begin to replace dialup. Dialup may never completely die for a while longer, because DSL still can't reach certain areas, but it should be enough to kill off many of the national ISPs.
Higher end broadband will be of interest to those who either really need it, or are just terribly excited about having the status symbol of having a faster connection.
Comcast upgraded their systems from 3.0 Mbps to 6.0 and I barely noticed anything. Hopefully I'll be able to switch one day to another provider not because of better speed, but because of lower cost, as the only reason I have comcast is that I can't get DSL or fiber to my house yet.
preface: I am an american myself.
First of all, why do Americans have to get so high and mighty about Europe's anti-Nazi laws? Every time I hear someone go off on a law like this it's like a European gets their foot chopped off when they utter the word "Hitler" or "Nazi."
I really can't speak for any of these laws, but what I can say is that just because such a law exists doesn't mean it's all that bad, even if it seems counter to our own constitution. Our own constitution at times seems flawed, in that the right to bear arms is felt by some to be completely unnecessary and constantly misinterpreted by modern governments.
And what's worse is that people think that free speech in America means being able to say racist and ethnic slurs so that no law is created that might on the off chance prevent someone from actually uttering the word "nigger" or "dirty jew" in a sentence that is not meant as a racist slur but in an intelligent adult discussion about the evils of racism.
My Major problem with racism and racist fucks is that to me it's really a form of slander or libel, except you are doing it against an entire race. You can't publically call someone a baby killer, so why the fuck can these people in America call Blacks and Jews baby killers?
In an ideal world you have evolving government and changing laws. There's no reason to think a democratically elected government cannot craft legislation that put forms of racist language on the level of libel.
And how does this relate to Nazism? That's the whole point. Europe witnessed the horrors of Hitler first hand and up front. The US has these weird rose colored glasses on at times. We agree Hitler was a bad guy, but we preserve our right to free speech because we should be able to say absolutely anything we want at all times. However, maybe if we stopped allowing whites to publically slur other races sooner, we could have ended segregation sooner, prevented Japanese Americans from being sent to internment camps, and prevented our own ethnic crimes from being committed in Tuskeegee.
You can't cry fire in a crowded theater, you can't call Bush a baby killer without proof, and you should not be able to go onto a radio show and say blacks and jews are causing an increase in crime and disease and should be thrown in jails.
...the most underwhelming and boring recorded interview for a product ever. She has no stage presence, he has no personality, and I couldn't stand how slow it was going before I shut it off before the presentation. Show the damn toys already!
And what's worse? They played that stupid car commercial twice and you can't fast forward in the window. Stupid commercial, stupid car, stupid people!
I'm going to grab a needie and beat you all with it! GRRRRRRR!
Monopolies have EVERYTHING to do with Marketshare.
A monopoly is a company that has an overwhelming marketshare or dominance in one particular market. By having a monopoly, you have abilities open to you that you would otherwise not have. For example, if you had a monopoly on oil, you can charge almost any price for gasoline and airline fuel and not have to worry about your customers going to a competitor. They could also put additives into the gasoline so that car makers who didn't make cars the way they wanted them to would break down and make those cars "incompatible" with their gasoline. These are hypotheticals, but the point is that
A monopoly has control over a market and thus breaks the nature of proper competitive capitalism. How can a monopoly have control over something if it doesn't sell something????? And you were modded insightful?
Therefore when a company is declared a monopoly, new rules are applied to them, or they are forced to break up so they become competitive. That is what a monopoly is.
Can Hitler buy stock in your company?
Oh damn, I just ruined the chain.
...now just Firefly and Farscape to go.
I've never seen so many references to Hitler in one Slashdot article, and yet the discussion rages on! Stop breaking this extremely important law before the universe disappears and is replaced by something even more bizzare and inexplicable!!!
Exactly how does one research an article on goatse.cx? I don't mean what resources do you look up, I mean how does one stomach it? And how does one keep that from appearing on their tech writing resume?
"My latest wiki contributions include identifying the person who took the picture for goatse.cx."
If you read the article, the article describes how the lab experiment is simply about people who had to recognize specific colors and shapes. It was easy when someone had to simply declare the color they saw. But it took more time to recognise both the color and shape of an object. The experiment simply measured when you had two factors to worry about, it took more time for your brain to process and respond.
And somehow they take the fantastic leap from a lab experiment involving shapes to cell phone usage in cars? Give me a break! There is a very thin thread which might link those two facts, but again it's thin. The fact that the scientist said that smells of either an over eager or political scientist trying to get their name in the papers.
Not to defend AOL or anything but you are wrong that AOL is the only dead weight in Time-Warner.
I didn't say they AOL was the only dead weight at Time Warner. I said they were the only dead weight I knew of.
The larger a company is, the less it competes on quality and innovation, and the more it competes on price and muscle. Smaller companies are more agile and can change more quickly.
My personal opinion is that Icahn is pushing this for simply financial reasons. Quite simply, Time Warner has money making divisions, and others are dead weight that should jettisoned. By splitting them up, an investor ends up with some kind of stock split amongst the resulting companies. They then sell off the loser stocks and put that money back into the good portions. This would be a great way to kill off AOL once and for all. AOL is the only division I know of that's dead weight, but there could be others. I'm really just guessing here. MY point is that Icahn is doing this for money reasons. It's the only reason why he would, and neither the article nor the submitter make any mention of this, which is extremely short sighted.
However, regardless of the financial motivations, I completely support a break up of any company as large as this, purely because it benefits consumers with competition. Also, while a merger usually ends up in "eliminating redunancies" in jobs, a break up will usually put those "redundancies" back and open up at least a few new jobs to fill.
No brainer really... get the sledgehammers out and start breaking!
One of the biggest things I loved about B5 was that this is the first Sci fi show I could remember in a long time that copious amounts of sarcasm, quips, snide insults, clever philosophy, and unique circumstances. JMS tried to do something new, and that's what sci fi fans want. Your hard core sci fi fan doesn't want what they saw before and they want something edgy with good dialog, good plot, and a healthy dose of snark. Before B5, the snide sarcasm was something left for the last 3 minutes of a Star Trek episode.
Have you noticed just how much snark made it's way into original sci fi series these days? B5 started it. SG1 made it a sci-fi standard. Joss with buffy/firefly turned it into a fine art worthy of hanging in the l'ouvre, if one could hang such things. Even Andromeda, which is an okay sci fi series, still has loads of snark. Snark and sarcasm are the highest forms of humor (I feel) and require intelligence and attention span to get. US TV executives of major networks shoot for the lowest common denominator and these are not traits most Americans have.
Now that was funny :)
Because that is when it will actually be released?
Okay... now taking bets if I get modded Funny or Insightful. Think about it.
Simple, the longer you can play Mario and Zelda on NES, the less you are tempted to play a new version or Mario or Zelda on Super NES, N64, GameCube, or Revolution. If your NES breaks, instead of buying a clone, you have to buy the latest and greatest. If you buy the latest and greatest, quite often you have to buy all new games. That's changing with the revolution which has promised backward compatibility with Gamecube, and PS2 is backward compatible with PS1. But Gamecube isn't anywhere near compatible with NES of course.
Like all technology companies, they are simply protecting their upgrade revenue stream.
The main difference between intelligent design and Religion is that intelligent design is being packaged in a way to pass itself off as science. The vatican admits what religion is, and is perfectly willing to say that Evolution is science. They then say that God gave man science, and established the rules of science, and acknowledge that this belief is creationism. There's a clear line between evolution and creationism there.
Intelligent design is in fact trying to blur those lines so children ask the wrong questions about Evolution. Questioning an established theory is great, as long as you ask the right questions.
This one dispels the myth that the US has absolutely no control over the internet:
One of the most cherished myths of cyberspace is that the Internet is totally decentralized and inherently uncontrollable. Like all myths, this one is based on a bit of truth and a heavy dose of wishful thinking. It is true that compared with the century-old telephone system, the Internet is a paragon of deregulation and decentralization. In four critical areas, however, it requires oversight and coordination in order to operate smoothly. Together, these areas constitute the "domain name system" of addresses, with which users navigate the Internet and send e-mail.
I.E. some tech in the United States is pulling switches and levers and managing and replacing computers to make sure a critical part of the internet works.
Here's a great blurb that refers to ICANN, who it reports to, and the problems it has:
As many developing countries woke to the Internet's importance, it struck them as outrageous that the Internet was essentially run by a nonprofit corporation whose 15-person board of directors was accountable to the attorney general of the state of California and under the authority of the U.S. government. Even the U.S. Congress criticized it, hauling the group into tense hearings regularly.
Basically, ICANN reports to the US government. More proof of who has power over the internet.
And here is what truly scares other countries:
Watching the United States go to war in Iraq despite global opposition, these diplomats saw ICANN as yet another example of American unilateralism. What would prevent Washington, they argued, from one day choosing, say, to knock Iran off the Internet by simply deleting its two-letter moniker, ".ir," from the domain name system? Surely the Internet ought to be managed by the international community rather than a single nation.
I mean c'mon people! This has nothing to do with the grandiose idea that the internet is free to everyone and everything is going along just and any idealistic crap. This is about other countries in the world getting scared shitless that a country which they don't trust. Good old fashioned internation diplomacy of protecting themselves.
And in this case they are protecting themselves from someone who scares them. Our president went to war in Iraq when the majority of the world thought it was a bad idea. And we elected the crackpot! Right now Bush is in South America trying to set up a free trade zone in the americas. The conference has huge protests outside slamming Bush as a whacko and denouncing the conference as something that will hurt south america. Depending on what you think of the conference, it's clear to me those people don't trust Bush.
Our voting process put him in power! The voting system of the US, with whatever flaws you think it has, put him in power! The rest of the world looks at each and every single American and now says "I don't trust Bush, and I don't trust your voting system to put someone into place I can trust." So what are they going to do? They are going to protect their own interests. Just like we claim to have done in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In this post I'm not going to go into the details of why Bush is not trusted, but sufficit to say he isn't. I will say with issues like this and others Bush has the worst foreign policy. With an attitude like this, Bush is basically saying "Fuck you all, I'm not listening." That's what he did in Iraq, and now he's doing it with the internet. Any good diplomat will tell you that you don't do that, even if you have Nuclear Weapons. The fact is we in fact have an even stronger weapon than a nuclear weapon, it's call the internet. It could destroy an economy with just a few lines of code. The world wants that weapon out of American hands.
I'm a US citizen and I'm scared for other countries that this could affect. I do support the idea, from a sympathetic viewpoint, of giving up control of the major points that
As many threads have already noted, the percentages are misleading because Dell's total amount of profit is larger than Apples total profit. Dell's 4th quarter profit for 2005 was 667 million while Apple's was 430 Million.
Okay, Dell's revenue is higher, but it's not that much higher. Also, Dell's profitability is falling while Apple's is rising. Del's profit was 749 million last year. I think it's premature to rub anything in Dell's face but I do think that even thought they are percentages, they are significant. The percentage is even more significant since Dell's revenue and expenses over all are higher than Apple's. This means that they are more severely effected by slimming margins.
The article might be premature, and it's most likely hype, but there is a valid point here, and that is 8 years ago Dell wrote off Apple, and now Apple is trending up, while Dell is trending down.
Making all the "do you want a whole grape or a slick of a watermelon" analogies you want, but If the watermelon slice is dried out and sour, and the grape is perfectly ripe, I'll take the grape. (see I can make analogies too!)