Think of all the disasters that the research team averted by alerting authorities that a shark was close to the shore! It would have been a blood bath for sure!
You think that is the only Great White shark that is patrolling the East Coast? You think that they have tagged all the Great White sharks that patrols the East Coast? I'm sure many untagged Great White sharks came close to beaches along the East Coast that authorities and beach goers are unaware of.
The majority of murders solved and prevented by Stop and Frisk have been of black victims.
Is there any evidence that Stop and Frisk actually prevented or solved any crimes? I understand that 92% of searches were total misses, which means 8% have hit "something". But somehow I doubt a lot of them were fleeing murderers and not people with unregistered guns or with pot.
Most of those arrested were for small quantities of pot. Surprisingly, very few of those arrested were for illegal guns.
I've always wondered how something can be racist if it is true. I don't know what the percentages in NYC are of people who commit crimes in certain areas and what races those folks tend to be, but if 70% of the crimes in an area are committed by folks of a certain race, whatever that race may be, why does it not make sense to focus your suspicions while policing on people of that race?
What is true? 90% of the people stopped and frisked were innocent. Of the 10% arrested most are for small quantities of marijuana which is not an arrestable offense in NYS but that is a whole other issue. NYC is currently experiencing one of the lowest crime rate in its history, and the lowest of any big city in the U.S.A. in the last 20 years. So, what is the justification for racially targeting young Black and Hispanic males?
What's really sad about this is that the act of frisking anyone without any fact-based suspicion is not considered a violation of the constitution. It's only the racial bias in the ways the stops were performed that makes it illegal.
Laws have to be applied equally to every group. When 87% of the people stopped and frisked are young Black or Hispanic males would suggest that these two groups were singled out and that may be illegal. Not to mention the judge found some of the "stop and frisk" stops were a violation of Federal law.
I'm truly curious about this. Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match? I know this won't work in our current society of government mandated prices for commodities (through subsidies for farmers and such), but in a truly free market society would this not work?
No. If wages goes down it is because supply of wage earners exceeds demand. Purchasing power of the individual may do down but total wages remain the same. Therefore, purchasing power of wage earners as a group remains the same. Since, total wages remain the same prices wouldn't fall. If prices fall then the system is experiencing a period of deflation and that is bad news for everyone.
the only reason they became accepted into the enterprise is because that is what consumers were familiar with
Sorry but you're talking out of your ass. If a "consumer" owned a PC at all at the time that Windows started to make inroads to the enterprise it was either Apple, Atari or Commodore. Windows made inroads because MS-DOS was the defacto standard thanks to IBM and when the GUI was ready for primetime Microsoft was already embedded in the culture. Whoever modded you up doesn't know jack about computing in the enterprise. It's kind of pathetic when you stop to think of it.
But now that model is going to rot from the ground up, at least three other major players have good inroads to eat Microsoft's lunch.
It's going to rot? Really? Show me where MS's domination on a production platform is threated. Do you honestly think that people using Android phones and iPads are a threat to full functioning computers that aren't just running a bunch of small apps? Please. And Windows will still be the largest marketshare (by far) for the home user who still decides to support a PC into the next decade.
Windows 8 marks the beginning of the fall of Microsoft.
I seem to recall hearing the same thing around here when Windows ME was about a year old too. Lo and behold, the next release from MS made Microsoft more money and embedded them further into the end user culture more than any other product ever has.
When Windows ME debut there were no practical alternatives to to the Windows platform. We don't know to what extent Windows ME failure played into customers generally negative view of the company's products and product quality. I would bet it played a big part. Perhaps, Microsoft current problems started with Windows ME failure where customers realize that Microsoft product quality can be terrible bad. Android operation system is projected to run on more devices than Windows (mobile, desktop, laptop) by 2017. Currently, Android is the world's most popular operation system; however, windows runs on more devices which will change by 2017. And to answer your question. Yes, Android and iOS powered devices are a serious threat to your so called "full functioning computers". What do you think is the purpose of Windows 8? You haven't been paying attention.
Yahoo went dead the moment they appointed a clueless Hollywood hack Terry Semel as CEO. He should not be hired to run even a grocery store. Then they acquired broadcast.com (I still don't know what the hell that website/service performed) which made a few insiders insanely rich. The new acquisition of the news reading app by Marissa Mayer shows the old culture is still intact. Jerry Yang and David Filo are overrated...they are not Sergey Brin or Larry Page.
(Generally people are aware of public sector corruption, but private sector all over the world is equally corrupt.)
Marissa Mayer made a huge miscalculation by taking the Yahoo CEO position. This is like Sarah Palin running against Obama. Palin is clever. Marissa Mayer is not.
She absolutely did the right thing by becoming Yahoo's CEO. It's not like CEO positions for Fortune 500 companies open up every day and Yahoo is still one of the most recognized brands on the planet. So, when you get an opportunity to be a Fortune 500 CEO you take it, especially considering she had reached the ceiling at Google.
That also means that Eric Schmidt is full of crap. I don't know what his agenda is, but the government is already monopolizing the use of drones everywhere that's not private property or very low, so there is no need to further regulate "civilian" use of them.
His agenda is he wants to prevent paparazzi and other civilians from being able spy on their targets from above. Can you imagine, you are a famous person getting it on with a groupie in your pool within your secluded property and unknown to you paparazzi is filming it all from above. I don't blame Eric Schmidt for his position on this one. It's a privacy issue.
They have to. Because they cannot rule out that someone crazy/stupid enough to bring a bomb on a plane would not also be crazy/stupid enough to brag about it.
And it also serves to discourage such jokes that make the other passengers uncomfortable. Because you are, literally, joking about killing them.
Absolutely. A lot of burglars brag at barrooms where anyone can overhear.
But do they brag in the checkout line of the store they plan on robbing?
Probably not but passengers saying they have a bomb may be mentally unstable and warrants further investigation to determine if they pose a threat to the airline or other passengers. Simply dismissing "I have a bomb threat" made by passengers would be grossly irresponsible and may even be criminal negligent if the passenger hurts other passengers.
I think the down payment option is a good deal. However not everybody agrees, and I think the reason why is kind of stupid.
Techcrunch basically attacks t-mobile over this one because if you want to change carriers, you're still stuck with a $600 (or whatever) phone, as opposed to a $350 early termination fee.
I'm wondering if they have a bone to pick with t-mobile, because a few hours ago slashdot posted an article from them about how t-mobile UK are scamming customers with premium SMS.
The only possible way I could see the light in this statement would be if you could bring that phone to any of the other major carriers. Sadly, as far as major carriers, your only other option is AT&T. Though you can get some pretty good deals with the MVNO's, their coverage isn't as good. Personally I'd prefer to just own the phone than be in a contract.
They are being dishonest. The termination fee partially recoups the unpaid portion of the customer's phone. The cost of early termination is more than $350 when the down payment for the phone is factored in. For example, the typical smart phone cost the customer $200 out of pocket plus a two year contract. If the customer breaks their contract their total cost would be $200 that they paid for the phone + $350 early termination fee = $550. So, the cost to the customer is the same under both scenarios. Also, the Nexus 4 costs $299 and $350; so, in many situations the cost to the customer is no more than the termination fee of all the major carriers.
Unless this is baseless hype, but still, I'm seeing a lot about this one OS.
I understand operators not wanting to be beholden to an iOS-Android duopoly, but why pick Firefox as the 3rd player ? Are there no other reasonnably OSS, reasonably good, more proven mobile OSes ? MS, RIM, Bada are proprietary, but what about Meego, Tizen, even Ubuntu ? Why not just fork Android ?
Why fork Android? What's the point in reinventing the wheel. Ubuntu for phones is not available as yet but Firefox is. Firefox OS is going in a different direction than Android, iOS, Windows 8, Ubuntu, etc and may provide a unique experience for users.
But Amazon is selling books at prices across the board that are unprofitable and accusing anyone charging higher prices of gouging. They are actively trying to destroy other distributors and bring publishers under their thumb. This is going to hurt consumers in the long run because destroying publishers and distributors ability to make a profit will result in fewer books getting published. Consumers will have fewer books to choose from and fewer venues in which to shop for them.
I'm absolutely amazed that folks here on Slashdot who claim to value freedom, etc, are actually cheering Amazon's attempt to build a monopoly. Has everyone's hatred for Apple really blinded them that much to what's going on here?
Consumers were hurt when Apple colluded with publishers to raised prices for ebooks. The wrong solution is to form a cartel between Apple and publishers.
For casual use, content consumption, sure. It fills the same niche as those netbooks of a few years ago, and tablets (for the most part) now. But for content creation, they need apps that are currently only ported to Winders and OSX. So, will Chrome OS be a threat to Winders? Don't ask me, ask the developers. I couldn't possibly care less what OS the device is running. I'm only concerned about what I can do with it.
Why does Chromebook need apps that are currently only available on Windows or OSX? The average person creates virtually all their content using a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software. You can add video creation for the purpose of uploading to social networks to the list. The average person can do all of those things with Chromebook. Also, Chrome market has applications for small business or personal use in accounting, finance, ERP, SaaS, business tools, education, utilities, etc with more productivity apps added frequently. Granted, Chrome doesn't have the rich and diverse ecosystem as Windows, but the apps available to Chromebook market meets the need of the average user.
Find a company with a PE of ~11.5 that doesn't have negative earnings.
I am sorry, maybe my math is fuzzy but a stock with negative earnings will have a negative PE. After all, PE ratio measures stock price divided by earnings per share. So, if earnings are negative (the company is losing money) then the PE will be negative. So, a company that has a positive PE ratio will always have positive earnings. Most financial analysts will say that a company whose PE ratio is around 11.5 is a buy opportunity because the stock is undervalued. The logic being that a low P/E ratio of 11.5 means that an investor has to pay 11.5 dollars to get 1 dollar in earnings by the company. In comparison, a high P/E of 55 means that an investor has to pay $55 for every $1 the company earns.
Modern supply chain systems make extensive use of EDI and ERP systems. When you are Apple, and you really want to make sure you have sufficient capacity to supply your product, you tool up two suppliers to supply the full volume of your sales. As such, the EDI system says that in 6 months you will ship 32 million units x 2 suppliers = 65 million units.
At the 3 month mark, both suppliers are fully tooled up. As such, you cut the 3 month advance planning order to 16 million units x 2 suppliers = 32 million units. This should be close to actual sales. This is done, because the automated ERP systems will actually build 65 million phones, unless someone tells them to stop.
Crazy numbers like this happen all the time in some industries. 6 month = 2 million units/month. 3 month = 1 million/month. 1 month = 1.5 million/month. 2 week = 0.5 million/week. 1 day = 0.2 million/day. The numbers can be all over the place. Sometimes, the suppliers have no idea how many parts will be shipping the next day.
What you describe is counter to what an ERP system is supposed to do. If suppliers have no idea how many parts will ship the next day then those suppliers have poorly implemented ERP systems and supply chains. Apple has a sophisticated and nimble supply chain. Tim Cook (Apple's CEO) is a Operations Management guru who bragged that Apple's mastery of their supply chain is key to success. Apple practices lean manufacturing meaning they produce just enough to meet demand. So, Apple will not order 65 million units of any product unless they intend to sell 65 million units. Apple has cut their demand for iPhone 5 screens by half. Why is that? I suspect that Apple's supply chain is experiencing a bullwhip effect due to an overly opportunistic demand forecasting for the iPhone5.
Beer tastes better from a can, by a lot. The seal of the metal cap on a glass bottle is inferior to the metal-on-metal seal of a can. So, in addition to less UV radiation (fluorescent lights, Sun) reaching the isomerized hop alpha acids through the glass of a bottle, a metal can just plain ol' keeps more oxygen out. And that helps keep your beer fresh. Don't just take my word for it, though!.. Try a blind can-vs-bottle test, of the exact same beers, for yourself. It's really interesting.
Actually, my experience is the opposite. I stopped drinking canned beer in favor of bottle beer because I find can beer has a metallic taste. UV radiation doesn't penetrate brown bottles so if you beer is in a brown bottle there shouldn't be a problem. Now. beer in clear or green bottles may be affected by light.
What are you willing to pay? I personally buy books from Amazon all the time for Kindle, even though I have a Nexus 7 now. Amazon offers the best prices out of everyone I've checked.
Ideally, I'd pay around $6 or so, which is what I typically pay for a used book to be delivered to my door. (and I usually pay $4 - $6 on Smashwords or Baen)
Here's an example of pricing that makes no sense (assuming free Amazon Prime shipping)
The Amateur - $16.99 hardcover, $9.99 eBook, $6.99 paperback, $6.88 used
Even moving off the bestseller list and going to an older book doesn't help
Why is the paperback priced lower than the Kindle? I paid $100 for an eReader and publishers want me to pay more for the privilege of reducing their distribution costs?
It does go the other way sometimes too -- usually (but not always), the eBook is cheaper than the hardcover, but more often than not, the eBook seems to be priced more than the paperback, and is almost always more than a used book.
Publishers are setting their prices to what the market will bear. Publishers believe (correctly) that consumers are willing to pay a premium for the convenience of ebooks. In your example, the ebook costs $9.99 and the paperback cost $7.19, the difference of $2.80 is the premium consumers are willing to pay for the convenience of having the ebook in comparison to the physical book.
Sure, but understand it costs about $1 to print your average book these days in quantities that book publishers are interested in. If you want to print 10 copies of your book that is a different matter - the publisher isn't interested in any book they aren't going to print at least 100,000 of unless it is a smallish tech book publisher.
Shipping? Sure, but it costs about $0.25 to ship a book in a box with other books in the box.
Bookstore margin? Yes, but I am guessing that Amazon, Apple or whomever wants that margin. They might take a bit of a cut, but it isn't going away completely.
I can see a savings of $1.25 a book here. Maybe if you stretched it you could sequeeze out $2 a book..
In 2009 printing costs for the industry were about 10% of book prices. Shipping, warehousing and packaging costs were about 10% for large publishers and between 40% to 60% for small and self publishers. So, cost reductions of book distribution ranges from 20% for large publishers to anywhere between 50% to 70% for small and self publishers. There is also book retailing costs. For example, retailers such as Barnes & Noble have warehouse, inventory, shrinkage and other overhead costs associate with physical books. Also, there are production inefficiencies associated with physical books. For example, 100,000 books ordered but only 60,000 actually sold. So, at the very least ebooks should be 20% less than the equivalent physical books. Anyone thinking that at most $2 should be shaved off the price of ebooks hasn't really looked at the cost breakdown of book publishing and distribution.
Many here presume Flash will go away. This is sort of like saying Linux will become popular, people here do not understand why people use software, they use software because it works well. Adobe has great tools that work well and just expecting people to stop using them when there are no alternatives or the alternatives are inferior is absurd.
They may not want to stop using Flash, but they will, unless they want to write off essentially all portable devices. Steve Jobs signed Flash's death warrant when he refused to support it on iOS. How many businesses will want to pay for a website that doesn't work on iPhones or iPads?
As of May 25, 2012 mobile devices account for 20% of WEB traffic. CISCO has projected that IP traffic from wireless devices (mobile devices) will exceed traffic from wired devices (desktop computers). CISCO projected by 2016 IP wireless/mobile devices will account for 61% of IP traffic and wired devices will account for 39% of IP traffic. I agree with you that developers may not want to quit using Flash but market forces will push them away from Flash.
I've looked at putting solar panels on my house, and it will cost $30K after tax breaks and credits. The life span of a solar panel is 15-20 years with a denigration of efficiency of about 25% over that period. Then they will have to be replaced again. The payback period is roughly 10-12 years, so I'd come out ahead, but I have to make a significant capital purchase and live in the house for over a decade. What happens if I get a new job that requires me to move next year? The $30K investment in the house doesn't raise it's value that amount. For this to work, the payback period will have to drop to 5-6 years, and solar panels will have to be considered a viable option. Geo-thermal heat pumps, vertical wind turbines, efficient appliances, zone cooling and heating, tankless water heaters and (to channel Jimmy Carter) sweaters have more reasonable payback.
How do you know that the $30,000 solar power investment doesn't raise the value of the house by $30,000? Every indication that I have seen suggests the house value will raise by the investment (slightly more because of interest paid on the investment). However, the value will decrease over time because of depreciation. For example, the solar panels cost $30,000 and lasts for 20 years so every year the investment lose $1,500 in value. So, when the solar panels are new your house will be worth x + $30,000. If you sell the house after 8 years the value of the solar panels are worth $18,000. For simplicity let's assume your house didn't increase in value or lose value, the value of your house would be x + $18,000. In other words, you will tack on the book value of the solar panels to the selling price of your house.
Slashdot Mirror
Think of all the disasters that the research team averted by alerting authorities that a shark was close to the shore! It would have been a blood bath for sure!
You think that is the only Great White shark that is patrolling the East Coast? You think that they have tagged all the Great White sharks that patrols the East Coast? I'm sure many untagged Great White sharks came close to beaches along the East Coast that authorities and beach goers are unaware of.
The majority of murders solved and prevented by Stop and Frisk have been of black victims.
Is there any evidence that Stop and Frisk actually prevented or solved any crimes? I understand that 92% of searches were total misses, which means 8% have hit "something". But somehow I doubt a lot of them were fleeing murderers and not people with unregistered guns or with pot.
Most of those arrested were for small quantities of pot. Surprisingly, very few of those arrested were for illegal guns.
I've always wondered how something can be racist if it is true. I don't know what the percentages in NYC are of people who commit crimes in certain areas and what races those folks tend to be, but if 70% of the crimes in an area are committed by folks of a certain race, whatever that race may be, why does it not make sense to focus your suspicions while policing on people of that race?
What is true? 90% of the people stopped and frisked were innocent. Of the 10% arrested most are for small quantities of marijuana which is not an arrestable offense in NYS but that is a whole other issue. NYC is currently experiencing one of the lowest crime rate in its history, and the lowest of any big city in the U.S.A. in the last 20 years. So, what is the justification for racially targeting young Black and Hispanic males?
What's really sad about this is that the act of frisking anyone without any fact-based suspicion is not considered a violation of the constitution. It's only the racial bias in the ways the stops were performed that makes it illegal.
Laws have to be applied equally to every group. When 87% of the people stopped and frisked are young Black or Hispanic males would suggest that these two groups were singled out and that may be illegal. Not to mention the judge found some of the "stop and frisk" stops were a violation of Federal law.
Surface was never meant to compete with the iPad. It's more like a laptop/tablet hybrid.
Microsoft is currently running ads comparing Surface to iPad; so, I would guess that Microsoft absolutely intended for Surface to compete with iPads.
The fact that the Navy blasted XBONE ( http://www.navytimes.com/article/20130614/OFFDUTY02/306140030 ) is probably the biggest reason Microsoft took such a drastic 180, not us regular consumers.
I am hearing that the XBox One pre-orders are dismal and that is the real reason for the about face by Microsoft.
I'm in my early 30's with better than 20/20 vision. I know that won't hold out forever, but I've never needed glasses. Why would I want to wear these?
If you have to ask then you are not in the target group.
I'm truly curious about this. Don't the laws of supply and demand state that if the overall wage goes down, purchasing power goes down, and then prices must fall to match? I know this won't work in our current society of government mandated prices for commodities (through subsidies for farmers and such), but in a truly free market society would this not work?
No. If wages goes down it is because supply of wage earners exceeds demand. Purchasing power of the individual may do down but total wages remain the same. Therefore, purchasing power of wage earners as a group remains the same. Since, total wages remain the same prices wouldn't fall. If prices fall then the system is experiencing a period of deflation and that is bad news for everyone.
the only reason they became accepted into the enterprise is because that is what consumers were familiar with Sorry but you're talking out of your ass. If a "consumer" owned a PC at all at the time that Windows started to make inroads to the enterprise it was either Apple, Atari or Commodore. Windows made inroads because MS-DOS was the defacto standard thanks to IBM and when the GUI was ready for primetime Microsoft was already embedded in the culture. Whoever modded you up doesn't know jack about computing in the enterprise. It's kind of pathetic when you stop to think of it. But now that model is going to rot from the ground up, at least three other major players have good inroads to eat Microsoft's lunch. It's going to rot? Really? Show me where MS's domination on a production platform is threated. Do you honestly think that people using Android phones and iPads are a threat to full functioning computers that aren't just running a bunch of small apps? Please. And Windows will still be the largest marketshare (by far) for the home user who still decides to support a PC into the next decade. Windows 8 marks the beginning of the fall of Microsoft. I seem to recall hearing the same thing around here when Windows ME was about a year old too. Lo and behold, the next release from MS made Microsoft more money and embedded them further into the end user culture more than any other product ever has.
When Windows ME debut there were no practical alternatives to to the Windows platform. We don't know to what extent Windows ME failure played into customers generally negative view of the company's products and product quality. I would bet it played a big part. Perhaps, Microsoft current problems started with Windows ME failure where customers realize that Microsoft product quality can be terrible bad. Android operation system is projected to run on more devices than Windows (mobile, desktop, laptop) by 2017. Currently, Android is the world's most popular operation system; however, windows runs on more devices which will change by 2017. And to answer your question. Yes, Android and iOS powered devices are a serious threat to your so called "full functioning computers". What do you think is the purpose of Windows 8? You haven't been paying attention.
Yahoo went dead the moment they appointed a clueless Hollywood hack Terry Semel as CEO. He should not be hired to run even a grocery store. Then they acquired broadcast.com (I still don't know what the hell that website/service performed) which made a few insiders insanely rich. The new acquisition of the news reading app by Marissa Mayer shows the old culture is still intact. Jerry Yang and David Filo are overrated...they are not Sergey Brin or Larry Page. (Generally people are aware of public sector corruption, but private sector all over the world is equally corrupt.) Marissa Mayer made a huge miscalculation by taking the Yahoo CEO position. This is like Sarah Palin running against Obama. Palin is clever. Marissa Mayer is not.
She absolutely did the right thing by becoming Yahoo's CEO. It's not like CEO positions for Fortune 500 companies open up every day and Yahoo is still one of the most recognized brands on the planet. So, when you get an opportunity to be a Fortune 500 CEO you take it, especially considering she had reached the ceiling at Google.
That also means that Eric Schmidt is full of crap. I don't know what his agenda is, but the government is already monopolizing the use of drones everywhere that's not private property or very low, so there is no need to further regulate "civilian" use of them.
His agenda is he wants to prevent paparazzi and other civilians from being able spy on their targets from above. Can you imagine, you are a famous person getting it on with a groupie in your pool within your secluded property and unknown to you paparazzi is filming it all from above. I don't blame Eric Schmidt for his position on this one. It's a privacy issue.
They have to. Because they cannot rule out that someone crazy/stupid enough to bring a bomb on a plane would not also be crazy/stupid enough to brag about it.
And it also serves to discourage such jokes that make the other passengers uncomfortable. Because you are, literally, joking about killing them.
Absolutely. A lot of burglars brag at barrooms where anyone can overhear.
But do they brag in the checkout line of the store they plan on robbing?
Probably not but passengers saying they have a bomb may be mentally unstable and warrants further investigation to determine if they pose a threat to the airline or other passengers. Simply dismissing "I have a bomb threat" made by passengers would be grossly irresponsible and may even be criminal negligent if the passenger hurts other passengers.
I think the down payment option is a good deal. However not everybody agrees, and I think the reason why is kind of stupid.
Techcrunch basically attacks t-mobile over this one because if you want to change carriers, you're still stuck with a $600 (or whatever) phone, as opposed to a $350 early termination fee.
http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/26/t-mobiles-uncarrier-pricing-isnt-so-different-from-the-contract-devil-you-already-know/
I'm wondering if they have a bone to pick with t-mobile, because a few hours ago slashdot posted an article from them about how t-mobile UK are scamming customers with premium SMS.
The only possible way I could see the light in this statement would be if you could bring that phone to any of the other major carriers. Sadly, as far as major carriers, your only other option is AT&T. Though you can get some pretty good deals with the MVNO's, their coverage isn't as good. Personally I'd prefer to just own the phone than be in a contract.
They are being dishonest. The termination fee partially recoups the unpaid portion of the customer's phone. The cost of early termination is more than $350 when the down payment for the phone is factored in. For example, the typical smart phone cost the customer $200 out of pocket plus a two year contract. If the customer breaks their contract their total cost would be $200 that they paid for the phone + $350 early termination fee = $550. So, the cost to the customer is the same under both scenarios. Also, the Nexus 4 costs $299 and $350; so, in many situations the cost to the customer is no more than the termination fee of all the major carriers.
Unless this is baseless hype, but still, I'm seeing a lot about this one OS.
I understand operators not wanting to be beholden to an iOS-Android duopoly, but why pick Firefox as the 3rd player ? Are there no other reasonnably OSS, reasonably good, more proven mobile OSes ? MS, RIM, Bada are proprietary, but what about Meego, Tizen, even Ubuntu ? Why not just fork Android ?
Why fork Android? What's the point in reinventing the wheel. Ubuntu for phones is not available as yet but Firefox is. Firefox OS is going in a different direction than Android, iOS, Windows 8, Ubuntu, etc and may provide a unique experience for users.
But Amazon is selling books at prices across the board that are unprofitable and accusing anyone charging higher prices of gouging. They are actively trying to destroy other distributors and bring publishers under their thumb. This is going to hurt consumers in the long run because destroying publishers and distributors ability to make a profit will result in fewer books getting published. Consumers will have fewer books to choose from and fewer venues in which to shop for them.
I'm absolutely amazed that folks here on Slashdot who claim to value freedom, etc, are actually cheering Amazon's attempt to build a monopoly. Has everyone's hatred for Apple really blinded them that much to what's going on here?
Consumers were hurt when Apple colluded with publishers to raised prices for ebooks. The wrong solution is to form a cartel between Apple and publishers.
For casual use, content consumption, sure. It fills the same niche as those netbooks of a few years ago, and tablets (for the most part) now. But for content creation, they need apps that are currently only ported to Winders and OSX. So, will Chrome OS be a threat to Winders? Don't ask me, ask the developers. I couldn't possibly care less what OS the device is running. I'm only concerned about what I can do with it.
Why does Chromebook need apps that are currently only available on Windows or OSX? The average person creates virtually all their content using a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation software. You can add video creation for the purpose of uploading to social networks to the list. The average person can do all of those things with Chromebook. Also, Chrome market has applications for small business or personal use in accounting, finance, ERP, SaaS, business tools, education, utilities, etc with more productivity apps added frequently. Granted, Chrome doesn't have the rich and diverse ecosystem as Windows, but the apps available to Chromebook market meets the need of the average user.
Find a company with a PE of ~11.5 that doesn't have negative earnings.
I am sorry, maybe my math is fuzzy but a stock with negative earnings will have a negative PE. After all, PE ratio measures stock price divided by earnings per share. So, if earnings are negative (the company is losing money) then the PE will be negative. So, a company that has a positive PE ratio will always have positive earnings. Most financial analysts will say that a company whose PE ratio is around 11.5 is a buy opportunity because the stock is undervalued. The logic being that a low P/E ratio of 11.5 means that an investor has to pay 11.5 dollars to get 1 dollar in earnings by the company. In comparison, a high P/E of 55 means that an investor has to pay $55 for every $1 the company earns.
Modern supply chain systems make extensive use of EDI and ERP systems. When you are Apple, and you really want to make sure you have sufficient capacity to supply your product, you tool up two suppliers to supply the full volume of your sales. As such, the EDI system says that in 6 months you will ship 32 million units x 2 suppliers = 65 million units.
At the 3 month mark, both suppliers are fully tooled up. As such, you cut the 3 month advance planning order to 16 million units x 2 suppliers = 32 million units. This should be close to actual sales. This is done, because the automated ERP systems will actually build 65 million phones, unless someone tells them to stop.
Crazy numbers like this happen all the time in some industries. 6 month = 2 million units/month. 3 month = 1 million/month. 1 month = 1.5 million/month. 2 week = 0.5 million/week. 1 day = 0.2 million/day. The numbers can be all over the place. Sometimes, the suppliers have no idea how many parts will be shipping the next day.
What you describe is counter to what an ERP system is supposed to do. If suppliers have no idea how many parts will ship the next day then those suppliers have poorly implemented ERP systems and supply chains. Apple has a sophisticated and nimble supply chain. Tim Cook (Apple's CEO) is a Operations Management guru who bragged that Apple's mastery of their supply chain is key to success. Apple practices lean manufacturing meaning they produce just enough to meet demand. So, Apple will not order 65 million units of any product unless they intend to sell 65 million units. Apple has cut their demand for iPhone 5 screens by half. Why is that? I suspect that Apple's supply chain is experiencing a bullwhip effect due to an overly opportunistic demand forecasting for the iPhone5.
Wasn't Motorola the company that picked up one of the lead developers of CyanogenMod a year or so ago?
No, that was Samsung.
Sorry, but no. Canned beer is worse than bottled beer is worse than tap beer.
I absolutely agree with you.
Beer tastes better from a can, by a lot. The seal of the metal cap on a glass bottle is inferior to the metal-on-metal seal of a can. So, in addition to less UV radiation (fluorescent lights, Sun) reaching the isomerized hop alpha acids through the glass of a bottle, a metal can just plain ol' keeps more oxygen out. And that helps keep your beer fresh. Don't just take my word for it, though!.. Try a blind can-vs-bottle test, of the exact same beers, for yourself. It's really interesting.
Actually, my experience is the opposite. I stopped drinking canned beer in favor of bottle beer because I find can beer has a metallic taste. UV radiation doesn't penetrate brown bottles so if you beer is in a brown bottle there shouldn't be a problem. Now. beer in clear or green bottles may be affected by light.
What are you willing to pay? I personally buy books from Amazon all the time for Kindle, even though I have a Nexus 7 now. Amazon offers the best prices out of everyone I've checked.
Ideally, I'd pay around $6 or so, which is what I typically pay for a used book to be delivered to my door. (and I usually pay $4 - $6 on Smashwords or Baen)
Here's an example of pricing that makes no sense (assuming free Amazon Prime shipping)
The Amateur - $16.99 hardcover, $9.99 eBook, $6.99 paperback, $6.88 used
Even moving off the bestseller list and going to an older book doesn't help
Fahrenheit 451 - $13.78 hardcover, $9.99 eBook, $7.19 paperback, $6.88 used
Why is the paperback priced lower than the Kindle? I paid $100 for an eReader and publishers want me to pay more for the privilege of reducing their distribution costs?
It does go the other way sometimes too -- usually (but not always), the eBook is cheaper than the hardcover, but more often than not, the eBook seems to be priced more than the paperback, and is almost always more than a used book.
Publishers are setting their prices to what the market will bear. Publishers believe (correctly) that consumers are willing to pay a premium for the convenience of ebooks. In your example, the ebook costs $9.99 and the paperback cost $7.19, the difference of $2.80 is the premium consumers are willing to pay for the convenience of having the ebook in comparison to the physical book.
Sure, but understand it costs about $1 to print your average book these days in quantities that book publishers are interested in. If you want to print 10 copies of your book that is a different matter - the publisher isn't interested in any book they aren't going to print at least 100,000 of unless it is a smallish tech book publisher.
Shipping? Sure, but it costs about $0.25 to ship a book in a box with other books in the box.
Bookstore margin? Yes, but I am guessing that Amazon, Apple or whomever wants that margin. They might take a bit of a cut, but it isn't going away completely.
I can see a savings of $1.25 a book here. Maybe if you stretched it you could sequeeze out $2 a book. .
In 2009 printing costs for the industry were about 10% of book prices. Shipping, warehousing and packaging costs were about 10% for large publishers and between 40% to 60% for small and self publishers. So, cost reductions of book distribution ranges from 20% for large publishers to anywhere between 50% to 70% for small and self publishers. There is also book retailing costs. For example, retailers such as Barnes & Noble have warehouse, inventory, shrinkage and other overhead costs associate with physical books. Also, there are production inefficiencies associated with physical books. For example, 100,000 books ordered but only 60,000 actually sold. So, at the very least ebooks should be 20% less than the equivalent physical books. Anyone thinking that at most $2 should be shaved off the price of ebooks hasn't really looked at the cost breakdown of book publishing and distribution.
Many here presume Flash will go away. This is sort of like saying Linux will become popular, people here do not understand why people use software, they use software because it works well. Adobe has great tools that work well and just expecting people to stop using them when there are no alternatives or the alternatives are inferior is absurd.
They may not want to stop using Flash, but they will, unless they want to write off essentially all portable devices. Steve Jobs signed Flash's death warrant when he refused to support it on iOS. How many businesses will want to pay for a website that doesn't work on iPhones or iPads?
As of May 25, 2012 mobile devices account for 20% of WEB traffic. CISCO has projected that IP traffic from wireless devices (mobile devices) will exceed traffic from wired devices (desktop computers). CISCO projected by 2016 IP wireless/mobile devices will account for 61% of IP traffic and wired devices will account for 39% of IP traffic. I agree with you that developers may not want to quit using Flash but market forces will push them away from Flash.
I've looked at putting solar panels on my house, and it will cost $30K after tax breaks and credits. The life span of a solar panel is 15-20 years with a denigration of efficiency of about 25% over that period. Then they will have to be replaced again. The payback period is roughly 10-12 years, so I'd come out ahead, but I have to make a significant capital purchase and live in the house for over a decade. What happens if I get a new job that requires me to move next year? The $30K investment in the house doesn't raise it's value that amount. For this to work, the payback period will have to drop to 5-6 years, and solar panels will have to be considered a viable option. Geo-thermal heat pumps, vertical wind turbines, efficient appliances, zone cooling and heating, tankless water heaters and (to channel Jimmy Carter) sweaters have more reasonable payback.
How do you know that the $30,000 solar power investment doesn't raise the value of the house by $30,000? Every indication that I have seen suggests the house value will raise by the investment (slightly more because of interest paid on the investment). However, the value will decrease over time because of depreciation. For example, the solar panels cost $30,000 and lasts for 20 years so every year the investment lose $1,500 in value. So, when the solar panels are new your house will be worth x + $30,000. If you sell the house after 8 years the value of the solar panels are worth $18,000. For simplicity let's assume your house didn't increase in value or lose value, the value of your house would be x + $18,000. In other words, you will tack on the book value of the solar panels to the selling price of your house.