No, we went wrong when we started giving corporations the rights of humans but not the responsibilities nor the treatment of. These corporations have created lobbying entities which have further screwed up the entire system for the common man. Additionally, we put too much power in the hands of the federal government what should be at the state and private level.
We have a legacy infrastructure that has cost a bundle to build (using a lot of public funds) and we ended up giving the keys to a few pseudo individuals and now they are milking everything they can from it. They see much more profit in keeping outdated hardware and providing poor service than moving onto higher quality services and upgrades.
If that was it, they would have died a long time ago, but we also have a generally ignorant user base who thinks their wallet is too big. Additionally we have a political system with only two parties that preach to us that we should smile while getting bent over and taken by the pseudo individuals.
It's no different in the US. If you look at the advertising, AT&T offers less than a quarter of what Comcast offers for basically the same price. Granted there are a LOT of short comings in Comcast, and some benefits to DSL, but those things never show up in the market speak from both. If you just look at what is advertised, you begin to wonder how AT&T's broadband division even exists year to year. Do they get tax credits, are their customers really that lazy or ignorant, is there some secret service that I somehow missed and makes it all better....?
Every once in a while I get calls from my local cable provider and AT&T asking to take up their net phone, landline, or internet. These are my most pleasant marketing calls EVER. I make it very easy for them by basically telling them my situation (Vonage - need to call UK & India, Cell - Family plan, >2Mb/512Kb net, and total price) and ask them to even match the value. It's almost worth my time just to listen to the silence. The smart ones bid me a good day and the rest go back to being drones, to which I say "no" once and hangup. Its not rude to hangup on drones who waste your time.
I know what you mean. To our generation and later, it's feels retarded how ingrained it is in the previous generations not to touch the all powerful computers.
Even our teaching style is geared toward "doing what you are supposed to do or what everyone else does" instead of critical problem solving abilities. We really should be teaching people how to teach themselves. Give the basic toolset and let them "mess around". Its funny how we (and most of the animal kingdom) as a species survived and expanded for centuries on that philosophy, but today the general person is expected to follow step by step instructions to the letter. And all we get in return is a piece of paper that basically says you can follow this particular set of instructions.
People talk about the race to the bottom when it comes to quality and cost, but I think this is the real race to the bottom. We have so much market speak that pretty much says "Better than what you have" but uses all the extreme words available. We have already crossed the most extreme possible in coherent English so now we just invent random definitions.
Predictable enough, society has evolved to just comprehend such things as everyday "commodities" thou we still expect to see those odd words. Sad part is, in a global scale, most things conveying "Better than..." is actually average or lower quality than the rest of the world (ex: broadband, music, sports, cellphones, cars, renewable resources, math & sciences...).
I think a better deal would be to split the discount you get for the phone and the charges for the actual service. Its that simple. On your bill, you get your Phone mortgage and your plan charges.
Then we can discuss further separating the link between the phone and the plan. The phone aspect should be treated like a straight out loan. You pick one of: the monthly payment, interest rate, or duration of loan and the provider picks the other two. Of course you should have a "buy out" option on each statement that tells you how much you need to pay to completely OWN the phone.
THEN we can realistically compare and discuss the discounts that providers give for service contracts. Right now, the system is too hidden and vague. It severely prefers customers who jump providers every 2 years and creates a lot of waste (useless phones). It punishes current and future loyal customers. Customer acquisition is a LOT more expensive than keeping current customers, and the system prefers the former with the later bearing the additional expense burden.
On point one, IF you know what you are doing, then its moot as there are many solutions such as multicore processors, external firewalls, etc. But as the general public doesn't know what "Press any key" means, I concede that point to you.
As for controllers... they used to be great when you could actually assign the buttons. Today, there are a few preset profiles, most of which suck or are useless. I am a southpaw, but not one southpaw profile fits me. I would rather go with the general or legacy profile.
But, my PS3 controller works fine with my PC, and it is completely customizable. I rather like this solution... a standardized controller for a PC.
I will admit that consoles would mostly win out if they weren't so locked down and crippled. I want to use my PS3, maybe not as a full blow PC, but atleast the browser should be good. And why shouldn't I be allowed to play media off a usb HD? Its like having a sports car that can take me to the grocery store, but is locked down to 20mph if I go anywhere else. Its frustrating to say the least.
Milking gamers for them is a matter of people like Activision CEO, not because of the mechanism itself.
Oh I completely agree. I don't blame the developers or scriptwriters at all. The blame rests on the layers of management that has encompassed the core team. Today, games are more about flash and flare than content. Even the term "content" has been changed to mean intellectual property rather than gameplay. Its more about how much a movie or franchise is leveraged than delivering a value added product.
Is... is that where our old school potato chips been going? Cause I would gladly take that back as one of those bags is more satisfying as 10 Pringle cans (that's when I get shortness of breath doing the "One you pop..." song and dance).
Games were ALWAYS shitty on PCs when first released (except before the days of the internet). It was something that gamers were used to. But patches came out quick and fast. By patch 2, it was an awesome game.
Today, consoles have adopted this practice. As I said, today's consoles are basically limited, proprietary, locked down versions of their PC counterparts. The difference, we are still being charged the arm and leg that consoles used to charge for "high quality games". ie: The worst of both worlds.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
That is the origin, but today, they are a totally different beast. In the past, an expansion on the PC was huge, and an expansion equivalent on the console was a totally new game.
Today, even a plot twist becomes a "sequel". And things that developers though were nice, but couldn't make the deadline, are DLCs. Obviously we don't need to discuss the wallet gouging prices.
I look at most of today's game companies and all I see are the kernels of the RIAA, and MPAA hovering over a different format.
EA is a blacklisted company in my book. If I hear EA, I just ignore anything from anywhere about it till the game has come out and at least a month has passed. Then I do a google search for " sucks" and see what the results are. Even if everyone thinks the game is great, I still just rent it.
EA needs to learn to pay its developers and testers like it does its marketing/sales, artists, reviewers, and copyright owners.
From a non-biased GAMER who's still sees both sides, I would say consoles (as an experience) today suck!
Consoles today are basically the worst of the PC world and the worst of the old console world.
Consoles used to be about highly polished games that the developers (not the artists & marketing) put a lot of work into. Now a days with the net connection, most games deliver as betas (like the PCs), and then after 2 updates become... ok. The graphics are better, but the controls, storylines, action, and overall game play has gone down the crapper. We have games that are cross platform on the PSP, Xbox360, and PS3! So those games basically cater to the lowest common denominator of all three and not take advantage of any specifics. Xbox360 ports to the PS3 look like crap (I am looking at you EA)!
The worst of the console world... the price tag. Cause its on a "console," there is a huge upfront price tag. And with the net connection, you get the rest of the game delivered via additional charges! There is also the bombardment of marketing (which I think is the major reason for the price tags) that drone on and on about the latest upcoming game that is either a sequel or must have new concept. Which of course rarely lives up to the hype. Not to mention, we mostly lose that big benefit of consoles... local coop play. With the net, every bloody stupid game wants you to connect to some random 12 year old to play what should be local coop, or a rip off of counterstrike.
All consoles today are: locked down, controlled, 2 year old proprietary hardware... PCs! The only advantage is the massive number of games made for it (cause its a great way to lock in customers).
But just like non-cloud software, the cloud will evolve to be more open. Remember the good old days when every bloody vendor had their own stupid data storage setup for user data, configurations, and upgrades. Over time, some moved toward some sort of standard, many times open standards. Most that didn't either failed, or were too powerful to fail, but are dying a slow death.
The cloud will go through the same evolution. Plus you get other (in theory) advantages like ubiquitous access, perfect redundancy, complete history, unlimited storage, and massive computational power.
The only real negatives are having third parties hold a copy of your data, and net security will always be less than physical security.
I would think vendor lock in would be a small, short term price to pay for the advantages.
That's bending the rules to fit your ends. Everyone does it, but that doesn't mean that its the rules fault. In this case, Apple could have booked the revenue as they had already sold and delivered the product per the original deal struck with the buyer at the time of sale.
Additional upgrades are just that, nothing more or less. You could charge for the additional upgrade/features and only book that additional revenue upon fulfilling the liability (delivery of said product). OR, not charge for the upgrade/feature and not book anything...
The good practice and common sense (this was way before SOX) is you can't assume you gained revenue until you have fulfilled your end of the bargain (earned the cash).
I think the most efficient will be the battery, followed by the compression, and lastly the hydrogen.
In the first, you go direct from electrical to storage to motion. In the later two, you need to do those (for compression via a motor) and additional transformations to get the same work.
SOX isn't a bad thing! If anything, it is a bit watered down. SOX basically makes it a requirement what normal IT and Accounting people consider good practices and common sense. Plus, you only need to be SOX compliant if you are publicly trading on a US exchange. If you don't like it, move your stock to OTC or overseas to London, Hong Kong, and Japan!
Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.
Ummm, since we no longer do that, and pregnancy is a one-to-many male to female relationship, maybe nature is going to make 100 males and 150 females? Or 200?? A guy could hope....
Try out DSL, it won't matter how many of you get on the pipe. I don't like the telco, but value wise, my current trade off is cheaper net (AT&T) or basically uncapped net (Charter). But do ask your telco what the final price on your DSL will be as their advertised price is no where close to what they do charge you.
T-Mobile and the rest are really no different. I was a T-Mobile customer for 4 years (2 year contract). Eventually, I found a new SE that I liked and wanted to upgrade. The discount I got from them was almost 1/2 the discount I would have gotten from switching to _any_ other carrier. I pointed this out, and they didn't care. So I left.
The new guy, AT&T ended up getting 4 new lines via a family plan. After that contract ended, I talked to AT&T about upgrading 2 of the phones... same issue as T-Mobile. So I talked to T-Mobile & Sprint, and even though I was coming to them with 4 phones, _each_ line would have an activation fee, and a minimum of 1 year contract. Only 2 years would give phone discounts (no bill discount).
This whole industry is so messed up. I can't even fathom the amount of money lost just from their stupidity. No to mention, we needed laws to make phones unlockable after the contract, and phone number migration.
Now a full year later, still with AT&T, but no more contracts for me. Looking at Walmart to see if they will atleast shake up the market. But I will most certainly spend the $500-600 to get a unlocked open phone and not get into a contract ever again.
Slashdot Mirror
No, we went wrong when we started giving corporations the rights of humans but not the responsibilities nor the treatment of. These corporations have created lobbying entities which have further screwed up the entire system for the common man. Additionally, we put too much power in the hands of the federal government what should be at the state and private level.
We have a legacy infrastructure that has cost a bundle to build (using a lot of public funds) and we ended up giving the keys to a few pseudo individuals and now they are milking everything they can from it. They see much more profit in keeping outdated hardware and providing poor service than moving onto higher quality services and upgrades.
If that was it, they would have died a long time ago, but we also have a generally ignorant user base who thinks their wallet is too big. Additionally we have a political system with only two parties that preach to us that we should smile while getting bent over and taken by the pseudo individuals.
It's no different in the US. If you look at the advertising, AT&T offers less than a quarter of what Comcast offers for basically the same price. Granted there are a LOT of short comings in Comcast, and some benefits to DSL, but those things never show up in the market speak from both. If you just look at what is advertised, you begin to wonder how AT&T's broadband division even exists year to year. Do they get tax credits, are their customers really that lazy or ignorant, is there some secret service that I somehow missed and makes it all better....?
Every once in a while I get calls from my local cable provider and AT&T asking to take up their net phone, landline, or internet. These are my most pleasant marketing calls EVER. I make it very easy for them by basically telling them my situation (Vonage - need to call UK & India, Cell - Family plan, >2Mb/512Kb net, and total price) and ask them to even match the value. It's almost worth my time just to listen to the silence. The smart ones bid me a good day and the rest go back to being drones, to which I say "no" once and hangup. Its not rude to hangup on drones who waste your time.
I know what you mean. To our generation and later, it's feels retarded how ingrained it is in the previous generations not to touch the all powerful computers.
Even our teaching style is geared toward "doing what you are supposed to do or what everyone else does" instead of critical problem solving abilities. We really should be teaching people how to teach themselves. Give the basic toolset and let them "mess around". Its funny how we (and most of the animal kingdom) as a species survived and expanded for centuries on that philosophy, but today the general person is expected to follow step by step instructions to the letter. And all we get in return is a piece of paper that basically says you can follow this particular set of instructions.
People talk about the race to the bottom when it comes to quality and cost, but I think this is the real race to the bottom. We have so much market speak that pretty much says "Better than what you have" but uses all the extreme words available. We have already crossed the most extreme possible in coherent English so now we just invent random definitions.
Predictable enough, society has evolved to just comprehend such things as everyday "commodities" thou we still expect to see those odd words. Sad part is, in a global scale, most things conveying "Better than..." is actually average or lower quality than the rest of the world (ex: broadband, music, sports, cellphones, cars, renewable resources, math & sciences ...).
And few consultants are thin.
A self proclaimed good PHP programmer... yeah there are about a 100 of those to every 1 that doesn't do that.
I think a better deal would be to split the discount you get for the phone and the charges for the actual service. Its that simple. On your bill, you get your Phone mortgage and your plan charges.
Then we can discuss further separating the link between the phone and the plan. The phone aspect should be treated like a straight out loan. You pick one of: the monthly payment, interest rate, or duration of loan and the provider picks the other two. Of course you should have a "buy out" option on each statement that tells you how much you need to pay to completely OWN the phone.
THEN we can realistically compare and discuss the discounts that providers give for service contracts. Right now, the system is too hidden and vague. It severely prefers customers who jump providers every 2 years and creates a lot of waste (useless phones). It punishes current and future loyal customers. Customer acquisition is a LOT more expensive than keeping current customers, and the system prefers the former with the later bearing the additional expense burden.
On point one, IF you know what you are doing, then its moot as there are many solutions such as multicore processors, external firewalls, etc. But as the general public doesn't know what "Press any key" means, I concede that point to you.
As for controllers... they used to be great when you could actually assign the buttons. Today, there are a few preset profiles, most of which suck or are useless. I am a southpaw, but not one southpaw profile fits me. I would rather go with the general or legacy profile.
But, my PS3 controller works fine with my PC, and it is completely customizable. I rather like this solution... a standardized controller for a PC.
I will admit that consoles would mostly win out if they weren't so locked down and crippled. I want to use my PS3, maybe not as a full blow PC, but atleast the browser should be good. And why shouldn't I be allowed to play media off a usb HD? Its like having a sports car that can take me to the grocery store, but is locked down to 20mph if I go anywhere else. Its frustrating to say the least.
Milking gamers for them is a matter of people like Activision CEO, not because of the mechanism itself.
Oh I completely agree. I don't blame the developers or scriptwriters at all. The blame rests on the layers of management that has encompassed the core team. Today, games are more about flash and flare than content. Even the term "content" has been changed to mean intellectual property rather than gameplay. Its more about how much a movie or franchise is leveraged than delivering a value added product.
Is... is that where our old school potato chips been going? Cause I would gladly take that back as one of those bags is more satisfying as 10 Pringle cans (that's when I get shortness of breath doing the "One you pop..." song and dance).
Games were ALWAYS shitty on PCs when first released (except before the days of the internet). It was something that gamers were used to. But patches came out quick and fast. By patch 2, it was an awesome game.
Today, consoles have adopted this practice. As I said, today's consoles are basically limited, proprietary, locked down versions of their PC counterparts. The difference, we are still being charged the arm and leg that consoles used to charge for "high quality games". ie: The worst of both worlds.
BTW, DLCs came from PCs - they was called expansions in the past.
That is the origin, but today, they are a totally different beast. In the past, an expansion on the PC was huge, and an expansion equivalent on the console was a totally new game.
Today, even a plot twist becomes a "sequel". And things that developers though were nice, but couldn't make the deadline, are DLCs. Obviously we don't need to discuss the wallet gouging prices.
I look at most of today's game companies and all I see are the kernels of the RIAA, and MPAA hovering over a different format.
Yes, we Americans are FAT, we get it! Just leave us, our couches, and potato chips (I mean Pringles) alone already!
EA is a blacklisted company in my book. If I hear EA, I just ignore anything from anywhere about it till the game has come out and at least a month has passed. Then I do a google search for " sucks" and see what the results are. Even if everyone thinks the game is great, I still just rent it.
EA needs to learn to pay its developers and testers like it does its marketing/sales, artists, reviewers, and copyright owners.
From a non-biased GAMER who's still sees both sides, I would say consoles (as an experience) today suck!
Consoles today are basically the worst of the PC world and the worst of the old console world.
Consoles used to be about highly polished games that the developers (not the artists & marketing) put a lot of work into. Now a days with the net connection, most games deliver as betas (like the PCs), and then after 2 updates become... ok. The graphics are better, but the controls, storylines, action, and overall game play has gone down the crapper. We have games that are cross platform on the PSP, Xbox360, and PS3! So those games basically cater to the lowest common denominator of all three and not take advantage of any specifics. Xbox360 ports to the PS3 look like crap (I am looking at you EA)!
The worst of the console world... the price tag. Cause its on a "console," there is a huge upfront price tag. And with the net connection, you get the rest of the game delivered via additional charges! There is also the bombardment of marketing (which I think is the major reason for the price tags) that drone on and on about the latest upcoming game that is either a sequel or must have new concept. Which of course rarely lives up to the hype. Not to mention, we mostly lose that big benefit of consoles... local coop play. With the net, every bloody stupid game wants you to connect to some random 12 year old to play what should be local coop, or a rip off of counterstrike.
All consoles today are: locked down, controlled, 2 year old proprietary hardware... PCs! The only advantage is the massive number of games made for it (cause its a great way to lock in customers).
But just like non-cloud software, the cloud will evolve to be more open. Remember the good old days when every bloody vendor had their own stupid data storage setup for user data, configurations, and upgrades. Over time, some moved toward some sort of standard, many times open standards. Most that didn't either failed, or were too powerful to fail, but are dying a slow death.
The cloud will go through the same evolution. Plus you get other (in theory) advantages like ubiquitous access, perfect redundancy, complete history, unlimited storage, and massive computational power.
The only real negatives are having third parties hold a copy of your data, and net security will always be less than physical security.
I would think vendor lock in would be a small, short term price to pay for the advantages.
That's bending the rules to fit your ends. Everyone does it, but that doesn't mean that its the rules fault. In this case, Apple could have booked the revenue as they had already sold and delivered the product per the original deal struck with the buyer at the time of sale.
Additional upgrades are just that, nothing more or less. You could charge for the additional upgrade/features and only book that additional revenue upon fulfilling the liability (delivery of said product). OR, not charge for the upgrade/feature and not book anything...
The good practice and common sense (this was way before SOX) is you can't assume you gained revenue until you have fulfilled your end of the bargain (earned the cash).
I think the most efficient will be the battery, followed by the compression, and lastly the hydrogen.
In the first, you go direct from electrical to storage to motion. In the later two, you need to do those (for compression via a motor) and additional transformations to get the same work.
Disclaimer: SOX Auditor.
SOX isn't a bad thing! If anything, it is a bit watered down. SOX basically makes it a requirement what normal IT and Accounting people consider good practices and common sense. Plus, you only need to be SOX compliant if you are publicly trading on a US exchange. If you don't like it, move your stock to OTC or overseas to London, Hong Kong, and Japan!
I didnt' RTFA, but:
Normally 106 boys are born for every 100 girls: it is thought to be nature's way of making up for the fact that men were more likely to be killed hunting or in conflict.
Ummm, since we no longer do that, and pregnancy is a one-to-many male to female relationship, maybe nature is going to make 100 males and 150 females? Or 200?? A guy could hope....
Anyone else think the Slashdot IDs were perfectly appropriate for the posts?
Try out DSL, it won't matter how many of you get on the pipe. I don't like the telco, but value wise, my current trade off is cheaper net (AT&T) or basically uncapped net (Charter). But do ask your telco what the final price on your DSL will be as their advertised price is no where close to what they do charge you.
T-Mobile and the rest are really no different. I was a T-Mobile customer for 4 years (2 year contract). Eventually, I found a new SE that I liked and wanted to upgrade. The discount I got from them was almost 1/2 the discount I would have gotten from switching to _any_ other carrier. I pointed this out, and they didn't care. So I left.
The new guy, AT&T ended up getting 4 new lines via a family plan. After that contract ended, I talked to AT&T about upgrading 2 of the phones... same issue as T-Mobile. So I talked to T-Mobile & Sprint, and even though I was coming to them with 4 phones, _each_ line would have an activation fee, and a minimum of 1 year contract. Only 2 years would give phone discounts (no bill discount).
This whole industry is so messed up. I can't even fathom the amount of money lost just from their stupidity. No to mention, we needed laws to make phones unlockable after the contract, and phone number migration.
Now a full year later, still with AT&T, but no more contracts for me. Looking at Walmart to see if they will atleast shake up the market. But I will most certainly spend the $500-600 to get a unlocked open phone and not get into a contract ever again.
You mean he WAS and still is on the pill. It works for women, so...