I know people wanted to slam Microsoft on everything about Xbox One, but I never suspected that it wouldn't work without Kinect attached. I throw this clearly into the FUD category. I think Microsoft was clarifying that idiots assumed it needed Kinect to work, not reversing a decision that it would require Kinect to work.
There is no reason for a light bulb to be connected to the internet, this proves it. If you are too stupid or lazy to be able to turn on/off your own lights using a mechanical switch you deserve getting the "blackout of shame".
It took hundreds of millions of years to decaying plant and animal life to produce the fuel humans have used up in a little over a century. All the CO2 that was trapped over hundreds of millions of years has been released in just one century.
Biofuel is not the remedy. There is no NATURAL way to replace the reserve of fuels created after hundreds of millions of years. Our fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are UNNATURAL. To believe there is some cheap way to naturally produce fuel from some miracle crop or organism is fundamentally retarded.
I mean really think hard about this! Fossil Fuel came from nature but it took millions of years to accumulate and a little over a century to burn through. It took hundreds of millions of years of planet wide "crops" to make enough fuel for 100 years. How can anyone think that a yearly or semi-yearly crop harvest is going to make enough fuel to power a planet?
We should be looking at some kind of artificial photosynthesis as the solution. We need a solution that can remove waste CO2 from the air and turn it back into fuel. It would be awesome to create an equilibrium where the CO2 we emitted is then trapped and turned back into fuel, using solar and wind energy. PLanting "natural" crops is not even a sane solution because planting, harvesting and processing crops only produces more CO2 so we still put more into the air then what the crops can take out.
I think we need to find a way of creating a "reverse" factory which can scrub waste CO2 out of the air and turn it back into fuel. A few acres of factory producing fuel like this would prevent millions of acres of land wasted producing crops and also be the first human invention that has a "negative" carbon footprint.
But, two things against artificial photosynthesis, its not cheap to develop AND cannot be monopolized. Greedy corporations will not invest money into a solution that could ultimately be used in your own backyard to power your own car and home. Crops can be monopolized, air can't.
"a diffuse mess, with a density that is ridiculously low, to the point where detecting its local effects is likely to remain... challenging for the foreseeable future"
In other word something irrelevant we can safely ignore and not invest any more money or resources into.
I think leadership is one of those bullshit HR myths that they believe they need in every candidate.
Its the same HR myth as needing a developer that has 10 years experience in C#, Java, C and Python. I mean would you actually want a job that required that haphazard collection of skills? No, so why do HR staff love throwing in every language they have ever heard of as a job requirement?.
You can't have a team full of leaders, nothing will get accomplished.
If you are looking for a team lead position, then look for a leader. If looking for a strong developer look at years of demonstrated experience and forget about bullshit buzzwords and HR myths.
And there is nothing wrong with being a "follower" in so much as assuming if you are not a leader you must be a follower. There are definitely different levels of participation of the non-leaders in a team. I don't just do what I am told or feel I have no impact on the decisions made. If I don't agree with something I will make my voice heard, and I have often been told by my team leads that without my feedback they could not do their job as well as they do. I don't want the added burden of having to manage a team, but I am also not sitting around waiting to be told to do something without question or involvement in the process.
It's a shame HR will never understand how important it is to have someone passionate about their job rather then having some bullshit title in their past work experience.
The problem with benchmarks is that they are unrealistic. Throw several gigs of random data into a read/write cycle and measure performance. The article suggests that Seagate established that under typical usage most people are not accessing more than 9 GB of unique data in a day. Yes, that means that under certain conditions the hybrid drive is just the same as an HDD in performance, but on average use the drive performs closer to an SSD.
There is no real ulterior motive or misdirection going on, its common sense for the most part that stuff you do every day (i.e. check email, tweet, whatever) is going to run faster as the drive detect this is the kind of data use repeatedly.
It would be great if there was more a direct connection with storage/RAM but you have to throw a whole OS kernel layer to cache content and then you are taking away the memory required by running applications. Realize that even a 1 mb application might required 1 - 2 GB of RAM, especially games, its not just enough to run the game off a RAM but to have enough available for the runtime data. All you are saving is startup time and I mean most games these day's start quickly enough.
I mean back in the day using RAMDISK on DOS it was cool to get a game to launch in seconds off a memory drive cache, but then you ran into issues where you didn't have enough memory to run the game so the game would crash periodically.
SSD's are great, yes, but there are still too big problems with them.
1) Capacity and price. HDD are still significantly cheaper per GB and get up to 4TB per drive. Its a hard sell to offer a computer with only 128 GB or 256 GB of system storage when you can also find ones with 3 to 4 TB of storage.
2) SSD's are still using HDD technology. While SSD offer better performance than HDD, really SSD should be offering performance on par with RAM rather than physical spinning disk media. While come companies like Apple are hooking SSD directly to the PCI E bus, I would expect that a drive made of up solid state chips to perform more like RAM rather than really just being slightly faster than HDD.
I'm not saying I want HDD over SSD, but I mean I've been around long enough to know when SSDs were first promised as the "next great thing" and still greatly disappointed at the state they are in today.
I think the whole SSD industry dropped the ball as I have never seen an industry innovate at such as snails pace. SSD is a card full of chips, its not rocket science, and yet SSD still have read/write rate of decay, performance is not on par with RAM and prices are still ridiculous.
Now compare to the HDD industry? They exceeded perceived limitations on the amount of storage per inch of platter several times now. I mean this has been SIGNIFICANT feats of engineering to squeeze out more bit density and I mean they even moved to stacking bits vertically on the medium.
I don't know, there is no reason why we don't have Terabyte SSD's that cost $50 and rival RAM in speed today except that the SSD industry has either been unwilling to bring us this technology at this price point OR grossly incompetent to not be able to deliver the goods.
For now, if you can put 8 GB of cache into a 4 TB hard drive and deliver me comparable speeds to SSD for less money, I think this is a huge win for Seagate over all the negative bashing you all are giving them.
When SSD grows up and start matching HDD on price/capacity or delivering me speeds that make RAM obsolete, let me know, for now this has been an over-promised and underwhelming technology.
Also will people please stop assuming this is the same as "we only need 640k of RAM" or "only 9GB!" statement. Its retarded. They are not claiming that people only need 8 GB of storage in total but that on average on any given day, people are only accessing roughly 8 GB of storage so cache that much and give people high performance of SSD without the stupid expense of them, and yet still have terabytes of storage to access from.
BTW its not a train but a capsule suspended in air by magnets in a tube. The sound it would make is probably the muffled woosh as often heard by readers of Slashdot.
I think the reality is few people would like to strap themselves into a coffin and fly down a tube at 4000 mph considering that we can't even prevent trains from crashing in the 21st century. I mean think of how ridiculous that trains actually crash? The one in Spain crashed because it was going to fast around the corner because the driver was texting on his phone. Why would there not be simply some mechanical/electrical switch that triggers the train to slow down automatically approaching sharp corners?
I mean mankind wants to build cars that drives themselves, but we haven't figured out how to make stuff that can only drive on a set of rails safe and autonomous. Why the hell do we even have Train engineers when the source of most train crashes is human failure? Hell we even have planes that can land themselves on auto pilot and I think the physics and technology involve in landing a flying object is significantly more complicated than trying to control something stuck on a set of rails.
So I can only imaging how much humans could screw up something as simple as a capsule being fired down a tube.
I am sure that technically this is a very feasible transportation solution, but lets figure out how to stop trains from crashing into each other or running off the rails because they are going to fast FIRST before we string the planet together with tubes.
With exception to Buffy, all cancelled very quickly.
If they want Doctor Who canceled quickly, then make the next one a woman.
I'm not saying its right and frankly don't care as long as its a good actor/actress playing the part, but I mean historically shows that have a "strong female lead" are not ratings superhits. Probably a lot more bigots out there then people want to let on to.
Just don't make the next Doctor Who a vampire/fairy/werewolf/ghost hybrid that battles zombies.
If Nasa says it would cost $828.11 billion then really what that means is "ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD" because NASA is not known to keep their projects under budget.
Of course, why build 1 when you can build 2 at twice the price. Another Jodie Foster reference.
But wearing a big douchy snorkel like headset is the reason why VR has never taken off in the 30 years that is has been promised.
I mean this is not a new concept and the technology to make it happen has existed for 30 years. I don't agree that computer's were not powerful enough, BS. I don't agree that screens were not small enough, BS. Occulus Rift is under some huge delusion that they have innovated a product that nobody else has thought of and this will be a huge hit all of a sudden. There is a reason why nobody is doing or has done VR, and its not because Occulus Rift has a team full of amazing engineers.
And tell me the first slide of a guy gaming with this thing on doesn't look like a complete douche. Also look at all the shots of guys wearing this while their mouths gaping wide open like they are ready to swallow something big.
Between Google Glass and Occulus Rift I think the Douchaggedon is the next big thing to prep for.
I have read there has been a dramatic increase in bed bugs over the last decade in major urban centers. There is a very good reason why it has.
People have been told to save energy (and the environment) by using cold water to wash their laundry. While your laundry comes out smelling and looking clean just the same, you STILL need to use high temp wash under certain situations, like washing your bed sheets.
I mean this is why I hate stupid green alarmists because they can't apply rational common sense to anything. Sure, washing your jeans or shirts in cold water makes an environmentally sound choice, but then you get the stupid green alarmists who wash EVERYTHING in cold water using some weak ass granola derivative laundry detergent.
Guess what? Bed bugs survive cold water washes using ineffective detergent which is why bed bugs are increasing in urban centers which have a high concentration of stupid green alarmists.
Use common sense and realize that your bed sheets and underwear should be washed with the hottest fucking cycle your laundry machine can muster, that will end your bed bug and (most liikly) crab issues.
Also, if the police knew exactly where the car was they wouldn't be posting an amber alert. Maybe that's all the information they know man because they usually post these things moment after getting the call that a child was abducted. Maybe the repeated annoying messages afterwards might contain relevant updates, in the meantime keep an eye open for the car and call the police if you see it. What the more do you want. Geezus!!!
Look out for a LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door moron.
You are not the police so you are not entitled to know everything man. In the meantime while bitching about this on Slashdot you probably missed the BLUE Nissan Versa whizzing past you with the licence 6WCU986 heading North on the freeway.
If Californians are really that confused when given the license plate number AND description of a car that contains a kidnapped child then I apologize to the whole state of California for containing citizens too stupid for words.
I would agree that you should be allowed to opt out of this if you truly find the repeated messages sent by police trying to save the life of a child annoying and confusing. I think there should be a "heartless idiot" clause with every cellphone contract that lets self absorbed fucktards opt out of potentially life saving notices.
In the rest of the country and around the world:
"'Boulevard, CA AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door"
It's called economy of scale. If you can buy more product wholesale from a vendor then you can sell it more cheaply. There are no ulterior motives here. Its not like Best Buy or Amazon or other "monopolies" as you call them are selling stuff at a profit loss just to screw over a place like Geeks.com. If you buy something in bulk on the quantity of millions, your are going to get a bigger discount from the manufacturer then if you buy a few hundred of the same thing.
If you are "the small guy" you have to do more than just sell the stuff that the big box stores are already selling cheaper anyways. I mean it's absolutely FUCKING STUPID for the small guy to sell something that bigger stores are selling for cheaper, and then expect to stay in business. That goes for all the "ma and pa" stores that have been "crushed" by Walmart. I mean, you can't sell toilette paper ar $10 a package when Walmart sells it for $5. There is no fucking reason for a ma and pa store to stay in business. Either you go upscale and sell stuff the big box stores won't touch, or you find out ways to add value to the purchase through excellent customer service that the big box stores can't match. You can't do either, then you go out of business, period.
Look at how fucking successful monoprice.com is. They found a way to outsell ALL the big box stores by going direct to the Chinese manufactures and cutting out the middleman. This is how "small" companies can innovate and compete, not by selling the same stuff at higher prices but finding new ways of winning over their customers.
I don't believe in the idea that just because you are local or small or the underdog that you should succeed and that all big box companies are evil heartless corporations. How many people did Geeks.com have working for them, how many does Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart employ? Big box is simply better for the fucking economy.
So fuck off with your trite little "ah look, big business kills the little guy". If you want to pay 50% to 500% for the same fucking thing you can get cheaper a Best Buy, go right ahead, but no store can stay in business long with that pricing structure because 99% of people with a brain will get their stuff at the cheaper price.
Finally it might not have anything to do with "the monopolies" because as the PC market dies then the appeal of buying PC parts and accessories is also dying. Big Box is adapting by selling more consumer electronics, specialty sites like this place has limited appeal. You can't stay in business selling shit nobody wants.
Good point, I am sure the Japanese engineers that build the ship did not think to make the surface not melt when something tries to land or take of vertically on it. Good thing Slashdot exists otherwise all kinds of engineers and scientists might be making fools of themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
At one time this would have sounded crazy....then came Hyperloop.
Can't wait to take my jetpack to the Hyperloop station so I can commute to my job in Atlantis.
I know people wanted to slam Microsoft on everything about Xbox One, but I never suspected that it wouldn't work without Kinect attached. I throw this clearly into the FUD category. I think Microsoft was clarifying that idiots assumed it needed Kinect to work, not reversing a decision that it would require Kinect to work.
There is no reason for a light bulb to be connected to the internet, this proves it. If you are too stupid or lazy to be able to turn on/off your own lights using a mechanical switch you deserve getting the "blackout of shame".
Stopped using FIrefox more than 200 versions ago, been using Chrome for 400 versions. Still waiting for 1 good version of IE.
Consider this.
It took hundreds of millions of years to decaying plant and animal life to produce the fuel humans have used up in a little over a century. All the CO2 that was trapped over hundreds of millions of years has been released in just one century.
Biofuel is not the remedy. There is no NATURAL way to replace the reserve of fuels created after hundreds of millions of years. Our fuel consumption and CO2 emissions are UNNATURAL. To believe there is some cheap way to naturally produce fuel from some miracle crop or organism is fundamentally retarded.
I mean really think hard about this! Fossil Fuel came from nature but it took millions of years to accumulate and a little over a century to burn through. It took hundreds of millions of years of planet wide "crops" to make enough fuel for 100 years. How can anyone think that a yearly or semi-yearly crop harvest is going to make enough fuel to power a planet?
We should be looking at some kind of artificial photosynthesis as the solution. We need a solution that can remove waste CO2 from the air and turn it back into fuel. It would be awesome to create an equilibrium where the CO2 we emitted is then trapped and turned back into fuel, using solar and wind energy. PLanting "natural" crops is not even a sane solution because planting, harvesting and processing crops only produces more CO2 so we still put more into the air then what the crops can take out.
I think we need to find a way of creating a "reverse" factory which can scrub waste CO2 out of the air and turn it back into fuel. A few acres of factory producing fuel like this would prevent millions of acres of land wasted producing crops and also be the first human invention that has a "negative" carbon footprint.
But, two things against artificial photosynthesis, its not cheap to develop AND cannot be monopolized. Greedy corporations will not invest money into a solution that could ultimately be used in your own backyard to power your own car and home. Crops can be monopolized, air can't.
"a diffuse mess, with a density that is ridiculously low, to the point where detecting its local effects is likely to remain... challenging for the foreseeable future"
In other word something irrelevant we can safely ignore and not invest any more money or resources into.
I think leadership is one of those bullshit HR myths that they believe they need in every candidate.
Its the same HR myth as needing a developer that has 10 years experience in C#, Java, C and Python. I mean would you actually want a job that required that haphazard collection of skills? No, so why do HR staff love throwing in every language they have ever heard of as a job requirement?.
You can't have a team full of leaders, nothing will get accomplished.
If you are looking for a team lead position, then look for a leader. If looking for a strong developer look at years of demonstrated experience and forget about bullshit buzzwords and HR myths.
And there is nothing wrong with being a "follower" in so much as assuming if you are not a leader you must be a follower. There are definitely different levels of participation of the non-leaders in a team. I don't just do what I am told or feel I have no impact on the decisions made. If I don't agree with something I will make my voice heard, and I have often been told by my team leads that without my feedback they could not do their job as well as they do. I don't want the added burden of having to manage a team, but I am also not sitting around waiting to be told to do something without question or involvement in the process.
It's a shame HR will never understand how important it is to have someone passionate about their job rather then having some bullshit title in their past work experience.
Is it because nobody is buying it, or even talking about it?
The problem with benchmarks is that they are unrealistic. Throw several gigs of random data into a read/write cycle and measure performance. The article suggests that Seagate established that under typical usage most people are not accessing more than 9 GB of unique data in a day. Yes, that means that under certain conditions the hybrid drive is just the same as an HDD in performance, but on average use the drive performs closer to an SSD.
There is no real ulterior motive or misdirection going on, its common sense for the most part that stuff you do every day (i.e. check email, tweet, whatever) is going to run faster as the drive detect this is the kind of data use repeatedly.
It would be great if there was more a direct connection with storage/RAM but you have to throw a whole OS kernel layer to cache content and then you are taking away the memory required by running applications. Realize that even a 1 mb application might required 1 - 2 GB of RAM, especially games, its not just enough to run the game off a RAM but to have enough available for the runtime data. All you are saving is startup time and I mean most games these day's start quickly enough.
I mean back in the day using RAMDISK on DOS it was cool to get a game to launch in seconds off a memory drive cache, but then you ran into issues where you didn't have enough memory to run the game so the game would crash periodically.
SSD's are great, yes, but there are still too big problems with them.
1) Capacity and price. HDD are still significantly cheaper per GB and get up to 4TB per drive. Its a hard sell to offer a computer with only 128 GB or 256 GB of system storage when you can also find ones with 3 to 4 TB of storage.
2) SSD's are still using HDD technology. While SSD offer better performance than HDD, really SSD should be offering performance on par with RAM rather than physical spinning disk media. While come companies like Apple are hooking SSD directly to the PCI E bus, I would expect that a drive made of up solid state chips to perform more like RAM rather than really just being slightly faster than HDD.
I'm not saying I want HDD over SSD, but I mean I've been around long enough to know when SSDs were first promised as the "next great thing" and still greatly disappointed at the state they are in today.
I think the whole SSD industry dropped the ball as I have never seen an industry innovate at such as snails pace. SSD is a card full of chips, its not rocket science, and yet SSD still have read/write rate of decay, performance is not on par with RAM and prices are still ridiculous.
Now compare to the HDD industry? They exceeded perceived limitations on the amount of storage per inch of platter several times now. I mean this has been SIGNIFICANT feats of engineering to squeeze out more bit density and I mean they even moved to stacking bits vertically on the medium.
I don't know, there is no reason why we don't have Terabyte SSD's that cost $50 and rival RAM in speed today except that the SSD industry has either been unwilling to bring us this technology at this price point OR grossly incompetent to not be able to deliver the goods.
For now, if you can put 8 GB of cache into a 4 TB hard drive and deliver me comparable speeds to SSD for less money, I think this is a huge win for Seagate over all the negative bashing you all are giving them.
When SSD grows up and start matching HDD on price/capacity or delivering me speeds that make RAM obsolete, let me know, for now this has been an over-promised and underwhelming technology.
Also will people please stop assuming this is the same as "we only need 640k of RAM" or "only 9GB!" statement. Its retarded. They are not claiming that people only need 8 GB of storage in total but that on average on any given day, people are only accessing roughly 8 GB of storage so cache that much and give people high performance of SSD without the stupid expense of them, and yet still have terabytes of storage to access from.
Why won't Anonymous Cowards show their research to back up their claims?
BTW its not a train but a capsule suspended in air by magnets in a tube. The sound it would make is probably the muffled woosh as often heard by readers of Slashdot.
NEVER!
I think the reality is few people would like to strap themselves into a coffin and fly down a tube at 4000 mph considering that we can't even prevent trains from crashing in the 21st century. I mean think of how ridiculous that trains actually crash? The one in Spain crashed because it was going to fast around the corner because the driver was texting on his phone. Why would there not be simply some mechanical/electrical switch that triggers the train to slow down automatically approaching sharp corners?
I mean mankind wants to build cars that drives themselves, but we haven't figured out how to make stuff that can only drive on a set of rails safe and autonomous. Why the hell do we even have Train engineers when the source of most train crashes is human failure? Hell we even have planes that can land themselves on auto pilot and I think the physics and technology involve in landing a flying object is significantly more complicated than trying to control something stuck on a set of rails.
So I can only imaging how much humans could screw up something as simple as a capsule being fired down a tube.
I am sure that technically this is a very feasible transportation solution, but lets figure out how to stop trains from crashing into each other or running off the rails because they are going to fast FIRST before we string the planet together with tubes.
With exception to Buffy, all cancelled very quickly.
If they want Doctor Who canceled quickly, then make the next one a woman.
I'm not saying its right and frankly don't care as long as its a good actor/actress playing the part, but I mean historically shows that have a "strong female lead" are not ratings superhits. Probably a lot more bigots out there then people want to let on to.
Just don't make the next Doctor Who a vampire/fairy/werewolf/ghost hybrid that battles zombies.
If Nasa says it would cost $828.11 billion then really what that means is "ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD" because NASA is not known to keep their projects under budget.
Of course, why build 1 when you can build 2 at twice the price. Another Jodie Foster reference.
But wearing a big douchy snorkel like headset is the reason why VR has never taken off in the 30 years that is has been promised.
I mean this is not a new concept and the technology to make it happen has existed for 30 years. I don't agree that computer's were not powerful enough, BS. I don't agree that screens were not small enough, BS. Occulus Rift is under some huge delusion that they have innovated a product that nobody else has thought of and this will be a huge hit all of a sudden. There is a reason why nobody is doing or has done VR, and its not because Occulus Rift has a team full of amazing engineers.
I don't know, go to here:
http://www.oculusvr.com/
And tell me the first slide of a guy gaming with this thing on doesn't look like a complete douche. Also look at all the shots of guys wearing this while their mouths gaping wide open like they are ready to swallow something big.
Between Google Glass and Occulus Rift I think the Douchaggedon is the next big thing to prep for.
I have read there has been a dramatic increase in bed bugs over the last decade in major urban centers. There is a very good reason why it has.
People have been told to save energy (and the environment) by using cold water to wash their laundry. While your laundry comes out smelling and looking clean just the same, you STILL need to use high temp wash under certain situations, like washing your bed sheets.
I mean this is why I hate stupid green alarmists because they can't apply rational common sense to anything. Sure, washing your jeans or shirts in cold water makes an environmentally sound choice, but then you get the stupid green alarmists who wash EVERYTHING in cold water using some weak ass granola derivative laundry detergent.
Guess what? Bed bugs survive cold water washes using ineffective detergent which is why bed bugs are increasing in urban centers which have a high concentration of stupid green alarmists.
Use common sense and realize that your bed sheets and underwear should be washed with the hottest fucking cycle your laundry machine can muster, that will end your bed bug and (most liikly) crab issues.
Name two other groups that are as resistant to change, truth and scientific study then the NRA and the Vatican.
Also, if the police knew exactly where the car was they wouldn't be posting an amber alert. Maybe that's all the information they know man because they usually post these things moment after getting the call that a child was abducted. Maybe the repeated annoying messages afterwards might contain relevant updates, in the meantime keep an eye open for the car and call the police if you see it. What the more do you want. Geezus!!!
Look out for a LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door moron.
You are not the police so you are not entitled to know everything man. In the meantime while bitching about this on Slashdot you probably missed the BLUE Nissan Versa whizzing past you with the licence 6WCU986 heading North on the freeway.
If Californians are really that confused when given the license plate number AND description of a car that contains a kidnapped child then I apologize to the whole state of California for containing citizens too stupid for words.
I would agree that you should be allowed to opt out of this if you truly find the repeated messages sent by police trying to save the life of a child annoying and confusing. I think there should be a "heartless idiot" clause with every cellphone contract that lets self absorbed fucktards opt out of potentially life saving notices.
In the rest of the country and around the world:
"'Boulevard, CA AMBER Alert UPDATE: LIC/6WCU986 (CA) Blue Nissan Versa 4 door"
Is painfully obvious!
you think there are editors on Slashdot, how cute.
Oh fuck off.
I tire of this crap.
It's called economy of scale. If you can buy more product wholesale from a vendor then you can sell it more cheaply. There are no ulterior motives here. Its not like Best Buy or Amazon or other "monopolies" as you call them are selling stuff at a profit loss just to screw over a place like Geeks.com. If you buy something in bulk on the quantity of millions, your are going to get a bigger discount from the manufacturer then if you buy a few hundred of the same thing.
If you are "the small guy" you have to do more than just sell the stuff that the big box stores are already selling cheaper anyways. I mean it's absolutely FUCKING STUPID for the small guy to sell something that bigger stores are selling for cheaper, and then expect to stay in business. That goes for all the "ma and pa" stores that have been "crushed" by Walmart. I mean, you can't sell toilette paper ar $10 a package when Walmart sells it for $5. There is no fucking reason for a ma and pa store to stay in business. Either you go upscale and sell stuff the big box stores won't touch, or you find out ways to add value to the purchase through excellent customer service that the big box stores can't match. You can't do either, then you go out of business, period.
Look at how fucking successful monoprice.com is. They found a way to outsell ALL the big box stores by going direct to the Chinese manufactures and cutting out the middleman. This is how "small" companies can innovate and compete, not by selling the same stuff at higher prices but finding new ways of winning over their customers.
I don't believe in the idea that just because you are local or small or the underdog that you should succeed and that all big box companies are evil heartless corporations. How many people did Geeks.com have working for them, how many does Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart employ? Big box is simply better for the fucking economy.
So fuck off with your trite little "ah look, big business kills the little guy". If you want to pay 50% to 500% for the same fucking thing you can get cheaper a Best Buy, go right ahead, but no store can stay in business long with that pricing structure because 99% of people with a brain will get their stuff at the cheaper price.
Finally it might not have anything to do with "the monopolies" because as the PC market dies then the appeal of buying PC parts and accessories is also dying. Big Box is adapting by selling more consumer electronics, specialty sites like this place has limited appeal. You can't stay in business selling shit nobody wants.
Good point, I am sure the Japanese engineers that build the ship did not think to make the surface not melt when something tries to land or take of vertically on it. Good thing Slashdot exists otherwise all kinds of engineers and scientists might be making fools of themselves.