Are they actually just trying to get the best price they can for what they now realise is an obsolete product?
The real question is: will their factories continue with production (after the stock of components are used up), or will they shut down - maybe even licence Blu-Ray and start building "the competition's" products.
The only indicator would be if Tosh are still ordering components - anyone know?
In a competitive market where 100-core processors cost $100 to produce, a company selling 50-core crippled ones for $101 and 100-core processors for $200 would quickly be pushed out of business by a company making the 100-core processors for $100 and selling them, uncrippled, for $101.
And when your software is licensed per processor at (let's say) $100 per cpu, your extra, unwanted, 50 processors quickly become a burden. I'd be willing to pay more for a crippled processor if it saved me money elsewhere, and there was no way to slice up domains to reduce the liability
In my rather limited experience of financial packages, companies do tend to be very conservative about new products. If you merely have a wizzy new software package, you might find it hard to get it adopted by the big players.
They all insist on boring things like support, training, documentation etc. - stuff that FOSS traditionally lacks for the first few iterations, at least.
My suggestion would be to use the software as a sort of loss-leader. Give it away (hence the free) and sell your expertise in training staff in how to use it. Apart from bringing in some $$$$, you'll also get first-hand experience of what they like, what they have problems with and what other features would help. This is invaluable for version 2.
The other nice thing about running training,is that your costs are virtually fixed no matter how big the class size. Once you have covered your costs the fees from every additional student is almost all profit.
That way of they don't like it, they've lost nothing. They can always go ahaed and buy some stuff.
As the article says, this is about people who don't care. All they want is to get stuff done. They're not interested in discussing your personal philosophy so just give them what they want - without the sermon.
[1] yes, yes, I know free beer or speech. Don't forget we're still talking about people who don't care
I think the guy who put forward that argument meant self-image, rather than prestige.
Every country likes to think that it has a superiority in one area or another. Using progress in (manned) space exploration as a prop is part of Kennedy's legacy. It's probably good for another coulple of decades - while people who were young adults during the 60's are still alive. After that I think it'll become much less important both to the people as a whole and to therefore to the politicians. Unless NASA can pull off another space-spectacular or aliens pay us a visit.
The question posed was "is manned space exploration worth the cost?"
Most of the answers and justifications include manned and unmanned exploration. If you take the benefits from unmanned exploration out of the responses from the selected pundits, the answers are much less emphatic.
(not my view, just an observation that the question wasn't properly answered)
Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged soon after the incident.
I'm going out on a limb here, but I will assume this is code for 2 spy satellites.
In that case, since the US has many more spy satellites than the chinese, is this just their way of levelling things out a bit?
Yes, it makes space less accessible, but when you're behind your "competitor" then they have more to lose than you do. Sadly this kind of logic has an attraction to the less responsible elements present in some governments.
so us "normal" people don't have to put up with some inconsiderate &as%@d yapping away at 100dB in enclosed spaces about things that are so inconsequential they make you want to rip your ears off to escape the inanity of it all.
If it needs a supermarket trolley to carry the equipment around in, well that's a small price to pay.
The article called him a skeptic because he was skeptical that there was any danger in giving out his name, bank account details and hints of his address. This was a result of the furore about the 25 million NHS details that were lost last year - he didn't think there was anything to worry about.
In the article the guy says it's just like providing heat and light to guests. Fine, why not give them all your money, too. Why not take the fall when your "guests" are pulled for speeding, or online fraud?
By providing free internet access, you are effectively saying that it's OK for someone you don't know to commit crime and to have no defence when the cops come knocking on your door. The "it wasn't me, it was someone else" defence stopped being credible years ago and could easily wind up with the freebe provider getting the blame for other poeple's criminal activity.
He says that he doesn't think "there's much of a risk". Ha!, let's see how far his "good manners" get him in jail!
They aren't trying to protect the little guy, who copyrights a page on his/her
website. This will still get passed through their filters - even if the copyright
is being violated.
All they will do is ban material that the big players (read: RIAA MPAA) want stopped.
I doubt it will work, as the studios will still have to have a means of digital
distribution, so I'm guessing that "legitimate" content will have some sort of pass-
phrase or encrypted header applied. The filters will let that stuff through (to the destination in the header?) but would prevent it going elsewhere,
What happens next is people learn how to hack or decrypt the headers (or apply their own over the top of the old header) and we're back here again.
Plus ca change
such as these "superbugs" became more prevalent when the health service oursourced ward cleaning...... to the lowest bidder.
There's also a view that having (letting?) staff wear their uniforms outside the hospital both brings in bugs from outside the hospital and lets them out into the real world.
There are some absolutely basic things that the NHS could do, but for some inexplicable (cost related?) reasons won't do. It doesn't need high-tech investigations and it's not rocket science - just basic hygene sense.
Just the same, political squabbles among IT staffers fighting for turf
This is a classic sign of a broken IT department. One place I worked, if you (well, if I) needed to increase the size of a database table, I had to get sign-offs from
The database team - not unreasonable
the server team - it ran on their boxes
the storage team - they allocated the disk space
the network team - as the storage was NAS'd (bad idea!!!)
the backup/security team - or it wouldn't get backed up
net result? nothing ever got agreed. The simplest changes took forever and cost a fortune. The operation is now outsourced.
Who's to blame? Probably not the techies, they just pressed buttons. Quite likely the team-leaders for turning it political, definitely the IT managers who allowed the situation to continue.
Who kept their jobs? yup, the managers! You've been warned: infighting only hurts the foot-soldiers, the generals aren't affected. Sort it out yourselves or you'll have to start learning chinese.
or better still make it a "guantanamo-able" offence.
If you can't see people's eyes, it's very difficult to interpret their expressions. Obviously sunglasses-wearing travellers have something to hide. Just to be sure, ship 'em off (modern day transportation of criminals?)
Just as a side-bar, how many of the errrr... ZERO terrorist attacks in the last couple of years would this measure have prevented?
Good answer. This is pretty much the post I was about to make. Somewhere in the mix between w2k and XP the whole mess stalled. Right now all the is carrying microsoft is it's own inertia.
Let's hope that when they do implode (if that hasn't happened already and we just haven't noticed) they don't take the open source world with them. Maybe "we" need to start distancing ourselves?
These types of small-scale scams have been happening for years - there's no reason to get into a panic about it now (unless it happens to be a slow-news day..... New years, hmmm)
Barcodes are pretty much obsolete so far as people's ID goes so the only organisations who might possibly take a hit are those that haven't updated their systems to "modern" mag-strip technlogy.
If you wanted to try and scare people over the holidays - and there hasn't been a good scare for a while, so I suppose someone wants to increase the fear factor - why not go with that?
Someone please put this story back in 1988 where it belongs
If you want your new product to pass the "dumb user" test, just give it to your boss. If he/she can understand it, there's a good chance that every other idiot can.
If it has buttons (a la DVD remote) coat them with a substance that easily rubs off. Whatever buttons haven't been pressed (i.e. still have substance on them) after 5 minutes of boss-time, remove them as they will never be used by other people. If the "on" switch is one of these, toss the prototype as it's obvious no-one will ever use it.
BTW, it goes without saying that they'll never read the instruction manual - except to pick up spelling mistooks, so better leave that out too.
Apart from the visor, the guy also spent $18k on 2 other pieces - which he claims were misrepresented. A table, that is he's doubtful if it is the one in a scene and a uniform that was (we are told) one of many.
So really, this guy spent a wad on stuff that he hadn't properly researched.
Personally if I was going to drop $24k on stuff like this, I'd have done a bit of homework first. It can't be that difficult to check an auction catalog to see if a table is actually the same as one in a scene, or even eyeball it before the auction starts. Even more with the costume - $11,400 buys a lot of preparation, not least an assessment of what your maximum bid would be.
Of course, if these items were unresearched impulse buys in a bidding war that went horribly out of control and what we're really seeing is a large dose of buyer's remorse, well it was an expensive lesson.
Slashdot Mirror
It really hacks me off when someone changes a UI (or goods on supermarket shelves, for that matter) just for the sake of doing something new.
What we need are some standards here. Preferable just one, so people stick to it.
Got bored with it and all it's variations after a few years haven't felt the need to get back into it since
and a few people still buy Betmax for the same reason ...
The real question is: will their factories continue with production (after the stock of components are used up), or will they shut down - maybe even licence Blu-Ray and start building "the competition's" products.
The only indicator would be if Tosh are still ordering components - anyone know?
And when your software is licensed per processor at (let's say) $100 per cpu, your extra, unwanted, 50 processors quickly become a burden. I'd be willing to pay more for a crippled processor if it saved me money elsewhere, and there was no way to slice up domains to reduce the liability
They all insist on boring things like support, training, documentation etc. - stuff that FOSS traditionally lacks for the first few iterations, at least.
My suggestion would be to use the software as a sort of loss-leader. Give it away (hence the free) and sell your expertise in training staff in how to use it. Apart from bringing in some $$$$, you'll also get first-hand experience of what they like, what they have problems with and what other features would help. This is invaluable for version 2.
The other nice thing about running training,is that your costs are virtually fixed no matter how big the class size. Once you have covered your costs the fees from every additional student is almost all profit.
That way of they don't like it, they've lost nothing. They can always go ahaed and buy some stuff.
As the article says, this is about people who don't care. All they want is to get stuff done. They're not interested in discussing your personal philosophy so just give them what they want - without the sermon.
[1] yes, yes, I know free beer or speech. Don't forget we're still talking about people who don't care
Every country likes to think that it has a superiority in one area or another. Using progress in (manned) space exploration as a prop is part of Kennedy's legacy. It's probably good for another coulple of decades - while people who were young adults during the 60's are still alive. After that I think it'll become much less important both to the people as a whole and to therefore to the politicians. Unless NASA can pull off another space-spectacular or aliens pay us a visit.
Which is a whole lot different, as it excludes unmanned exploration
Most of the answers and justifications include manned and unmanned exploration. If you take the benefits from unmanned exploration out of the responses from the selected pundits, the answers are much less emphatic.
(not my view, just an observation that the question wasn't properly answered)
I'm going out on a limb here, but I will assume this is code for 2 spy satellites.
In that case, since the US has many more spy satellites than the chinese, is this just their way of levelling things out a bit?
Yes, it makes space less accessible, but when you're behind your "competitor" then they have more to lose than you do. Sadly this kind of logic has an attraction to the less responsible elements present in some governments.
If it needs a supermarket trolley to carry the equipment around in, well that's a small price to pay.
He was wrong and went on to say so
See this example in the UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hereford/worcs/6565079.stm
By providing free internet access, you are effectively saying that it's OK for someone you don't know to commit crime and to have no defence when the cops come knocking on your door. The "it wasn't me, it was someone else" defence stopped being credible years ago and could easily wind up with the freebe provider getting the blame for other poeple's criminal activity.
He says that he doesn't think "there's much of a risk". Ha!, let's see how far his "good manners" get him in jail!
All they will do is ban material that the big players (read: RIAA MPAA) want stopped.
I doubt it will work, as the studios will still have to have a means of digital distribution, so I'm guessing that "legitimate" content will have some sort of pass- phrase or encrypted header applied. The filters will let that stuff through (to the destination in the header?) but would prevent it going elsewhere,
What happens next is people learn how to hack or decrypt the headers (or apply their own over the top of the old header) and we're back here again.
Plus ca change
There's also a view that having (letting?) staff wear their uniforms outside the hospital both brings in bugs from outside the hospital and lets them out into the real world.
There are some absolutely basic things that the NHS could do, but for some inexplicable (cost related?) reasons won't do. It doesn't need high-tech investigations and it's not rocket science - just basic hygene sense.
This is a classic sign of a broken IT department. One place I worked, if you (well, if I) needed to increase the size of a database table, I had to get sign-offs from
net result? nothing ever got agreed. The simplest changes took forever and cost a fortune. The operation is now outsourced.
Who's to blame? Probably not the techies, they just pressed buttons. Quite likely the team-leaders for turning it political, definitely the IT managers who allowed the situation to continue.
Who kept their jobs?
yup, the managers! You've been warned: infighting only hurts the foot-soldiers, the generals aren't affected. Sort it out yourselves or you'll have to start learning chinese.
If you can't see people's eyes, it's very difficult to interpret their expressions. Obviously sunglasses-wearing travellers have something to hide. Just to be sure, ship 'em off (modern day transportation of criminals?)
Just as a side-bar, how many of the errrr... ZERO terrorist attacks in the last couple of years would this measure have prevented?
And a great deal of video archive from CCTV as well I expect.
The question that arises is how would you index all this?
Let's hope that when they do implode (if that hasn't happened already and we just haven't noticed) they don't take the open source world with them. Maybe "we" need to start distancing ourselves?
Barcodes are pretty much obsolete so far as people's ID goes so the only organisations who might possibly take a hit are those that haven't updated their systems to "modern" mag-strip technlogy.
If you wanted to try and scare people over the holidays - and there hasn't been a good scare for a while, so I suppose someone wants to increase the fear factor - why not go with that?
Someone please put this story back in 1988 where it belongs
Where that percentage is definitely not generalised, but is specifically 10 percent - i.e. decimate = reduce by one-tenth.
You're right though, it is an inappropriate use of the word
If it has buttons (a la DVD remote) coat them with a substance that easily rubs off. Whatever buttons haven't been pressed (i.e. still have substance on them) after 5 minutes of boss-time, remove them as they will never be used by other people. If the "on" switch is one of these, toss the prototype as it's obvious no-one will ever use it.
BTW, it goes without saying that they'll never read the instruction manual - except to pick up spelling mistooks, so better leave that out too.
So really, this guy spent a wad on stuff that he hadn't properly researched.
Personally if I was going to drop $24k on stuff like this, I'd have done a bit of homework first. It can't be that difficult to check an auction catalog to see if a table is actually the same as one in a scene, or even eyeball it before the auction starts. Even more with the costume - $11,400 buys a lot of preparation, not least an assessment of what your maximum bid would be.
Of course, if these items were unresearched impulse buys in a bidding war that went horribly out of control and what we're really seeing is a large dose of buyer's remorse, well it was an expensive lesson.