Damn, whenever you think of something you think is too silly to ever actually happen, someone comes up with an example of when it did. Life is still the best comedy.
The point about the shareholders is the crux of the problem with any corporation. The concept of Good and evil is irrelevant to a public company, the only cause a public company has is to make profit, in fact it is the obligation of that company to increase its profit year on year. Like it or not, that is all a corporation does. Such inherently religous concepts do not apply to the world of stock and shares. This is why Google, whatever the intentions of its founders were, will turn into a monster like Microsoft. The problem is that at the moment Google can expand into uncharted territories or to new custom and can seem to be morally upstanding. However, at some point in the future Google will have exhausted all new avenues for an increase in profit. But, the share price demands for further increases in profit, thus Google will be forced to do the usual two unfortunate (bad) things - 1. Reduce costs (sack staff/move to India for cheap staff) 2. Enforce more revenues ('lock-in' consumers with time limited licenses, raise prices for its services, etc) Over and over again.
I did think of that, but lets face it, controlled substances haven't been stopped from entering any country. I am waiting for the day someone gets jailed for dealing non-standard media players. I guess they could work out of a hack house.
You might also want to explain to all those plasma physicists why they're wrong
A press release circa 1200AD could well have read: -
"Gold from base elements, 10 thousand alchemists can't be wrong!"
You realise that they could be simply misguided. I would love to see that this works, and I think I understand the (v. basic) principles behind why it should eventually. Of course they should try to see if they can get energy from fusion, because as with the alchemists, they may make other discoveries while they are doing it. Even if fusion itself is a red herring.
You point out the lack of freedom of these countries, but this law would reduce freedom in the 'land of the free'. Ironically, it doesn't matter if these countries are free or not. What the parent was pointing out is that the US laws only apply to the US not for the whole world (no matter how much it tries to enforce its laws on everyone else) and all that needs to be done to make this law useless (outside of the US) is that someone in these 'freedomless' states just makes hardware that doesn't comply with these laws and distributes it. As soon as this stuff is available outside the US, it will be available in the US. The same goes for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD DRM, DVD region encoding and everything that benefits no-body and harms the consumer.
The problems with gasoline right now are the oil companies acting like a oligopoly, and the US government not doing their job to stop it
Now I am not the greatest fan of either the US government or the oil companies, but the problem with gasoline is because there IS NO OIL LEFT, nothing to do with back room dealings, as much as they may take place. Oil will now only go up in value over the long term, because people are using more oil, and there is increasingly less to use.
Sorry this is off-topic but I really had to pick that comment up.
Moderators:
Dont MOD this down as off-topic, the previous comments were pointing out examples of why rebranding away from something people know & trust is dangerous and often indicative of an attempt to mask bigger problem within the company. Which is exactly what Intel is doing by dropping the famous and trusted name of their chip.
Did I really have to explain why this is relevant?
...Read 'Intel Inslide'.
Sometimes rebranding works wonders, but what kind of image change can a processor maker make. It isn't as if it can appeal to a new demographic.
besides people know and trust the Pentium name for being a CPU. The last thing you want to do is what the Royal Mail did in Britain, they changed their name to 'Consignia', were hated as a result by everyone, because we knew what the Royal Mail did and since privatisation RM/Consignia were getting worse. Eventually, they ended up renaming themselves back to the Royal Mail.
But then I guess Intel only used the Pentium name because they couldn't patent 586.
Crude Oil has or is just about peaked. I don't see many companies or governments publicising that statistic much.
It seems that the article contradicts the findings anyway. They say that there is a reduction from 80% to 60%, but actually the justification is that there are so many filters in place now. It is a bit like looking at the park, noting that not so much litter is lying around anymore and saying "people are dropping less litter", when actually there are just more litter pickers working in that park. - People may well be dropping more litter.
There were two main reasons I could see for the quick uptake of DVD-
1. People were used to the relative advantages of CD over cassette and had brought CDs, the DVD's advantages over video were very similar so it was easy for people to think that CDs were better therefore DVDs were better.
2. (This was my experience and it was for many others) I brought a new PC in late 1999, it had a DVD drive instead of a CD drive, so I started renting DVDs, then buying DVDs. The fact that DVD drives could be a useful part of a PC (for reading CDs) before people cared about the DVD bit helped it to get a foothold.
Unfortunately for me (usually a pedestrian), cars wont get sold on the safety of the car for pedestrians. People might buy a car because it makes them safer, I dont think many people are going to buy a car because it makes others safer.
HarperCollins demands for some sort of 'DRM' in its books?
All of these companies even hate the idea that we would lend DVDs and CDs to our friends/relatives. But how many of those CEOs have lent a book to someone? Unauthorised lending is a big part of piracy, but I would imagine that a larger proportion of the profit from a book goes to the author, than the profit on a CD to the artist. God knows what they think of libraries these days.
Hopefully, someone will lose patience and just release one. No company is going to sit there with new technology for too long especially a new large storage medium. Someone is going to realise that if they are first, they could take advantage of the demand from the IT market. Forget movie players, the desktop PC made the DVD a success.
All that needs to happen is a company in a country (such as China perhaps?) will make a non-DRM blue laser drive. It does't really matter what the USA's or the EU's laws are for manufacture and sale, you just start importing them. Any foreign company that wants to make a killing just has to make a box that is compatible with the established technology (whenever they agree on something) in the US and EU.
I am not in the USA so wouldn't know, but couldn't you just eat more organic foods? they do still have 'stuff' added but they have LESS added than their relevant equivalents. Although in Britain buying organic means paying more for products that may have travelled further to reach the shelf.
If big buildings cause major earthquakes, then L.A. and San Francisco should have fallen into the sea by now. Not to mention Manhattan
That statement has all the restricted-thinking of a 25 year old who smokes 50 a day saying "cigarettes dont kill, or I would be dead by now"
Tectonic activity works on geological timescales (hundreds of thousands of years, not decades)
LA and San Franciso ARE falling into the sea, the question is if they are shifting faster due to the extra stress of big buildings on soft substrata. I am not aware of the geology of LA or San Franciso but I would guess that they are on harder bedding than Taiwan, spread over a much larger area.
And it is facetious to include Manhattan as it is nowhere near a faultline.
The real building concern in America is building Nuclear power stations along the San Andreas fault.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I should have added 3. Involve itself in lawmaking (lobby the government to outlaw something that might threaten your profits)
Damn, whenever you think of something you think is too silly to ever actually happen, someone comes up with an example of when it did. Life is still the best comedy.
The point about the shareholders is the crux of the problem with any corporation. The concept of Good and evil is irrelevant to a public company, the only cause a public company has is to make profit, in fact it is the obligation of that company to increase its profit year on year.
Like it or not, that is all a corporation does. Such inherently religous concepts do not apply to the world of stock and shares.
This is why Google, whatever the intentions of its founders were, will turn into a monster like Microsoft. The problem is that at the moment Google can expand into uncharted territories or to new custom and can seem to be morally upstanding. However, at some point in the future Google will have exhausted all new avenues for an increase in profit. But, the share price demands for further increases in profit, thus Google will be forced to do the usual two unfortunate (bad) things -
1. Reduce costs (sack staff/move to India for cheap staff)
2. Enforce more revenues ('lock-in' consumers with time limited licenses, raise prices for its services, etc)
Over and over again.
I did think of that, but lets face it, controlled substances haven't been stopped from entering any country.
I am waiting for the day someone gets jailed for dealing non-standard media players. I guess they could work out of a hack house.
What about the grim reaper in Bill and Teds Bogus Journey?
You realise that they could be simply misguided. I would love to see that this works, and I think I understand the (v. basic) principles behind why it should eventually. Of course they should try to see if they can get energy from fusion, because as with the alchemists, they may make other discoveries while they are doing it.
Even if fusion itself is a red herring.
You point out the lack of freedom of these countries, but this law would reduce freedom in the 'land of the free'.
Ironically, it doesn't matter if these countries are free or not. What the parent was pointing out is that the US laws only apply to the US not for the whole world (no matter how much it tries to enforce its laws on everyone else) and all that needs to be done to make this law useless (outside of the US) is that someone in these 'freedomless' states just makes hardware that doesn't comply with these laws and distributes it. As soon as this stuff is available outside the US, it will be available in the US.
The same goes for Blu-Ray/HD-DVD DRM, DVD region encoding and everything that benefits no-body and harms the consumer.
The problems with gasoline right now are the oil companies acting like a oligopoly, and the US government not doing their job to stop it
Now I am not the greatest fan of either the US government or the oil companies, but the problem with gasoline is because there IS NO OIL LEFT, nothing to do with back room dealings, as much as they may take place. Oil will now only go up in value over the long term, because people are using more oil, and there is increasingly less to use. Sorry this is off-topic but I really had to pick that comment up.
Moderators:
Dont MOD this down as off-topic, the previous comments were pointing out examples of why rebranding away from something people know & trust is dangerous and often indicative of an attempt to mask bigger problem within the company. Which is exactly what Intel is doing by dropping the famous and trusted name of their chip.
Did I really have to explain why this is relevant?
...Read 'Intel Inslide'.
Sometimes rebranding works wonders, but what kind of image change can a processor maker make. It isn't as if it can appeal to a new demographic.
besides people know and trust the Pentium name for being a CPU. The last thing you want to do is what the Royal Mail did in Britain, they changed their name to 'Consignia', were hated as a result by everyone, because we knew what the Royal Mail did and since privatisation RM/Consignia were getting worse. Eventually, they ended up renaming themselves back to the Royal Mail. But then I guess Intel only used the Pentium name because they couldn't patent 586.
Crude Oil has or is just about peaked. I don't see many companies or governments publicising that statistic much. It seems that the article contradicts the findings anyway. They say that there is a reduction from 80% to 60%, but actually the justification is that there are so many filters in place now. It is a bit like looking at the park, noting that not so much litter is lying around anymore and saying "people are dropping less litter", when actually there are just more litter pickers working in that park. - People may well be dropping more litter.
like McDonalds now serving healthier foods due to public pressure to do so
I think you are confusing 'bowing to public pressure' with 'jumping on the bandwagon'
I guess that is good news. Do you know if the regulation covers white vans and 4x4s?
There were two main reasons I could see for the quick uptake of DVD-
1. People were used to the relative advantages of CD over cassette and had brought CDs, the DVD's advantages over video were very similar so it was easy for people to think that CDs were better therefore DVDs were better. 2. (This was my experience and it was for many others) I brought a new PC in late 1999, it had a DVD drive instead of a CD drive, so I started renting DVDs, then buying DVDs. The fact that DVD drives could be a useful part of a PC (for reading CDs) before people cared about the DVD bit helped it to get a foothold.
Well it is really more of a 'lease with conditions'.
Unfortunately for me (usually a pedestrian), cars wont get sold on the safety of the car for pedestrians. People might buy a car because it makes them safer, I dont think many people are going to buy a car because it makes others safer.
HarperCollins demands for some sort of 'DRM' in its books?
All of these companies even hate the idea that we would lend DVDs and CDs to our friends/relatives. But how many of those CEOs have lent a book to someone?
Unauthorised lending is a big part of piracy, but I would imagine that a larger proportion of the profit from a book goes to the author, than the profit on a CD to the artist. God knows what they think of libraries these days.
Hopefully, someone will lose patience and just release one. No company is going to sit there with new technology for too long especially a new large storage medium. Someone is going to realise that if they are first, they could take advantage of the demand from the IT market. Forget movie players, the desktop PC made the DVD a success.
All that needs to happen is a company in a country (such as China perhaps?) will make a non-DRM blue laser drive. It does't really matter what the USA's or the EU's laws are for manufacture and sale, you just start importing them. Any foreign company that wants to make a killing just has to make a box that is compatible with the established technology (whenever they agree on something) in the US and EU.
I am not in the USA so wouldn't know, but couldn't you just eat more organic foods? they do still have 'stuff' added but they have LESS added than their relevant equivalents. Although in Britain buying organic means paying more for products that may have travelled further to reach the shelf.
If big buildings cause major earthquakes, then L.A. and San Francisco should have fallen into the sea by now. Not to mention Manhattan
That statement has all the restricted-thinking of a 25 year old who smokes 50 a day saying
"cigarettes dont kill, or I would be dead by now"
Tectonic activity works on geological timescales (hundreds of thousands of years, not decades)
LA and San Franciso ARE falling into the sea, the question is if they are shifting faster due to the extra stress of big buildings on soft substrata. I am not aware of the geology of LA or San Franciso but I would guess that they are on harder bedding than Taiwan, spread over a much larger area.
And it is facetious to include Manhattan as it is nowhere near a faultline.
The real building concern in America is building Nuclear power stations along the San Andreas fault.
Or two tickets to LEGOLAND
Auh crap! Someone just delete this thread and I'll volunteer for euthanasia.
Sorry messed that up,
here should be the link.
by reports like this...
Are the police fighting to get some more budget right now?