If you think about it, Apple is really hard on suppliers - think of them as the Wal-Mart of the computer industry. If they can get a part cheaper, they'll bully their suppliers to get it. Thus, it's really in the supplier's interest to find better ways of making the chips cheaper. 8GB chips are already here, and 16GB ones are going to be commercially available shortly, but still, it's a tight market.
The MP3 player industry, maybe. In the PC market, Apple doesn't have the buying power to squeeze its suppliers. When Apple demanded faster-cheaper PowerPCs from IBM threatening to take its then-2% market share elsewhere, Big Blue could barely stop laughing long enough to tell Steve Jobs to take a hike.
Dell is the Wal-Mart of the PC market...legendary for cutting costs (and quality, when it suits them) and pressuring suppliers. And it has the buying power to do it.
I won't argue that these patents might make some cash in the short term, but I'm curious if they've factored in the value of consumer good will...
For placing a projectile travelling at high velocity into the foot of person holding the projectile launcher, or metaphorically performing the same function on a company.
One can only hope that if IBM is granted these patents, their rigourous enforcement will make offshoring less attractive.
We don't know that. Just because the guy who did it says it didn't get many complaints, and even has a few outspoken proponents, doesn't mean it's necessarily a popular one.
...You know, it's interesting. The PC has proved to be very resilient because, as Bill said earlier, I mean, the death of the PC has been predicted every few years. --Steve Jobs.
The only way in which 2007 is "worse" than either 2003 or OOo in terms of interface is that its not the same as one would expect from any other Windows application
Are we talking about the CEO who laid off half the development team, required the remainder to work over time, and then gave himself a bonus by firing the rest after the product went gold or the pirates?
I say this because more than naught developers are underpaid for their work and then have the hounds released on them by the bean counters when quarter figures need to look better.
Nice little Freudian slip there.
I'd wager that most of the successful commercial software companies treat their developers with a modicum of dignity. Sure, there have been dozens of exceptions over the years, but by and large it's hard to stay in the business if you treat your programmers like shit. It's a good way to make sure your company is a one-hit wonder. Perhaps that's why Adobe, Microsoft, and Google have all been on the "Best Companies to Work For" list, as have other software firms. They may not please all of their employees, but they generally have a reputation for taking care of their own.
It's often a meaner existence for programmers who work for non-software companies like financial or logistics firms--they're viewed as a "cost," not a revenue stream.
Since the founding of this nation, there has been exactly one time when the populace took up arms en masse against the government to fight to preserve a right that appeared to be threatened.
What right was that?
The right to enslave black people.
Armed revolt is a nasty, unpredictable thing, and it only ever serves the causes of majority large enough to challenge a government. Which is great if you've got one...but if so, why not just vote?
At least from my experiences here in Canada, they stock the exact same stuff as most other discount department stores, and pay their employees about the same amount. How much do you expect them to pay people to stock shelves?
In the US, where there is no national health care, it is left up to the employer to provide health insurance. This represents a cost to the company, and Wal-Mart is pretty good at avoiding it.
Its health plans are open to part-time employees (those who work fewer than a specified number of hours per week) only after a year of employment. Meaning, as a newly hired employee, you must wait at least a year before you can get any insurance at all. (And Wal-mart may force people to work off the clock to keep their hours-per-week low.) Furthermore, the plans that they offer are too expensive for the wages that they pay; the premiums are higher, the deductibles are higher, and the coverage is lower. So many eligible Wal-Mart employees are still unable to afford health care.
Of course being exposed to some bacteria over your life is a good thing anyhow - it builds the immune system. That's why parents should let their kids go out side and play/eat the dirt, they'll be better for it in the long run.
There's absolutely no evidence that a lack of exposure to bacteria reduces the efficacy of the immune system.
In fact, it seems that the reverse is true. As we've become more hygenic, the immune system, strong as ever, goes looking for soft targets to beat up. It becomes hypersensitive, creating conditions like allergies and athsma.
Thing is, most Mac users don't use this functionality since the two-button mouse has not been standard...and because Control click is a pain in the ass. Thus, very few Mac application developers exert the extra effort to do a halfway decent job for contextual menus.
Yes, there are some Mac apps where commands exist only in the menu bar.
On the other hand, there are dozens of applications where commands exist only in right-click menus. This is a much, much worse state of affairs, because the only way to find these commands is to right click on every single object on the screen.. At least with a menu bar, you can see the full list of commands for the application just by swiping your mouse across the screen once.
It is for exactly this reason that the Apple HCI guidelines state that the menu bar should get first priority, and contextual menus second.
BTW, most Windows users now have three button mice (center wheel click).;-Whoop de friggin' do. Center (scroll) clicking is also supported by default under OS X. Can you also squeeze the mouse to activate the task switcher, as you can with the standard Apple mouse? No? Oh, look, the standard Mac mouse has four distinct click modes, plus two scroll axes! My mouse-penis is larger!
There used to be this company called GMC and it had others called Chevrolet and Pontiac, et al. We could take a bell housing off a 66 Pontiac whatever and fit it perfectly to a 68 Chevrolet whatever. ALL water thermostat housings between all of these makes were the same.
What you really mean was, there used to be this company called GM, which owned brands called Chevrolet and Pontiac and GMC. They maintained these brands in the marketplace, spending millions on separate marketing campaigns and styling treatments to the point where you thought they were different on the inside.
I doubt it, unless the power plant is nuclear or solar etc. If you're burning fossil fuels to make the electricity, which do you think is more efficient: a car which turns chemical energy directly into kinetic energy, or a car which starts by converting that same fuel first to electricty at the power plant, then transmitting it many miles, then converting it to chemical energy in the battery, then converting that back to electricity, and then using that electricity to produce kinetic energy? Don't forget to factor in the increased weight you have to lug around, and all the energy consumed in manufacturing the car itself.
Consider that regular hybrids already convert chemical energy into mechanical energy, and then into electrical energy, chemical (battery) energy, and then back into electrical and finally mechanical energy. Obviously, this complicated series of thermodynamic conversions must make them less efficient than conventional gasoline cars, right?
No, because there are all sorts of mitigating factors. For hybrids, this comes from the fact that they use regenerative braking. There are other factors at work in power plants.
The specifics of thermodynamics are best worked out in practice, not theory.
Email fills your inbox. If you don't have time to answer something, it stays there, begging for your time forever - or at least, for the couple of weeks it takes me to realize that no, I will never in fact get back to that, and I'll file it away from my attention. You have all these "open" communication threads, things to which you own an answer but you don't care enough. IM is not like that. If you are away, people don't IM you. If you have an IM conversation, when it's closed, it's closed, you move on to other stuff - you don't have this feeling of these hundreds of threads demanding your attention.
IM requires symmetrical effort. In email, a lot of the messages I get are sent to more than one person: workplace mailing lists, even the usual habit of CCs. The junk accumulates, and this is a bigger problem than spam, as there are no effective automatic filters for workplace mailing-lists. In IM, if somebody IMs me, they are giving me their full attention.
These issues exist entirely with your conception of email, not the medium itself. You could accomplish the same thing with email by using the Delete (or "Move") key in your mail client in the same way that you use the "clear" button on your cell phone.
As far as spam goes...I get as much text message "spim" as I do spam.
Let them learn about every kind of sex, stop treating sex and masturbation like freakish taboo abnoramalities and let them have open honest dialogue about sex.
I don't have a problem with porn, and I don't have a problem with children learning about sex, but I don't think porn is a healthy way for children to learn about sex. There's all sorts of porn out there, and a good deal of it presents unrealistic scenarios out of context. Particularly those that deal with how women should be treated.
Porn should come after proper sex education, not in its stead.
Firefox's market share may be of primary interest to web developers, but it's also relevant to the general OSS and Mac user communities as well.
Why? Because IE isn't just another browser. It's a Windows-only browser with proprietary features (ActiveX, etc.) that promotes lock-in. So lots of people care about IE's market share, and lots of people, for all sorts of selfish resons, want IE to fail.
Don't like it? Fine, follow your own advice and STFU already.
Quite a few die-hard Star Wars fans would pay $99 to be able to buy the Holiday Special. Even the crappy home-video rip is remarkably popular, if only for the humor value.
And it would be even more popular among the disillusioned George Lucas haters.
Yes, a much safer way to put carcinogens in his body. The point is to delivery nicotine, which isn't a carcinogen. Since he didn't want to smoke, I pointed out a much safer alternative. The notion that smokeless tobacco is as bad for you as cigarettes is utter nonsense. That doesn't mean it's in any way advisable. It's sort of like saying it's safer to play Russian Roulette with one round than two. Especially with plenty of cancer-risk-free ways to get nicotine into you.
Yes, and it's only approved for the treatment of nicotine addiction. No doctor who cares about his license is going to prescribe it for you for, say, the treatment of depression. They're sold OTC.
Slashdot Mirror
If you think about it, Apple is really hard on suppliers - think of them as the Wal-Mart of the computer industry. If they can get a part cheaper, they'll bully their suppliers to get it. Thus, it's really in the supplier's interest to find better ways of making the chips cheaper. 8GB chips are already here, and 16GB ones are going to be commercially available shortly, but still, it's a tight market.
The MP3 player industry, maybe. In the PC market, Apple doesn't have the buying power to squeeze its suppliers. When Apple demanded faster-cheaper PowerPCs from IBM threatening to take its then-2% market share elsewhere, Big Blue could barely stop laughing long enough to tell Steve Jobs to take a hike.
Dell is the Wal-Mart of the PC market...legendary for cutting costs (and quality, when it suits them) and pressuring suppliers. And it has the buying power to do it.
Well, the densely populated U.S. cities could have been done. Still could be done. Still are not being done.
http://www22.verizon.com/content/consumerfios/
Coming soon to a densely populated city near you
No, it's nowhere near universal coverage. But it's definitely "being done."
Um...no, that's "alternative." If you're going to be a word-usage Nazi, get it right first.
Unless you're trying to suggest that they're switching back and forth repeatedly.
I won't argue that these patents might make some cash in the short term, but I'm curious if they've factored in the value of consumer good will...
For placing a projectile travelling at high velocity into the foot of person holding the projectile launcher, or metaphorically performing the same function on a company.
One can only hope that if IBM is granted these patents, their rigourous enforcement will make offshoring less attractive.
Oh, for the sensible names of my youth, like 80486DX-2.
policy that's popular within the community
We don't know that. Just because the guy who did it says it didn't get many complaints, and even has a few outspoken proponents, doesn't mean it's necessarily a popular one.
...You know, it's interesting. The PC has proved to be very resilient because, as Bill said earlier, I mean, the death of the PC has been predicted every few years. --Steve Jobs.
http://d5.allthingsd.com/20070531/d5-gates-jobs-transcript/
The only way in which 2007 is "worse" than either 2003 or OOo in terms of interface is that its not the same as one would expect from any other Windows application
Fixed that for you.
Nice little Freudian slip there.
I'd wager that most of the successful commercial software companies treat their developers with a modicum of dignity. Sure, there have been dozens of exceptions over the years, but by and large it's hard to stay in the business if you treat your programmers like shit. It's a good way to make sure your company is a one-hit wonder. Perhaps that's why Adobe, Microsoft, and Google have all been on the "Best Companies to Work For" list, as have other software firms. They may not please all of their employees, but they generally have a reputation for taking care of their own.
It's often a meaner existence for programmers who work for non-software companies like financial or logistics firms--they're viewed as a "cost," not a revenue stream.
Some people are still using analog copper wire for their voice systems.
Crazy, I know.
Since the founding of this nation, there has been exactly one time when the populace took up arms en masse against the government to fight to preserve a right that appeared to be threatened.
What right was that?
The right to enslave black people.
Armed revolt is a nasty, unpredictable thing, and it only ever serves the causes of majority large enough to challenge a government. Which is great if you've got one...but if so, why not just vote?
Not OpenOffice XML. (When referring to Microsoft's proposed document format standard.)
Huge potential for confusion, and Slashdot's submitters/editors get it wrong half the time.
At least from my experiences here in Canada, they stock the exact same stuff as most other discount department stores, and pay their employees about the same amount. How much do you expect them to pay people to stock shelves?
In the US, where there is no national health care, it is left up to the employer to provide health insurance. This represents a cost to the company, and Wal-Mart is pretty good at avoiding it.
Its health plans are open to part-time employees (those who work fewer than a specified number of hours per week) only after a year of employment. Meaning, as a newly hired employee, you must wait at least a year before you can get any insurance at all. (And Wal-mart may force people to work off the clock to keep their hours-per-week low.) Furthermore, the plans that they offer are too expensive for the wages that they pay; the premiums are higher, the deductibles are higher, and the coverage is lower. So many eligible Wal-Mart employees are still unable to afford health care.
Of course being exposed to some bacteria over your life is a good thing anyhow - it builds the immune system. That's why parents should let their kids go out side and play/eat the dirt, they'll be better for it in the long run.
There's absolutely no evidence that a lack of exposure to bacteria reduces the efficacy of the immune system.
In fact, it seems that the reverse is true. As we've become more hygenic, the immune system, strong as ever, goes looking for soft targets to beat up. It becomes hypersensitive, creating conditions like allergies and athsma.
...server capacity, on the other hand, is too expensive.
Thing is, most Mac users don't use this functionality since the two-button mouse has not been standard...and because Control click is a pain in the ass. Thus, very few Mac application developers exert the extra effort to do a halfway decent job for contextual menus.
;-Whoop de friggin' do. Center (scroll) clicking is also supported by default under OS X. Can you also squeeze the mouse to activate the task switcher, as you can with the standard Apple mouse? No? Oh, look, the standard Mac mouse has four distinct click modes, plus two scroll axes! My mouse-penis is larger!
Yes, there are some Mac apps where commands exist only in the menu bar.
On the other hand, there are dozens of applications where commands exist only in right-click menus. This is a much, much worse state of affairs, because the only way to find these commands is to right click on every single object on the screen.. At least with a menu bar, you can see the full list of commands for the application just by swiping your mouse across the screen once.
It is for exactly this reason that the Apple HCI guidelines state that the menu bar should get first priority, and contextual menus second.
BTW, most Windows users now have three button mice (center wheel click).
There used to be this company called GMC and it had others called Chevrolet and Pontiac, et al. We could take a bell housing off a 66 Pontiac whatever and fit it perfectly to a 68 Chevrolet whatever. ALL water thermostat housings between all of these makes were the same.
What you really mean was, there used to be this company called GM, which owned brands called Chevrolet and Pontiac and GMC. They maintained these brands in the marketplace, spending millions on separate marketing campaigns and styling treatments to the point where you thought they were different on the inside.
I doubt it, unless the power plant is nuclear or solar etc. If you're burning fossil fuels to make the electricity, which do you think is more efficient: a car which turns chemical energy directly into kinetic energy, or a car which starts by converting that same fuel first to electricty at the power plant, then transmitting it many miles, then converting it to chemical energy in the battery, then converting that back to electricity, and then using that electricity to produce kinetic energy? Don't forget to factor in the increased weight you have to lug around, and all the energy consumed in manufacturing the car itself.
Consider that regular hybrids already convert chemical energy into mechanical energy, and then into electrical energy, chemical (battery) energy, and then back into electrical and finally mechanical energy. Obviously, this complicated series of thermodynamic conversions must make them less efficient than conventional gasoline cars, right?
No, because there are all sorts of mitigating factors. For hybrids, this comes from the fact that they use regenerative braking. There are other factors at work in power plants.
The specifics of thermodynamics are best worked out in practice, not theory.
These issues exist entirely with your conception of email, not the medium itself. You could accomplish the same thing with email by using the Delete (or "Move") key in your mail client in the same way that you use the "clear" button on your cell phone.
As far as spam goes...I get as much text message "spim" as I do spam.
Let them learn about every kind of sex, stop treating sex and masturbation like freakish taboo abnoramalities and let them have open honest dialogue about sex.
I don't have a problem with porn, and I don't have a problem with children learning about sex, but I don't think porn is a healthy way for children to learn about sex. There's all sorts of porn out there, and a good deal of it presents unrealistic scenarios out of context. Particularly those that deal with how women should be treated.
Porn should come after proper sex education, not in its stead.
Firefox's market share may be of primary interest to web developers, but it's also relevant to the general OSS and Mac user communities as well.
Why? Because IE isn't just another browser. It's a Windows-only browser with proprietary features (ActiveX, etc.) that promotes lock-in. So lots of people care about IE's market share, and lots of people, for all sorts of selfish resons, want IE to fail.
Don't like it? Fine, follow your own advice and STFU already.
Of course not. Everyone on Slashdot knows Apple invented multitouch for the iPhone.
Quite a few die-hard Star Wars fans would pay $99 to be able to buy the Holiday Special. Even the crappy home-video rip is remarkably popular, if only for the humor value.
And it would be even more popular among the disillusioned George Lucas haters.
Umm...
See the difference?
Yes, a much safer way to put carcinogens in his body. The point is to delivery nicotine, which isn't a carcinogen. Since he didn't want to smoke, I pointed out a much safer alternative. The notion that smokeless tobacco is as bad for you as cigarettes is utter nonsense.
That doesn't mean it's in any way advisable. It's sort of like saying it's safer to play Russian Roulette with one round than two. Especially with plenty of cancer-risk-free ways to get nicotine into you.
Yes, and it's only approved for the treatment of nicotine addiction. No doctor who cares about his license is going to prescribe it for you for, say, the treatment of depression.
They're sold OTC.