Maybe I'm just being foreign, but what' the heck is an Ofer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofer
Ofer (Hebrew: ) is a moshav located south of Haifa, Israel in the Carmel Mountains and is a part of the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. The moshav was founded in 1950 by immigrants from India. Agricultural income is derived from raising cattle, sheep and chickens growing vegetables and flowers, and tourism.
Wow! Did you realize that you wrote more words (660) than were in the whole of TFA (610)?
And you still missed the fact that the article is obviously all lies since the world simply may not contain 8 million year-old bacteria since it is 6,000 years old.
I've run both, and still do, for a large financial institution. Your comment about seeing stability, security and performance does not hold up though. We regularly (weekly or biweekly) have to reboot the windows boxes for all of the typical windows updates, as well as to just "clean them up" and clean out memory problems from all of the applications that have to run on them.
So, how stable is a webserver where the underlying, obligatory OS requires regular reboots? Just how stable may one say their webserver is if it has to be rebooted?
If he's walking out, it's too late. The most they can do at that point (assuming he refuses a search) is escort him out. I presume that that point of law matches that of our northernmost state--err, neighbors to the north.
How about something that filters out pointless conversation instead? In the middle of some intense thinking and and some numbskull walks wanting to share some boring story again? Expecting an urgent email but tired of reading each message as it pops up? Tired of having to concentrate and focus on "conversation" with the Wifey or kids (aka, saying "uh-huh" at the right time)?
Get a Conversation Coprocessor! It handles mundane written and verbal conversations for you! Worried about missing something important? Conversation Coprocessor records all conversation for later review and recall. If any current conversation meets the conditions you specify as being "worth attending to" it immediately triggers a small sneezing/coughing/belching fit and plays back the previous conversation buffer to you. End result: you waste less time on pointless conversation and are able to time-shift conversations! It's like Tivo for conversation.
I was wondering something similar, but almost opposite. In this case, a relatively small office was closed down for investigation. What if the Hungarians declared that they felt that the evidence was also stored on the "main" network, which was connected by intranet. How would MS (or any large company) handle a demand that full access be granted to the entire intranet for investigation. What if the demand included suspending all activity, or introducing all details found into (public) evidence.
Would a large company like MSFT be willing to absolutely refuse demands from a policing body, be it American, the E.U., or Hungary? Reversing that question, how small of a policing body could make such a demand before MSFT would comply?
I don't know what Rez is, but 5 minutes of searching on the internet finds it at $25. Is it one of those "title is spectacular" ones? Give it enough time, and I'm pretty sure it'll hit the $20 mark. As for older console games, yeah, I'm sure those were all $20 at some point. Perhaps now finding that exact game you want now demands a higher price - you're paying for the novelty if you're just now getting SuperNES games though.
There was a significant hop in price with the XBox games. The way they structured it, the basic game was $40-50, and then the ultimate/gold/platinum/collector's edition was another $10 or $20 on top of that and included an extra level or other goody. Ads typically showed the cheaper version to get people into the store, and then offered the gold version for just a bit more.
People at the store already spending around $50 easily justified the special-edition for only another 20%, and viola, the $60 price-point was born. Game makers saw that the public eagerly snapped up (as eagerly as at $50 at least) and reset their target to $60. The only reason I could see the extra 20% justification is that buying it at that premium includes all of the downloadable content that the basic version may buy.
Personally, unless the title is spectacular, I wait until it hits the bargain bin ($20) and get it. Fortunately for me, I can typically get the collector's edition for the same $20 price as the basic version.
I still have my 1989 Encyclopedia Britannica and it looks great in the two sets of boxes in the basement.
Want me to take those off your hands? It'll clear up some space for you! I'll then give the books to my kids to peruse.
Honestly, how many of you/.'ers didn't flip through the encyclopedia as a kid just to see what was out there? That's something that's not as easy to do on a laptop - flip through random articles (not related by links). Granted your books are almost 20 years old, but I imagine that there hasn't been that huge of a change in all things in 20 years.
I'd like to have another encyclopedia for the kids to flip around in. Granted it's not the best way to research every topic, but there are advantages. Like: I can actually tell my kid to read about sexuality without worrying what he'd find googling vagina.
Seriously, let me know if you want to get rid of those books.
Speaking personally, I have less of a reason to go to a LUG than "back-in-the-day". Before I was so new to it, that any help was great. At that time, I was hacking together leftover, unsupported, often-broken hardware.
Now though, I can afford to buy normal hardware, and the stuff I have is all standardized enough that I'm not looking for help guessing the right X config settings for my particular vid card.
Attendance at LUGs being down may actually be indicative of less hand-holding being needed for installation and configuration. I would rather go to a geek-gathering where we can discuss some sort of RPG and debate dwarves vs. elves than to go to a LUG where we all rally around and cheer how well some package installed without error.
And if all that's left at a LUG is debating distros, I'd probably have more fun debating religions. I'll opt to take the kids out for some fun any time over that.
Why would you waste time creating a demo when you are trying to get the game done?
You would make a demo because the true goal isn't to get the game done, it's to profit. The way to profit is to sell merchandise (the game) when the margins are higher. So, if you want to sell the game to me when it hits the shelves, rather than when it's in the clearance bin, get me interested in it with a free demo.
I personally am interested in the game, but won't drop $60 on it unless I can try it out myself. I'll just wait until it hits $20-$25 used (note that used nets you no profit either).
Imagine an office full of coders all talking at normal voice-levels trying to get that paren in the right spot. Noisy, eh? Now take it towards the end of the day having that same group of people, all pissed off because the voice control is "really good" but not perfect.
That's way way better than Google Maps, but you can't identify a face that only takes up 4 "pixels".
You, good sir, need to buy a clue! I know better, I've seen CSI!!! Don't you know that they're able to zoom-in, enhance, zoom-in, enhance, and zoom-in, enhance anything? They're able to zoom in (and enhance) on the inverted reflection on the concave of a spoon, which is on a reflection of someone's sunglasses, who is in near-total darkness, and underwater. I've heard they're almost able to do facial biometrics and genetic tests from that same picture!
Surely if they can do that, they can zoom-in enough to recognize people from a high-tech satellite!
Not to negate your point, but considering that so many people are actually in debt (negative wealth) there would have to be an income consideration too. Although, it would be interesting to see someone earning additional income by being fined while in debt.
Perhaps a better way is to fine people time as well as a financial amount. As an example, if you're caught speeding, you have to perform community service: 1 day per mile over the speed limit. Time is money, after all; and the more "valuable" you are, the more your time is worth. This would be an easy way to scale fines; aside from people that have nothing better to do than community service.
On the first day of college, the Dean addressed the students, pointing out some of the rules.
"The female dormitory will be out-of-bounds for all male students, and the male dormitory to the female students. Anybody caught breaking this rule will be fined $20 the first time."
He continued, "Anybody caught breaking this rule the second time will be fined $60. Being caught a third time will incur a hefty fine of $180. Are there any questions?"
At this, a male student in the crowd inquires, "How much for a season pass?"
Watch for them to offer PCs in other developing countries where
Okay, so where is the link for Americans that want to order a handful of these machines for their kids' classes? My kids' school has Windows pc's and is surely willing to accept a few more of them. Why is it that I have to live in a foreign country to get the "cheap pc"? (Yes, I know I can set up Linux, but the school is not ready to admin heterogenous operating systems and I can't replace them all.)
(Begin Rant)
I think that any "Americian" company willing to sell a product a foreign market should be required to make available that product in their home market at the same - or better - price. Although this seems like an off-topic statement, it's applicable because this article is showing the opposite stance. They want to sell a discounted product abroad, but will not offer the item at "home". Blame my mother for this idea, as she is the one that taught me, "Charity begins at home."
Before someone tries to throw out the argument that it's a business decision, may I simply point out that subsidizing "a limited number of retail outlets in Pune and Bangalore" is little different than subsidizing "a limited number of retail outlets in (inner-city of choosing) and (rural district in chosen state)". I would hope that an American company subsidizing an American region should have more "long term" benefit than subsidizing Pune and Bangalore.
Of course, this same principle applies to all merchandise -- consider prescription costs. It makes no sense to me that I have to pay 5X for a drug that sells for X elsewhere, when the producer is not willing to hire me for 5X the the salary. If my company is willing to lay me off in favor of hiring 5 people off-shore, then they should only be allowed to sell off-shore also.
(/End Rant)
Any respectable geek should run from the TechStop idea:
Yeah, it's cool that there's someone there to answer dumb-user questions, but I would hope that my company would hire programmers that realize that the that network cable goes into the NIC. Besides that, the person working the counter is likely a step up from a BestBuy salesman, able to see a problem, but not good enough to get a job as a dedicated sysadmin.
The available supply of equipment is a nice idea, except that there's inevitably someone (like myself) that would snap up the new and neat stuff that came in and drop off my crusty old gear. The end result there would be a stock of old crap that some manager can't justify replacing.
I would think that the best idea from that section of TFA is "a more flexible model for employees to define their OWN equipment needs". I'd rather accomplish that with a corporate card that let me order my own stuff using my own limits (as designated by my position or manager). And if the under-an-hour feature is of real value, let me use my account at the local computer store without approvals.
Yes, it was a neat idea, but not for a company that touts its staff of geeks.
Word-of-mouth from two more ordinary folks, Mom and Dad. My mom, who is computer literate - but far from expert - sent me an email yesterday. (I just moved and hadn't chatted with her in a couple weeks so excuse the first sentence. I'm including it so that I can paste verbatim.) This alone should give you a real user's opinion on Vista. She got Vista on her new PC when her old PC was dying. She also has a Mac, which she loves, but needs a PC for some of her software. She sent this to me after spending a month trying to get her ISP (in Mexico) to support and communicate with her Vista pc.
Hi Dear,
I am sorry to bother you, but we don't seem to have up to date communication
information. Would you mind sending me you current information? I have a
question also: do you think it is possible to make a partition on our new
computer and to load Windows XP into it? Vista is incompatible with a LOT of
older programs.
Thanks!
Mom
Also to note is that my Dad, who loves to upgrade and tinker (and royally break the shit out of his computer (like removing his modem because he got a busy signal on dial-up)) has not installed Vista despite having a free upgrade certificate.
A more fitting "rehabilitation" would be to give him a flexible release date. Let him know that his release date is the day that he finishes reading all of the email he sent, out loud. The quandry of course is how to pronounce things like "v!agr@".
Slashdot Mirror
That would be Dragon's Lair (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Lair) Fun to watch, expensive to play back in the day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ofer
Ofer (Hebrew: ) is a moshav located south of Haifa, Israel in the Carmel Mountains and is a part of the Hof HaCarmel Regional Council. The moshav was founded in 1950 by immigrants from India. Agricultural income is derived from raising cattle, sheep and chickens growing vegetables and flowers, and tourism.
Wow! Did you realize that you wrote more words (660) than were in the whole of TFA (610)?
And you still missed the fact that the article is obviously all lies since the world simply may not contain 8 million year-old bacteria since it is 6,000 years old.
I've run both, and still do, for a large financial institution. Your comment about seeing stability, security and performance does not hold up though. We regularly (weekly or biweekly) have to reboot the windows boxes for all of the typical windows updates, as well as to just "clean them up" and clean out memory problems from all of the applications that have to run on them.
So, how stable is a webserver where the underlying, obligatory OS requires regular reboots? Just how stable may one say their webserver is if it has to be rebooted?
If he's walking out, it's too late. The most they can do at that point (assuming he refuses a search) is escort him out. I presume that that point of law matches that of our northernmost state--err, neighbors to the north.
How about something that filters out pointless conversation instead? In the middle of some intense thinking and and some numbskull walks wanting to share some boring story again? Expecting an urgent email but tired of reading each message as it pops up? Tired of having to concentrate and focus on "conversation" with the Wifey or kids (aka, saying "uh-huh" at the right time)?
Get a Conversation Coprocessor! It handles mundane written and verbal conversations for you! Worried about missing something important? Conversation Coprocessor records all conversation for later review and recall. If any current conversation meets the conditions you specify as being "worth attending to" it immediately triggers a small sneezing/coughing/belching fit and plays back the previous conversation buffer to you. End result: you waste less time on pointless conversation and are able to time-shift conversations! It's like Tivo for conversation.
I was wondering something similar, but almost opposite. In this case, a relatively small office was closed down for investigation. What if the Hungarians declared that they felt that the evidence was also stored on the "main" network, which was connected by intranet. How would MS (or any large company) handle a demand that full access be granted to the entire intranet for investigation. What if the demand included suspending all activity, or introducing all details found into (public) evidence.
Would a large company like MSFT be willing to absolutely refuse demands from a policing body, be it American, the E.U., or Hungary? Reversing that question, how small of a policing body could make such a demand before MSFT would comply?
I don't know what Rez is, but 5 minutes of searching on the internet finds it at $25. Is it one of those "title is spectacular" ones? Give it enough time, and I'm pretty sure it'll hit the $20 mark. As for older console games, yeah, I'm sure those were all $20 at some point. Perhaps now finding that exact game you want now demands a higher price - you're paying for the novelty if you're just now getting SuperNES games though.
It is if your business model emphasizes monopoly and imitation over innovation and competition.
MSFT profits most by being bigger, not better.
There was a significant hop in price with the XBox games. The way they structured it, the basic game was $40-50, and then the ultimate/gold/platinum/collector's edition was another $10 or $20 on top of that and included an extra level or other goody. Ads typically showed the cheaper version to get people into the store, and then offered the gold version for just a bit more.
People at the store already spending around $50 easily justified the special-edition for only another 20%, and viola, the $60 price-point was born. Game makers saw that the public eagerly snapped up (as eagerly as at $50 at least) and reset their target to $60. The only reason I could see the extra 20% justification is that buying it at that premium includes all of the downloadable content that the basic version may buy.
Personally, unless the title is spectacular, I wait until it hits the bargain bin ($20) and get it. Fortunately for me, I can typically get the collector's edition for the same $20 price as the basic version.
Want me to take those off your hands? It'll clear up some space for you! I'll then give the books to my kids to peruse.
Honestly, how many of you
I'd like to have another encyclopedia for the kids to flip around in. Granted it's not the best way to research every topic, but there are advantages. Like: I can actually tell my kid to read about sexuality without worrying what he'd find googling vagina.
Seriously, let me know if you want to get rid of those books.
Speaking personally, I have less of a reason to go to a LUG than "back-in-the-day". Before I was so new to it, that any help was great. At that time, I was hacking together leftover, unsupported, often-broken hardware.
Now though, I can afford to buy normal hardware, and the stuff I have is all standardized enough that I'm not looking for help guessing the right X config settings for my particular vid card.
Attendance at LUGs being down may actually be indicative of less hand-holding being needed for installation and configuration. I would rather go to a geek-gathering where we can discuss some sort of RPG and debate dwarves vs. elves than to go to a LUG where we all rally around and cheer how well some package installed without error.
And if all that's left at a LUG is debating distros, I'd probably have more fun debating religions. I'll opt to take the kids out for some fun any time over that.
Only on
You would make a demo because the true goal isn't to get the game done, it's to profit. The way to profit is to sell merchandise (the game) when the margins are higher. So, if you want to sell the game to me when it hits the shelves, rather than when it's in the clearance bin, get me interested in it with a free demo.
I personally am interested in the game, but won't drop $60 on it unless I can try it out myself. I'll just wait until it hits $20-$25 used (note that used nets you no profit either).
Imagine an office full of coders all talking at normal voice-levels trying to get that paren in the right spot. Noisy, eh? Now take it towards the end of the day having that same group of people, all pissed off because the voice control is "really good" but not perfect.
You, good sir, need to buy a clue! I know better, I've seen CSI!!! Don't you know that they're able to zoom-in, enhance, zoom-in, enhance, and zoom-in, enhance anything? They're able to zoom in (and enhance) on the inverted reflection on the concave of a spoon, which is on a reflection of someone's sunglasses, who is in near-total darkness, and underwater. I've heard they're almost able to do facial biometrics and genetic tests from that same picture!
Surely if they can do that, they can zoom-in enough to recognize people from a high-tech satellite!
*67 = Caller-id blocking
e.g.: *67,18005551212
Not to negate your point, but considering that so many people are actually in debt (negative wealth) there would have to be an income consideration too. Although, it would be interesting to see someone earning additional income by being fined while in debt.
Perhaps a better way is to fine people time as well as a financial amount. As an example, if you're caught speeding, you have to perform community service: 1 day per mile over the speed limit. Time is money, after all; and the more "valuable" you are, the more your time is worth. This would be an easy way to scale fines; aside from people that have nothing better to do than community service.
On the first day of college, the Dean addressed the students, pointing out some of the rules. "The female dormitory will be out-of-bounds for all male students, and the male dormitory to the female students. Anybody caught breaking this rule will be fined $20 the first time."
He continued, "Anybody caught breaking this rule the second time will be fined $60. Being caught a third time will incur a hefty fine of $180. Are there any questions?"
At this, a male student in the crowd inquires, "How much for a season pass?"
Okay, so where is the link for Americans that want to order a handful of these machines for their kids' classes? My kids' school has Windows pc's and is surely willing to accept a few more of them. Why is it that I have to live in a foreign country to get the "cheap pc"? (Yes, I know I can set up Linux, but the school is not ready to admin heterogenous operating systems and I can't replace them all.)
(Begin Rant)
I think that any "Americian" company willing to sell a product a foreign market should be required to make available that product in their home market at the same - or better - price. Although this seems like an off-topic statement, it's applicable because this article is showing the opposite stance. They want to sell a discounted product abroad, but will not offer the item at "home". Blame my mother for this idea, as she is the one that taught me, "Charity begins at home."
Before someone tries to throw out the argument that it's a business decision, may I simply point out that subsidizing "a limited number of retail outlets in Pune and Bangalore" is little different than subsidizing "a limited number of retail outlets in (inner-city of choosing) and (rural district in chosen state)". I would hope that an American company subsidizing an American region should have more "long term" benefit than subsidizing Pune and Bangalore.
Of course, this same principle applies to all merchandise -- consider prescription costs. It makes no sense to me that I have to pay 5X for a drug that sells for X elsewhere, when the producer is not willing to hire me for 5X the the salary. If my company is willing to lay me off in favor of hiring 5 people off-shore, then they should only be allowed to sell off-shore also.
(/End Rant)
After looking at the Venezuela-Cuba-US love triangle, here's my guess:
Any respectable geek should run from the TechStop idea:
Yeah, it's cool that there's someone there to answer dumb-user questions, but I would hope that my company would hire programmers that realize that the that network cable goes into the NIC. Besides that, the person working the counter is likely a step up from a BestBuy salesman, able to see a problem, but not good enough to get a job as a dedicated sysadmin.
The available supply of equipment is a nice idea, except that there's inevitably someone (like myself) that would snap up the new and neat stuff that came in and drop off my crusty old gear. The end result there would be a stock of old crap that some manager can't justify replacing.
I would think that the best idea from that section of TFA is "a more flexible model for employees to define their OWN equipment needs". I'd rather accomplish that with a corporate card that let me order my own stuff using my own limits (as designated by my position or manager). And if the under-an-hour feature is of real value, let me use my account at the local computer store without approvals.
Yes, it was a neat idea, but not for a company that touts its staff of geeks.
Word-of-mouth from two more ordinary folks, Mom and Dad. My mom, who is computer literate - but far from expert - sent me an email yesterday. (I just moved and hadn't chatted with her in a couple weeks so excuse the first sentence. I'm including it so that I can paste verbatim.) This alone should give you a real user's opinion on Vista. She got Vista on her new PC when her old PC was dying. She also has a Mac, which she loves, but needs a PC for some of her software. She sent this to me after spending a month trying to get her ISP (in Mexico) to support and communicate with her Vista pc.
Hi Dear,
I am sorry to bother you, but we don't seem to have up to date communication information. Would you mind sending me you current information? I have a question also: do you think it is possible to make a partition on our new computer and to load Windows XP into it? Vista is incompatible with a LOT of older programs.
Thanks!
Mom
Also to note is that my Dad, who loves to upgrade and tinker (and royally break the shit out of his computer (like removing his modem because he got a busy signal on dial-up)) has not installed Vista despite having a free upgrade certificate.
A more fitting "rehabilitation" would be to give him a flexible release date. Let him know that his release date is the day that he finishes reading all of the email he sent, out loud. The quandry of course is how to pronounce things like "v!agr@".