Yes, they release a new model to prevent the old model falling under the magic US$200 price point. They've got to keep the price up somehow.
This exactly. How many people aren't in the market for a game system but would buy one if the price were right. There are probably quite a few people who don't want a Wii (which is now essentially priced at as an impulse buy) who wouldn't mind a PS3. Too bad they won't crank out the old systems for cheap.
Sony doesn't want you buying the PS3 for cheap. It dilutes the premium image and Sony needs to make money from the PS3. Profitability is lagging behind MS (Nintendo is on another planet when it comes to making a profit).
Sony revises the design of an existing product to use smaller, cheaper parts, fewer materials and higher shipping density, markets it as a new and improved model to boost sales and sells it for just as much as the old one.
Yes, they release a new model to prevent the old model falling under the magic US$200 price point. They've got to keep the price up somehow.
Not only are carriers sufficiently armed and escorted themselves, sinking one does not win a war. In fact, sinking a carrier is such an overt act of war it guarantees the doom of the attacking government.
Actually you'd need to think twice about that.
If you're considering sinking a carrier, you're already at war or at least at a war game.
Secondly, you don't need to sink a carrier, you just need to damage it or nullify it's ability to project power (I.E. if you can control the airspace outside the missile cruisers range, carrier is useless, the escorts will need to engage your forces on your terms).
Thridly, carriers are incredibly vulnerable. A slightly damaged flight deck will completely knock the carrier out of commission. At the very least that's leaving the combat area to effect repairs, more likely it's back to a friendly base to effect repairs. That's for the entire carrier group. Carriers seem effective because they've only fought opponents who cant strike back for the last 60 years.
In WWII carriers were quite vulnerable even with all their escorts and the best weapons of the day. Kamikaze and Torpedo attacks did huge amounts of damage. What made the US carriers effective is that the US could repair and replace them faster than the Japanese could replace submarines and Kamikaze pilots. A modern example, if I fire $100 million worth of drones, missiles and manned aircraft and succeed in knocking a $4.5 billion carrier out of the fight that is a victory unless you have over 450 times the manufacturing and economic capacity as me. War is as much about economics as it is about weapons and strategy.
British and Australian Submarines routinely damage or destroy US carriers in war games.
We'll see traditional aircraft carriers go the way of battleships in the future as they get replaced by destroyer and submarine sized variants that can deploy a larger number of drones.
It would be interesting to see how long they last in a war between evenly matched sides where the carriers are vulnerable to air/missile attack.
It seems like you would need an awful lot of successful attacks to take out a carrier though. The modern carrier has so many defenses, some secret, I am doubtful even a good supersonic missile could get close to one. Even if a missile does get through they are so huge and compartmentalized it would probably not sink.
Nope, you only need one successful attack.
The question is how many failed attacks will that cost.
Don't place too much stock in high tech defenses. The British fleet in the Faulkands war suffered two major attacks, one from an Exocet missile that only hit because the destroyer didn't switch the CWIS system on (you can always count on incompetence) and the second was from unguided bombs dropped by low flying Argentine jets. The saving grace for the British was that Argentina didn't have that many jets or Exocets to waste. This becomes less of a defense when your opponent is producing weapons at a wartime pace.
US carriers in the pacific in WWII suffered from two big problems, Japanese torpedoes and Japanese Kamikazes. It's very easy to create a weapon that is difficult to stop if you make it difficult to detect, if it doesn't need to make a return trip it's even harder to stop. What saved the carriers is the fact the US could repair or replace them faster than the Japanese could produce subs and Kamikaze pilots.
So even if you've got enough defences to stop 15 supersonic missiles, I just have to fire 16 at you.
Carriers going the way of the battleship because its easier to launch 100 drones from land bases and have them loiter and then attack the attack the carrier at your leisure, you've lost $100 million worth of drones but taken out $20 billion worth of carrier and support ships. Wining a war isn't about weapons as much as it's about economics.
Even if a missile does get through they are so huge and compartmentalized it would probably not sink.
You dont need to sink one, hell ships have been incredibly hard to sink since Nelsons day sunshine.
The gunners of Nelsons ships didn't try to sink the french, they tried to kill the crew, cripple the sails and rigging or the holy grail of Napoleonic naval warfare, topple the mast. There was no point in putting a shot below the water line as it'll take days for a wooden ship to sink.
By the same token, you don't have to sink a carrier, you just have to do enough damage that it cant operate. Damage the flight deck, set up a AAA exclusion zone to shoot down it's complement of jets, there are a heap of ways to do it. The fact the jets are required to return to a carrier is a huge weakness, one that Australia and Japan practice exploiting every few years in war games with US carriers. Carriers are quite fragile, thats why they have a lot of support ships.
Folks buy Apple to be kewl and show off how much money they have, you can't say that about MS.
Do you honestly believe that the majority of people that buy Apple products...do so as a status symbol?? I know that is the often quoted opinion on/. , but do people really believe that deep down?
Yes, I beleive that.
A lot of Apple users buy Apple products because they think of them as status symbols.
Now do I believe that Iphones are status symbols. No, no I don't.
Iphones have become the Toyota Camry of the phone world. For those unfamiliar with the Camry, it's a very popular 4 door commuter sedan. It's not a performance car by any metric, lets be honest here, the Camry corners like a whale, accelerates like a slug and is generally not a fun drive. It's a true A to B car, but it's a car that Just Works(TM), it's mechanically reliable and parts are plentiful. They are so ubiquitous even people on the dole own one.
But yes, there are also people who drive Camrys who consider them to be luxury Automobiles. The rest of us know Camrys, even Camry Aurions are common as muck. The same is true for Iphones
Users don't give a crap about UI's, they've been happily using bad UI's for years because the software does what they want it to. A classic example is considered one of the best RTS's of all time, Total Annihilation which remains to this day, an incredibly fun game despite it's eye clawingly bad UI. Point of sale software, yet to see one with a good UI actually suceed where crappy UI's like Pronto are going ganbusters (Pronto's UI is from 1992 and that's modern, a lot of POS systems use text menus). People put up with crappy UI because getting the software to do what they want is more important. Users will buy a product with a bad UI that does what they want but they wont buy a product with a good UI that doesn't do what they want.
So if we replace UI with function, your post makes sense.
Of course, those who don't use common ESSIDs and use peculiar passwords along with WPA2, they should have nothing to worry about.
This,
The point of security is not to be uncrackable but to be so difficult and time consuming to crack that an attacker simply gives up (combined with the risk of being detected/caught). The threats to my wireless network consist almost entirely of local neighborhood script kiddies who want free internet, a 64 character randomly generated WPA2 key ensures they'll move onto softer targets before too long.
Just start working with it. You will find that cut and paste works in the cases where you really have to put in an IPv6 address
What I've found is that a lot of IPv6 interfaces don't work well with copy/paste. Windows especially. It's OK when dealing with the 4 IPv4 octets but the 16 IPv6 can become a real PITA. Not to mention configuring new appliances like firewalls where the UI is a text based pre-install environment.
Not saying that IPv6 is bad, or that we shouldn't be trying to move to IPv6 ASAP but there are some usability kinks that should be ironed out.
Why not make them human readable?
Keep the hex numbers in the background but have a human readable translation for them in the foreground? IIRC, it's just the same 256 characters as IPv4 but there's 8 octets instead of 4. Obviously 255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255 is not ideal but I'm sure someone can come up with a better system.
Ever since Apple went bankrupt after it tried to sell that disastrous mp3 "pod" player thing in the early 2000s (not as much space as my Nomad but more expensive? no thanks!), we've known that the market for high-end, "premium" products had finally closed up.
The End User saw the walkman and said, this is too bulky and battery consuming. They end user lamented that they could not use the music files on their PC instead of a spinning disk.
Upon hearing the lamentation of the end users, many companies developed MP3 players that thrived on open standards like USB and MSC. They worked like portable flash drives with audio processors built in and they became ever more popular production costs dropped due to the increased production of PC components which the MP3 players shared a lot of common components with.
The end user saw the MP3 player and saw that it was good.
Then the End User looked at their smartphone and cried, Winmo, BB, Palm, are ye gods or devils for thou cannot say. Your ideas are grand but your devices are flawed.
Then a great voice boomed from the havens and said, I AM ANDROID AND I HEAR YOU MY CHILD. Thus the Android had spoken, however the Android did not try to lock it down, rather they opened it up to developers, allowed them to run their own code or other peoples code without the supervision of some kind of "gatekeeper" or "walled garden" which spawned a myriad of similar devices using the same OS or another OS based on the same general idea. The Android even allowed the End User to create their own version of the Android and run them on their own hardware. The Android did not sue all their competitors nor did they try to patent obvious ideas and use them to inhibit their competitors, rather the Android said "go forth and multiply" and relished in the competition he had created.
The End User used Android and saw that it was good.
In this wonderful alternate universe, people have cheap, functional devices that operate in a thriving competitive market without a single company trying to monopolise it and control the every action of the end users. And the end users lived happily ever after.
Moral of the story, new ideas happen because of demand exists, not because a certain company exists.
Yup. Recently spent nearly $50k for a new machine (512GB ram, 64 CPU, etc.). Seems many people are using low end hardware at the client end and expecting the cloud (which for some applications is not easily distributed) to do the real work.
64 CPU for only $50K
Clearly that wasn't a System P.
iPhones hit that "stupid spot" in the American consumer - no money down, affordable monthly payments, visible bling to flash around with your friends, and it has grown into a hip-cool brand too.
Doesn't matter what it does or doesn't do, with those components you've got a winner.
This is it exactly.
The Iphone has become the Toyota Camry of phones. In terms of functionality as well as popularity.
The Camry is a common, 4 door sedan that is not particularly flashy nor a performance vehicle but it is highly reliable and easy to drive. It's the ideal A to B car and it's popularity to "A to B" commuters reflects this. Lets be honest, the Camry is not a good drive. It corners like a whale, accelerates like a slug, handles like a brick and is often driven by a prick who pays no attention to the road but the Camry just works(TM), it's dead simple to drive, mechanically reliable and service and parts are easy to come by when they do break them. This does not however, stop Camry owners from thinking their Camry is special, they will put their my family stickers on their replacement windshields completely oblivious that it came off the last person to crash their Camry. Camry's are so ubiquitous and readily available that even people on the dole own one.
Sent from my Nexus Integra (that's Acura RSX if you live in the US).
For a serious computer user, an SSD has been worth the money for a while now.
* If you need to do serious disk I/O with a mid-size or smaller notebook, RAID isn't even an option for increasing speed. * Running multiple virtual machines? Want them to boot quickly? An SSD makes them feel native. * Running Windows as a native operating system, and have more than one or two programs that you legitimately want to launch at boot, and can't/won't disable? An SSD makes your computer usable within tens of seconds as opposed to multiple minutes. * Doing compilation? Syncing of filesystems with a system such as Unison? Doing anything filesystem heavy? The speedup is insanely awesome.
* Gaming. Most gamers now have an SSD. * CAD/GIS although this is still limited by the high cost of high capacity SSDs.
If all you care about is running Your Web Browser and editing Word documents, or storing a few photos, obviously an SSD is a more questionable upgrade, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
The users that will be most interested in an SSD now they have dropped in price are not the users that have high disk speed requirements rather users that have low power requirements. People who need to get an extra hour or 2 out of their laptop batteries, they may only use Word, Outlook and Chrome but they spend 6-8 hours on the road every 2nd day. Users who have low storage requirements and low power requirements are the users who benefit from cheap SSD's.
There will always be a market for premium hardware. This is just abjectly idiotic.
But we aren't talking the difference between a $15K Nissan Maxima and a $40K Nissan Skyline 370 GT here. These are two radically different products.
We are talking about the difference between a $50 tablet made in China and a $500 tablet made in China. When two products are almost exactly the same, but one is priced radically higher than the other.
Now I would very much like to buy the 370 GT over the Maxima because the Maxima does not have the performance of the 370 by a long shot, but why should I pay $3-500 more for a tablet when it has the exact same performance as the no-name brand?
You're right that there will always be a market for premium goods, but only when those goods are premium like the Skyline 370, however, there will never be a premium market for the Maxima because it's a consumer car, not a performance car. If you released a "premium" Maxima, it just wont sell because the non premium Maxima is exactly the same and half the price.
Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write what we think privately or publicly, about the government, or about any topic. We do not censor the media and may criticise the government without fear of arrest. Free speech comes from facts, not rumours, and the intention must be constructive, not to do harm. There are laws to protect a person's good name and integrity against false information. There are laws against saying or writing things to incite hatred against others because of their culture, ethnicity or background. Freedom of speech is not an excuse to harm others.
Some very intresting wording on that site... what we do have is constituationally protected speach with regard to politics as the High Court rulled that the constitutions' guarentee of democratic elections cover this.
tl;dr: political trolls will be fine or will have some very intresting court battles, its already illegal for most other forms of trolling
What this simply says is that you will be accountable for what you say. It does not inhibit your rights to say it, rather it makes you aware that if you spread false and malicious information you cant hide behind free speech to avoid the consequences. This is the "fire in a crowded theatre" bit of free speech.
I.E., If I printed "HJED loved to beat his wife" on the front page of the SMH, you'd have a right to sue unless I had hard evidence that you enjoyed beating your wife.
James Ashby who is now facing 10 years in prison: "Mr Slipper's lawyers suggested James Ashby could have breached sections of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which prohibits public servants from publishing or communicating internal documents without authorisation." Free speech my arse
Interesting that you have already tried and convicted Arby. Considering that article specifically states that the Federal Court has not decided to refer the matter to the AFP.
Also funny how you neglect to mention that the charge is not "saying what he liked" it's a violation of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. From the fine article you posted
Mr Slipper's lawyers suggested the former media adviser could have breached sections of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which prohibits public servants from publishing or communicating internal documents without authorisation.
So he didn't exercise free speech, he used his position to leak sensitive documents to political rivals. He was given access to senstive information and abused that trust, name me a single nation that wouldn't consider that at least in part, criminal. But nice try to make it all about "TEH FREEDOMS(TM)".
Besides this, he hasn't even been charged and the maximum sentence is two years but we all know he wont even get a slap on the wrist if convicted (he's lost his public service job already though).
" There are laws to protect a person's good name and integrity against false information. There are laws against saying or writing things to incite hatred against others because of their culture, ethnicity or background. "
This does not inhibit your speech. You can still make false and misleading claims against other people. This clause merely says you can and will be held accountable for what you say.
And it ends with a doozy:
" Freedom of speech is not an excuse to harm others" (even if they deserve it!)
Really, a "doozy".
So you honestly expect to be able to hurt other people and then hide behind "MAH FREEDOMZ(TM)" when they want to harm you back.
Get real sunshine. Free speech is not here to protect people who abuse it, this is the "fire in a crowded theatre" bit. You can shout "fire" in a crowded theatre but you are responsible for the panic it creates.
Finally, I just love how you left out this part.
We do not censor the media and may criticise the government without fear of arrest.
Not true ; banks charge merchants for handling cash. So much so that supermarkets here will offer to add some cash to your bill ("cashback"), obviating the need for you to visit an ATM. You benefit from increased convenience and they benefit from reduced cash handling charges.
Are you trying to say there is a per transaction charge for handling cash?
If you aren't, it has no baring on what I said.
You need to give this a read and consider the costs to businesses. When you put everything on credit, you make a dent in that businesses profit and they have to in turn raise prices to compensate. Whilst massive super chains can bury costs like interchange and service fees in huge contracts, franchise owners and small businesses cant.
Realistically if you think putting everything on the credit card is saving or earning you anything you're deluding yourself. Ask yourself, why would a bank, one of the most solid profit oriented businesses on earth, offer you a service they lose money on?
If a merchant has a business bank account, then they pay whenever they make a deposit, and a withdrawl. If they handle a lot of cash, then they also have to deal with security - safe, how to get the money deposited etc etc.
Unless a merchants average transactions are less than about 5 pounds, it makes economic sense to do things via electronic transactions rather than by cash.
Please note, I said credit not electronic transactions. Electronic transactions on Debit (I.E. using your own money rather than the banks) attract a much lower service fee in Australia, some as low as A$0.20 here in Oz, most CC transactions cost more even before the interchange fee comes out. I'd be surprised if the UK were different.
Secondly, if it were true that cash costs more than EFT for anything over A$20/GBP 5, why would car yards offer better deals for cash? Every business is different, for a lot of businesses that do a high frequency of trade (cafe's, restaurants, 7-11/convenience stores) EFT costs a lot more than cash, OTOH, for places that do a low volume trade on high margin items (laptops, jewellery) the costs of using EFT are minimised. In both cases, credit as opposed to debit always costs the business more.
The interesting thing that a lot of Australian Internet Users miss is that we (Australians) do not have a provision garanteeing or protecting free speech. All internet posts are pretty much covered under the libel and slander laws.
The interesting part is that this is a myth.
Speech is one of the five fundamental freedoms that every Australian is entitled to. The other four are Association, Assembly, Movement and Religion. Feel free to have a read.
What we don't have is a US style bill of rights, but just like the US's bill of rights Australia's five fundamental freedoms is only as good as the people who defend it (it's for this reason I believe Oz doesn't need a bill of rights).
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, they release a new model to prevent the old model falling under the magic US$200 price point. They've got to keep the price up somehow.
This exactly. How many people aren't in the market for a game system but would buy one if the price were right. There are probably quite a few people who don't want a Wii (which is now essentially priced at as an impulse buy) who wouldn't mind a PS3. Too bad they won't crank out the old systems for cheap.
Sony doesn't want you buying the PS3 for cheap. It dilutes the premium image and Sony needs to make money from the PS3. Profitability is lagging behind MS (Nintendo is on another planet when it comes to making a profit).
Sony revises the design of an existing product to use smaller, cheaper parts, fewer materials and higher shipping density, markets it as a new and improved model to boost sales and sells it for just as much as the old one.
Yes, they release a new model to prevent the old model falling under the magic US$200 price point. They've got to keep the price up somehow.
continue to scream and shout and grasp at straws while trying to use ad hom attacks to show there is no climate warming caused by man.
Beside, it won't matter becasue there god wouldn't let it happen.
because there, god wouldn't let it happen.
*becasue that don't send memos up you ass
Sir,
If I had mod points ATM, I'd mod up 5 of your other posts for a post of that quality.
Bravo
Not only are carriers sufficiently armed and escorted themselves, sinking one does not win a war. In fact, sinking a carrier is such an overt act of war it guarantees the doom of the attacking government.
Actually you'd need to think twice about that.
If you're considering sinking a carrier, you're already at war or at least at a war game.
Secondly, you don't need to sink a carrier, you just need to damage it or nullify it's ability to project power (I.E. if you can control the airspace outside the missile cruisers range, carrier is useless, the escorts will need to engage your forces on your terms).
Thridly, carriers are incredibly vulnerable. A slightly damaged flight deck will completely knock the carrier out of commission. At the very least that's leaving the combat area to effect repairs, more likely it's back to a friendly base to effect repairs. That's for the entire carrier group. Carriers seem effective because they've only fought opponents who cant strike back for the last 60 years.
In WWII carriers were quite vulnerable even with all their escorts and the best weapons of the day. Kamikaze and Torpedo attacks did huge amounts of damage. What made the US carriers effective is that the US could repair and replace them faster than the Japanese could replace submarines and Kamikaze pilots. A modern example, if I fire $100 million worth of drones, missiles and manned aircraft and succeed in knocking a $4.5 billion carrier out of the fight that is a victory unless you have over 450 times the manufacturing and economic capacity as me. War is as much about economics as it is about weapons and strategy.
British and Australian Submarines routinely damage or destroy US carriers in war games.
We'll see traditional aircraft carriers go the way of battleships in the future as they get replaced by destroyer and submarine sized variants that can deploy a larger number of drones.
It would be interesting to see how long they last in a war between evenly matched sides where the carriers are vulnerable to air/missile attack.
It seems like you would need an awful lot of successful attacks to take out a carrier though. The modern carrier has so many defenses, some secret, I am doubtful even a good supersonic missile could get close to one. Even if a missile does get through they are so huge and compartmentalized it would probably not sink.
Nope, you only need one successful attack.
The question is how many failed attacks will that cost.
Don't place too much stock in high tech defenses. The British fleet in the Faulkands war suffered two major attacks, one from an Exocet missile that only hit because the destroyer didn't switch the CWIS system on (you can always count on incompetence) and the second was from unguided bombs dropped by low flying Argentine jets. The saving grace for the British was that Argentina didn't have that many jets or Exocets to waste. This becomes less of a defense when your opponent is producing weapons at a wartime pace. US carriers in the pacific in WWII suffered from two big problems, Japanese torpedoes and Japanese Kamikazes. It's very easy to create a weapon that is difficult to stop if you make it difficult to detect, if it doesn't need to make a return trip it's even harder to stop. What saved the carriers is the fact the US could repair or replace them faster than the Japanese could produce subs and Kamikaze pilots.
So even if you've got enough defences to stop 15 supersonic missiles, I just have to fire 16 at you.
Carriers going the way of the battleship because its easier to launch 100 drones from land bases and have them loiter and then attack the attack the carrier at your leisure, you've lost $100 million worth of drones but taken out $20 billion worth of carrier and support ships. Wining a war isn't about weapons as much as it's about economics.
Even if a missile does get through they are so huge and compartmentalized it would probably not sink.
You dont need to sink one, hell ships have been incredibly hard to sink since Nelsons day sunshine.
The gunners of Nelsons ships didn't try to sink the french, they tried to kill the crew, cripple the sails and rigging or the holy grail of Napoleonic naval warfare, topple the mast. There was no point in putting a shot below the water line as it'll take days for a wooden ship to sink.
By the same token, you don't have to sink a carrier, you just have to do enough damage that it cant operate. Damage the flight deck, set up a AAA exclusion zone to shoot down it's complement of jets, there are a heap of ways to do it. The fact the jets are required to return to a carrier is a huge weakness, one that Australia and Japan practice exploiting every few years in war games with US carriers. Carriers are quite fragile, thats why they have a lot of support ships.
Do you honestly believe that the majority of people that buy Apple products...do so as a status symbol?? I know that is the often quoted opinion on /. , but do people really believe that deep down?
Yes, I beleive that.
A lot of Apple users buy Apple products because they think of them as status symbols.
Now do I believe that Iphones are status symbols. No, no I don't.
Iphones have become the Toyota Camry of the phone world. For those unfamiliar with the Camry, it's a very popular 4 door commuter sedan. It's not a performance car by any metric, lets be honest here, the Camry corners like a whale, accelerates like a slug and is generally not a fun drive. It's a true A to B car, but it's a car that Just Works(TM), it's mechanically reliable and parts are plentiful. They are so ubiquitous even people on the dole own one.
But yes, there are also people who drive Camrys who consider them to be luxury Automobiles. The rest of us know Camrys, even Camry Aurions are common as muck. The same is true for Iphones
"Dearer"? You mean more expensive?
In NZ and Oz, "dear" is more commonly used than "expensive".
For example,
I don't mind venison, my only problem with venison is that it's a bit deer.
Webster (a US dictionary) shows the 4th definition of the adjective dear:
high or exorbitant in price : expensive "eggs are very dear just now"
Yes, but it just sounds better when it is said in an English accent.
Of course, those who don't use common ESSIDs and use peculiar passwords along with WPA2, they should have nothing to worry about.
This,
The point of security is not to be uncrackable but to be so difficult and time consuming to crack that an attacker simply gives up (combined with the risk of being detected/caught). The threats to my wireless network consist almost entirely of local neighborhood script kiddies who want free internet, a 64 character randomly generated WPA2 key ensures they'll move onto softer targets before too long.
What I've found is that a lot of IPv6 interfaces don't work well with copy/paste. Windows especially. It's OK when dealing with the 4 IPv4 octets but the 16 IPv6 can become a real PITA. Not to mention configuring new appliances like firewalls where the UI is a text based pre-install environment. Not saying that IPv6 is bad, or that we shouldn't be trying to move to IPv6 ASAP but there are some usability kinks that should be ironed out.
that's the price of progress
Why not make them human readable? Keep the hex numbers in the background but have a human readable translation for them in the foreground? IIRC, it's just the same 256 characters as IPv4 but there's 8 octets instead of 4. Obviously 255.255.255.255.255.255.255.255 is not ideal but I'm sure someone can come up with a better system.
It's a badly written work of fiction. I'm guessing it got posted on Datamation because even Harlequin has standards.
//Fifty Shades of Green (colour may vary depending on IDE)
The End User saw the walkman and said, this is too bulky and battery consuming. They end user lamented that they could not use the music files on their PC instead of a spinning disk.
Upon hearing the lamentation of the end users, many companies developed MP3 players that thrived on open standards like USB and MSC. They worked like portable flash drives with audio processors built in and they became ever more popular production costs dropped due to the increased production of PC components which the MP3 players shared a lot of common components with.
The end user saw the MP3 player and saw that it was good.
Then the End User looked at their smartphone and cried, Winmo, BB, Palm, are ye gods or devils for thou cannot say. Your ideas are grand but your devices are flawed. Then a great voice boomed from the havens and said, I AM ANDROID AND I HEAR YOU MY CHILD. Thus the Android had spoken, however the Android did not try to lock it down, rather they opened it up to developers, allowed them to run their own code or other peoples code without the supervision of some kind of "gatekeeper" or "walled garden" which spawned a myriad of similar devices using the same OS or another OS based on the same general idea. The Android even allowed the End User to create their own version of the Android and run them on their own hardware. The Android did not sue all their competitors nor did they try to patent obvious ideas and use them to inhibit their competitors, rather the Android said "go forth and multiply" and relished in the competition he had created.
The End User used Android and saw that it was good.
In this wonderful alternate universe, people have cheap, functional devices that operate in a thriving competitive market without a single company trying to monopolise it and control the every action of the end users. And the end users lived happily ever after.
Moral of the story, new ideas happen because of demand exists, not because a certain company exists.
Yup. Recently spent nearly $50k for a new machine (512GB ram, 64 CPU, etc.). Seems many people are using low end hardware at the client end and expecting the cloud (which for some applications is not easily distributed) to do the real work.
64 CPU for only $50K
Clearly that wasn't a System P.
iPhones hit that "stupid spot" in the American consumer - no money down, affordable monthly payments, visible bling to flash around with your friends, and it has grown into a hip-cool brand too.
Doesn't matter what it does or doesn't do, with those components you've got a winner.
This is it exactly.
The Iphone has become the Toyota Camry of phones. In terms of functionality as well as popularity.
The Camry is a common, 4 door sedan that is not particularly flashy nor a performance vehicle but it is highly reliable and easy to drive. It's the ideal A to B car and it's popularity to "A to B" commuters reflects this. Lets be honest, the Camry is not a good drive. It corners like a whale, accelerates like a slug, handles like a brick and is often driven by a prick who pays no attention to the road but the Camry just works(TM), it's dead simple to drive, mechanically reliable and service and parts are easy to come by when they do break them. This does not however, stop Camry owners from thinking their Camry is special, they will put their my family stickers on their replacement windshields completely oblivious that it came off the last person to crash their Camry. Camry's are so ubiquitous and readily available that even people on the dole own one.
Sent from my Nexus Integra (that's Acura RSX if you live in the US).
For a serious computer user, an SSD has been worth the money for a while now.
* If you need to do serious disk I/O with a mid-size or smaller notebook, RAID isn't even an option for increasing speed.
* Running multiple virtual machines? Want them to boot quickly? An SSD makes them feel native.
* Running Windows as a native operating system, and have more than one or two programs that you legitimately want to launch at boot, and can't/won't disable? An SSD makes your computer usable within tens of seconds as opposed to multiple minutes.
* Doing compilation? Syncing of filesystems with a system such as Unison? Doing anything filesystem heavy? The speedup is insanely awesome.
* Gaming. Most gamers now have an SSD.
* CAD/GIS although this is still limited by the high cost of high capacity SSDs.
If all you care about is running Your Web Browser and editing Word documents, or storing a few photos, obviously an SSD is a more questionable upgrade, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
The users that will be most interested in an SSD now they have dropped in price are not the users that have high disk speed requirements rather users that have low power requirements. People who need to get an extra hour or 2 out of their laptop batteries, they may only use Word, Outlook and Chrome but they spend 6-8 hours on the road every 2nd day. Users who have low storage requirements and low power requirements are the users who benefit from cheap SSD's.
There will always be a market for premium hardware. This is just abjectly idiotic.
But we aren't talking the difference between a $15K Nissan Maxima and a $40K Nissan Skyline 370 GT here. These are two radically different products.
We are talking about the difference between a $50 tablet made in China and a $500 tablet made in China. When two products are almost exactly the same, but one is priced radically higher than the other.
Now I would very much like to buy the 370 GT over the Maxima because the Maxima does not have the performance of the 370 by a long shot, but why should I pay $3-500 more for a tablet when it has the exact same performance as the no-name brand?
You're right that there will always be a market for premium goods, but only when those goods are premium like the Skyline 370, however, there will never be a premium market for the Maxima because it's a consumer car, not a performance car. If you released a "premium" Maxima, it just wont sell because the non premium Maxima is exactly the same and half the price.
Sure, but then you can make many pies. Billions and billions of pies.
We are pie stuff.
From your link:
Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write what we think privately or publicly, about the government, or about any topic. We do not censor the media and may criticise the government without fear of arrest. Free speech comes from facts, not rumours, and the intention must be constructive, not to do harm. There are laws to protect a person's good name and integrity against false information. There are laws against saying or writing things to incite hatred against others because of their culture, ethnicity or background. Freedom of speech is not an excuse to harm others.
Some very intresting wording on that site... what we do have is constituationally protected speach with regard to politics as the High Court rulled that the constitutions' guarentee of democratic elections cover this.
tl;dr: political trolls will be fine or will have some very intresting court battles, its already illegal for most other forms of trolling
What this simply says is that you will be accountable for what you say. It does not inhibit your rights to say it, rather it makes you aware that if you spread false and malicious information you cant hide behind free speech to avoid the consequences. This is the "fire in a crowded theatre" bit of free speech.
I.E., If I printed "HJED loved to beat his wife" on the front page of the SMH, you'd have a right to sue unless I had hard evidence that you enjoyed beating your wife.
Interesting that you have already tried and convicted Arby. Considering that article specifically states that the Federal Court has not decided to refer the matter to the AFP.
Also funny how you neglect to mention that the charge is not "saying what he liked" it's a violation of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. From the fine article you posted
Mr Slipper's lawyers suggested the former media adviser could have breached sections of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which prohibits public servants from publishing or communicating internal documents without authorisation.
So he didn't exercise free speech, he used his position to leak sensitive documents to political rivals. He was given access to senstive information and abused that trust, name me a single nation that wouldn't consider that at least in part, criminal. But nice try to make it all about "TEH FREEDOMS(TM)".
Besides this, he hasn't even been charged and the maximum sentence is two years but we all know he wont even get a slap on the wrist if convicted (he's lost his public service job already though).
This does not inhibit your speech. You can still make false and misleading claims against other people. This clause merely says you can and will be held accountable for what you say.
Really, a "doozy".
So you honestly expect to be able to hurt other people and then hide behind "MAH FREEDOMZ(TM)" when they want to harm you back.
Get real sunshine. Free speech is not here to protect people who abuse it, this is the "fire in a crowded theatre" bit. You can shout "fire" in a crowded theatre but you are responsible for the panic it creates.
Finally, I just love how you left out this part.
Which is key to what is being discussed here.
not for accepting cash
Not true ; banks charge merchants for handling cash. So much so that supermarkets here will offer to add some cash to your bill ("cashback"), obviating the need for you to visit an ATM. You benefit from increased convenience and they benefit from reduced cash handling charges.
Are you trying to say there is a per transaction charge for handling cash?
If you aren't, it has no baring on what I said.
You need to give this a read and consider the costs to businesses. When you put everything on credit, you make a dent in that businesses profit and they have to in turn raise prices to compensate. Whilst massive super chains can bury costs like interchange and service fees in huge contracts, franchise owners and small businesses cant. Realistically if you think putting everything on the credit card is saving or earning you anything you're deluding yourself. Ask yourself, why would a bank, one of the most solid profit oriented businesses on earth, offer you a service they lose money on?
If a merchant has a business bank account, then they pay whenever they make a deposit, and a withdrawl. If they handle a lot of cash, then they also have to deal with security - safe, how to get the money deposited etc etc.
Unless a merchants average transactions are less than about 5 pounds, it makes economic sense to do things via electronic transactions rather than by cash.
Please note, I said credit not electronic transactions. Electronic transactions on Debit (I.E. using your own money rather than the banks) attract a much lower service fee in Australia, some as low as A$0.20 here in Oz, most CC transactions cost more even before the interchange fee comes out. I'd be surprised if the UK were different.
Secondly, if it were true that cash costs more than EFT for anything over A$20/GBP 5, why would car yards offer better deals for cash? Every business is different, for a lot of businesses that do a high frequency of trade (cafe's, restaurants, 7-11/convenience stores) EFT costs a lot more than cash, OTOH, for places that do a low volume trade on high margin items (laptops, jewellery) the costs of using EFT are minimised. In both cases, credit as opposed to debit always costs the business more.
The interesting thing that a lot of Australian Internet Users miss is that we (Australians) do not have a provision garanteeing or protecting free speech. All internet posts are pretty much covered under the libel and slander laws.
The interesting part is that this is a myth.
Speech is one of the five fundamental freedoms that every Australian is entitled to. The other four are Association, Assembly, Movement and Religion. Feel free to have a read.
What we don't have is a US style bill of rights, but just like the US's bill of rights Australia's five fundamental freedoms is only as good as the people who defend it (it's for this reason I believe Oz doesn't need a bill of rights).