If electric vehicles reach even 1% of the market, you don't think gas stations will install a few metered outlets for them? It would be a pretty small cost for a potentially large amount of profit.
Why should I pay taxes to give $465 million dollars to a company that GROSSES $20 million a year?!
Ideally, the company will make enough of a profit in the future (I'm using the old-fashioned definition of "future" of a few to maybe even 20 years, not the new corporate definition of "this quarter") that they can pay back that loan. Not quite as ideal, but still not bad, is that even if they don't end up paying back the entire loan, the technology that comes out of it will save more than $465 million in fuel use and environmental cleanup. Whether or not either of these outcomes actually happens, of course, remains to be seen.
Seriously, I don't know anyone that could just blow $100k on a car.
You must not know any upper-level managers or executives, especially in high cost-of-living areas like Boston, New York, or Los Angeles. It's okay, though, I only know a couple (I worked at a small company for a couple years, so I personally knew the CEO and CFO), and it's not uncommon for typical employees not to know any.
Perfect! Now someone just needs to write the plugin for gMail.
Reminds me of a similar Labs option in GMail that makes you solve a few arithmetic problems before sending the email. It's appropriately called "Mail Goggles", I assume because the primary purpose would be to prevent drunk-mailing someone.
Yeah, that's possible, but I would hope that the FTC and/or DoJ wouldn't buy that argument if it actually did come down to a fraud investigation. Dunno if I'd be surprised if that argument worked, but I'd definitely be disappointed.
MS has a right to return whatever results they want with Bing. It's a free service. They have no obligation to serve you impartially. Get over your unfounded sense of entitlement.
Not necessarily. Lying about the product that you're offering your customer is generally considered fraud, which is illegal in many countries. The common expectation (the opinions of technology-oriented people like us aren't considered common) is that a search engine gives results in some generally unbiased manner, and particularly does not hide results that might be critical of the owner of the search engine.
What's truly disheartening to me is that a formerly relevant news site like cnn.com has it on their front page. Oh CNN, I remember when you used to report actual news...now look what you've become.
Obviously you haven't watched CNN lately, otherwise you would know how dependent they are on Twitter now. Seems like all they do these days is read Twitter messages from viewers.
The FOX News crowd tends to be an older one (not to forget those of you younger people that watch it, but the demographic is older)
Then why do I see just as many commercials for life insurance and other goods and services targeted to older people on CNN or MSNBC as I do on Fox News?
I don't think he necessarily meant older than other 24-hour news channels, but older than the average age of the entire population. While I wouldn't be surprised if Fox News had an older demographic than CNN or MSNBC, all of them, as well as the major networks' news broadcasts, are stronger in older demographics than they are in the 18-35 range.
Yes, Fox News has a pretty large viewership (I would guess that CNN, Fox, and MSNBC are approximately evenly split, but I don't watch any of them so I don't care enough to dig up any numbers), and yes, your assessment is fairly accurate. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly are probably the most well-known Fox News personalities, and they're all extreme ideologues (Beck also has the bonus feature of being completely fucking nuts). If you want a nice Best Of Fox News review, I recommend watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; while they'll still make fun of CNN (which seems to have become just a reading of Twitter messages from viewers) and MSNBC (which is almost as ideological as Fox News, but they generally manage to hide the crazy better), Fox News provides by far the most entertaining clips.
Anything that reduces the number of sheep reading right wing echo chambers can only help America.
Anything that reduces the number of sheep reading extremist echo chambers can only help America. As with pretty much any argument or debate, all sides have their fair share of very loud, extremist whackjobs who, despite being a very small portion of the population, manage to make the calm, rational people on all sides look bad.
2 predictions:
* Lots of slashdot users trying to post something witty about why this is a new story
* trolls saying how this is everything we should expect and therefore should ignore.
Um, this is Slashdot. That's like betting that a coin toss will be either heads or tails.
You're going from under 10 millisecond pings for an internal network, to an external site that very possibly (depending on internet weather) could have pings of a 50-100 milliseconds or more.
I remember the days when 50-100 millisecond ping was considered very nearly incredible, 150 was considered pretty damn good, and 200-250 was considered normal.
The same people that will control your health care
So if a medical procedure is obvious or has been done before, I won't get treatment? Damn, I knew the plan had been watered down in Congress, but I never knew it was that bad.
do you also worry about people in Illinois pirating windows and hence the trade deficit between IL and WA? If not, why should one arbitrary political boundary matter more than another?
I don't know, has Illinois borrowed a few trillion dollars from Washington?
While I agree with most of what you had to say, I find it interesting that *this* makes news on slashdot while hundreds of people in the US are beaten (and sometimes killed) for being gay, but we don't seem to be as outraged. Thousands are routinely abused in mental institutions and elder care facilities (and again, many die) and again, it's not as apparent that slashdotters feel the need to draw attention to it.
Unfortunately, something that happens frequently isn't considered "news", no matter how much of a tragedy it is.
One rule of thumb is the rule of 2000 - square the percentage market shares of all the providers and add it up. If the result exceeds 2000, it's a monopoly.
I don't quite see how that could work. By that rule, any company having 45% market share would create a monopoly, no matter what the shares of other competitors were. While that large of a share would certainly give the company significant influence on the market, it hardly gives them monopolistic control of an industry.
This recurrent claim of anti-Microsoft bias early in Slashdot discussions involving MS is so frequent that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a deliberate tactic by their reputation management team.
You did see which "editor" posted the story, right?
Slashdot Mirror
Could a terrorist build some nasty device with these . . . ?
Great, you've just given Homeland Security an excuse to ban paper from being brought onto a plane.
If electric vehicles reach even 1% of the market, you don't think gas stations will install a few metered outlets for them? It would be a pretty small cost for a potentially large amount of profit.
Why should I pay taxes to give $465 million dollars to a company that GROSSES $20 million a year?!
Ideally, the company will make enough of a profit in the future (I'm using the old-fashioned definition of "future" of a few to maybe even 20 years, not the new corporate definition of "this quarter") that they can pay back that loan. Not quite as ideal, but still not bad, is that even if they don't end up paying back the entire loan, the technology that comes out of it will save more than $465 million in fuel use and environmental cleanup. Whether or not either of these outcomes actually happens, of course, remains to be seen.
Seriously, I don't know anyone that could just blow $100k on a car.
You must not know any upper-level managers or executives, especially in high cost-of-living areas like Boston, New York, or Los Angeles. It's okay, though, I only know a couple (I worked at a small company for a couple years, so I personally knew the CEO and CFO), and it's not uncommon for typical employees not to know any.
Really, where can I plug in my electric car when I go on vacation 100 to 200 miles from home?
You vacation someplace that has gas stations but no power outlets?
Perfect! Now someone just needs to write the plugin for gMail.
Reminds me of a similar Labs option in GMail that makes you solve a few arithmetic problems before sending the email. It's appropriately called "Mail Goggles", I assume because the primary purpose would be to prevent drunk-mailing someone.
Well played, sir, well played.
Right, like he said, if it wasn't for the Simpsons.
What does Rupert Murdoch, of all people, know about Quality Journalism?
He must know everything about quality journalism to be able to avoid it so perfectly.
No, the story has a metastory about a story that was missing.
I hear you like... oh, fuck it.
Yeah, that's possible, but I would hope that the FTC and/or DoJ wouldn't buy that argument if it actually did come down to a fraud investigation. Dunno if I'd be surprised if that argument worked, but I'd definitely be disappointed.
This is no different than Google drumming up... Wikipedia hits
Did I miss the news about Google buying Wikipedia?
MS has a right to return whatever results they want with Bing. It's a free service. They have no obligation to serve you impartially. Get over your unfounded sense of entitlement.
Not necessarily. Lying about the product that you're offering your customer is generally considered fraud, which is illegal in many countries. The common expectation (the opinions of technology-oriented people like us aren't considered common) is that a search engine gives results in some generally unbiased manner, and particularly does not hide results that might be critical of the owner of the search engine.
What's truly disheartening to me is that a formerly relevant news site like cnn.com has it on their front page. Oh CNN, I remember when you used to report actual news...now look what you've become.
Obviously you haven't watched CNN lately, otherwise you would know how dependent they are on Twitter now. Seems like all they do these days is read Twitter messages from viewers.
The FOX News crowd tends to be an older one (not to forget those of you younger people that watch it, but the demographic is older)
Then why do I see just as many commercials for life insurance and other goods and services targeted to older people on CNN or MSNBC as I do on Fox News?
I don't think he necessarily meant older than other 24-hour news channels, but older than the average age of the entire population. While I wouldn't be surprised if Fox News had an older demographic than CNN or MSNBC, all of them, as well as the major networks' news broadcasts, are stronger in older demographics than they are in the 18-35 range.
Yes, Fox News has a pretty large viewership (I would guess that CNN, Fox, and MSNBC are approximately evenly split, but I don't watch any of them so I don't care enough to dig up any numbers), and yes, your assessment is fairly accurate. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly are probably the most well-known Fox News personalities, and they're all extreme ideologues (Beck also has the bonus feature of being completely fucking nuts). If you want a nice Best Of Fox News review, I recommend watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report; while they'll still make fun of CNN (which seems to have become just a reading of Twitter messages from viewers) and MSNBC (which is almost as ideological as Fox News, but they generally manage to hide the crazy better), Fox News provides by far the most entertaining clips.
Anything that reduces the number of sheep reading right wing echo chambers can only help America.
Anything that reduces the number of sheep reading extremist echo chambers can only help America. As with pretty much any argument or debate, all sides have their fair share of very loud, extremist whackjobs who, despite being a very small portion of the population, manage to make the calm, rational people on all sides look bad.
2 predictions: * Lots of slashdot users trying to post something witty about why this is a new story * trolls saying how this is everything we should expect and therefore should ignore.
Um, this is Slashdot. That's like betting that a coin toss will be either heads or tails.
It's too late anyway, their base is under attack!
Argh! Fucking Zergling rush!
You're going from under 10 millisecond pings for an internal network, to an external site that very possibly (depending on internet weather) could have pings of a 50-100 milliseconds or more.
I remember the days when 50-100 millisecond ping was considered very nearly incredible, 150 was considered pretty damn good, and 200-250 was considered normal.
Now get off my lawn.
The same people that will control your health care
So if a medical procedure is obvious or has been done before, I won't get treatment? Damn, I knew the plan had been watered down in Congress, but I never knew it was that bad.
do you also worry about people in Illinois pirating windows and hence the trade deficit between IL and WA? If not, why should one arbitrary political boundary matter more than another?
I don't know, has Illinois borrowed a few trillion dollars from Washington?
While I agree with most of what you had to say, I find it interesting that *this* makes news on slashdot while hundreds of people in the US are beaten (and sometimes killed) for being gay, but we don't seem to be as outraged. Thousands are routinely abused in mental institutions and elder care facilities (and again, many die) and again, it's not as apparent that slashdotters feel the need to draw attention to it.
Unfortunately, something that happens frequently isn't considered "news", no matter how much of a tragedy it is.
One rule of thumb is the rule of 2000 - square the percentage market shares of all the providers and add it up. If the result exceeds 2000, it's a monopoly.
I don't quite see how that could work. By that rule, any company having 45% market share would create a monopoly, no matter what the shares of other competitors were. While that large of a share would certainly give the company significant influence on the market, it hardly gives them monopolistic control of an industry.
This recurrent claim of anti-Microsoft bias early in Slashdot discussions involving MS is so frequent that it's hard to believe it's anything other than a deliberate tactic by their reputation management team.
You did see which "editor" posted the story, right?