Posts by Eddy Ito 4662 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
EPS is negative, forward P/E >100, Price/Book >30, PEG >10 so, to be kind, it's overpriced regardless of what they sold last quarter. Both Apple and Ford are more stable investments with better financials and both currently pay dividends.
For the Tesla touters who would like to point out that Tesla is up 625% over the last 5 years, kindly note that Apple isn't far behind at 550% and Ford tops both at 635%.
They pay two million brozgnats (alien money) to partake in an annual limited seating gourmet meal which consists of the "winning" human contestant. The contest is supposed to self select the smartest, and therefore tastiest, human available. The cicada connection? Simple, cicadas are descendants of the first alien visitors to arrive on earth but they didn't have an adequate supply of humans to eat on the first trip so they devolved into the tiny insect we know. The original alien species is much larger but looks surprisingly similar and the picture isn't our familiar insect it's actually the head alien chef that prepares meal.
Start with civil cases in small claims court asking for the maximum that small claims allows. Avoid class action like the plague. Even if the 40 million people only manage to win $100 on average it will be 10% of Target's market cap which should come as quite a stinger to Target, their management and shareholders that this kind of slack behavior won't be tolerated. It will also serve as an ominous warning to other mega-corps to clean up their act regarding personal data security. There is no national security claim so I don't see how the government can grant retroactive immunity in this case. I just hope everybody waits a few days so I have time to get my short options on Target.
The 48V that is already on the existing POTS line and currently coexists with DSL connections. Sure, it wouldn't handle the general day to day traffic but it may, or may not, be enough to handle emergency comms in the event of a power outage. It wouldn't be a long term solution but as you point out back up systems aren't always capable of being used as a permanent replacement and often aren't intended to be, just like the tiny spare tire in the trunk of my car.
It seems like it should be pretty trivial on the network side. To oversimplify, isn't it DSL without the frequency filters to prevent interference with the POTS part. I'd think the existing 48V would be enough for a low power processor to maintain emergency communications in the event of a mains outage albeit not at speeds needed to stream HD video but then it doesn't need to. The real PITA is going to be like the digital TV transition since both systems will have to be active simultaneously as people switch. Either way, Congress will ensure it will take at least a year to perform the crossover and that's only once people can just buy an IP phone and have it work like any other phone. Of course many folks will still wait until the last week of the twice extended deadline because they can't be bothered; sometimes it's just easier to pull the bandage off quickly in one go than to slowly savor the slow extraction of each hair.
"My home FAX, how do I deal with it?"
Toss it in the bin where it belongs? Sorry, I know there some people who still use them but in the end you're just using the phone number to access a network printer/scanner. It'll just take an RJ11 dongle that 'answers' or 'dials' the phone and routes the data to/from the 'phone line' and whatever device you use to view or scan documents on.
Phaxblet, phablax, faxblone, tablax? Whatever it's called the name won't be pretty.
"Maybe the court should pay for the work, then it would probably drop to under $20 an hour."
And the court gets it money from where? In these parts the courts are funded by we taxpayers. Because nothing is more fair than screwing the little guy to protect the little guy from being screwed by corporate price fixing schemes of a company worth roughly 4.9x10^11 dollars. Oh and good luck finding someone competent to do the job for $20/hr or have you missed the news stories of last months fast food worker strike? Oh, perhaps Apple could find someone they could pay in iPhone apps.
Oddly the article illustrates your point quite nicely if unintentionally.
The Lake Toba supervolcano in Indonesia erupted around 74,000 years ago...the Oruanui eruption, blew off just 26,500 years ago
So it's good within an order of magmatude. Don't suppose the coat would help much if one goes off.
People have been leaving Detroit for 50 years. If you actually pay attention you'll see that the population peaked in the 1950s and has been in decline ever since. Sure, the drop between the last two decades was slightly higher than the average drop over the previous five decades but not shockingly so. The loss of 240k people on the most recent census is on par with the 300k loss in the 70s and 200k drop in the 80s.
After issues with organized crime, racial discord and the automotive industry problems through the 70s and the 80s, this latest burst bubble is only symptomatic of another city that is and has been run by politicians who turned a blind eye to the real problems for fifty years and felt that following the usual mantra of throwing money at the problem and deficit spending would make everything better. I guess that only works for Uncle Sam.
"Won't clean them up, but it can keep them on notice."
I don't see how it does that. The politicians are free to do anything they wish as long as they promise to protect their cohorts in the NSA and keep the funding coming in and the NSA can equally pressure anyone else on the outside should the dirty secret start to get out in order to protect the hand that feeds. Each part is happy to continue helping each other no matter how dark and dank it gets because they are essentially holding this twisted system of hidden checks and balances to prevent their own side from becoming irrelevant.
Maybe not but it would likely be fairly trivial to discredit any candidate who was strong on privacy. It would also be easy to make sure candidates didn't stray far from the standard talking points and any talk of opening up government remained just talk. The birther bunch might say that Obama did his quick flip on openness because the NSA found/made/whatever a copy of his "real" birth certificate.
"... a knowlegeable hacker will restore the system to a functional state pdq..."
That would be fine for the average wired user but it is unlikely that the hacker would be able to replicate the wireless key assuming it was changed from the default and the user doesn't rely on the 'magic button' to join the network in the event of problems. Still, any wired devices such as a NAS box will be copied off rather swiftly, even more swiftly if the target is known and mimo is employed to its fullest.
As an American I feel I have to point out that what ,in particular, the NSA and, in general, the Government does, while largely in our name, is certainly not on our behalf. If we really knew everything that was being pissed away the voting booths would be literally filled with vomit as folks would would no longer be able to hold their nose and chew it back as they do now.
What it comes down to is goat herding which is a form of job security and it is the reason most things like this have to be done covertly. The basic paradigm is that when secrets get out someone gets thrown under the bus but it's ok because the bus and the ground below it is made of foam rubber. Politicians can't afford to have it known they signed off on all the stupid and illegal things the agencies do lest they get fired next election cycle so when it gets found out they go through the motions of wrist slapping and job shuffling. This gives the impression that the politicians have "done something" to fix the problem without real harm to the scapegoat and this keeps the goat in check with lips firmly sealed to the truth while taking the full weight of the consequences in a patriotic "did it for my country" dookie* dance knowing full well that the density of the bus is akin to aerogel. Usually the fourth estate will do the required bell clanging about how disgraced the goat is in their new job with a lobbyist, which often pays more than the one they lost, and that usually does the required damage control for the people who hand out things like press passes and invitations to special events like press conferences where we hoi polloi aren't allowed because we would ask the wrong questions.
*That's the American English version of dookie and has nothing to do with Oz, Baptists or poker.
ChromeOS has a user agent string that identifies the operating system as "CrOS" not "Linux" so does it get counted in as Linux since it's just a stripped down version or does it go into the "Other" bucket on the chart? If it's counted as Linux it might explain some of the growth but they do seem to break out known flavors in the list like Windows 2000 & 98 so why not CromeOS?
I don't think these numbers relate to sales. My understanding of how NetApplications data is based on what they can derive from the user agent strings with which browsers identify themselves and the platform/OS.
"OTOH, I pay for more and more apps now if for no other reason that I don't mind kicking in only $3 to support the developer of a quality app."
Exactly. If it's a useful app and doesn't ask for access to the world I have no problem paying cash. The worst offenders are typically the most trivial. For my work phone (WP8) I've run across "flashlight" apps that only turn on the LED, to me that's worth a buck if I can avoid all the other junk including MS's developer crap but at least one of these still want access to things like phone and owner identity, network data, camera, microphone, data libraries, accelerometer and directional sensors. Seriously, an LED flashlight? I'll give it the motion sensor since it has a shake to activate but it's not voice activated or network activated. I'm fairly confident my data libraries aren't going to turn it on and I don't know what it plans to do with the camera. It seems like they just used everything available - but hey it's the pay version so there are no ads.
Likewise I've found some non-free RPN calculator apps that have the same requirements but some of those I can understand if they let you store or upload functions but what's with needing the mic, camera and compass on a calculator? Sorry, no sale. I wish I could search apps and sort them by permissions/requirements.
It's pretty clear that your examples are all profitable as I'd wager Chromecast is. It's equally clear that the ones killed off along with Google Reader were not. My question is, in which bucket will Cloud Print fall? That isn't at all clear to me.
From the data collection section of their support page it would appear they aren't scraping your documents for information to sell to others at this time but it is fairly obvious they are going to sell information such as how much toner/ink and paper you go through to their advertisers and likely the cooperating printer manufacturers as well. I'm sure the printer manufacturers would really like to know how better to push high margin consumables and prevent you from using aftermarket supplies. Not that Google would make your print job a low quality streaky mess if you were using aftermarket inks or consume those supplies by dumping reminders in your printer tray. Well, not for free anyway.
Speaking as one who is approaching not admitting to being in the 'senior' category and who not only doesn't print squat but scans important documents to be free of the paper storage headache, I have to say the printing situation on a Chromebook is a total non-starter and it is why I returned a pair I had purchased as gifts.
There is no reason for not being able to directly access simple things like IPP or postscript. Likewise there is no reason to have to buy another printer that is cloud print enabled or set up a computer with Chrome running on it to act as a print server. There is no reason to have to send a document hundreds or thousands of miles to one of Google's data centers, who will undoubtedly scrape it for any and all useful data, so they can send it back to a printer that is about a dozen feet away. Lastly, the thing I print out most is a boarding pass and so far I've never had to worry if Chrome was installed on the print server or if it the network printer was sufficiently Googled wherever I've gone.
As you say, we'll see, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm thinking there is too much money in Google's cloud printing service for them to give it up and let's be honest, if it isn't making money Google shuts it down as many Google Reader fans well know.
Is it still crippled with the 30 second scare screen when it boots into developer mode? I know, Ctrl+D makes it go away but it's still an annoyance. Also is it like the C710 with two versions, the older with an 847 and the newer with the U1007. Last I looked the newer version wasn't broken open to getting something like SeaBios on it. It would be good to know ahead of time if the same was true for the C720.
One last point just to be clear, this is Acer as in the headline not Asus as mentioned frequently in the text, correct?
"a system dubbed QUANTUMTHEORY, an arsenal of zero-day exploits that it has either found itself or bought on the open market"
I assume this also means that when the NSA is on a buying binge it isn't really particular about the color of the hat being worn by the seller. To think there are people who don't trust electronic voting machines but are blissfully unaware that they could be arrested for kiddie porn which was surreptitiously loaded on their own computer by the NSA and the backdoor removed after the fact. Then again, the NSA could just create their own TrueCrypt volume on your machine but it will be fine, McCarthyism is all in the past. Right?
This is where I think you are confused. Nobody here defended spammers, claimed to enjoy spam or said there wasn't a need to reduce spam. Only you have claimed that others are of this opinion because you conflate the concept with disagreeing with your method of baying at the moon to rally the troops to reduce spam with defending spammers. I agree with you that "the overwhelming majority of normal human beings would vote with me for less spam" and I am even one of them but to my way of thinking your inability to take criticism about how you do things and attacking potential allies is a step in the wrong direction. I'm honestly trying to help you understand that lashing out with vitriolic inferences isn't necessarily the best means to the end we both desire. I now realize that is folly so I give up. Carry on with whatever little band of cohorts you go into battle with as you have convinced me that it's best to sit on the sidelines.
I fail to see, Mr. Jacobs, how extended rants, which account for approximately 20% of all posts on this particular internet forum, make the world a better place any more than a dog barking in the middle of the street does.
As for what I'm doing for anyone, while it isn't your concern perhaps you'll look earlier in the forum and notice that I provided an answer to a question. Perhaps it wasn't the best or most complete answer but it was of more substance than "I hate spam, spammers should die, if you disagree with me or my methods then you must be an evil spammer lover" ad nauseum. I freely admit I don't know how to fix the problem that is spam but then thanks to a variety of filters I don't have a particularly hard time with it so it isn't my top priority. I'm truly sorry about your affliction but vitriolic rants and personal attacks don't make your plight more sympathetic in fact they achieve the opposite.
Finally, don't worry Mr. Jacobs. I would never take any comment here personally since I couldn't give a shit less about the opinion of some caricature on the internet especially when you consider that over 60% of web traffic isn't human.
If you gave me a button to push and told me that each push administered a painful electric shock to a spammer, then I don't see how I could resist the behavioral extreme of pushing it several times a second until I died of starvation
Here's your button. Each push will administer a painful electric shock to a spammer.
Now if you'll all excuse me it looks like someone has been spamming the forum with some frothy mouthed diatribe about being some sort of an anti-spam crusader, no sorry, make that whinger as the anti-spam spammer appears to have snapped and likely isn't able to function normally much less as a crusader.
But it seems that many software company founders have no idea of the history of their own industry.
If you'll pardon a graybeard for saying it but it isn't really surprising when you consider how old these founders are. Consider that email and compact discs have been around longer than Mark Zuckerberg. Besides the only industry specific history that they've ever read was likely "Netscape Time".
Just to be clear and get back to basics, this isn't about products. Nobody has any desire to deliver products. At this moment in time, everyone wants to be in the service business so it's all about "_aaS" not products. On one side you have trinkets* that are usually called products purchased by the consumer and these trinkets are designed to lock the consumer into particular services. The other purpose of the trinket is data collection and intelligence distillation. This intelligence is then provided as a service to business.
So what you have is a trinket that delivers consumption as a service to the consumer and consumers as a service to businesses. We might get actual products when we've decided we've had our fill of iFartFacebuchTwaddle and are going to get back to being productive. Unfortunately it looks like that time isn't coming soon given that it seems folks feel they do enough working at a job they hate and need their "me time" to be spent in a semi-vegetative state rather than attempting to improve their situation and get a job they enjoy. Granted, it's probably hard to get paid to spend time in a semi-vegetative state and I suppose it's healthier than the drugs and alcohol that was the standard bearer of vegetative states for the last 50 years.
*trinkets because I don't really care if it's an iPhone, Chromebook, slablet, gaming console or whatever else is currently in or coming down the sewer pipe and it seems appropriate.
"If you heard that Boeing employees refused to commute in 747's, wouldn't you at least question what kind of priority they are for the company (if not outright questioning their safety)???"
No, I wouldn't. I might question their sanity if they preferred to commute in a 747 in the same way I'd question the sanity of the finish carpenter who chose to use a jack-hammer to install a mirror into a frame.
I don't think you're giving Google enough credit for the Chromebook. It would be fairly cheap for them to make unlocking the hardware trivial but they go to great lengths to make sure it stays only as capable as they choose. I'd love to pick up one and turn it into a Mintbook but it seems you have to be careful choosing which piece of hardware you get since the newer C7s with the 1007U haven't been broken open just yet.
Consider that if MS tried locking down hardware in the same way as Google has with the Chromebook, people would be howling at the top of their lungs. Make no mistake it's mostly a [meta?]data collection device and there's probably a pretty good chance that somewhere down the road we'll find out that some 'rogue' Google employee has 'accidentally' been collecting fairly disturbing data because they didn't remove some 'debugging' code somewhere along the line.
Besides, if Googlers had to eat their own dogfood, what makes you think they would share it with you?
Don't forget you are talking about China where Christmas Eve isn't much different from any other Tuesday night. Let's call "early in the New Year" some time around Chinese New Year but certainly not during the period where China seemingly stops for a bit.
Either way, it will probably be when they settle on a 5S/5C ratio somewhere between 50/50 and 100/0. Maybe Apple could do a deal before Chinese New Year if all the 5C units were red with a gold 福 on the back.
"All anyone has to do is monitor the on-ramps and off-ramps, which is why the whole concept is completely idiotic to begin with."
It does get a little more idiotic and a lot simpler when you have folks who don't think it through. Let's be honest, if you're trying to hide your tracks you probably should be smart enough to ensure the network sending the threat wasn't the same one to receive it.
In that respect your analogy is a bit off. It's more like he used his access card to enter the building in the middle of the night, rob the joint, and then hit the electronic lock on his way out. All the next person who goes in has to do is look at the access log and they have a pretty good idea of what happened when it turns out that his key card is still in his pocket. It's not an inherent failure of Tor, it's a failure to understand how things work. The kid might as well use Tor for Google Cloud Print.
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