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On 6/8/2011 6:20, Invisible wrote:
> and now nobody ever mentions their name,
It's on signs on pretty much every street corner here. ;-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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On 6/8/2011 5:49 AM, Warp wrote:
> Darren New<dne### [at] san rr com> wrote:
>> On 6/7/2011 3:40, Warp wrote:
>>> Microsoft, the fourth most profitable company in the world, and they
>>> whine and moan about Linux's market share and how free software is killing
>>> the industry.
>
>> You know, I've never actually seen MS complain about Linux market share.
>> They FUD about GNU licensing and such, and dis the OS and all, but I've
>> never heard them "complain". Can you post a link next time you run across
>> what you're talking about here?
>
> I didn't mean to say that Microsoft has explicitly complained about
> Linux's market share being too large. On the contrary, they (read: Steve
> Ballmer) always remember to proudly proclaim how Windows is the most
> popular OS by a large margin (iow. argument ad populum).
>
Shouldn't that actually be like "argument ad preinstallum"? lol
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On 6/8/2011 8:32 AM, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] dev null> writes:
>
>>> Survived what? The Exxon Valdez disaster was a mere footnote in their
>>> history.
>>
>> One of the worst, most infamous ecological catastrophes in human
>> history, and it's a "mere footnote"?? How did it not end their
>> existence? How did they not get sued off the face of creation?
>
> Because they figured out how not to pay as much in damages as they were
> ordered to.
Which, in most of these cases, means, "As little as possible for the
court to charge them, without actually doing anything that would keep
them from making the same mistake again." The Coch brother's companies
are sued over environmental issues, and fined, on an almost yearly basis
too, their response is to funnel an equal, or more, money into right
wing think tanks, to go to congress and babble about how they don't need
the EPA, and all those damn regulations are unnecessary. Its pretty cost
effective. Pay a few million in fines, funnel ten million to
professional liars, and rake in billions from your actual products. They
probably pay more to take lunch in Paris, by flying there in a private
jet, than they get charged for the violating anything. Until that
changes, and companies have to pay real money, that actually damages the
business... But, seriously, they know they can have problems, and they
spend more time figuring out how much they can afford to pay out, to
appear contrite, than they do *actually* developing safety programs, or
making sure equipment works, or watching out for the possibility that
their workers are drunk off their asses.
After all, they have half the government on their side, to lie about how
it really hurt them to pay out a few million, how *unfair* it is to make
them follow rules, and/or pay 35% taxes, down from nearly 50% in the
50s, and they should instead only have to pay 25% (then loop hole that
into 1%, or even 0%). Where have we heard that logic before? Oh, right,
back when a major insurance company:
1. Bought out the company that determined average costs for medical
treatment.
2. Had them inflate the costs.
3. Got sued
4. Paid out money to create a new alternate company for that, while
being allowed to keep their own, they opted to *not* use, so that the
result was that they *still* used inflated prices.
5. Argued, 20 years later, that it was *unfair* that people had to only
pay 25% over and above what it actually cost to be treated (based on
their inflated costs), and no, the insured should be paying 35% of the
bill. A charge that "originally" was only charged to you *if* the cost
of the doctor you went to was *higher* than the average cost, nation
wide, but slowly crept up to 10%, then 15%, then 20%, then 25%, then
finally, "Oh, congress! Poor us! Its bankrupting us to have to pay 75%
of the bill!"
Same stupid shit. Don't tax us what they did 50 years ago, and, let us
charge 100% over what we would have, in the same time period, for a
service we will turn around and tell people they don't qualify for in
the first place (not just insurance mind, but everyone from your
computer maker, to your phone company, to cell companies, etc., all of
whom want to charge you for shit that was free, or is even more trivial
to provide now than it was 60 years ago, but which would, "bankrupt
them", if they didn't charge you extra for every damn little thing,
while then turning around, and in the same year, getting bloody hundred
million dollar "tax refunds" from the government, possibly on top of
free money they already got, as "incentives" to supposedly make things
cheaper, instead of continually raising the frakking prices on us, and
charging you if they accidentally left pocket lint in the new shorts you
bought (an added feature/commodity, don't cha know).
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>>>> Why would it be a surprise that IBM is more profitable than Apple?
>>>
>>> Because, last I heard, the company was in severe financial trouble and
>>> was close to being liquidated. To go from that to being one of the most
>>> profitable companies on Earth is a pretty big turn-around.
>>
>> "Last you heard" was in the 80s, and you heard wrong.
>
> OK, fair enough. But given that they were once a big name that everybody
> knew and talked about, and now nobody ever mentions their name, it's not
> surprising that I got the impression that they weren't doing so well.
They're still a pretty big name. Just because you haven't heard from
them doesn't mean no one has. You've heard of Thinkpad latops, haven't
you? They spun off that division 5 years ago because, while it was
profitable, it wasn't profitable enough... This means their server
divisions, application divisions, as well as their service offerings
were even more succesful.
Every single developped country's government uses IBM mainframes.
Every single bank in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
Every single insurance compnay in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
Every single airline in the world still uses IBM mainframes.
Most of the Fortune 1000 companies have IBM mainframes (Google is
probably one of the very few exceptions)
Most of the above will have hundreds of P-Series (AIX) servers, AS/400s,
And intel-based servers made by IBM. Not to mention use various Tivoli
monitoring tools, Websphere applications platforms, and in many case,
Lotus Notes for internal e-mail.
Also, watch this, when you have 15 minutes of spare time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39jtNUGgmd4
>
>> Survived what? The Exxon Valdez disaster was a mere footnote in their
>> history.
>
> One of the worst, most infamous ecological catastrophes in human
> history, and it's a "mere footnote"?? How did it not end their
> existence? How did they not get sued off the face of creation?
>
You've heard of appeals courts? Exxon has yet to pay a single cent of
what they were fined, and even when they finally do, it will not harm
them in the long run. Their fine has been capped at $507M, which is
roughly their profits for one week (they made $30B in profits last year).
Oh, and by the way, the Bhopal disaster hadn't killed Union Carbide
before they were bought out by Dow Chemicals, and last summer's
Deepwater Horizon tragedy will not kill BP, either. It's sad, but it's
the truth.
>> Don't base your financial knowledge on Kevin Costner movies.
>
> There's a movie?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
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On 6/8/2011 10:46, Darren New wrote:
> On 6/8/2011 6:20, Invisible wrote:
>> and now nobody ever mentions their name,
>
> It's on signs on pretty much every street corner here. ;-)
Sorry. I thought we were still talking about Exxon.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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>>> and now nobody ever mentions their name,
>>
>> It's on signs on pretty much every street corner here. ;-)
>
> Sorry. I thought we were still talking about Exxon.
Well, for that matter, I'd never heard of Exxon before the tanker
disaster, and I never heard about them again afterwards. (Which probably
just means they trade under different names in this country.)
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>>> "Last you heard" was in the 80s, and you heard wrong.
>>
>> OK, fair enough. But given that they were once a big name that everybody
>> knew and talked about, and now nobody ever mentions their name, it's not
>> surprising that I got the impression that they weren't doing so well.
>
> They're still a pretty big name. Just because you haven't heard from
> them doesn't mean no one has.
OK, fair enough. My point was that what *I* have or haven't heard about
is all I've got to go on.
>> One of the worst, most infamous ecological catastrophes in human
>> history, and it's a "mere footnote"?? How did it not end their
>> existence? How did they not get sued off the face of creation?
>
> You've heard of appeals courts? Exxon has yet to pay a single cent of
> what they were fined, and even when they finally do, it will not harm
> them in the long run.
Figures...
> Oh, and by the way, the Bhopal disaster hadn't killed Union Carbide
Yeah, but that happened in a 3rd world country that people only
/pretend/ to give a damn about.
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Le 2011-06-09 04:10, Invisible a écrit :
>>>> and now nobody ever mentions their name,
>>>
>>> It's on signs on pretty much every street corner here. ;-)
>>
>> Sorry. I thought we were still talking about Exxon.
>
> Well, for that matter, I'd never heard of Exxon before the tanker
> disaster, and I never heard about them again afterwards. (Which probably
> just means they trade under different names in this country.)
Esso and Mobil.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
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/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcable com> wrote:
> Shouldn't that actually be like "argument ad preinstallum"? lol
I just find it hilarious when Steve Ballmer makes the argument from
popularity, like in that one interview where the interviewer asked something
like "seriously, what is it with Windows Vista?" and Ballmer argued something
like "What? The second most used operating system in the world?" (obviously
referring to XP as the most popular one), as if popularity was some kind of
indication of quality.
The vast majority of people who had (and have) Vista in their PCs had
no choice. It's not like Vista became "the second most popular OS" by
people's choice. It became the second most popular because computer vendors
made the choice for their customers, often without even offering any
alternatives (unless a customer specifically asks for one, and how many
of them do?)
It's a bit like arguing that OPEC is a great organization because the
vast majority of the world's oil comes from them. That would be one of
the dumbest arguments in existence.
--
- Warp
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On 6/9/2011 5:48, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Esso and Mobil.
And "Esso" is the name they took after the US government thought they were
too big and broke them up.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"Coding without comments is like
driving without turn signals."
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