He ain't got nothin on Mr. Zap...

(Google it)

Does Cass Sunstein write Vogon poetry too?

PC's in the late 80s were standardized - Functionally there was very little difference between an actual IBM PC running DOS or a far cheaper PC clone running DOS. That changed with IBM attempting the PS/2 architecture but by then everybody was settled on the AT (and later the ATX) motherboard architecture. AMD vs Intel exchange some performance vs price differences but ultimately that's like choosing a V6 over a V8 over an I4 and most people aren't going to care.

Each car manufacturer has its own architecture, designs and manufacturing styles - Just slapping a google-droidPod-phone-radio into the car isn't going to make a major difference when I'm looking for dependability or gas mileage (or battery mileage) or style/appearance.

A closer analogy would've been the 6502 systems (the original Apple vs IBM vs Commodore 64 vs Atari)

Manufacture Date November 1, 1994.

Saved it from an old employer that was throwing it out for one o' dem new fangled Dell quietkeyboards.

Used it daily up until about 6 months ago when my company switched to macs for development. (Still have the windows box running in case I need to do some maintenance on legacy stuff but once that's gone it'll replace my old VT keyboard (that I also saved from an old employer) that I use at home.

It's catsup you insensitive clod!

> Last week, I live-blogged a talk by theoretical physicist Amanda Peet, and while there were a great amount of comments and discussions focused on her lecture, there was also a great amount focused on Dr. Peet’s physical appearance. Sure, sometimes I’m judged on my appearance as well—I’m an unusual looking person and I do things to draw attention to myself—but when I talk or write or profess about whatever it is I’m doing professionally, I can always expect to be judged for my merits as a professional. Not for my looks first and then for my scholarship, but for the quality of the work I do. I feel like that’s a privilege, a way I get to play the game of life on “easy mode,” that I wouldn’t get simply if my gender weren’t male.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

So if I start my own company with my own money then, by your own loose definitions, I'm a customer because I've sold myself on the idea.

Let's just generalize it to where you want this argument to go then -

Money makes jobs and without money there are no jobs.

Ergo - What Zuckerburg and Edison are doing here is correct because this will make MORE jobs because they will have more money with which to be customers with to create new jobs with.

The investors were not "customers" - they were INVESTORS.

A customer is one who uses the product or services produced.
An investor is one who puts up support for a company to help produce goods or services with the intention that they'll be paid back or sometimes NOT AT ALL (for tax purposes or just to help a fella out).

It doesn't change the fact that they created jobs on a long term gamble that demand could be created. You can tap dance around that all you want but I worked for several of those companies and made a good chunk of income from them for several years at a time as well as contributing that in increased tax dollars to the government.

as for jobs going "bye-bye" - I don't see the difference between them and Edison here (a successful and established company, with customers) making jobs go "bye-bye" for cost cutting measures.

A "job" is any activity in which you're paid for work.

But I'll be sure to pass that on to my buddies in the housing industry that only work for several months at a time or my other friends who work as musicians "Hey, do you know you don't have a job because you're only employed for several weeks at a stretch?"

> See many of the dot-com bombs who had no paying customers and no exit plan.

And still created jobs.

Google sez we must remove ad blocker functionality!

I smell an ulterior motive..

"AT&T spokeshole"

Is this part of the new genderless naming styles from the AP?

If they're worthwhile (by whatever metric you want to use that's important to you), yes. If not, no.

Everything else is mental masturbation for the sake of political argument.

Intelligence is a weaker selection trait in the wild then, say, strength, stamina, endurance and mate attraction.

It only becomes worthwhile once you have a stable society and can then pursue such "luxuries" and, even then, it appears to take thousands of years to become critical to society in general and, even now, it's still not considered a "desirable" trait for mate attraction...