Comment Goodbye Battlefield! (Score 1) 323
That's it for me, no more Battlefield anything. I've had enough.
That's it for me, no more Battlefield anything. I've had enough.
I don't take that kind of talk at its face value. On the other hand it was deeply personal for Jobs, what he really meant and felt is not for us to speculate about. If Jobs truly had put Apple on the line [to destroy Google], that would change things. He didn't.
Yes, please do. Those are not very good examples, they're stories that prove that people act irrational at times. I'm not sure that qualifies as "irrational" in general. Look at their work instead of tabloid headlines.
After all, did Steve continue to throw chairs at work? Did they launch Microsoft Chairs XP? I suppose he has a temper, but how did that affect his business decisions? It does not seem to have been very detrimental? Microsoft is still pretty solid.
Steve Jobs' desire to bankrupt and destroy Google is hardly irrational, it's quite logical to want to beat your competitor(s). As for how he said it, he was a show man, was he not? Did Apple in fact spend every Dollar they had?
They're certainly "characters" we remember, but I don't think that's a bad thing.
What exactly do you claim Steve and Steve did that was not rational? Please, remind me.
I agree that they are/were controversial, but irrational? They seem to have done very well for themselves, their respective corporations and products.
I seem to remember mostly business decisions that other people simply didn't like or had negative effects for others. That's not irrational or unreasonable by definiton.
I find it strange that you feel the need to defend this corporation? Especially its quick and dirty establishment.
I'm afraid you misunderstand if you think I attacked the British/American "Ltd"/"LLC" or the German "GmbH". It is specifically the "UG" form banks and other serious organizations regard as lesser.
German banks certainly don't award credit as easily. I don't blame them as the company has little or no capital to begin with! It is not simply my opinion, by German law there are limits on such companies that the GmbH-form does not have. As long as the capital is under €25,000 they have to keep 1/4 of the profits in the company, a severe limit for any successful venture.
Yes, I see your point and it's well founded, however for the moment I see no reason to wish for interference.
The best way to resolve the issue is in the form of competition. The two sides, content providers and network owners, are struggling to finding a balance between who pays and owns what.
Regulators and consumers need only sit back and watch, if there is a need for regulation the watchdogs can step in and force their hand(s). This latest wave of changes has barely begun, who knows where and how the lines between the two sides will end?
As it stands the content providers interests happen to match that of the consumers, both want the lowest possible price for [their] users' free and unrestricted access.
It's a sound strategic move for any large content and service provider including Google, Apple and especially Facebook.
They rely on the networks for their revenue, it makes sense to own parts of this infrastructure yourself if you can afford it. If only to use as leverage and/or offsetting future increases in transport costs. Owning huge datacenters is not enough, any longer, for the very large scale, global enterprises.
The [network] owners have already begun asking companies such as Facebook to pay for their users' data usage. The European ISPs and telecom corporations asked earlier this year for the right to offer "better" service levels to paying clients such as Facebook (i.e. Network Neutrality).
This is all part of Facebook's new strategy.
Facebook will be building a huge new data center in northern Sweden to support the rapid global growth of its users. The new data center in Lulea, Sweden will be Facebook’s first facility outside the United States.
“It’s the next step in our ongoing strategy of building our own infrastructure and moving away from leased facilities,” said Facebook spokesman Michael Kirkland. “We are expecting this data center to continue to help us reduce latency for our users in Europe and beyond.”
Thanks, after looking it up in the business register I see it's formally "IPP Int UG" (i.e. haftungsbeschränkt or almost the equiv. of Ltd/LLC).
In other words this is the "light version" or less serious company form, founded with €1 in capital, i.e. not a very serious business [in my and the bank's opinion].
Does this so-called "IPP" company in fact exist at all? I've had a cursory glance on Google, but didn't find much of interest.
German companies are not called Limited or Ltd. if they are indeed "governed by German law", as claimed in the court declaration. Under German law it should be called "IPP GmbH". I would normally assume a "Ltd." company was based in the UK, on one of their islands or somewhere far away from Europe in general.
IPP seems to be a fairly common name in the German business register (Unternehmensregister), but none of them seem to be the company in question? Does anyone out there have further information?
Radio is still free in Europe, as far as I know. Satellite radio is not offered here, and I don't want it either. The largest national broadcaster here is [still] trying to push DAB radios.
As a Norwegian I don't understand your frankly ignorant attack on Arctic resource exploitation. We have been active in this region for a long time, with rapidly increasing activity levels the last two decades.
As an Arctic nation we are very concerned with regards to our environment and safety. We have a proven track record.
May I ask if you have any real knowledge of the region or indeed oil & gas exploration?
Newspapers are not dying everywhere in the world, you know? I know it's happening a lot in the US, but we Europeans seem to keep buying and reading them
I can't speak for everyone, but I know my [country's] newspapers are doing very well thanks to both print and the web/apps. Lots of new revenue options including non-news services.
I should have been more precise, it's slightly unfair to claim it's just "old people". It's not just about age obviously, my apologies.
While people on Slashdot are generally more technologically capable, the general population is less so. Age is a factor as well as income and education. It would perhaps be more fair to say that [within the general population] the oldest and poorest are both more likely to use traditional television services. They might not be aware of the possibilities or simply don't care.
Like you I'm not wasting my time or money on services I don't want. If I want access to Discovery, NatGeo or BBC documentaries and programmes I want those and nothing else. For now I'm content with my iPlayer and BitTorrent access. It would be better for everyone if I could pay and access the content directly [at a fair price].
The "loudness wars" were already lost when BitTorrent made content without ads easily available to people in general. Heck, I generally don't like loud music or noises in my TV-shows, so I wrote a little script...
That doesn't change my view of the TV as a very limited and passive device. I'm sorry if I offended anyone.
I would also like to point out that in my country most people have access to plenty of bandwith at very reasonable prices (Scandinavia). We have Netflix-like services and PVR/DVRs here as well.
May Euell Gibbons eat your only copy of the manual!
