I'd love to see the same thing done with the health care industry. I have a pet hypothesis that the financial complexity of the industry is one of the barriers to reducing costs: Nobody knows what's being spent on what, and to whom. Everybody can claim that somebody else is gouging us.
Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
51–60 of 273 posts
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny and satirical as it is, [1] completely changed my opinion of Steve Ballmer for the positive. > Steve Ballmer. You open the door to his enormous grinning face, and before you know it he’s in the hall handing over a bottle of something cheap (but with such confidence you don’t notice) and he’s giving you the handshake of your life. Then he’s in. Loving it. Loving the music. Loving the food and drink. He’s going u…
One thing that gets wrong is calling Gates the genius. Ballmer is the smarter of the two.
Could you elaborate on that?
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#53Today I filed my tax return showing all the money that came in and every minute expense required to make that money. Why can't we hold the government to the same standard? There should be one (huge) annual spreadsheet published showing how much money came in (federal, state, and local levels), with a detailed accounting of where every penny went, just like I am required to do for my business to claim deductions.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#54m$ has got so much better since he left.
Seems to me lots of companies make $ Do they all get a derogatory psuedonym? adob$ amaz$ face$ goog$ mailchim$ etc etc etc or is the negativity reserved for M$ Suggesting there is something wrong with a software company because it makes money seems to be a blow in from 1990's militant open source philosophy and probably best left in the 1990s.
They are doing a public service for anyone reading their comments. Doesn't take much cognitive function to know you can ignore what they are saying if they use juvenile words like "M$" or "Crapple".
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems to me lots of companies make $ Do they all get a derogatory psuedonym? adob$ amaz$ face$ goog$ mailchim$ etc etc etc or is the negativity reserved for M$ Suggesting there is something wrong with a software company because it makes money seems to be a blow in from 1990's militant open source philosophy and probably best left in the 1990s.
M$ will never, ever, be forgiven for the FUD that put OS in dire straits.
O$ is not in dire straits. No point in hating on them if that's the reason.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#56The article mentions that the data shows a huge allocation of resources to education. Why is education publicly funded in the USA, and not left to market forces? Can't that be considered a "socialist" policy?
It's welfare.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#57I just bought a domain for something similar. Oops
You just signed a lease for a domain. No one owns their domain.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#58m$ has got so much better since he left.
Seems to me lots of companies make $ Do they all get a derogatory psuedonym? adob$ amaz$ face$ goog$ mailchim$ etc etc etc or is the negativity reserved for M$ Suggesting there is something wrong with a software company because it makes money seems to be a blow in from 1990's militant open source philosophy and probably best left in the 1990s.
As I recall the M$ came about around the time when Microsoft engaged in rather questionable business tactics. They were the largest IT company and still played super hard ball. They deliberately did "embrace, extend and extinguish" various software/protocols to create lock-in to their own proprietary technologies (IE55/HTML. Kerberos/LDAP, AOL/IM) to further their market dominance.
At the time, the M$ acronym was IMO well earned. These days it appears to be different. Microsoft still has a large dominance on the desktop, but appears to not be playing quite as hard ball anymore. Stuff like NodeJS on Azure and VSCode would simply not have happened in the early 2000. Whether they actually changed, time will tell.
As for other companies deserving a derogatory acronym, I think you can measure these companies with:
1) How much do they actually subvert/interfere with standards and other companies inventions to gain/maintain their market dominance?
2) Do they at all innovate to deserve their market position and/or give back?
Without much analysis, I think Adobe may actually deserve an Adob$. Here you have a company that still almost every year change their proprietary binary formats (.PSD, .AI, etc) forcing an entire creative industry to spend a lot on software that have largely not had any significant innovation for the last 10-15 years (the functions in Photoshop/Illustrator have more or less remained the same).
And it is the same lock-in as Microsoft Office has/had, because even if you decide to operate your creative business using only alternative software, your clients and suppliers won't.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#59The UK gov supplies a very simple chart that shows where your taxes have gone, it looks like this:
Although the real thing shows how much money you personally contributed to each sector - I removed for the screenshot.
Re: Steve Ballmer serves up a data trove about government spending in the US
#60Steve Ballmer will be running for president ... wait and see