This seems like a monster place .I wonder how many servers it takes to run all those billion dollar s of servers and would you need a few more servers to run those servers ?? Or would a g3 imac do the job ??
i guess itunes just got powerful .
uhm, what? so many things wrong with that.
Not to mention, employing contractors, firms, construction companies, etc. That's only the beginning. Don't forget electricity, upkeep, IT monitoring, blah blah blah. As I said, 1bil is most likely NOT just an initial cost.
And how the hell would a g3 imac do the job? What job do you think things are doing? Do you have any idea how iTunes works? How it works to stream gigabytes of data out of a server farm to clients all over the world every second? Apple has iTunes, MobileMe, Developer Tools, Software Update, etc that all need to be sent out fast. I can attest that MobileMe has incredibly slow upload/download speeds compared to these other services. They need a new / expanded farm desperately. And when you build (and have 18bil in reserves), why not build for the future?
The US Government issues bonds--lots of them in fact--and relies on the fact that China will buy them. When China stopped a couple months ago, the world paniced and Obama accused China of manipulating world economies (which is true).
According to federal sources summed up @ http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08230/904931-109.stm, California has the 6th highest tax burden of any state, when measured as a percentage of GDP. Get the facts right.
The budget crisis is largely a result of the stock market crash. Capital gains taxes account for large amounts of tax revenue for California, which is the case for many large states with wealthy populations like New York. Nobody wants to sell stock when prices are low, so all those Apple employees with options below water are just sitting on them. Therefore, California loses out on revenue.
California's unemployment isn't the highest in the nation, they are fourth (that's easily googled). Second, California doesn't have the highest taxes in the nation as noted above.
To the bits of this that are actually relevant to the article above:
1. Al Gore is a lying hypocrite, a tool of the Global Warming-money making fear machine, and Jobs does want Apple to be "greener". "Greener" does not mean "Whatever Al Gore wants" as Jobs is at least smart enough to recognize that about half the green campaign is a total scam. Putting Gore on the board probably seemed like a good idea until he went on his Global ManBearPig ALlelujah Carbon-tax Tour.
2. China losing money hand over fist to bad US debt and refusing to lose any more isn't "market manipulation", it's FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, something Obama would not recognize if it fell out of the sky, landed on his face, and started to wiggle.
3. Your interweb article data are "Advanced Estimates" created well before the August 17 2008 publishing date of this article, and they are WRONG. I am a CA taxpayer, and as of TODAY, our state income tax rate is 10.5% , and when added into the federal rate of taxation, along with the taxes that we Californians are paying on the local City and County levels, we are the NUMBER ONE HIGHEST-TAXED INDIVIDUALS IN THE UNITED STATES. Period, end of story. Your articles are quite fond of citing only state income tax rates because telling the whole truth would require those poor "journalists" to actually do real research, instead of a fast google-search for the data that will keep their fat asses planted in their news chairs.
4. you should be embarrassed to say something this absurd. California made the vast majority of its annual wealth over the last ten years from Property taxation, NOT capital gains, please go back to school or stop typing. CA's budget since its inception as a State in the 1800s grew to 90 billion dollars as of 1998. Over one hundred years it took to reach a budget of 90 billion dollars. Then, between 1998 and 2008, it DOUBLED to 180 billion Dollars. Please, point out to me exactly where the second government is hiding its additional statewide police force, unions, fire depts, and public services, because we're clearly paying for TWO of everything we had in 1998, but I sure as hell don't see it. CA has not a shred of fiscal responsibility, and that is why it is in the financial crisis its in right now, much as you'd like to blame the stock market and big, evil CAPITALISM for the problem. You'd do yourself a great justice focusing on the truth: irresponsibility, and extremely liberal social services for the illegal population here in CA.
5. Corporations in CA are the not the primary source of revenue and never have been. Small-business owners are, and they are leaving this state in droves. While you don't understand this yet, you soon will, because as the state's revenue streams continue to decrease, they will panic, and eventually seek to levy massive taxes on the few corporations left in CA, which will, sooner or later, leave the state as well. These tax measures CA has enacted are ridiculous, meaningless, asinine paper banners being pushed in your face because those politicians up in Sac want you to think it ain't their fault. But, it IS their fault, and yours, because you keep voting them back to Sac.
Doesn't Apple already have a big data centre in CA from 2006. It was an article here on Ai, there were Google earth pixs and stuff. Guess they must have filled that one already!!
More is always good . Not to mention that it's good to build like this in a recession. Having money in a recession is always a good thing.
4. you should be embarrassed to say something this absurd. California made the vast majority of its annual wealth over the last ten years from Property taxation, NOT capital gains, please go back to school or stop typing.
Wow. Just about everything you said was bull... but I'll focus on this one. California's ability to make revenue from property tax was incredibly hamstrung YEARS ago with prop 13. Not to mention California requires a supermajority to pass a new budget, which makes compromise on anything (including getting new revenue) incredibly difficult. In addition, the use of direct democracy (props) on many of these financial issues only inflames the situation since the populace ends up falling to slogans etc instead of thinking things through... so low taxes and high spending is the result.
The inexperienced Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is responsible for California's budget problems. Darrell Issa spent 1.7 million to blame (for the energy crisis) and recall Governor Grey Davis. Cutting the car registration tax resulted a substantial ($21B) short fall.
From a personal Income perspective (they make more), the people in California are taxed less as a percentage then MOST other sates.
A big component in the "cost of during business" is the cost of real estate which is expensive in California (employees need to be paid more to live). That's a market driven component (not based on costs) mostly out of the control of the government.
Actually, the citizens of California are responsible for most of their problems.
California is a State in which referendums rule. The citizens vote on most spending and tax measures.
Over the years, they have consistently voted to lower taxes, and increase services.
What does anyone expect to happen during a downturn?
Just the other day, they voted against cutting spending and increasing taxes.
My first thought was too slam you bad, But then I thought that is how your kind creates the teckspud kind .I went and fixed my last two offensive posts. Yes, they were poor. It was late, I was sloppy and the new gaming site really rocks . And I do change them because to a point ,I do want to fit in. And I would never want to upset anyone here ,for any reason. Even bill gates would get a hug from me .
My writing is a bit dis-jointed .No matter how much I try to be normal like you. You will have to accept it dude .
As for 9 yr. old crack Hmm I am not the one to post 9 times a day here for 3 yrs. And what is worse is that you have gained no wisdom from your incredible high post count. Have you become bitter ?
I come here to post about apple. I may make a friend. I will not flame or troll with you dude. So last warning. Feel free comment on my posts .Thats your right. But speak to me a nice way. BUT STOP THE NASTY cracks. I should be on your ignore list since you dislike me so much, anyway .
I am writer by the way of sorts. some print and TV ads have used my lines or blurbs, I also in some PF forums write odd kinda of poetry that other members have put to music. maybe i am a little syd barret like in my writing/thinking style .<<not his genius of course >> i say all this above to let you know i am aware of your feelings . and you are not the first to deride me .yet some have found something they like in my <<think different style >>
again be my buddy or put me on your teckspud list
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And since it's ok to go so far off topic here . Apple loses a ton of sales because the top games crash on most mac machines . Even on low settings . To put it all on a cloud as someone here just said . Wow .
To play crysis on my black mac 13 in would rock . To choose between every game ever made on any platform and play those games full force on any device .wow
and it can happen if ....../ apple can light all those thousand of miles of dark fiber optic lines . and have a bunch of billion dollar class of server farms .if they can do all this . then they would have the bandwidth to insure an incredible cloud gaming/other stuff. and if you add google's amount with apple's then cloud would stream endless . i guess hulu would be available planet wide
Apple should build some wind farms geo farms solar farm to power these server farms .
c
Does anyone know how large the gaming community really is ?? And how large could they grow into ?
peace
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I know it is not the norm to post the entire comment but this was worthy of posting again in my opinion. I've had the same thought through the years reading the comments here.
Well written and a thoughtful comment to a very rude person. I don't know if I would have had the restraint you have shown in your words.
solipsism has tried and succeeded with his immature postings degrading everyone that doesn't agree with him for way too long. His facts are normally wrong and he always has a comeback that is less than intelligent when called out on his obvious overall lack of knowledge on all things tech.
They could do a number of things with an expensive farm. Given that system spec on the Mac side is typically low, they could offer a service like this:
that would stream even the latest high end games to Apple's lower end devices. Assuming they used Mac Pros instead of Xserves with 8GB Ram and 4 x GT 120. That's $3000 to buy but would be much less for Apple - say $2000.
With half of the $1b budget on hardware, that's 250,000 servers with 4 GPUs each with centers in every state to maintain low latency and $10m to build each center. That could mean 1 million simultaneous games of Crysis streaming to Apple TVs and tablets. Only for America though.
No more system requirements for Apple products for games besides a fast enough internet connection. No more waiting for game ports. No more games piracy. Interesting that one of the people who developed the 1 millisecond compression software was a former Quicktime developer:
Voice of reason! Thank you . Should be noted... as a citizen of CA, I really am ashamed of my state.
What's not to like about 71˚? And what's not to like about paying only about $4,000 a year in property tax on the $5,000,000 (current value) house you may have purchased in 1963?
Of course it's only true for some. That's why I said the overall standard of living. Some people lose (the ones who are not as skilled/educated/hard working/lucky) and many more gain.
Yep, and you have to go through the hard part before you get to the good part. The rich guilt that causes many Americans to try to fight for better conditions in third world countries that we trade with only hurts those countries overall. It's great that people have better working conditions, but the cost is that fewer people there benefit from the work.
China is the world's biggest polluter. That's a shame, but it does not affect the economics of the situation. Thank god the world was not so concerned with healthy workers and pollution while the USA was at the stage that China is at now. Who knows what would have happened.
When governments get involved in free trade, the only possible outcome is that the benefits from trade are lowered. Governments may decide that the benefits from mucking with the trade are worth it, but the bottom line is that overall welfare goes down when trade is hindered.
We can only deal in the reality of what is, not what was, or what might have been.
The problems China is creating for itself will come back to bite it.
One example is coal. Because of their insistence that every village mine coal, there were tens of thousands of little coal mines that were worked with primitive equipment. In hundreds of these mines, the coal veins caught fire, and are now burning out of control all over the country. The government can;t stop it, because they are burning underground. Plant life is dying all over from these fires, many of which are estimated to remain burning for up to a century from now.
The earthquake last year is thought by a number of geologists to have been caused, at least in part, from the settling of the Three Gorges Dam. This killed thousands of kids in the poorly built schools in a large tract of the surrounding country, and tens of thousands of people overall. No real environmental study was done of course. In fact, some of those demanding one were arrested, and most are still in jail.
It's estimated that in the long run, its "growth at any cost" policies will cost it over a trillion dollars to fix. Whether it will be able to do that is open to question.
Free Trade. Well, I'm not against free trade when it exists.
The problem is that we've been too afraid to insist on free trade. The US always gets the bad end of things there. We do have some of that guilt you mention, and it makes it difficult for us to insist on equal rules.
We don't insist that our companies have at least a 51% share in any foreign operations as they do. We don't insist on getting the technology that those companies have before we allow them to set up. There are lots of ways free trade should be done. But they are not done that way.
If we insisted that other countries abide by the rules they want us to abide by, then things would be different.
Hey Virgil I like your past posts, but this one sucked.
American workers have the HIGHEST productivity in the free world.
Except for Mexico which is number one.
In America we produce way more per hour than anyone else .
we also take less days off than anyone else
Europe shuts down for the summer .
And most of the innovation comes from here. For many reasons we have lost a lot of jobs . BUT IT WILL NEVER BE BECAUSE OF LAZY AMERICANS . And any one who says so is a complete asshole .
Our workplace is the model for the rest of the world .
Our gov't and scum bag special interests never protected our industries in the correct manner. In NYS they even subsidize companies to out source NYS jobs to India so fcuk me, my taxes pay for my buddies to lose there jobs.
Korea dumped steel until almost all our shipyards and steel works were killed off .THIS IS WHAT CHINA DID TO OUR TOY INDUSTRY. Across the board this tactic of other gov't and special interests dumping on us until whole industries collapse is why we are so bad off here and not because we are lazy.
There is real pain the Usa right now And the pain is not from our great hard working citizens doing something wrong. Which also makes us very bitter that we were fooled so badly. AND That our elected leaders could be bought off so cheaply. The right and left did this.
Of course the CEO'S are to blame for lost jobs too.
peace
9
YOU have take care of our home fires first.Then we can aid other people .
American .I mean north american industries HAVE ONLY WANTED A LEVEL playing field in which in to compete .
Let's see: American workers have the highest productivity, work the most hours, have the greatest innovations etc etc -- all while working in US companies -- and yet those darned American CEOs of the very same companies are responsible for job losses?
I think the idea is great and could take off very big but I don't see Apple hosting a site that doesn't push the need for Beefed Up Gaming Computers.
Apple makes the majority of their profit from Harware and Software sales.
It would seem counter productive to allow the Apple gaming community to play games on lower end Macs such as the mini.
That's true but gaming doesn't look like it will ever come to the Mac in a big way and so won't be a driving force for people to buy faster Macs. Currently people using Macs for games have to pay Microsoft for their OS, which just helps increase the competitors profits. They are also buying Windows games, which exacerbates the problem.
One other area that I can see such a setup being of use is to demo Mac software to PC users. You'd be able to demo Final Cut, iLife, Logic and even OS X using demo files provided where uploading your own would be too slow. They could even move their in-store training sessions online. If anyone has tried out Leopard's screen sharing in ichat, you can see how effective it can be. On home computers, it's limited by the upload connection on one end and also the latency introduced in the on-the-fly compression but those issues can be resolved with servers.
Also, although higher end Mac hardware may not be purchased, they could push other hardware with subscriptions etc.
Hardware is very quickly reaching a point where people don't need the highest end models and in fact the lowest end suffices so the only way that people will make money is in software.
Television networks or a generalization of that will always make money because they provide unique entertainment content. Because they have this draw for an audience, they attract advertisers who will always exist to shift products people always need. The digital content provision industry won't die and Apple need to find as many ways to profit from it.
Subscription models are the easiest ways and the iphone was the beginning. Apple make some money from the device but they also make money from kickbacks from the service providers and they can make that extra money from subscriptions every year unlike a hardware sale.
If they turned the ipod touch into a device like the small onlive game box, they could allow output of the content to a TV and hook up over wifi. The ipod could be a touch controller or a controller could connect to it somehow - perhaps if Apple have mini-dp out as well as the current connector. They make more money from owners of the ipod than normal as they would be paying for access to games via a subscription. The Apple TV box is another, probably more suitable option.
Imagine 40 million ipod owners and just 20% paying a $20 per month itunes subscription for games etc. That's $160m a month - nearly $2b per year. Running costs will be high but it's an indefinitely sustainable eco-system because it's based on digital content provision.
Imagine 40 million ipod owners and just 20% paying a $20 per month itunes subscription for games etc. That's $160m a month - nearly $2b per year. Running costs will be high but it's an indefinitely sustainable eco-system because it's based on digital content provision.
As I said, I'm not a gamer so I wasn't aware that the Mac wasn't the platform of choice for gamers (it actually surprises me with the graphics cards and great graphics we have).
After knowing this I see it working great for the desktop/notebook arena but not for the iPhone and Touch platform (At least in the US).
AT&T has put too many limitations on current iPhone apps that Stream data (Sling being my biggest complaint). They limit high bandwidth streaming to WiFi only.
I see people gaming at work during breaks and lunch on various devices. iPhone, Touch, PSP etc. The company I work for does not allow personal devices on their WiFi connection.
You'd be limited to being within a WiFi area for gaming which greatly limits it's usability.
If AT&T opened this up to 3G it would change the entire scenario but I don't see it happening now or for the new Phone being announced next month.
This may change if the rumors are correct and Apple gets a little competition between vendors such as Verizon but for now I still don't see it as a viable portable solution.
Edit: I should have said "I still don't see it as a viable portable streaming gaming solution."
The earthquake last year is thought by a number of geologists to have been caused, at least in part, from the settling of the Three Gorges Dam. This killed thousands of kids in the poorly built schools in a large tract of the surrounding country, and tens of thousands of people overall. No real environmental study was done of course.
I am afraid there are many such links (between dams and earthquake) that have been made, including in the US. For instance, the Hoover dam is believed to have significantly altered seismic activity in the region; there was a California dam that is believed to have caused earthquakes in the 1970s, and so forth. (Happy to give you cites, if you wish; but you can also google it).
Yet, no one is suggested shutting down Hoover, or the dams in California.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
One example is coal. Because of their insistence that every village mine coal, there were tens of thousands of little coal mines that were worked with primitive equipment. In hundreds of these mines, the coal veins caught fire, and are now burning out of control all over the country. The government can;t stop it, because they are burning underground. Plant life is dying all over from these fires, many of which are estimated to remain burning for up to a century from now.
True. But China is getting much better. It leads the world in clean coal technology: They are building them at the rate of one a month, and often taking down the older inefficient ones in the process. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/wo...ia/11coal.html Similarly, China has now set aggressive targets for reducing carbon footprint, far more than the US has even contemplated.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Well, I'm not against free trade when it exists.The problem is that we've been too afraid to insist on free trade. The US always gets the bad end of things there. We do have some of that guilt you mention, and it makes it difficult for us to insist on equal rules. etc etc.....
See my point above, about Ricardo. Just about every major economist would disagree with you: free trade makes both sides better off, regardless of the income levels of the countries that are trading ("comparative advantage"). Arguably, we got to where we are today because of free trade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
We can only deal in the reality of what is, not what was, or what might have been.
The problems China is creating for itself will come back to bite it.
"The reality of what is" is China has a per capita income of about $3000; the US $46,000. The average Chinese person is aspiring to get to $10,000 per capita ten years from now, not where the US is today. You can't stop that process; indeed, some might argue it is even immoral to do that.
Just as the US and the EU and the others did, China will exploit natural resources and degrade its environment in the process of becoming richer and pay a price, but hopefully, just as the US and the EU and the others did, China will also get wealthy enough to pay that price and clean it up.
That said, if that growth starts to impose externalities on other countries (e.g., brown clouds floating across the pacific into California), then someone will have to pay to help mitigate that: But where the cost should fall (since it is the US consumer and corporation looking for ever cheaper products that is largely the culprit) is not clear.
I think it's a smart move to spread your company around, as long as you do it within your business plan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by federmoose
California's ability to make revenue from property tax was incredibly hamstrung YEARS ago with prop 13.
Prop 13 was passed over 30 years ago (1977 I believe). Since then and up until recently, we've run budget surpluses. When a house sells, it's taxed 1.0 % of fair market value (the sale price) plus any bonded indebtedness (usually and additional 0.2% max which means about 1.2% of the sale price). Since that proposition, a conservative estimate of people who stay in their homes more than 7 years is well below 50%. Everytime a house is sold, the state ratches up the revenue stream from the new owners. The plan was to allow the elderly on fixed incomes staying in their own homes the rest of their lives not to be priced out by real estate inflation...that worked.
Quote:
Originally Posted by federmoose
Not to mention California requires a supermajority to pass a new budget, which makes compromise on anything (including getting new revenue) incredibly difficult.
The supermajority is only in regards to NEW or INCREASES in taxes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by federmoose
In addition, the use of direct democracy (props) on many of these financial issues only inflames the situation since the populace ends up falling to slogans etc instead of thinking things through... so low taxes and high spending is the result.
Less than 50% of the general revenue is apportioned under various props (e.g., K-12 education, roads -- which the legislature plays rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul with anyway).
What happened was during the 90s, money was coming in so fast that the legislature thought it would never end (as did some people). There were even economists preaching the end of recessions. California simply forgot Economics 101. We elected these people. May 19th may have been a sobering moment for many...good Java after the punch bowl ran dry.
Yeah, I don't get why they picked North Carolina at all. I wish someone with some actual knowledge of server farms would comment here as this seems like a very weird deal from what I can find out.
First off, it seems like a billion dollar server farm is absolutely HUGE. Is this their first "home grown" server farm? If so, it's weird for them to start off by building one twice the size of everyone else's.
Secondly, it seems like a billion bucks is about a sixth of what all the top five Internet companies combined spent on capital expenditures last year? That can't be right can it?
Third, everyone else is building server farms in the Pacific Northwest where it's cool, temperate, and there is abundant cheap power (hydroelectric). Why is Apple building something in a hot, stormy area down south? And maybe someone who lives there can say what kind of power they have in North Carolina? I thought it was all coal-fired down there which makes no sense at all.
North Carolina has been actively trying to lure tech companies in just about any fashion available. They paid out the waazoo for the Dell plant and the Google server farm. They do other sources of power. The two counties they are talking about are at opposite ends of the state. There is a nuclear facility in the mountains, and there are some small solar and wind sources as well. Having said that, I doubt any of sources of power will be used. As far as weather, it is not as bad as what California and the majority of the Northwest gets. Ruling a state out because of hurricanes is silly, when you have earthquake central (California) hosting so many tech companies. The hurricanes don't happen near as much as the wildfires and earthquakes out west. The tax base is cheaper in NC than in CA. I lived in NC for 35 years and trust me when I say that NC i snot as bad as you think for tech. Red Hat is based in Research Triangle Park (Raleigh area) as well as some game creators (i.e. Spore and SIMS).
Let's see: American workers have the highest productivity, work the most hours, have the greatest innovations etc etc -- all while working in US companies -- and yet those darned American CEOs of the very same companies are responsible for job losses?
You make no sense at all, I am afraid.
And I'm afraid you make no sense at all either. Please explain.
... When things are made more cheaply, the overall welfare of the world improves. ...
I know you are already being pilloried by others, but I have to say this is the dumbest statement I've heard in a while.
Automobiles for example can be made very cheaply if you make them out of old newspapers and cheap plastic resin, that doesn't mean that this is a good idea or that it would improve the welfare of the world.
Comments
wow
really
what does one billion dollars buy ??
Its just a farm for servers .
And the price of everything has fallen .
This seems like a monster place .I wonder how many servers it takes to run all those billion dollar s of servers and would you need a few more servers to run those servers ?? Or would a g3 imac do the job ??
i guess itunes just got powerful .
uhm, what? so many things wrong with that.
Not to mention, employing contractors, firms, construction companies, etc. That's only the beginning. Don't forget electricity, upkeep, IT monitoring, blah blah blah. As I said, 1bil is most likely NOT just an initial cost.
And how the hell would a g3 imac do the job? What job do you think things are doing? Do you have any idea how iTunes works? How it works to stream gigabytes of data out of a server farm to clients all over the world every second? Apple has iTunes, MobileMe, Developer Tools, Software Update, etc that all need to be sent out fast. I can attest that MobileMe has incredibly slow upload/download speeds compared to these other services. They need a new / expanded farm desperately. And when you build (and have 18bil in reserves), why not build for the future?
But according to http://www.apple.com/hotnews/agreenerapple/, Steve Jobs wants Apple to "be greener".
The US Government issues bonds--lots of them in fact--and relies on the fact that China will buy them. When China stopped a couple months ago, the world paniced and Obama accused China of manipulating world economies (which is true).
According to federal sources summed up @ http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08230/904931-109.stm, California has the 6th highest tax burden of any state, when measured as a percentage of GDP. Get the facts right.
The budget crisis is largely a result of the stock market crash. Capital gains taxes account for large amounts of tax revenue for California, which is the case for many large states with wealthy populations like New York. Nobody wants to sell stock when prices are low, so all those Apple employees with options below water are just sitting on them. Therefore, California loses out on revenue.
California's unemployment isn't the highest in the nation, they are fourth (that's easily googled). Second, California doesn't have the highest taxes in the nation as noted above.
To the bits of this that are actually relevant to the article above:
1. Al Gore is a lying hypocrite, a tool of the Global Warming-money making fear machine, and Jobs does want Apple to be "greener". "Greener" does not mean "Whatever Al Gore wants" as Jobs is at least smart enough to recognize that about half the green campaign is a total scam. Putting Gore on the board probably seemed like a good idea until he went on his Global ManBearPig ALlelujah Carbon-tax Tour.
2. China losing money hand over fist to bad US debt and refusing to lose any more isn't "market manipulation", it's FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY, something Obama would not recognize if it fell out of the sky, landed on his face, and started to wiggle.
3. Your interweb article data are "Advanced Estimates" created well before the August 17 2008 publishing date of this article, and they are WRONG. I am a CA taxpayer, and as of TODAY, our state income tax rate is 10.5% , and when added into the federal rate of taxation, along with the taxes that we Californians are paying on the local City and County levels, we are the NUMBER ONE HIGHEST-TAXED INDIVIDUALS IN THE UNITED STATES. Period, end of story. Your articles are quite fond of citing only state income tax rates because telling the whole truth would require those poor "journalists" to actually do real research, instead of a fast google-search for the data that will keep their fat asses planted in their news chairs.
4. you should be embarrassed to say something this absurd. California made the vast majority of its annual wealth over the last ten years from Property taxation, NOT capital gains, please go back to school or stop typing. CA's budget since its inception as a State in the 1800s grew to 90 billion dollars as of 1998. Over one hundred years it took to reach a budget of 90 billion dollars. Then, between 1998 and 2008, it DOUBLED to 180 billion Dollars. Please, point out to me exactly where the second government is hiding its additional statewide police force, unions, fire depts, and public services, because we're clearly paying for TWO of everything we had in 1998, but I sure as hell don't see it. CA has not a shred of fiscal responsibility, and that is why it is in the financial crisis its in right now, much as you'd like to blame the stock market and big, evil CAPITALISM for the problem. You'd do yourself a great justice focusing on the truth: irresponsibility, and extremely liberal social services for the illegal population here in CA.
5. Corporations in CA are the not the primary source of revenue and never have been. Small-business owners are, and they are leaving this state in droves. While you don't understand this yet, you soon will, because as the state's revenue streams continue to decrease, they will panic, and eventually seek to levy massive taxes on the few corporations left in CA, which will, sooner or later, leave the state as well. These tax measures CA has enacted are ridiculous, meaningless, asinine paper banners being pushed in your face because those politicians up in Sac want you to think it ain't their fault. But, it IS their fault, and yours, because you keep voting them back to Sac.
Doesn't Apple already have a big data centre in CA from 2006. It was an article here on Ai, there were Google earth pixs and stuff. Guess they must have filled that one already!!
More is always good
4. you should be embarrassed to say something this absurd. California made the vast majority of its annual wealth over the last ten years from Property taxation, NOT capital gains, please go back to school or stop typing.
Wow. Just about everything you said was bull... but I'll focus on this one. California's ability to make revenue from property tax was incredibly hamstrung YEARS ago with prop 13. Not to mention California requires a supermajority to pass a new budget, which makes compromise on anything (including getting new revenue) incredibly difficult. In addition, the use of direct democracy (props) on many of these financial issues only inflames the situation since the populace ends up falling to slogans etc instead of thinking things through... so low taxes and high spending is the result.
Do your research, and stop listening to Limbaugh.
The inexperienced Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is responsible for California's budget problems. Darrell Issa spent 1.7 million to blame (for the energy crisis) and recall Governor Grey Davis. Cutting the car registration tax resulted a substantial ($21B) short fall.
From a personal Income perspective (they make more), the people in California are taxed less as a percentage then MOST other sates.
A big component in the "cost of during business" is the cost of real estate which is expensive in California (employees need to be paid more to live). That's a market driven component (not based on costs) mostly out of the control of the government.
Actually, the citizens of California are responsible for most of their problems.
California is a State in which referendums rule. The citizens vote on most spending and tax measures.
Over the years, they have consistently voted to lower taxes, and increase services.
What does anyone expect to happen during a downturn?
Just the other day, they voted against cutting spending and increasing taxes.
Madness!
Actually, the citizens of California are responsible for most of their problems.
California is a State in which referendums rule. The citizens vote on most spending and tax measures.
Over the years, they have consistently voted to lower taxes, and increase services.
What does anyone expect to happen during a downturn?
Just the other day, they voted against cutting spending and increasing taxes.
Madness!
Voice of reason! Thank you
My first thought was too slam you bad, But then I thought that is how your kind creates the teckspud kind .I went and fixed my last two offensive posts. Yes, they were poor. It was late, I was sloppy and the new gaming site really rocks . And I do change them because to a point ,I do want to fit in. And I would never want to upset anyone here ,for any reason. Even bill gates would get a hug from me .
My writing is a bit dis-jointed .No matter how much I try to be normal like you. You will have to accept it dude .
As for 9 yr. old crack Hmm I am not the one to post 9 times a day here for 3 yrs. And what is worse is that you have gained no wisdom from your incredible high post count. Have you become bitter ?
I come here to post about apple. I may make a friend. I will not flame or troll with you dude. So last warning. Feel free comment on my posts .Thats your right. But speak to me a nice way. BUT STOP THE NASTY cracks. I should be on your ignore list since you dislike me so much, anyway .
I am writer by the way of sorts. some print and TV ads have used my lines or blurbs, I also in some PF forums write odd kinda of poetry that other members have put to music. maybe i am a little syd barret like in my writing/thinking style .<<not his genius of course >> i say all this above to let you know i am aware of your feelings . and you are not the first to deride me .yet some have found something they like in my <<think different style >>
again be my buddy or put me on your teckspud list
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
And since it's ok to go so far off topic here . Apple loses a ton of sales because the top games crash on most mac machines . Even on low settings . To put it all on a cloud as someone here just said . Wow .
To play crysis on my black mac 13 in would rock . To choose between every game ever made on any platform and play those games full force on any device .wow
and it can happen if ....../ apple can light all those thousand of miles of dark fiber optic lines . and have a bunch of billion dollar class of server farms .if they can do all this . then they would have the bandwidth to insure an incredible cloud gaming/other stuff. and if you add google's amount with apple's then cloud would stream endless . i guess hulu would be available planet wide
Apple should build some wind farms geo farms solar farm to power these server farms .
c
Does anyone know how large the gaming community really is ?? And how large could they grow into ?
peace
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I know it is not the norm to post the entire comment but this was worthy of posting again in my opinion. I've had the same thought through the years reading the comments here.
Well written and a thoughtful comment to a very rude person. I don't know if I would have had the restraint you have shown in your words.
solipsism has tried and succeeded with his immature postings degrading everyone that doesn't agree with him for way too long. His facts are normally wrong and he always has a comeback that is less than intelligent when called out on his obvious overall lack of knowledge on all things tech.
...
They could do a number of things with an expensive farm. Given that system spec on the Mac side is typically low, they could offer a service like this:
http://www.onlive.com/
that would stream even the latest high end games to Apple's lower end devices. Assuming they used Mac Pros instead of Xserves with 8GB Ram and 4 x GT 120. That's $3000 to buy but would be much less for Apple - say $2000.
With half of the $1b budget on hardware, that's 250,000 servers with 4 GPUs each with centers in every state to maintain low latency and $10m to build each center. That could mean 1 million simultaneous games of Crysis streaming to Apple TVs and tablets. Only for America though.
No more system requirements for Apple products for games besides a fast enough internet connection. No more waiting for game ports. No more games piracy. Interesting that one of the people who developed the 1 millisecond compression software was a former Quicktime developer:
http://kotaku.com/5181300/onlive-mak...sis-on-your-tv
If Apple are streaming HD movies to their ATVs, they can stream games content too.
I think the idea is great and could take off very big but I don't see Apple hosting a site that doesn't push the need for Beefed Up Gaming Computers.
Apple makes the majority of their profit from Harware and Software sales.
It would seem counter productive to allow the Apple gaming community to play games on lower end Macs such as the mini.
Very cool site though and a great idea. I'm not a gamer but know many friends that I'll be forwarding the link to.
Thoughts?
Voice of reason! Thank you
What's not to like about 71˚? And what's not to like about paying only about $4,000 a year in property tax on the $5,000,000 (current value) house you may have purchased in 1963?
Of course it's only true for some. That's why I said the overall standard of living. Some people lose (the ones who are not as skilled/educated/hard working/lucky) and many more gain.
Yep, and you have to go through the hard part before you get to the good part. The rich guilt that causes many Americans to try to fight for better conditions in third world countries that we trade with only hurts those countries overall. It's great that people have better working conditions, but the cost is that fewer people there benefit from the work.
China is the world's biggest polluter. That's a shame, but it does not affect the economics of the situation. Thank god the world was not so concerned with healthy workers and pollution while the USA was at the stage that China is at now. Who knows what would have happened.
When governments get involved in free trade, the only possible outcome is that the benefits from trade are lowered. Governments may decide that the benefits from mucking with the trade are worth it, but the bottom line is that overall welfare goes down when trade is hindered.
We can only deal in the reality of what is, not what was, or what might have been.
The problems China is creating for itself will come back to bite it.
One example is coal. Because of their insistence that every village mine coal, there were tens of thousands of little coal mines that were worked with primitive equipment. In hundreds of these mines, the coal veins caught fire, and are now burning out of control all over the country. The government can;t stop it, because they are burning underground. Plant life is dying all over from these fires, many of which are estimated to remain burning for up to a century from now.
The earthquake last year is thought by a number of geologists to have been caused, at least in part, from the settling of the Three Gorges Dam. This killed thousands of kids in the poorly built schools in a large tract of the surrounding country, and tens of thousands of people overall. No real environmental study was done of course. In fact, some of those demanding one were arrested, and most are still in jail.
It's estimated that in the long run, its "growth at any cost" policies will cost it over a trillion dollars to fix. Whether it will be able to do that is open to question.
Free Trade. Well, I'm not against free trade when it exists.
The problem is that we've been too afraid to insist on free trade. The US always gets the bad end of things there. We do have some of that guilt you mention, and it makes it difficult for us to insist on equal rules.
We don't insist that our companies have at least a 51% share in any foreign operations as they do. We don't insist on getting the technology that those companies have before we allow them to set up. There are lots of ways free trade should be done. But they are not done that way.
If we insisted that other countries abide by the rules they want us to abide by, then things would be different.
Hey Virgil I like your past posts, but this one sucked.
American workers have the HIGHEST productivity in the free world.
Except for Mexico which is number one.
In America we produce way more per hour than anyone else .
we also take less days off than anyone else
Europe shuts down for the summer .
And most of the innovation comes from here. For many reasons we have lost a lot of jobs . BUT IT WILL NEVER BE BECAUSE OF LAZY AMERICANS . And any one who says so is a complete asshole .
Our workplace is the model for the rest of the world .
Our gov't and scum bag special interests never protected our industries in the correct manner. In NYS they even subsidize companies to out source NYS jobs to India so fcuk me, my taxes pay for my buddies to lose there jobs.
Korea dumped steel until almost all our shipyards and steel works were killed off .THIS IS WHAT CHINA DID TO OUR TOY INDUSTRY. Across the board this tactic of other gov't and special interests dumping on us until whole industries collapse is why we are so bad off here and not because we are lazy.
There is real pain the Usa right now And the pain is not from our great hard working citizens doing something wrong. Which also makes us very bitter that we were fooled so badly. AND That our elected leaders could be bought off so cheaply. The right and left did this.
Of course the CEO'S are to blame for lost jobs too.
peace
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YOU have take care of our home fires first.Then we can aid other people .
American .I mean north american industries HAVE ONLY WANTED A LEVEL playing field in which in to compete .
Let's see: American workers have the highest productivity, work the most hours, have the greatest innovations etc etc -- all while working in US companies -- and yet those darned American CEOs of the very same companies are responsible for job losses?
You make no sense at all, I am afraid.
That's not really true. It's only true for some. The standards of living in these places isn't what you would want to live at.
..... et etc
There isn't much good to be had in trying to gain economically too quickly. What I mentioned is just the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
On this issue, cameronj is spot on.
Over two centuries of post-Ricardo theories and empirical evidence are difficult -- actually, impossible -- to quarrel with.
I think the idea is great and could take off very big but I don't see Apple hosting a site that doesn't push the need for Beefed Up Gaming Computers.
Apple makes the majority of their profit from Harware and Software sales.
It would seem counter productive to allow the Apple gaming community to play games on lower end Macs such as the mini.
That's true but gaming doesn't look like it will ever come to the Mac in a big way and so won't be a driving force for people to buy faster Macs. Currently people using Macs for games have to pay Microsoft for their OS, which just helps increase the competitors profits. They are also buying Windows games, which exacerbates the problem.
One other area that I can see such a setup being of use is to demo Mac software to PC users. You'd be able to demo Final Cut, iLife, Logic and even OS X using demo files provided where uploading your own would be too slow. They could even move their in-store training sessions online. If anyone has tried out Leopard's screen sharing in ichat, you can see how effective it can be. On home computers, it's limited by the upload connection on one end and also the latency introduced in the on-the-fly compression but those issues can be resolved with servers.
Also, although higher end Mac hardware may not be purchased, they could push other hardware with subscriptions etc.
Hardware is very quickly reaching a point where people don't need the highest end models and in fact the lowest end suffices so the only way that people will make money is in software.
Television networks or a generalization of that will always make money because they provide unique entertainment content. Because they have this draw for an audience, they attract advertisers who will always exist to shift products people always need. The digital content provision industry won't die and Apple need to find as many ways to profit from it.
Subscription models are the easiest ways and the iphone was the beginning. Apple make some money from the device but they also make money from kickbacks from the service providers and they can make that extra money from subscriptions every year unlike a hardware sale.
If they turned the ipod touch into a device like the small onlive game box, they could allow output of the content to a TV and hook up over wifi. The ipod could be a touch controller or a controller could connect to it somehow - perhaps if Apple have mini-dp out as well as the current connector. They make more money from owners of the ipod than normal as they would be paying for access to games via a subscription. The Apple TV box is another, probably more suitable option.
Imagine 40 million ipod owners and just 20% paying a $20 per month itunes subscription for games etc. That's $160m a month - nearly $2b per year. Running costs will be high but it's an indefinitely sustainable eco-system because it's based on digital content provision.
...
Imagine 40 million ipod owners and just 20% paying a $20 per month itunes subscription for games etc. That's $160m a month - nearly $2b per year. Running costs will be high but it's an indefinitely sustainable eco-system because it's based on digital content provision.
As I said, I'm not a gamer so I wasn't aware that the Mac wasn't the platform of choice for gamers (it actually surprises me with the graphics cards and great graphics we have).
After knowing this I see it working great for the desktop/notebook arena but not for the iPhone and Touch platform (At least in the US).
AT&T has put too many limitations on current iPhone apps that Stream data (Sling being my biggest complaint). They limit high bandwidth streaming to WiFi only.
I see people gaming at work during breaks and lunch on various devices. iPhone, Touch, PSP etc. The company I work for does not allow personal devices on their WiFi connection.
You'd be limited to being within a WiFi area for gaming which greatly limits it's usability.
If AT&T opened this up to 3G it would change the entire scenario but I don't see it happening now or for the new Phone being announced next month.
This may change if the rumors are correct and Apple gets a little competition between vendors such as Verizon but for now I still don't see it as a viable portable solution.
Edit: I should have said "I still don't see it as a viable portable streaming gaming solution."
The earthquake last year is thought by a number of geologists to have been caused, at least in part, from the settling of the Three Gorges Dam. This killed thousands of kids in the poorly built schools in a large tract of the surrounding country, and tens of thousands of people overall. No real environmental study was done of course.
I am afraid there are many such links (between dams and earthquake) that have been made, including in the US. For instance, the Hoover dam is believed to have significantly altered seismic activity in the region; there was a California dam that is believed to have caused earthquakes in the 1970s, and so forth. (Happy to give you cites, if you wish; but you can also google it).
Yet, no one is suggested shutting down Hoover, or the dams in California.
One example is coal. Because of their insistence that every village mine coal, there were tens of thousands of little coal mines that were worked with primitive equipment. In hundreds of these mines, the coal veins caught fire, and are now burning out of control all over the country. The government can;t stop it, because they are burning underground. Plant life is dying all over from these fires, many of which are estimated to remain burning for up to a century from now.
True. But China is getting much better. It leads the world in clean coal technology: They are building them at the rate of one a month, and often taking down the older inefficient ones in the process. See, e.g., http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/wo...ia/11coal.html Similarly, China has now set aggressive targets for reducing carbon footprint, far more than the US has even contemplated.
Well, I'm not against free trade when it exists.The problem is that we've been too afraid to insist on free trade. The US always gets the bad end of things there. We do have some of that guilt you mention, and it makes it difficult for us to insist on equal rules. etc etc.....
See my point above, about Ricardo. Just about every major economist would disagree with you: free trade makes both sides better off, regardless of the income levels of the countries that are trading ("comparative advantage"). Arguably, we got to where we are today because of free trade.
We can only deal in the reality of what is, not what was, or what might have been.
The problems China is creating for itself will come back to bite it.
"The reality of what is" is China has a per capita income of about $3000; the US $46,000. The average Chinese person is aspiring to get to $10,000 per capita ten years from now, not where the US is today. You can't stop that process; indeed, some might argue it is even immoral to do that.
Just as the US and the EU and the others did, China will exploit natural resources and degrade its environment in the process of becoming richer and pay a price, but hopefully, just as the US and the EU and the others did, China will also get wealthy enough to pay that price and clean it up.
That said, if that growth starts to impose externalities on other countries (e.g., brown clouds floating across the pacific into California), then someone will have to pay to help mitigate that: But where the cost should fall (since it is the US consumer and corporation looking for ever cheaper products that is largely the culprit) is not clear.
California's ability to make revenue from property tax was incredibly hamstrung YEARS ago with prop 13.
Prop 13 was passed over 30 years ago (1977 I believe). Since then and up until recently, we've run budget surpluses. When a house sells, it's taxed 1.0 % of fair market value (the sale price) plus any bonded indebtedness (usually and additional 0.2% max which means about 1.2% of the sale price). Since that proposition, a conservative estimate of people who stay in their homes more than 7 years is well below 50%. Everytime a house is sold, the state ratches up the revenue stream from the new owners. The plan was to allow the elderly on fixed incomes staying in their own homes the rest of their lives not to be priced out by real estate inflation...that worked.
Not to mention California requires a supermajority to pass a new budget, which makes compromise on anything (including getting new revenue) incredibly difficult.
The supermajority is only in regards to NEW or INCREASES in taxes.
In addition, the use of direct democracy (props) on many of these financial issues only inflames the situation since the populace ends up falling to slogans etc instead of thinking things through... so low taxes and high spending is the result.
Less than 50% of the general revenue is apportioned under various props (e.g., K-12 education, roads -- which the legislature plays rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul with anyway).
What happened was during the 90s, money was coming in so fast that the legislature thought it would never end (as did some people). There were even economists preaching the end of recessions. California simply forgot Economics 101. We elected these people. May 19th may have been a sobering moment for many...good Java after the punch bowl ran dry.
Yeah, I don't get why they picked North Carolina at all. I wish someone with some actual knowledge of server farms would comment here as this seems like a very weird deal from what I can find out.
First off, it seems like a billion dollar server farm is absolutely HUGE. Is this their first "home grown" server farm? If so, it's weird for them to start off by building one twice the size of everyone else's.
Secondly, it seems like a billion bucks is about a sixth of what all the top five Internet companies combined spent on capital expenditures last year? That can't be right can it?
Third, everyone else is building server farms in the Pacific Northwest where it's cool, temperate, and there is abundant cheap power (hydroelectric). Why is Apple building something in a hot, stormy area down south? And maybe someone who lives there can say what kind of power they have in North Carolina? I thought it was all coal-fired down there which makes no sense at all.
North Carolina has been actively trying to lure tech companies in just about any fashion available. They paid out the waazoo for the Dell plant and the Google server farm. They do other sources of power. The two counties they are talking about are at opposite ends of the state. There is a nuclear facility in the mountains, and there are some small solar and wind sources as well. Having said that, I doubt any of sources of power will be used. As far as weather, it is not as bad as what California and the majority of the Northwest gets. Ruling a state out because of hurricanes is silly, when you have earthquake central (California) hosting so many tech companies. The hurricanes don't happen near as much as the wildfires and earthquakes out west. The tax base is cheaper in NC than in CA. I lived in NC for 35 years and trust me when I say that NC i snot as bad as you think for tech. Red Hat is based in Research Triangle Park (Raleigh area) as well as some game creators (i.e. Spore and SIMS).
Let's see: American workers have the highest productivity, work the most hours, have the greatest innovations etc etc -- all while working in US companies -- and yet those darned American CEOs of the very same companies are responsible for job losses?
You make no sense at all, I am afraid.
And I'm afraid you make no sense at all either. Please explain.
... When things are made more cheaply, the overall welfare of the world improves. ...
I know you are already being pilloried by others, but I have to say this is the dumbest statement I've heard in a while.
Automobiles for example can be made very cheaply if you make them out of old newspapers and cheap plastic resin, that doesn't mean that this is a good idea or that it would improve the welfare of the world.