Slashdot Mirror
Seriously Overpriced Books
Josh Baugher
sent us a link to a book (that none of you ought to buy!) over
at Amazon. By our good buddy Bill Gates,
but Check out that List Price.
So you thought he got rich simply by enforcing a monopoly on the
computer industry! Update: 03/23 01:15 by CT : Doh! Its a set of 24 books- so
its only $40 a book. Practically a bargain. Go pad Bills
pocket if you like.
And I thought that $150 Physics book I had to buy back in college was expensive...
and Office, and Visual Studio, heck I even think IE is overpriced and they give it out for free, with everything it puts me through they outta pay me to use it....
Talk about arrogance... does this guy expect to sell ANY copies or does he just want to be known as having authored the highest-priced book ever written?
yeah but we already know M$ has overcharged windows users by billions of $ so, it guess it can be for real.
Oh come now. $500.00 is cheap for a book that will make you millions.
xyf
I don't think this is a joke, barnesandnoble.com has it for the same price here.
Yes, it probably is (not a hack). If you remove the /SlashdotA from the URL, it is the same price. I presume (not assume, dont want to be an ass) that the /SlashdotA is some sort of feature to let Amazon know that the link was a referral FROM slashdot. Kinda like when someone hits an ad on the top of slashdot, and Rob gets money for it.
P.S. Anyone know how to set FTP (redhat 5.2) to not timeout a user?
Thanks
24 * $30 = $720..the barnes and noble entry has the quantity mentioned...
Is this for reading the book on the bus?
24 is actual copies, or just `client licenses'?
Seems to me that some self-respecting software buccaneer with decent OCR software ought to capture the text of this thing and distribute it on sheer principle. Will anyone /read/ it? I doubt it but--like doing a good deed--thumbing one's nose at Darth Gates/M$ is reward in itself.
I Think its a bargain, when ya look at the prices of other microsoft useless shit(Eg *censored* server) its just small change, i mean, any MIS who uses the above OS (*choke*), would have the budget for the book..
:p~~~~~~~
One word: "Awful". I doubt it will make it in though. We should get a stink up if they don't post -- what the hell, only genuflecting reviews make it onto the site?
maybe the book contain a cd which has the source code to do Operating sytem monopoly,
...but than again this is only version 2.0. better wait till version 3.0. must be buggy. for eg. it will only let Microsoft do the actual domination...
will it run on Linux?...mmm'
maybe someone will write the Open source code for world domination (tm), instead of paying 500 to Bill gates...
oh wait a minuteeeee..........
I already HAVE Linux.....*l*
Now, the real question is, who in their right mind would buy 24 copies of this book!
I'm sorry. Allowing 10 friends to look thru the book is a licencing violation.
One book, one user.
That's probably right!!! I wonder if they'll charge you money for quoting from the book too?
But I don't expect I'll choose to waste 3-4 hours of my life reading the drek. Let's see, Plato, Shakespeare, O'Henry, Villon -- GATES????
Don't be rediculous!
what the hell can you say in 24 volumes that you can't say in a couple of paragraphs?
this is so microsoft. I swear. kind of like how even the most simple VB program is a couple of megabytes.
--alissa (who's too lazy to create an account)
molbloo@interport.net
The Barnes&Noble listing says 'Pre-pack of 24 copies'... So there you go.
Look at the URL, you should see "slashdotA" in there. It is a cute joke, I must admit
Yeeesh! I only paid $139 for THREE VOLUMES of Knuth! Now THAT's worth it.
okay, so it must be a corporate multi-pack, sorry, this was my error.
still, ok. what can you say in a couple hundred pages that you can't say in a few paragraphs?
--alissa
molbloo@interport.net
ISBN numbers don't match.
Amazon has the ISBN No as 0446168076
B&N has the ISBN No as 0446525685
Amazon has that book for $18 as well.
At that price, Billy Boy better come to your house and install Windows for you.
yeah... i bought it, too, when i found such a cheap one in the book-store... and it was shit, wasn't it? i think i read 2/3 of the book and than i had enough. maybe people that never saw anything else than ms-software believe what's written in there... i'll definitly not buy a book of billyG again!
cu
-AURorA
I'm wondering what 'slashdotA' does in the URL above ... :-)
The $500 price is for a box of 24 books. Amazon left that little bit of info out.
This is coming from the guy who admits overcharging the end users over 2 billion dollars for a piece of shit product that they really have no choice about? I'm honestly not surprised... Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica (a GREAT book might I add) doesn't even come near that in price. ($220)
So, buy the $500 copy and SAVE A LOT MORE.
I mean, we know his name, and his email address...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446525685/ o/qid=922205740/sr=2-1/002-912 9910-1035630
Look at the URL... it has slashdot in it. That means it is a joke. Also, do a search for "Bill Gates" note that the overpriced book does not come up. This is all a big joke. Kinda funny me thinks...
JOhn
Why is it that "slashdotA" appears in the URL for that book?
Seeing the price that it's selling at, I'm even more sure that I'd like to follow up on the idea I had for a book: Write the second edition under an assumed name. Call myself 'Bill Yates' and title the book 'Buisness at the Speed of Crap'
Maybe it could be done in the Internet-book-in-a-day style.
Yet another person who doesn't want M$ to have a dime of my hard earned money
If you go to this URL:
8 5/o/qid=922207495/sr=2-1/002-6328109-02062 46
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04465256
...you can clearly see that the "$500" price is what you pay if you are a reseller buying in bulk.
This wasn't even worth bringing to my attention.
I dislike being subverted by lies and half-truths whether they originate from a Bill Gates lapdog or my favorite news source, Slashdot.
Better luck next time.
It isn't April 1 yet... but I see "slashdot" in the URL... does that have something to do with it? :)
7 6/slashdotA/002-8412504-1311851
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04461680
This is an evil conspiracy to line Rob's pockets with $ from all the hits he's sending over to Amazon!!! ;)
(Just kidding Rob!)
And the actual list price is $720.
did anybody notice the url?
7 6/slashdotA/002-7322656-3802435
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04461680
what's THAT all about?
Amazon routinely mungs the prices, and they will sometimes double or triple a price when they think that they can get the money from dopes. But this is ridiculous.
24? Are you kidding? I don't even know why
I'd want one, but 24? Right...
uselinux@email.com
There are two versions of that book, as far as
I can tell... the $500 version shipping now,
and the $18 (or whatever) version is not yet
published... kind of like when they sell videos
starting at $100 so only video stores can afford
them. Some people have mentioned that it's for
a 24 pack, but I didn't see any mention of that
on the page... others may be selling 24-packs
for $500, but the question is, are they only
pre-order?
That's the stupidest comment I ever seen in my entire life!
"I liked this book because Bill Gates wrote it. He is my idole."
Oh crap! Then kill your idole and find out a new goal. The guy who wrote that must be a retard.
Joe> $500? Bill Gates sure is an a**hole!
Bob> It has "slashdot" in the url, it's a prank
Fred> No, it's legit, that's just the price for a 24-pack
Jed> $500? Who would pay that damn much for a single copy of any book?
Jethro> No, man, see the "slashdot" in the url? They must have hacked the site!
repeat ad nauseum.
yeah once again poor article screening by slashdorks
The actual msrp is $~720 marked down to $~500.
I think someone forgot to get coffee on the way to work...
Heh...I saw "The Road Ahead" on the bargain table recently at Borders...it was like $1.99, and they had a stack of them. I _still_ didn't want to read it that badly. I did consider buying a stack and having a burning ceremony though...
So it turns out that the price is for a 24-pack. My question is "What kind of sick person would buy TWENTY-BLOODY-FOUR copies of this thing?" That's disgusting!
he wants to be known as having authored the highest-priced book ever written...duh...
Nobody in their right minds is going to dish out $500 to hear what that crooked little thief has to say; then again, people bought Windows 98...
Having discovered that the same bundling strategy Microsoft uses with OEMs works with books as well, Chairman Bill is now rumored to be considering other ways in which he can leverage tried and true Microsoft marketing techniques in the publishing industry.
For example, his next book won't actually be sold outright. Instead, you will have to license it on an annuity basis like Win2K. And the license agreement will claim that you can return unread portions of the book for a refund, but nobody will ever actually succeed to doing so.
This is straight off the Barnes and Noble link...
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0446168076
Publisher: Warner Books, Incorporated
Pub. Date: March 1999
Edition Desc: Pre-pack of 24 copies
If it weren't for Bill Gates most of you wouldn't even be into computers.
Anyone wondered why the URL has got a 'slashdot' in it?
I should buy it.. scan it.. and post it to UseNet.
>;)
Amazing. No end to his audacity.
Man I tell you, anti-Microsoft people will jump on anything and make it into a soapbox. If you read the fine print you will see that the price quoted is for a pack of 24 copies. This explains the $504 price tag (24 books at $21 a book totals $504).
n quiry.asp?userid=1PUDK56WCN&mscssid=A26T9E H8UHSH2J1F00LHRVHF7GLT2CW9&pcount=0&isbn=044616807 6
Check it out at Barnes and Noble:
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnI
---
Mike
Try http://www.acses.com to compare book prices!
Looks like the best prices for Gates are at A1Books and Shopping.com...
Has anyone noticed that Amazon has a price comparison system? They bought junglee and morphed it into their "shoptheweb." But guess what products you can't price compare? Books! What has happened to the poster child of Internet Clue?
Don't worry, it isn't. A typo.
8 5/o/qid=922216026/sr=2-1/002-7029967-57980 60
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04465256
...is the correct URL. Heh.
build the setup for it, then tell me how many floppies it'll ship on...
But Barnes and Noble calls it a prepack of 24n quiry.asp?userid=228CL77G6Z&mscssid=K6QEQ0 6HUHSH2JU800C0NDAQ40HSAKQB&pcount=0&isbn=044616807 6
books. check it out
http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnI
The Link you showed, had a totally different
isbn number than the $504 set at Amazon.com
God damn, you guys are so quick to bash MS that /. It's really pathetic that you can't go a
you neglect to gather all the facts.
Frankly, I'm getting sick of hearing about MS
on
day without bringing up Bill Gates or MS. No one
cares anymore. Sheesh
Business @ the Speed of Thought : Using a Digital Nervous System
by Bill Gates
Press this button when you are ready to [submit your review]
Here is your annotation the way it will appear:
The author, Bill Gates <askbill@microsoft.com>
E-commerce is a very exciting area.
We want everybody who works on the Internet to think of World Wide Web as a market place that they can buy on, a wallet-size bulge that we can take advantage of. It is now possible within your company or to your customers to post all the financial information there in a rich, electronic form. Has money for me, and maybe credit cards. I think there are more opportunities now to do business in a better way today since we have a monopolistic grip on the information technology industry. Windows creates so much dependence and computer illiteracy towards PCs users. We've got so many college kids hooked on prefab and expensive software since we took over, give them an hour or two to learn how to use Internet Explorer and send them on their way. Kownledge is whortless, they all share an approval. By the way, masturbation is futile. Have a nice dinner.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates
If this isn't the way you want it to look, please use your browser's BACK button or command to return to the review entry form, and re-submit it when you have edited the review. Submissions become the property of Amazon.com.
By submitting this form, I affirm that I am the Author named above or the Author's authorized representative.
Press this button when you are ready to [submit your review]
Well, why don't you just filter it out then?
... and you're removed from the Gene pool quickly and descisively by a guy named Biff with a baseball bat and a pile of MCSE study books.
This must be the version you have to buy if you want to let 10 friends leaf through it.
David Cornette
dcornett@isilzha.ne.mediaone.net
That's correct, this is the server edition. It's basically the same as the regular edition, but it's optimized for group use.
Note that if you want to let your friends read it, you'll also need to buy a license for the standard edition for each person who opens it.
If you read the fine print you will find out that the price is for a pre-packaged set of 24 books.
Sorry but it seems like we can't complain about Gates on this one.
At that price I'd better be able to reformat the book and install a Unix on it..
I didn't even spend that much on books when I was in school. Why the hell would I spend that much on a book written by Bill the Borg. That price can't be right! If you want a book to read go download the Linux SysAdmin book. (http://www.ugu.com/sui/ugu/show?I=help.articles.a dmin&F=1111111111&G=Y)
-------------------------------------------- It looks just like a Telefunken U-47! -Frank Zappa
Try taking the "SlashdotA" out of the URL:
7 6/002-0082520-0099040
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/04461680
Its the exact same entry. Prank? Clickthrough? I couldn't tell you. Either way I don't think I like the smell of it.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
Posted by JerTheNerd:
Either way, I'm willing to bet that within a year or two it'll be in the $5 bargain bin.
If it's anything like "The Road Ahead" it'll be on the remainders rack about tuesday.
Heh. The book is being serialized in the Financial Times. Check out http://www.ft.com/hippocampus/spgates.htm (it's a registration site, cypherpunk/cypherpunk works) and giggle as Billy boy eulogises 'digital numbers'.
This is some kind of IQ test.
:)
If you pay $500 to read what Gates has to say, you fail.
Signed edition? For that price, I'd expect Bill G to come to my house, tuck me into beddy-byes, and read it to me.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I don't think I got my $500 worth. I wonder if they'll let my review actually get posted. I doubt it.
I'd bet Steve Balmer bought a copy and even had Bill autograph it.
Can it? I mean a $500.00 book? This is a joke, right... RIGHT??? :)
jaraxle
perhaps as a joke, all /. readers should pretend they actually read the book (ya, like we really would) and write up a review. would probably be rather humourous for amazon.com to get a whole slew of bad reviews for the book. HA!
jaraxle
Maybe it's one of those corporate "training" packages-- and comes with a "instructor's guide" and "workbook."
Personally, I can't wait until they come out with
a "little red book" of Mr. Gates's "wisdom."
B&N has the the book for $18 (http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInq uiry.asp?userid=1LC8ZS6LD3&mscssid=L2PRK 9W3UHS12M0100LHRV18MGMMFBT9&pcount=0&isbn=04465256 85).
:-)
The price reduction must be because B&N uses ASP pages while Amazon does not.
Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they're not after you!
Whoah,
;-).
what happened to the US-Dollar? It's DM 52,36 at amazon.de, which used to be somewhat like 30 to 32 bucks.
Nah, even that's way to expensive for a book by Gates. I read "The Road Ahead" when I found it for DM 8,50 (around $5 - before Inflation
Yeah, but think of the money you (or your great-great-.......-great-Grandchildren) can sell this book for, when Y10K comes along ;-)
If there is still money then. Cobol surely is gonna stick around that long.
Ralph
Aren't you excited now?
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
Microsoft is just giving the customer what they want. By bundling the books together, they add value to the package.
The fact that you can buy the books separately does not mean that the whole thing is not one whole integrated book.
While I'm not sure why this is showing up in Amazon, when you go that page click on the name "Bill Gates" (don't be afraid, go on and do it), and you'll see there's another listing at the real $30 list price. You'll also see listings for a paperback edition AND for a "paperback display" at Amazon's special discount price of $288. It seems reasonable to assume that this $504 price is for a hardcover display set (the cardboard racks that bookstores put up).
Either that, or this is for the special 25-user license edition.
There are book price comparison tools elsewhere, though. Here's one a friend of mine put together that I use: http://www.netroglycerine.com/booklist.html --Joe
I'm a nature photographer.
That means nothing, that is all amazon associates identify that the link cam from them. If slashdot has the standard agreement, they make 15% off each direct link like that, whne someone buys the book.
So for this one they'd make $75 per book bought by them, not a bad deal.
Cheez
This Signature does Not Exist !! FNORD
I think this is just a Slashdot scam. The URL contains "slashdot" which is probably for clickthrough tracking. For every visitor that checks out this URL Rob gets a couple cents. Well, I guess Slashdot has to make money somehow.
Maybe amazon.com was cracked!
support gun control: take guns from cops
Why in the fuck would anyone want 40 copies of this shit!?!
Is this an educational discount?
As if ...
support gun control: take guns from cops
Has anyone tried submitting a comment from the link at the bottom of amazon's page that says "I am the author of this book and want to post a comment on it"?
Personally, I like Amazon. Where else can you submit a review as the author of BG's books?
;)
I doubt it'd be accepted, but...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446168076/ slashdotA/002-0001738-2435449
It has slashdot in it. Go to www.amazon.com, search for the book, and it's $18. (You also get to see it's picture). This has to be a joke
What are you smoking?
My
hmm...
-----------
Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
$504/24 = $21 which means you'll pay more if you buy them in bulk..
Which means that if you buy them in bulk they are twice as sure of your IQ.
-----------
Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~bganno n/booksearch/ and found that:
Barnes-n-Noble is selling it for $504.00
Amazon is selling it for $504.00
Shopping.com is selling it at: $489.60
BuyBooks.com is comes in at the least at: $432.00
I can't believe it!
-----------
Resume
Football Sports Contest - Win $500 for having an e
P.S. Anyone know how to set FTP (redhat 5.2) to not timeout a user?
/etc/inetd.conf, add a -t 9999999999 to the ftpd line and killall -HUP inetd
this is from 'man ftpd'
SYNOPSIS
ftpd [ -d ] [ -v ] [ -l ] [ -ttimeout ] [ -Tmaxtimeout ] [
-a ] [ -A ] [ -L ] [ -i ] [ -o ] -uumask ]
so just edit
Compile that as native code and tell me how big it is. Makes C++ look darn lean.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
BillG once said "you get through all of _The Art of Computer Programming_, send me a resume". This may have been back when MS actually paid top $$ for good programmers. Who burned out and churned out crap because they had to meet obscenely short ship dates.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
I hear bookstores sometimes have more than one copy of a book. Wild, eh?
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
The temptation to post an Author Comment is almost unresistable. Help!
The link is set up so that if you actually buy the book (yeah, right), slashdot.org gets a percent or two. It's part of a deal they have with amazon.com to refer people to them to buy books.
The URL is correct and is not a bait. Look at every book review with a link to Amazon and you will see slashdotA in everyone of them.
Amazon uses it to identify the site from which the buyer came, so it can pay it(the site) some percentage of the book price if a sale is completed.
The slashdotA is a referrer code. If one of us was fool enough to buy the book, Sashdot would get a cut.
As someone has already pointed out. The price is for 24 copies of the book.
-cpc-
I'm just going to wait untill it comes out
on video and then not rent it.
do
nothing
loop
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
It is obviously a misprint. Amazon.co.uk lists it as approx. 15 pounds.
Check it out.
vr
Last I heard, that was 20-30mph, tops.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
Our Philosophy professor actually recommended that we read Bill's new book for a good perspective on the internet. We EEs in the back gave him some really nasty looks...
10Brett-T
Oh, bother.
It's a 24 seat license for the book.
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446168076/ qid=922201731/sr=1-2/002-0335228-5130212
Doh, you beat me hear. I went to shoping.com where it costs $489.60, and has no mention of multiple books. Then I went to B&N. After searching for and looking at the results which had the $504 price, I followed the link to the more detailed description. There it was, on the bottom line of the description, pre-pack of 24 books.
Right next to dan quayle's book that I saw at Atlantic book store (a bargin bookstore/warehouse near me) at 2 for $1.50. 1 to bludgen yourself with and the other to use in your fireplace.
-matt
Let's see "Baby's first pop up book" or "Bussiness at the speed of thought"? I'm thinking Baby's first pop up would teach you more. And have cute little animals or something in it.
-matt
Neither Bill Gates nor Microsoft is making any money off this book. It all goes to charity.
Uhm, no. Slashdot would only get a rather small percentage of the sale of the item. It's standard Amazon.com policy. Many many web sites have links to Amazon.com off their site. Click-throughs get them NOTHING. Only sales.
-Augie, has had the Amazon.com button on his site for three or four months now and is the only person who ever clicked through it!
An easier solution is to make your FTP client send the NOOP command every other minute (with standard Berkeley or GNU inet-utils ftp, use the `quote noop' command). This keeps the connection active.
Cheers,
Joshua.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Must be an error... Amazon has it for $18.00 US
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
It looks like there are two entries for the book @ Amazon. I found the more "reasonably" priced version by doing a title search. I suspect that the "ludicrously overpriced" one is either a data entry error, or a signed-edition that isn't marked as such.
...to be as rich as Bill Gates.
I know many who will.
People will think "If I read this book I can be a gazillionaire too!"
But as noted before,
this is for a 24 pack of books.
(why would anyone buy that quantity?
do they think this will make them 24 times as rich as bill gates?
maybe multiply their chance to be rich by 24?
maybe build a mountain of books?)
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Of course..it's so freaking plain! Uncle Willy has taken a chapter(pun intended) from the Open Source movement and is releasing the code in *printed* form! What the Hell else could be in those 24 volumes? Seriously...maybe this is why 2000 is overdue,overhyped and bloated like Willy's bank account..he's locked himself up in his lakeside mansion and gone serious "artist" on the world.
Tired of being another body in the flock? Linux ! We are not sheep anymore.
Yes Virginia. There really is a Bill Gates, and his book costs too much at any price.
And, I hear it won't run linux.
BTW: The link in Taco's article may seem like a prank to you if you noticed the clickthrough url that refrences slashdot. You think, eh, this is a hack?
sub hello()
MsgBox ("Hello world.")
End Sub
Skevin
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
I know this $500 is for 24 copies of the same book, but come on. Who the hell wants 24 the same book written by butthead.
I do love Microsoft though. Just think all the fun we would be missing out on if we didn't have Microsoft to laugh at. If it weren't for Microsoft we may not have Open Source. Maybe we would just have really high quality commercial software and os's. What then? What would the world be like if we never had a Microsoft? I digress.
LoRider
Not that I don't believe you (I found another entry selling it for $18), but what fine print
do you refer to? I don't see a lot size anywhere
on that page.
Jeez, 24 copies of the book, not a 24 volume
set. Those are called encyclopedea
I wouldn't be surprised if the book had a typical End-user License Agreement that appears on the cover when the packaging is removed. Of course, it would probably state that the $500 you just forked over didn't really buy you the book, but merely a license to use the book, which is really still owned by Microsoft. :-)
--
Aron Burrell - ronnie@cflug.geeksanon.ab.ca
However, if you enter amazon.com normally and search for the book, it is displayed with the actual list price.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0446168076/ slashdotA/002-8746209-0394043
/. took notice.
Do you see the word SLASHDOT in that, me too. That's right, I think the kids over at Amazon wanted to see how long it would take before
If you think media people don't have attitude or humor, you haven't heard of the ADDY awards.
mage...
Cause you can't get a tan from an amber monitor. If you do, there is something horribly wrong.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Check out Harry Shearer's story about how his $16 list book was displayed on Amazon.com for $55.
/ leshow/leshow.9902.html
RealAudio link:
http://www.timecast.com/channels/comedy/shearer
Lots...
There are lots of things that I can say that would require space in the 'hundreds of pages' range.
Are you trying to say that all books are unnecessary, that all books can be whittled down to a coupla paragraphs...?
Somehow, I doubt it...
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It really depends on the version of VB you use.
.exe (or as VBRun100.dll, VBRun200.dll, VBRun300.dll, VB40016.dll, VB40032.dll -- should be self explanatory).
As with everything MS, every new version tends to introduce a fair amount of bloat.
If you use the original v1.0, you can get it down pretty small. Actually, versions 1 through 4 basically "compile" it to a form of Bytecode, then package it up with the interpreter embedded in the
The size of these things has steadily increased from about 100k (I think) for VBRun100.dll up to almost a meg for VB40032.dll.
But in any case, the program itself was not much more than what you have above. In fact, it was sometimes smaller than the actual VB code.
Versions 5 and 6, however, offer the ability to do a "true" compilation (into native code). Although the program will run faster (95 times out of 100), it all of a sudden requires huge globs of "things" to run.
Exactly what these "things" are tends to vary... for the most part, they are dll's and ActiveX components. Most of which are not required by your actual program (assuming you are using the Hello World example above).
However, not requiring them and not having them are 2 different things.
Microsoft, aiming VB at the lowest common denominator, tends to lump everything it thinks you may (ie: commonly) need into the package whether you ask for it or not.
The result is that the size of your executable + associated DLL's all of a sudden mushrooms to the vicinity of 2 1/2 megs.
Of which you only need (for your simple "Hello World" program) MSVBVM50.dll (the Virtual Machine stuff -- it actually is Java-like in that respect -- "native code" is a "bit" of a misnomer), which clocks in at 1.28 megs. But don't even think of trying to get rid of the rest. It has so many dependency tables that reference the other crap that deleting them will break your program irrecoverably (unless you put 'em back).
So is there a way to get rid of them? Yes, futz around with the options a whole bunch before you compile. You will also have to add and remove a few lines from your project (*.vbp) files by hand (the IDE doesn't offer the option), as well as a couple of other config files. But don't do it unless you know what you're doing. You won't succeed.
And me? I know because I have to work with this shit (and that's what it is) for a living.
YUCK! LEMME OUTTA HERE!!!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Well, I was going to spend my tax return on a 128 MB DIMM and a TNT2 card, but now . . . gosh. I'm just so torn! :P WTF is up with that price, anyway? It's got to be a snafu, yes?
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
How did they do that ??? :-)
We'll always feel free to complain about Gates, whether he deserves it or not! :) That's part of the fun, and clearly why this article was posted in the first place. And if he doesn't deserve it for this, then he does for something else!
Anyone care to review the book on Amazon? I have a class now or I'd do it. See John Katz's article for suggestions and KEEP IT CLEAN.
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Think of all the savings! For each book you buy, you save $216! That's one of the best deals I've seen!
If you go to BarenesAndNoble.com you will see that this is the price for 24 copies
toot!
Two words: ActiveX, retch
Just make sure you don't remove any of the books from the original bulk package - Otherwise they will all break.
Laff.
Boy, some times it amazes me how someone who reads /. can post something like this. /. is news for nerds. A nerd is someone who has a moderate level of intelligence. Many people replying to this news item don't appear to have this quality.
Go to Barnes and Noble and read...really carefully. You'll see it is for 24 copies.
You save $216 on _EACH_ copy you buy.
Don't forget that this book is pitched to the crowd that thinks Win98 is really swell.
I checked the book out at Barnes and Noble and they have it for $30 a copy. They also have the $720 with the 30% discount for a package of 24 books. Looks like a BIG typo on Amazon
Thanks for the link.
I was tempted to make a joke about the $700 book,
something like "it's for a 20 user license".
I'm glad I didn't.
This really, really has to be a mistake or a hoax. Come on, I've read reviews of this book, I suppose if the price is genuine it is a serious "Emperor's New Clothes" gig. Pretty soon, industry analysts and the media are gonna start publicly drooling over it to prove how much they "get it"
Ruler of creeper, mortal and scallop.
After going to Barnes & Noble's web site, I figured out what the deal is. This is a 24 pack of books. Of course, Amazon didn't bother to mention that!
Did you know that B&N needs 56 NT servers with SQL Server 7 to run their website. I read an article in InformationWeek on how their CIO couldn't wait for Windows 2000 so they could reduce their server s down to around 30-35 because it scales so much better than NT 4.0.
On the other hand, Amazon runs their entire website on 3 Sun Servers with Oracle.
I wonder how much each paid for their setups?
I hear the book marker is pretty stable.
Some of us read /. BECAUSE of the MS bashing. Sometimes it's even clever and original. What IS pathetic is that I have to use the (MS) stuff.
$500 for 1/24/40/whatever copies of Bill Gates' whatever is just too good a target to leave alone.
Lets do billy boy a good deed and scan the book/release it in pdf form. One of us can do it and just put it on a public ftp site (i'm sure god would pity you -- honest). If we get enough books out.. no one would buy the real thing. And he would become real famous (um)
I wasnt sure this made sense either but here' s the same book, also off of Amazon, that costs $18 bucks.