While I agree on your post, there's one point where I don't:
"If they are going to get $3 per copy of Windows+Office Microsoft would be lucky to break even on the raw materials, packaging, and shipping."
In the USA, perhaps. But in China? What do you think the chinese product will look like? A single DVD. Packaged into a very thin pamphlet. Sold in a shop, or with a paper saying "Version for QuickFoodCorp, good for 2500 licenses", or simply add a shipping charge. Raw materials, packaging and shipping costs a LOT less in China than in the USA.
Yes, they're making a profit. A small one, but a profit.
"[Re]styling would [be needed to]... avoid offending the sensibilities of the modern automobile consumer."
Um. Seeing that the very style of this car (not the driving style, but the appearance) has such a large amount of fans, what makes you say something like this? Besides, style is something which changes (quite radically) over time. It used to be really *IN* for a chap to have long hair. These days, it's in to have none or nearly none. That'll change again.
Another example: have a look at the Ford Mustang from the 60s. Very popular back then. Lots of fans today. Thus Ford brought out a new version, trying to look like to '68 model, but updated to the modern design. All people I know of call this a beautiful car if seen from the front (looks highly similar to the old version), and terrible if seen from the side or behind (where the rear was raised quite a bit to follow todays style). If you make a copy of a classic car, with lots of fans - make it look like the original. Fix everything you can inside (new technology improves fuel efficiency, engine power, road-hold, etc), but leave the outside as it was.
And, at least in my eyes (yes, okay, I'm nearly 40 and thus an old fart), the DeLorean is a particularly beautiful car.
Not only is BadAstronomy an excellent webseite about astronomy, but this article is pretty good. For example:
--- Here's what the former SG had to say about Bush's White House:
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.
Shocker.
I'm glad he spoke up. But hey, maybe this would have helped a bit more five years ago. He was the frackin' Surgeon General, the top doctor in this country and/delete{in charge of this nation's health!} a spokesman for health in this country!
What makes this worse is that I remember quite well a Surgeon General who spoke her mind, and to heck with the repercussions. Can you imagine any person in this current Administration, let alone the Surgeon General, saying "Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms"?
How come he's only telling us this horror now? I mean, he *was* "Surgeon General" back then. Responsible for science. Why didn't he complain the moment that damn administration tried to stop him?
"The president says we're going there". Sure he is. He's also saying lots of other things. He is not, however, financing NASA for this. Yes, they're cutting all kinds of other projects to scrape the money together. But it won't work, simply because they need true support From Above to do so instead of just some babbling.
I cannot believe that many people think we're really going to Mars any time soon. Sure, we should. Yes, we'd learn lots (always important!). Yes, obviously it's dangerous - part of an astronauts job. Yes, it's something new and fascinating.
However, the only thing which certainly will happen is that some of the Bush friends will earn a heck of a lot of money off NASA. And that'll be it.
Well, apparently most of these 'Games for Kids' are simply too trivial. Kids have quite a bit more brains than a lot of people seem to think. For example, the 1985 Mac-game "ChipWits" was for rated for "Kids from 12 years and up". Well, I wrote a (free) Windoze-Version of ChipWits, and know two seven-year old kids who really like it (it teaches them how to program using a funny bot and a bunch of command icons).
Sorry, but as a Mustang freak I just had to answer to this:) In '98, I bought a '68 Mustang (same age as me), and I really, really loved it. Spent a *lot* of time tuning it and playing with it, replacing the engine with a 351W, 2" X-pipe exhaust, stuff like that (http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/mustang/index.ht ml)
Never saw it again after the damned US borderpeople suddenly wouldn't extend my work permit, and so it simply got lost...
It used to be that the 'Bobbys' were completely unarmed, and rather friendly. These cops actually were your friends, and they honestly tried to assist you, helping in any way they could. The old phrase "What's all this then?" did not just come from the movies - you heard it in real life too.
Kind chaps. Friendly. Not semi-military as in the USA, or completely bureaucratic as in Germany.
This also meant that nobody would attack a Bobby. "Attacking an unarmed chap!" - no way. Even if you came from pretty nasty neighbourhoods, your would loose a *lot* of respect from your peers if you ever did something like this.
Obviously, all this has now changed. The friendly Bobby has gone. And never, ever, will any official with a camera on their head be trusted. By anybody.
I plugged my '86 version into the PC at work, and it *works*. Spill some coffee over it, and it still works... and if you feel like cleaning the coffee up - easy as pie.
Man, these things have a high quality, and a great typing feel. I have about five of them, just in case:)
Oh, and another *major* advantage: none of these idiotic Windows Keys.
I buy a DVD, rip it, compress it, and place it on my RAID array. Only then do I actually view it. This way, I don't have to look for the DVD, insert it, start up the DVD viewer, click my way through the menus, feed the cats while these moronic ads are shown, be forced to watch all these company names the film way created by, etc etc.
No, I click on the AVI and watch the movie.
My main bother is the fact that DVDs are not released on the world simultaneously. Heck, the (in my opinion) very funny 'Flushed Away' still hasn't shown up on DVD here in Germany, so I had to get it from the UK via eBay (I prefere to see films in the original language anyway).
I signed up with HoTMaiL before MS bought them. I still use it simple for signing up somewhere, and I assume that the address could be abused by spammers. And a few people still only know my hotmail account.
My 'real' web-based email account (GMail, what else) is only known to trusted friends. No company knows about it.
Yes, great idea. We've seen it with DVDs as well - an advert before the film starts which cannot be skipped. Same as all these adverts for the industry itself can't be skipped at the start of a film.
So: an honest user has a non-backupable box on his shelf (which he needs to take down, open, and insert the DVD into his drive). Then he has to select the movie. Then he has to watch through advertisement. Then he's insulted by warnings that'll you are EVIL and JAILBAIT if you DARE to copy this film. Then the film begins.
Owner of a pirate AVI: click on the file. Film starts.
Soooo.... give me a good reason for buying originals?
Oooh, I want to advertise on the net, and have trouble finding really popular websites!
Yes, I know. Many sites live off adverts, and yes, we can block most advertisements. But I have a deep hatred of adverts. I really loathe being treated like an idiot, which is exactly what these ads are doing. They're the primary reason that I do not own a TV, don't listen to radio, always keep 'AdBlock Plus' up to date.
And even worse: remember Duke Nukem 3D (not the Forever version;) ?
There was a suspiciously well-known black building. Which blew up and collapsed. Dukes comment "I ain't afraid of no Quake!" confirmed that, yes, this was model of ids headquarters.
People laughed. Nobody thought the Dn3D coders terrorists.
Obviously they sold a lot of Vista. After all, every new PC comes with Vista, if you want it or not (with very few exceptions). Thus, sales are up. Since Vista is not all that cheap, profits are up.
Lately, quite a few people have looked at transferring work from the CPU to the GPU. Not all that trivial, but a great idea, and it can seriously increase processing power - for example for proton beam therapy planning in medicine.
Add some DRM crap to block us from doing this? Okay - we'll shop from your competition.
Do this! And make it international! Because our stupendously moronic german gouverment wants to use systems like this to spy on our home computers - in the war against terrrrrrorism, of course. Then we could finally dump these idiots into jail:-D
While I fully agree on your point, for me pirating books is more or less impossible.
Sure, I know several people who have no problem with taking their laptop into the nice sunshine outside, sit under a tree and read a PDF book. Which is easy to pirate.
Not me, though. I like the book itself. Small, light, thick. Easily take it with you anywhere. Need to electrical power, and can be read anywhere. Nicely high resolution, too. For me, very large (and overflowing) bookshelves is a very good sign - dumb people don't read much, after all.
Thus I'd say that you point "It's much easier to steal from someone you think is very, very wealthy." does not really apply to books.
Besides, hey, the author of Harry Potter just beat the queen and is now the richest woman in the entire UK. And I say she earned every cent of it:-)
Well, personally I stopped listening to the radio because of the advertisements. They got more (lots more per hour), louder, and a lot more stupid.
After a while, I turned off my radio. Quickly than became permanent. Now I don't even own a radio. And that thing in my car has no antenna - it's used for navigation. And MP3s, of course.
While it is rather useful to continue writing on your documentation from any computer anywhere in the world, I'd simply not do so. Why? Well, because my docs would be Out There. Many people can read it - chaps working for google (although i still trust them so far), the gouverment (which I certainly don't), possibly the whole stuff will be handed over to the finance department, and of course it will all be scanned by the anti-terror organisations...
You don't believe this will happen. Wait for it - if this catches on, I guarantee there will be laws made for exactly this.
No thanks. Except for some web page stuff with some nice pics and some free open code, my data will stay on my personal hard drive. Where nobody has access to it (even if the german state is currently trying to make it legal for them to attack our computers at will...)
>In reality, most people just want to graduate so they can get on with their lives.
What? Heck no. Over here in Germany (where, in my time, studying was free), being a student is the best time in your life. Learn new things, meet interesting (and intelligent!) people, mess about with interesting projects...
Thank heavens I'm a programmer, and the rest of my life looks like this, too;)
You know, you're a bit right: when I read that article, the very first thought in my mind was that the US gouverment would want to control this, in order to control its population better. Who knows what code they'd put in there?
But, instead, you whined about the eeeevil terrorist Al-Queda organisation. After all, we have to be sooo veeery much careful about the eeeevil terrrrrorists, and do everything our gouverment tells us to do. I mean, it has nothing to do with the US officially *supporting* terrorists for many years, as for example right now in Iran...
Ah, bah. Sorry, but this topic is getting on my nerves.
To come back to our topic, I'm quite, quite certain that the US will want to control such devices, in order to defeat the evil terrorism... (thank The Gods that I don't live there anymore)
I personally learn languages by simply firing them up and fiddling about. Of course, a book is a good idea to learn from, but you learn fastest by simply starting to code.
I wrote a Windoze-Version of the 1985 Mac game 'ChipWits' (see sig) in Delphi, and now plan to learn C# by simply rewriting that game. Immediate usage is probably by far the quickest way:)
Slashdot Mirror
While I agree on your post, there's one point where I don't:
"If they are going to get $3 per copy of Windows+Office Microsoft would be lucky to break even on the raw materials, packaging, and shipping."
In the USA, perhaps. But in China? What do you think the chinese product will look like? A single DVD. Packaged into a very thin pamphlet. Sold in a shop, or with a paper saying "Version for QuickFoodCorp, good for 2500 licenses", or simply add a shipping charge.
Raw materials, packaging and shipping costs a LOT less in China than in the USA.
Yes, they're making a profit. A small one, but a profit.
"[Re]styling would [be needed to] ... avoid offending the sensibilities of the modern automobile consumer."
Um. Seeing that the very style of this car (not the driving style, but the appearance) has such a large amount of fans, what makes you say something like this?
Besides, style is something which changes (quite radically) over time. It used to be really *IN* for a chap to have long hair. These days, it's in to have none or nearly none. That'll change again.
Another example: have a look at the Ford Mustang from the 60s. Very popular back then. Lots of fans today. Thus Ford brought out a new version, trying to look like to '68 model, but updated to the modern design. All people I know of call this a beautiful car if seen from the front (looks highly similar to the old version), and terrible if seen from the side or behind (where the rear was raised quite a bit to follow todays style).
If you make a copy of a classic car, with lots of fans - make it look like the original. Fix everything you can inside (new technology improves fuel efficiency, engine power, road-hold, etc), but leave the outside as it was.
And, at least in my eyes (yes, okay, I'm nearly 40 and thus an old fart), the DeLorean is a particularly beautiful car.
Ummm... sorry to reply to my own posting, but I thought *this* might be of interest:
r e-were-these-people-when-they-should-have-spoken-u p/
/delete{in charge of this nation's health!} a spokesman for health in this country!
http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/10/whe
Not only is BadAstronomy an excellent webseite about astronomy, but this article is pretty good.
For example:
---
Here's what the former SG had to say about Bush's White House:
"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.
Shocker.
I'm glad he spoke up. But hey, maybe this would have helped a bit more five years ago. He was the frackin' Surgeon General, the top doctor in this country and
What makes this worse is that I remember quite well a Surgeon General who spoke her mind, and to heck with the repercussions. Can you imagine any person in this current Administration, let alone the Surgeon General, saying "Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms"?
...instead of years ago, when he was deep in it.
How come he's only telling us this horror now? I mean, he *was* "Surgeon General" back then. Responsible for science.
Why didn't he complain the moment that damn administration tried to stop him?
Pfff. Not impressive.
...because we won't go to Mars.
"The president says we're going there". Sure he is. He's also saying lots of other things.
He is not, however, financing NASA for this. Yes, they're cutting all kinds of other projects to scrape the money together. But it won't work, simply because they need true support From Above to do so instead of just some babbling.
I cannot believe that many people think we're really going to Mars any time soon. Sure, we should. Yes, we'd learn lots (always important!). Yes, obviously it's dangerous - part of an astronauts job. Yes, it's something new and fascinating.
However, the only thing which certainly will happen is that some of the Bush friends will earn a heck of a lot of money off NASA. And that'll be it.
Well, apparently most of these 'Games for Kids' are simply too trivial.
Kids have quite a bit more brains than a lot of people seem to think. For example, the 1985 Mac-game "ChipWits" was for rated for "Kids from 12 years and up".
Well, I wrote a (free) Windoze-Version of ChipWits, and know two seven-year old kids who really like it (it teaches them how to program using a funny bot and a bunch of command icons).
Thus: don't make these games too darn simplistic.
Hi!
:)t ml)
;)
Sorry, but as a Mustang freak I just had to answer to this
In '98, I bought a '68 Mustang (same age as me), and I really, really loved it. Spent a *lot* of time tuning it and playing with it, replacing the engine with a 351W, 2" X-pipe exhaust, stuff like that (http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/mustang/index.h
Never saw it again after the damned US borderpeople suddenly wouldn't extend my work permit, and so it simply got lost...
Have fun with your machine, you lucky sod!
Ciao,
Klaus
Star Wars
;)
30 Years!
Live long and prosper.
It used to be that the 'Bobbys' were completely unarmed, and rather friendly.
These cops actually were your friends, and they honestly tried to assist you, helping in any way they could. The old phrase "What's all this then?" did not just come from the movies - you heard it in real life too.
Kind chaps. Friendly. Not semi-military as in the USA, or completely bureaucratic as in Germany.
This also meant that nobody would attack a Bobby. "Attacking an unarmed chap!" - no way. Even if you came from pretty nasty neighbourhoods, your would loose a *lot* of respect from your peers if you ever did something like this.
Obviously, all this has now changed. The friendly Bobby has gone. And never, ever, will any official with a camera on their head be trusted. By anybody.
Bah. Fools.
Yup, second that!
:)
I plugged my '86 version into the PC at work, and it *works*. Spill some coffee over it, and it still works... and if you feel like cleaning the coffee up - easy as pie.
Man, these things have a high quality, and a great typing feel. I have about five of them, just in case
Oh, and another *major* advantage: none of these idiotic Windows Keys.
Oh, that's not a bother to me.
I buy a DVD, rip it, compress it, and place it on my RAID array. Only then do I actually view it.
This way, I don't have to look for the DVD, insert it, start up the DVD viewer, click my way through the menus, feed the cats while these moronic ads are shown, be forced to watch all these company names the film way created by, etc etc.
No, I click on the AVI and watch the movie.
My main bother is the fact that DVDs are not released on the world simultaneously. Heck, the (in my opinion) very funny 'Flushed Away' still hasn't shown up on DVD here in Germany, so I had to get it from the UK via eBay (I prefere to see films in the original language anyway).
I do.
I signed up with HoTMaiL before MS bought them. I still use it simple for signing up somewhere, and I assume that the address could be abused by spammers.
And a few people still only know my hotmail account.
My 'real' web-based email account (GMail, what else) is only known to trusted friends. No company knows about it.
No, no, they're not interested in causing damage.
They're interested in
a) making money, and helping out their friends in making money and
b) stroking their own ego.
They're not interested in anything else at all.
Yes, great idea. We've seen it with DVDs as well - an advert before the film starts which cannot be skipped. Same as all these adverts for the industry itself can't be skipped at the start of a film.
So: an honest user has a non-backupable box on his shelf (which he needs to take down, open, and insert the DVD into his drive). Then he has to select the movie. Then he has to watch through advertisement. Then he's insulted by warnings that'll you are EVIL and JAILBAIT if you DARE to copy this film.
Then the film begins.
Owner of a pirate AVI: click on the file. Film starts.
Soooo.... give me a good reason for buying originals?
Oooh, I want to advertise on the net, and have trouble finding really popular websites!
Yes, I know. Many sites live off adverts, and yes, we can block most advertisements.
But I have a deep hatred of adverts. I really loathe being treated like an idiot, which is exactly what these ads are doing. They're the primary reason that I do not own a TV, don't listen to radio, always keep 'AdBlock Plus' up to date.
Ads can die for all I care.
And even worse: remember Duke Nukem 3D (not the Forever version ;) ?
There was a suspiciously well-known black building. Which blew up and collapsed. Dukes comment "I ain't afraid of no Quake!" confirmed that, yes, this was model of ids headquarters.
People laughed. Nobody thought the Dn3D coders terrorists.
Obviously they sold a lot of Vista.
After all, every new PC comes with Vista, if you want it or not (with very few exceptions).
Thus, sales are up. Since Vista is not all that cheap, profits are up.
You're surprised?
Lately, quite a few people have looked at transferring work from the CPU to the GPU.
Not all that trivial, but a great idea, and it can seriously increase processing power - for example for proton beam therapy planning in medicine.
Add some DRM crap to block us from doing this? Okay - we'll shop from your competition.
Do this! And make it international! :-D
Because our stupendously moronic german gouverment wants to use systems like this to spy on our home computers - in the war against terrrrrrorism, of course. Then we could finally dump these idiots into jail
While I fully agree on your point, for me pirating books is more or less impossible.
:-)
Sure, I know several people who have no problem with taking their laptop into the nice sunshine outside, sit under a tree and read a PDF book. Which is easy to pirate.
Not me, though. I like the book itself. Small, light, thick. Easily take it with you anywhere. Need to electrical power, and can be read anywhere. Nicely high resolution, too.
For me, very large (and overflowing) bookshelves is a very good sign - dumb people don't read much, after all.
Thus I'd say that you point "It's much easier to steal from someone you think is very, very wealthy." does not really apply to books.
Besides, hey, the author of Harry Potter just beat the queen and is now the richest woman in the entire UK. And I say she earned every cent of it
Well, personally I stopped listening to the radio because of the advertisements.
They got more (lots more per hour), louder, and a lot more stupid.
After a while, I turned off my radio. Quickly than became permanent. Now I don't even own a radio. And that thing in my car has no antenna - it's used for navigation. And MP3s, of course.
While it is rather useful to continue writing on your documentation from any computer anywhere in the world, I'd simply not do so.
Why? Well, because my docs would be Out There. Many people can read it - chaps working for google (although i still trust them so far), the gouverment (which I certainly don't), possibly the whole stuff will be handed over to the finance department, and of course it will all be scanned by the anti-terror organisations...
You don't believe this will happen. Wait for it - if this catches on, I guarantee there will be laws made for exactly this.
No thanks. Except for some web page stuff with some nice pics and some free open code, my data will stay on my personal hard drive. Where nobody has access to it (even if the german state is currently trying to make it legal for them to attack our computers at will...)
>In reality, most people just want to graduate so they can get on with their lives.
;)
What? Heck no. Over here in Germany (where, in my time, studying was free), being a student is the best time in your life.
Learn new things, meet interesting (and intelligent!) people, mess about with interesting projects...
Thank heavens I'm a programmer, and the rest of my life looks like this, too
You know, you're a bit right: when I read that article, the very first thought in my mind was that the US gouverment would want to control this, in order to control its population better.
Who knows what code they'd put in there?
But, instead, you whined about the eeeevil terrorist Al-Queda organisation. After all, we have to be sooo veeery much careful about the eeeevil terrrrrorists, and do everything our gouverment tells us to do. I mean, it has nothing to do with the US officially *supporting* terrorists for many years, as for example right now in Iran...
Ah, bah. Sorry, but this topic is getting on my nerves.
To come back to our topic, I'm quite, quite certain that the US will want to control such devices, in order to defeat the evil terrorism...
(thank The Gods that I don't live there anymore)
I personally learn languages by simply firing them up and fiddling about.
:)
Of course, a book is a good idea to learn from, but you learn fastest by simply starting to code.
I wrote a Windoze-Version of the 1985 Mac game 'ChipWits' (see sig) in Delphi, and now plan to learn C# by simply rewriting that game. Immediate usage is probably by far the quickest way