Ford and GM would keep making and selling the old model, if that's what customers wanted. They also design their new models based on what customers want - this is why customers WANT the newer models of cars, and pay extra for them.
Microsoft is using its monopoly to force a product on consumers that they clearly don't want. A product consumers dont want SO MUCH they are willing to pay extra to AVOID the newer model.
Ford and GM don't have a monopoly. If they sell cars people don't want, they go out of business. Microsoft has a monopoly, and can make people buy whatever it wants them to buy. That's illegal abuse of their monopoly position.
Interestingly enough, people who postpone having kids until they're older, and have the money for fertility treatments, would correspond highly with "intelligent high-income professionals".
Potentially goes great with a hypothesis where asperger's and autism come genetically from a combination of "intelligence" genes being selected for by society rewarding people with these genes with higher salaries, doing well in school, etc.
(again, just a hypothesis, I am not an autism researcher)
I'm not an autism researcher, but consider that recent research has implicated a set of genes in autism.
It's quite possibly (likely even) that our modern society is selecting for these genes in reproduction, causing the rate of people catching the right combination (autism) to climb.
It would feel strange for sure, but if used books were advertised as "now with important parts highlighted!" it could probably be considered a derivative work.
I don't recall how it turned out, but there was a case where a "family friendly" movie store would edit movies to remove sex scenes, swear words, etc. The movie studios argued these were derivative works and barred under copyright law.
I rename the Firefox icon on the desktop "The Internet" and remove the blue E.
Then someone hit the "Work Offline" checkbox that's *right* next to Quit, by accident. For a week or two my parents' internet was "broken" until I came home and figured that out. Doh.
Thanks for the link! Even if this comes down to bad marketing/PR commentary while the engineers are doing "what's right" (fixing the problem after being notified), it's still Bad.
You're absolutely right. The only problem with Vista is that it had too many version, and was too confusing. Then again, when you have such a large market share, there's a lot more opportunity to segment the market and overcharge some people (ie: businesses) for the services they need, while leaving it out of the E-Machines version.
Home, Business, and Full. Do we really need more versions than that?
You're paying for Windows media player when you get Windows pre-installed on a computer. The other media player software has never had that luxury, and have had to monetize in other ways.
Winamp 5 still has functionality restrictions that require paying $20 for the Pro version. Check their website. Wikipedia says this has been the case since before 2.0, when Winamp was shareware.
Musicmatch Jukebox is shareware/Pro-ware like Winamp. Rhapsody and iTunes are both monetized by being tied to online music services. Quicktime also has a pro version, as does DivX.
Why would OEMs go to all that effort to remove/hide software that already comes free with the operating system? This is the whole point.
If it was separated and cost money, there could be actual competition in those markets. As long as it's free and bundled, there can be no real competition short of tremendous blunders on Microsoft's part. (Vista)
Have you ever wondered WHY it is that every company trying to compete with Microsoft's bundled media player, bundled operating system, bundled... etc. has to give their software away for free?
Does it help if I give you the hint that these companies used to be able to charge for the software before microsoft started giving it away for free with their operating system that has 90%+ market share?
I think the idea is that your computer manufacturer (or installation cds) could determine what browser (and presumably other software) goes on your computer. Ya know, instead of an operating system with a monopoly absorbing every profitable piece of software in existence by bundling it (along with the cost of creating it) into that operating system.
I'm not thinking of or terribly worried about any specific program myself, just defending the OP's concern that his tax money is being abused by people who could use a basic course in frugality and not living beyond one's means.
Personally, I agree that the reason that may be happening is because it's not exactly trivial (or desirable!) to inspect every purchase of every person who receives government assistance, and "objectively" determine if that purchase was "necessary".
I also agree that these programs are much more limited and restrictive than the people complaining about them realize.
(The idea of some black mom with 6 kids living in a ghetto with 2 brand new cars and a 60" TV and iphones -- doing all this on government checks -- is straight out of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh's wettest dreams)
I'm not going to claim this is entirely "fair", but the reason they don't allow UI for self-employed persons may be because they're then trusting YOU to tell them what YOU value yourself to base your unemployment checks on.
Otherwise anyone with a few $ in the bank could presumably give themselves a huge raise when they get laid off and then fire themselves and claim unemployment for far more than they're worth.
(again, not saying this is right or that they other conditions don't apply which invalidate, but it's a thought on one reason they might do so)
Also, if it makes you feel any better, in some states (mine at least) companies pay much more into UI if they have ex-employees claiming unemployment. So you may not have paid anywhere near as much unemployment tax as larger companies who have employees claiming unemployment, and are directly paying that salary as forced-severance after laying off that employee.
With self-employment there's by definition no way for them to recoup your unemployment costs from you. (take their check back? i dunno:)
I think the point is that unemployment and subsidized housing is paid for by his money, my money, and every other hard-working citizens' money.
It's legitimate to complain that your money is being taken by the government to help out someone "needy" who is only needy because they spent their food and housing money on cars, iphones, and lung cancer.
You sound like you've really taken it to the extreme, but there are a few things I do that help when I start feeling the same way driving.
1) Be glad that fast/aggressive/crazy person is past you and gone. Better to let them cause an accident somewhere up ahead (hopefully with a tree) instead of with you. I also like to thank them (in my head) for catching any speed traps up ahead by going 10mph faster than me.
2) No matter how slow you have to go, it really doesn't matter. You could drive 30mph on the interstate the whole way to work and you'd still get there, and it really wouldn't take THAT long. So having to slow down for that one guy, or having to slow down because someone wont "let" you get over - who cares?
3) Lower your expectations all around. Take it slow, set cruise control, help the people around you. If you try go 15mph over the speed limit and get mad every time you can't, even for a moment, then you're going to get very stressed and frustrated very fast.
4) I've noticed that listening to talk radio rather than music helps me relax and slow down and ignore the jerks around me. Not sure why, but there ya go.
Regardless of all of that, the driver's license training and police enforcement in the US needs to focus a lot more on aggressive driving, overly slow/indecisive driving (you can take a U-turn later, dont block up traffic trying to make an illegal turn!), and keeping to the right unless passing.
Prices change, products change. This isn't some massive greedy conspiracy against you.
Especially when it comes to the music labels, you should know by now that things like "removing drm" are the label's choice, not Apple's.
All of your DVDs are still encrypted and you don't have the option to "upgrade" them to remove the encryption. If you bought DRM-encumbered music for $10 an album last week you were obviously OK with it. Why pitch a fit now?
Thanks for this post. The description as "distributed" is I think the most confusing part. But as long as there's still an authoritative repository somewhere that's official and controlled, it doesn't sound like an issue.
I think "merge day" syndrome with SVN usually comes from people using project branches incorrectly. We got pretty involved in branching and merging at a past employer. Doing this:
Trunk -> branch -> project A project A changes a bunch Trunk changes a bunch (project B finishes and merges in) project A -> merge -> Trunk
Is wrong. Other people were working in the trunk in the meantime, and now everything is very different. What you SHOULD do with SVN is:
Trunk -> branch -> Project A trunk changes -> merge -> Project A (this should be done weekly or so ideally, but most importantly is done before merging A back in) Project A -> replace -> Trunk
You can call it a merge at the end, but since your project has all of the trunk changes, it's the same thing as replacing the trunk.
Anyway, that was working quite well for us, but I think is a lot more involved than most teams get with SVN. And it sounds like GIT helps a ton, especially if it stops to resolve conflicts incrementally, rather than applying all changes as a single massive changeset like SVN does when merging.
Yeah - add on to this, that the way many Windows app works, the modals will request information that may actually be hidden in a window behind the modal dialog. Except Windows won't let you click on, drag, move, bring-to-top, etc. the window behind the modal.
I've seen the reverse problem in Vista though, where non-model errors pop-up behind other windows, and you never even realized they're there.
Windows is a user interface nightmare.
Re:Because its not part of the game play
on
Torture in Games
·
· Score: 1
That's just the first part...later on it goes to something like "find the path somewhere in the southeast mountains" which I eventually gave up on and checked thottbott for a description of where it was. I held out on coordinate addons for a long time (years) but that just meant I was sitting on my laptop reading descriptions of where to go on thottbott/wowhead because of the inadequate quest text. I finally gave in and got Questhelper, but I really truly wish the quest text was good enough.
That's the thing about addons - sometimes games use them as a crutch. Whether they realize/admit it's an integral part of their success or not. For the most part WOW has integrated the most important addons, or invalidated them (threat has been somewhat removed as a concern in lich king, when they decided "winning at omen" wasn't a fun game to play in raids)
It's possible (likely) that's the result of cheap recording media, not anything sinister. A lot of the discount CD-R media I've bought in the past few years will work in some disc drives and not others. It's a pretty big pain in the ass when I've got data on a cd and only 2 out of 5 computers in the room can read it.
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I'm sorry, did a court of law find that Apple had a monopoly in the PC market? Or Linux?
The rules are NOT the same for a business which has been declared a monopoly.
Does ford or GM have a monopoly on car sales?
Ford and GM would keep making and selling the old model, if that's what customers wanted. They also design their new models based on what customers want - this is why customers WANT the newer models of cars, and pay extra for them.
Microsoft is using its monopoly to force a product on consumers that they clearly don't want. A product consumers dont want SO MUCH they are willing to pay extra to AVOID the newer model.
Ford and GM don't have a monopoly. If they sell cars people don't want, they go out of business. Microsoft has a monopoly, and can make people buy whatever it wants them to buy. That's illegal abuse of their monopoly position.
Your analogy is meaningless.
Interestingly enough, people who postpone having kids until they're older, and have the money for fertility treatments, would correspond highly with "intelligent high-income professionals".
Potentially goes great with a hypothesis where asperger's and autism come genetically from a combination of "intelligence" genes being selected for by society rewarding people with these genes with higher salaries, doing well in school, etc.
(again, just a hypothesis, I am not an autism researcher)
I'm not an autism researcher, but consider that recent research has implicated a set of genes in autism.
It's quite possibly (likely even) that our modern society is selecting for these genes in reproduction, causing the rate of people catching the right combination (autism) to climb.
It would feel strange for sure, but if used books were advertised as "now with important parts highlighted!" it could probably be considered a derivative work.
I don't recall how it turned out, but there was a case where a "family friendly" movie store would edit movies to remove sex scenes, swear words, etc. The movie studios argued these were derivative works and barred under copyright law.
I rename the Firefox icon on the desktop "The Internet" and remove the blue E.
Then someone hit the "Work Offline" checkbox that's *right* next to Quit, by accident. For a week or two my parents' internet was "broken" until I came home and figured that out. Doh.
I don't think anyone is silly enough to claim that bundling is an absolutely insurmountable obstacle.
But it is silly to claim that bundling doesn't provide an advantage and construct a large obstacle to competition.
Given two equal products of equal price, which will you use? The one you already have and "already paid for" whether you wanted it or not, obviously.
Thanks for the link! Even if this comes down to bad marketing/PR commentary while the engineers are doing "what's right" (fixing the problem after being notified), it's still Bad.
This is hardly "caving". Microsoft was alerted to a security issue, and they're fixing it. How did this get spun into an anti-microsoft story?
Did I miss some story where Microsoft said they absolutely refused to fix the problem, but now a few days later they're giving in and fixing it?
You're absolutely right. The only problem with Vista is that it had too many version, and was too confusing. Then again, when you have such a large market share, there's a lot more opportunity to segment the market and overcharge some people (ie: businesses) for the services they need, while leaving it out of the E-Machines version.
Home, Business, and Full. Do we really need more versions than that?
You're paying for Windows media player when you get Windows pre-installed on a computer. The other media player software has never had that luxury, and have had to monetize in other ways.
Winamp 5 still has functionality restrictions that require paying $20 for the Pro version. Check their website. Wikipedia says this has been the case since before 2.0, when Winamp was shareware.
Musicmatch Jukebox is shareware/Pro-ware like Winamp. Rhapsody and iTunes are both monetized by being tied to online music services. Quicktime also has a pro version, as does DivX.
Why would OEMs go to all that effort to remove/hide software that already comes free with the operating system? This is the whole point.
If it was separated and cost money, there could be actual competition in those markets. As long as it's free and bundled, there can be no real competition short of tremendous blunders on Microsoft's part. (Vista)
Have you ever wondered WHY it is that every company trying to compete with Microsoft's bundled media player, bundled operating system, bundled... etc. has to give their software away for free?
Does it help if I give you the hint that these companies used to be able to charge for the software before microsoft started giving it away for free with their operating system that has 90%+ market share?
I think the idea is that your computer manufacturer (or installation cds) could determine what browser (and presumably other software) goes on your computer. Ya know, instead of an operating system with a monopoly absorbing every profitable piece of software in existence by bundling it (along with the cost of creating it) into that operating system.
I think the fact that there's a 31-step guide on "how to use detailed view in explorer" is pretty good support that Vista Has Problems :)
Yeah, but maybe that's just because they've got humans getting in the way :X
I'm not thinking of or terribly worried about any specific program myself, just defending the OP's concern that his tax money is being abused by people who could use a basic course in frugality and not living beyond one's means.
Personally, I agree that the reason that may be happening is because it's not exactly trivial (or desirable!) to inspect every purchase of every person who receives government assistance, and "objectively" determine if that purchase was "necessary".
I also agree that these programs are much more limited and restrictive than the people complaining about them realize.
(The idea of some black mom with 6 kids living in a ghetto with 2 brand new cars and a 60" TV and iphones -- doing all this on government checks -- is straight out of Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh's wettest dreams)
I'm not going to claim this is entirely "fair", but the reason they don't allow UI for self-employed persons may be because they're then trusting YOU to tell them what YOU value yourself to base your unemployment checks on.
Otherwise anyone with a few $ in the bank could presumably give themselves a huge raise when they get laid off and then fire themselves and claim unemployment for far more than they're worth.
(again, not saying this is right or that they other conditions don't apply which invalidate, but it's a thought on one reason they might do so)
Also, if it makes you feel any better, in some states (mine at least) companies pay much more into UI if they have ex-employees claiming unemployment. So you may not have paid anywhere near as much unemployment tax as larger companies who have employees claiming unemployment, and are directly paying that salary as forced-severance after laying off that employee.
With self-employment there's by definition no way for them to recoup your unemployment costs from you. (take their check back? i dunno :)
I think the point is that unemployment and subsidized housing is paid for by his money, my money, and every other hard-working citizens' money.
It's legitimate to complain that your money is being taken by the government to help out someone "needy" who is only needy because they spent their food and housing money on cars, iphones, and lung cancer.
You sound like you've really taken it to the extreme, but there are a few things I do that help when I start feeling the same way driving.
1) Be glad that fast/aggressive/crazy person is past you and gone. Better to let them cause an accident somewhere up ahead (hopefully with a tree) instead of with you. I also like to thank them (in my head) for catching any speed traps up ahead by going 10mph faster than me.
2) No matter how slow you have to go, it really doesn't matter. You could drive 30mph on the interstate the whole way to work and you'd still get there, and it really wouldn't take THAT long. So having to slow down for that one guy, or having to slow down because someone wont "let" you get over - who cares?
3) Lower your expectations all around. Take it slow, set cruise control, help the people around you. If you try go 15mph over the speed limit and get mad every time you can't, even for a moment, then you're going to get very stressed and frustrated very fast.
4) I've noticed that listening to talk radio rather than music helps me relax and slow down and ignore the jerks around me. Not sure why, but there ya go.
Regardless of all of that, the driver's license training and police enforcement in the US needs to focus a lot more on aggressive driving, overly slow/indecisive driving (you can take a U-turn later, dont block up traffic trying to make an illegal turn!), and keeping to the right unless passing.
Prices change, products change. This isn't some massive greedy conspiracy against you.
Especially when it comes to the music labels, you should know by now that things like "removing drm" are the label's choice, not Apple's.
All of your DVDs are still encrypted and you don't have the option to "upgrade" them to remove the encryption. If you bought DRM-encumbered music for $10 an album last week you were obviously OK with it. Why pitch a fit now?
Thanks for this post. The description as "distributed" is I think the most confusing part. But as long as there's still an authoritative repository somewhere that's official and controlled, it doesn't sound like an issue.
I think "merge day" syndrome with SVN usually comes from people using project branches incorrectly. We got pretty involved in branching and merging at a past employer. Doing this:
Trunk -> branch -> project A
project A changes a bunch
Trunk changes a bunch (project B finishes and merges in)
project A -> merge -> Trunk
Is wrong. Other people were working in the trunk in the meantime, and now everything is very different. What you SHOULD do with SVN is:
Trunk -> branch -> Project A
trunk changes -> merge -> Project A
(this should be done weekly or so ideally, but most importantly is done before merging A back in)
Project A -> replace -> Trunk
You can call it a merge at the end, but since your project has all of the trunk changes, it's the same thing as replacing the trunk.
Anyway, that was working quite well for us, but I think is a lot more involved than most teams get with SVN. And it sounds like GIT helps a ton, especially if it stops to resolve conflicts incrementally, rather than applying all changes as a single massive changeset like SVN does when merging.
Yeah - add on to this, that the way many Windows app works, the modals will request information that may actually be hidden in a window behind the modal dialog. Except Windows won't let you click on, drag, move, bring-to-top, etc. the window behind the modal.
I've seen the reverse problem in Vista though, where non-model errors pop-up behind other windows, and you never even realized they're there.
Windows is a user interface nightmare.
That's just the first part...later on it goes to something like "find the path somewhere in the southeast mountains" which I eventually gave up on and checked thottbott for a description of where it was. I held out on coordinate addons for a long time (years) but that just meant I was sitting on my laptop reading descriptions of where to go on thottbott/wowhead because of the inadequate quest text. I finally gave in and got Questhelper, but I really truly wish the quest text was good enough.
That's the thing about addons - sometimes games use them as a crutch. Whether they realize/admit it's an integral part of their success or not. For the most part WOW has integrated the most important addons, or invalidated them (threat has been somewhat removed as a concern in lich king, when they decided "winning at omen" wasn't a fun game to play in raids)
It's possible (likely) that's the result of cheap recording media, not anything sinister. A lot of the discount CD-R media I've bought in the past few years will work in some disc drives and not others. It's a pretty big pain in the ass when I've got data on a cd and only 2 out of 5 computers in the room can read it.