You almost got it, and I got a nice laugh at your fluent MicroSpeak.
Might I add one refinement? The last option is not just listead as "advanced", it is under the "Advanced" tab and is not visible on the main screen of the product.
On one level, this is a silly promotion, since it doesn't make a lot of sense for people to send them their bottle caps so they can buy music. Why not just use the suggestions on their web site to buy whatever music you want to support yourself?
And if you think of it, this promotion really IS a brilliant way to highlight labels owned by their friends and acts that they like.
On that level, it's really a very nice job, and I'm sure it will help sales of "their" music.
D
Re:Put more information on your website!
on
KISS
·
· Score: 1
When I visit Randy Fry's emporium, I can see how badly it's struggling financially. The empty parking lots sweep across acres of bare macadam; when I enter, I see not one single customer sharing the cavernous halls with me. And, of course, when I go to the checkout, there are hundreds of checkout lanes but not a single customer to be found.
It is indeed a tragedy, an American story of failure and not success, to see the tragic struggle of Fry's Electronics against the indifference of the American customer.
It is obvious indeed that you are right; and that geeks hate Fry's so much they avoid the place in droves.
Clearly, they have no respect for this business, and it's on the ropes. It's all rather frightfully sad, no?
Poor Randy Fry. Every day, I worry about where this poor, misunderstood fellow will somehow scrape together the cash for his next meal.
But seriously, folks... when a main limiting factor for the success of a business is the size of their always-full parking lot, I somehow don't think management feels it has a lot to prove.
However deficient Fry's is on many levels, I doubt there are many Slashdot users that wouldn't just love to see one in their neighborhood. (I'm lucky; mine is less than two miles away).
Where else can you find 20 different brands of wireless router sharing the shelves with miles of Ethernet cable?
Geeks love Fry's because we need their stuff. They're not a perfect retailer, but, well, they're better than what came before.
That being said, I agree with you that it's more than a little surprising their rather simple formula hasn't been copied, in view of its remarkable results with the public.
One major reason is likely to be the amount of money that it would take to even build a single Fry's. Randy Fry had an unfair advantage since his parents were in the grocery biz and he was able to use their credit to get started. I'm sure the grocery experience also helped him a great deal since Fry's is really nothing more than a giant grocery store with a zillion-dollar inventory.
Fry's: Infuriating store policies or no, it's hard to imagine life without them.
But I buy my computers nowadays at Apple Retail Stores. Better service, well-informed salespeople, prices no different. If someone opens an Apple Retail-style chain selling PCs and the huge volume of accessories Fry's does, Randy Fry might have to earn an honest living for a change.
If you don't allow private ownership of capital/the means of production, then obviously I can't buy my PowerMac through the exchange of money.
It is, after all, a means of production, and so it has to be owned by the State. And you know what kind of access I'd actually get to it if it was owned by the State.
I don't think it's possible to wreck capitalism. You could destroy the value of money, but substitutes would be rapidly found. For example, in World War II prison camps, cigarettes were used as money.
I don't think there's any circumstance where society would be so degraded that people would not want to exchange goods in one form or another. Money is just a medium that makes that more flexible. If I offer my labor in exchange for a new PowerMac, it might be a long time before I could find someone who would want to make a direct exchange. But if I exchange my labor for money, and use that to buy the PowerMac, then everyone's a lot happier than they would have been without money.
I think your main complaint about money is simply that you don't have enough of it. Unfortunately, the only non-capitalist economic systems I know of solve the money problem by instituting rationing, so everyone gets the same pathetic set of lousy goods, which make them worse off than the American ghetto-dweller.
If you want to destroy capitalism, first think about what you want to put in its place. So far, I haven't seen anything better.
D
Re:Put more information on your website!
on
KISS
·
· Score: 1
Fry's doesn't design or build the products, so I don't think it's their responsibility as a retailer to be a repository of manuals.
Also, Fry's is - oddly - about the least web-savvy companies around. Considering their field, this is more than a little bizarre, but let's just say they're the last company in the world who will do something like this.
I checked out the manual for the RoboMower and, after reading it, determined that I could not buy one because my lawn was too small!
There's one sale they won't make -- but at least they won't go through the expense of having to process a return. So they are probably better off having done it even though I didn't buy the product.
I'm sure there are plenty of people at Pixar who makes six figures or more.
John Lassater makes $2.5 million a year and owns about $40 million worth of shares, last time I looked. I'm sure he'll be joined in the big earners club this year by Andrew Stanton, creator of Finding Nemo. If he's not, I'm sure Andrew can find a job at Disney paying at least as much.
Neither person is in any danger of landing in the poorhouse, and I really doubt most Pixar employees are, either.
Incidentally, I think Pixar is moving to Xserve G5s on MacOS X now that the CPUs are finally competitive. Don't expect that to change.
when it comes to continuing to use old hardware. I have an old Sony monitor that's just about good as new. It has a D-Sub connector.
Why would I want to throw out the monitor or buy an overpriced adaptor just so I could use some new-fangled connector?
D-Sub will continue until the last D-Sub-using monitor is junked. Because, after all, there is no real reason to junk it; the part's trivial in cost, and people are used to it. Getting rid of it is just one more reason for people to decide not to buy what you're selling.
(Of course this is already happening in laptops, which can only "afford" one connector for space reasons. My PowerBook G4 1ghz came with a DVI connector and a D-Sub adaptor).
Well, KDE is a cheesy copy of Windows 2000, and Gnome is... well, I'm not sure what it is since there are about a billion interfaces to it. Most of the attractive ones look like the designers were a bit too much into Goth, which isn't surprising since Gothic types may be morbid, but at least they're clever.
I found it amusing that the Gothic designers would spend hours and hours on beautiful 3D rendering for their almost illegible Gothic fonts, leaving the fonts you actually had to use as unreadable as ever:-(.
So you have two type of people working on Gnome/KDE, the types who want to not frighten people by making their system look as much like Windows as humanly possible, and those who do want to frighten people with morbid images! What an unbeatable combination.
(I might sound less bitter if I'd succeeded in getting just one of the Gothic themes to actually work on my Linux PC. I actually like the Gothic types, but I can't resist poking some gentle fun at them).
Anyway, with that setting the stage, you can see how much of a breath of fresh air MacOS X was to me. It's an original interface, that looks lovely and owes debts to nothing save its NeXTian ancestors. The fonts are lovely out of the box; you don't have to install complex X-Windows extensions with elaborate 15 step procedures to make them look ok; you can make 'em look great without any effort whatsoever. You can use great applications like Final Cut Pro and GarageBand, together with Unix stalwarts like emacs and all the command line stuff I know and love.
I don't find MacOS X deficient in command line operation at all. There is emacs (although I wish there was a graphical version that used lovely Cocoa fonts), all my friends tar and ssh and gcc and so on are present and accounted for. It's true that command line administration is a bit obscure, but if you (like me) don't do a lot of administration on your personal computer, that's perfectly fine.
It looks like I echo a lot of MacOS X users, when I note my 10-odd terminal windows and my 10-odd web browser windows. The value of the GUI seems to be primarily in the web browser when I'm doing work. Of course that might be because I develop web sites.
There's definite value in having Unix and Photoshop on the same machine, and that alone makes MacOS X beat Linux and other Unix variants effortlessly.
It's one computer for functions that used to take two or more. Not bad at all.
The big advantage in my view is that I feel better and work better when my screen's an aesthetic delight than otherwise.
So I'm delighted with all my Macs - I switched almost totally away from Linux and Irix, my previous systems, and in terms of computing environment, I couldn't be happier. The Mac isn't perfect, but it's as close to a hassle-free computing environment as I can get.
And that's worth its weight in gold, at least for me.
Just out of curiosity, could you give a few examples of things you can't do from the command line? I'll bet there actually are ways around it that you haven't heard.
Office is the problem. I tried installing OpenOffice on a couple of computers, using the excuse that then we wouldn't have to pay license fees, and everyone hated it because it didn't read Office files well at all.
People do hate getting viruses and worms, but they seem to be slowly learning not to click on email attachments.
When I found my company, it will use exclusively Macs. You get Office and you don't have to deal with Windows. Best of both worlds, far as I'm concerned.
The problem is that most people don't have three-button mice.
I ran into this problem because I had a TrackPoint keyboard with my Linux system, and I loved the trackpoint and didn't want to stop using it just because it had the wrong number of buttons.
Emulate3Buttons didn't seem to work well in my case, so cut and paste was horribly frustrating.
But with the G5s being in very short supply, I don't think it happened this time. Remember, at that moment everyone and his brother (including me!) was looking for one.
Virginia Tech had a huge time constraint, and Apple had a reason to delay delivery as much as possible. They compromised at an "educational list" deal, which is also not unheard of.
That being said, I'm sure they DID get a generous deal on the Xserves, since time pressure was not involved, and there was no pressing need to upgrade immediately.
I don't think most people are buying from the iTunes music store to make political points.
They're doing it because it's fun, easy, and cheap.
And because they don't like leaving artists with nothing. 10%-odd royalties aren't much, but they sure are better than what the artists get through Kazaa.
The weather's perfect. The environment's gorgeous. The fact that buildings are ready to collapse all around you is simply a frisson that makes life in Cuba more dramatic.
The people are friendly and inviting. The women are beautiful and, well, inviting.
But there's a reason they're inviting - the average salary is 200 pesos a month, which is about US$20. About half of this goes to a ration book of basic supplies. The other half can buy, well, about what $10 would bring in the US.
The housing is beautiful. It is also in disasterous shape. About 100 buildings in Central Havana collapse every year. My web page, The Fabulous Ruins of Cuba shows the heartbreaking details. All the buildings you see there are within a block or two of the ocean. They would be worth millions here in California; they're not even worth routine maintenance in Cuba.
The health service is rationed - it works well if you have connections, badly if you don't.
Cuba has enough money to buy shiny new $100,000 busses for tourists. But the busses Cubans ride are crude creations, packed to the gills with people. Cubans are not allowed in the tourist hotels, they are not allowed on the shiny tour busses, the Cuban government does its best to make sure Cubans and tourists don't mix.
Which is too bad, because the best thing about Cuba is the wonderful people who live there. I made good friends in Cuba. I thought it was a fantastic place.
But don't think the Communist government is some mildly extreme version of Canada. Policia were everywhere, and my Cuban girl was clearly scared of them. She was scared of being heard by the waiters in any resturant I visited. But she was lovely and charming and made my trip magical.
She could have gotten a three year sentence for endangering my morals, such as they were. There are accounts of tourists who get close to Cuban women and the Cuban women are then sent to jail. Nothing you can do about it.
However, to address the parent poster's point directly, Cubans are definitely influenced by American TV, specifically Univision. A few people have satellite TV, and you can see the awe in people's eyes at all the strange stuff available over on the other side. Cars! Paper towels! And Univision soap operas... let's just say they don't reflect American reality unless you are A Jerrold Perenchio, billionnaire founder of Univision.
I thought of taking my Cuban girl back to the US eventually. But as her eyes popped open while seeing Univision, I realized she wouldn't be able to stand my relatively humble home and ancient Mercedes. She wanted it all. Maybe someday she'll get it...
The year after my trip, Castro cracked down on dissidents and sentenced them to jail terms ranging from 18 to 28 years. I loved Cuba and really wanted to return to see my Cuban friends. But I didn't want to support Castro, so I decided, with more than a couple of tears in my eyes, not to return.
For now.
D
PS Concerning the point of the actual article, I never saw anyone with Internet (or even a computer) at home. All the Internet access I saw was Internet cafes. The government runs one in the Capitolio that I visited that Cubans can use (most of them are in tourist hotels where Cubans are not allowed). I found service friendly, but Internet access sluggish. My girl did not find the Internet easy to use, probably because she had never seen a computer before.
I thought as you did about the menus at first, but the usability experts are right - it's easiest to swish your mouse to the top of the screen, since you don't have to worry about going up higher than the menu. Because of this, it's easiest by far to have menus at the top. It also saves a lot of screen space otherwise devoted to menus.
One nice thing about the Mac is that the lockin technology is largely benign. It simply gives you more choices without taking things away. You can use Fink, X-windows and all open source tools. If you want to totally avoid lockin, hey, no problem.
The real problem, of course, is that the whole system is so seductive. I tried using X-Windows and xemacs at first, but compared to all the gleaming beauty of the system, the X-Windows environment looks like a grade school painting assignment - too crude for words.
So you do wind up with vendor lockin in the end, but at least it's one who genuinely tries to do the right thing, accepts standards instead of rejecting them, and does its best to take design beauty to a new level.
I think it's a sweet deal for all but the least financially endowed among us.
I could picture someone writing a truly humungous program to get all known variations. You could get one or two variations with 10 lines of Perl, but there are hundreds of different NOSPAM schemes out there, and each one would need a few lines to parse.
davidNOSPAM@amazing.com david at amazing.com davidATamazingDOTcom david@amazing.M OC (with verbal instructions to reverse it) etc
I don't bother spamguarding my address because I like to make it easy for people to contact me, and because my email address, in use since 1993, is pretty much everywhere anyway.
Quite honestly postal spam bothers me more than email, since I have to physically dispose of it all...
I thought the same thing, but when I saw the actual site there's little on it dependent on the name. I would think he should get at least a few hundred bucks to make up a new name and change the logo.
However, if the name has been in use and has a high position in search engines appropriate for his site, his domain might have a very high intrinsic value.
Right now, for instance, the domain has a very high value because about half a million people have been checking it out, and thanks to the story it will have a good position on major search engines from now on. Since a lot of credible sites have linked to it, now it's worth hugely more than it was 24 hours ago.
It only takes one or two of those half million people to say "Hey, this guy is good, let's give him some work" to give him a very nice start no matter what domain name he eventually winds up with. But once that's happened, and people look for him at his name... then it's worth real money.
Slashdot Mirror
You almost got it, and I got a nice laugh at your fluent MicroSpeak.
Might I add one refinement? The last option is not just listead as "advanced", it is under the "Advanced" tab and is not visible on the main screen of the product.
People will never find it.
D
On one level, this is a silly promotion, since it doesn't make a lot of sense for people to send them their bottle caps so they can buy music. Why not just use the suggestions on their web site to buy whatever music you want to support yourself?
And if you think of it, this promotion really IS a brilliant way to highlight labels owned by their friends and acts that they like.
On that level, it's really a very nice job, and I'm sure it will help sales of "their" music.
D
When I visit Randy Fry's emporium, I can see how badly it's struggling financially. The empty parking lots sweep across acres of bare macadam; when I enter, I see not one single customer sharing the cavernous halls with me. And, of course, when I go to the checkout, there are hundreds of checkout lanes but not a single customer to be found.
... when a main limiting factor for the success of a business is the size of their always-full parking lot, I somehow don't think management feels it has a lot to prove.
It is indeed a tragedy, an American story of failure and not success, to see the tragic struggle of Fry's Electronics against the indifference of the American customer.
It is obvious indeed that you are right; and that geeks hate Fry's so much they avoid the place in droves.
Clearly, they have no respect for this business, and it's on the ropes. It's all rather frightfully sad, no?
Poor Randy Fry. Every day, I worry about where this poor, misunderstood fellow will somehow scrape together the cash for his next meal.
But seriously, folks
However deficient Fry's is on many levels, I doubt there are many Slashdot users that wouldn't just love to see one in their neighborhood. (I'm lucky; mine is less than two miles away).
Where else can you find 20 different brands of wireless router sharing the shelves with miles of Ethernet cable?
Geeks love Fry's because we need their stuff. They're not a perfect retailer, but, well, they're better than what came before.
That being said, I agree with you that it's more than a little surprising their rather simple formula hasn't been copied, in view of its remarkable results with the public.
One major reason is likely to be the amount of money that it would take to even build a single Fry's. Randy Fry had an unfair advantage since his parents were in the grocery biz and he was able to use their credit to get started. I'm sure the grocery experience also helped him a great deal since Fry's is really nothing more than a giant grocery store with a zillion-dollar inventory.
Fry's: Infuriating store policies or no, it's hard to imagine life without them.
But I buy my computers nowadays at Apple Retail Stores. Better service, well-informed salespeople, prices no different. If someone opens an Apple Retail-style chain selling PCs and the huge volume of accessories Fry's does, Randy Fry might have to earn an honest living for a change.
Not that I see much danger of this.
D
If you don't allow private ownership of capital/the means of production, then obviously I can't buy my PowerMac through the exchange of money.
It is, after all, a means of production, and so it has to be owned by the State. And you know what kind of access I'd actually get to it if it was owned by the State.
D
Capitalism is nothing but exchange through money.
I don't think it's possible to wreck capitalism. You could destroy the value of money, but substitutes would be rapidly found. For example, in World War II prison camps, cigarettes were used as money.
I don't think there's any circumstance where society would be so degraded that people would not want to exchange goods in one form or another. Money is just a medium that makes that more flexible. If I offer my labor in exchange for a new PowerMac, it might be a long time before I could find someone who would want to make a direct exchange. But if I exchange my labor for money, and use that to buy the PowerMac, then everyone's a lot happier than they would have been without money.
I think your main complaint about money is simply that you don't have enough of it. Unfortunately, the only non-capitalist economic systems I know of solve the money problem by instituting rationing, so everyone gets the same pathetic set of lousy goods, which make them worse off than the American ghetto-dweller.
If you want to destroy capitalism, first think about what you want to put in its place. So far, I haven't seen anything better.
D
Fry's doesn't design or build the products, so I don't think it's their responsibility as a retailer to be a repository of manuals.
Also, Fry's is - oddly - about the least web-savvy companies around. Considering their field, this is more than a little bizarre, but let's just say they're the last company in the world who will do something like this.
I checked out the manual for the RoboMower and, after reading it, determined that I could not buy one because my lawn was too small!
There's one sale they won't make -- but at least they won't go through the expense of having to process a return. So they are probably better off having done it even though I didn't buy the product.
D
I'm sure there are plenty of people at Pixar who makes six figures or more.
John Lassater makes $2.5 million a year and owns about $40 million worth of shares, last time I looked. I'm sure he'll be joined in the big earners club this year by Andrew Stanton, creator of Finding Nemo. If he's not, I'm sure Andrew can find a job at Disney paying at least as much.
Neither person is in any danger of landing in the poorhouse, and I really doubt most Pixar employees are, either.
Incidentally, I think Pixar is moving to Xserve G5s on MacOS X now that the CPUs are finally competitive. Don't expect that to change.
D
They're going to do a distribution deal, but with a different studio. Or they may even go back to Disney if their terms are met.
What I hear is that distribution deals cost around 10% of gross, instead of Disney's 50%.
They won't have to go without the clout of a major studio.
I should remind you that many people say Toy Story 2 was actually better than Toy Story 1. So sequels are not necessarily a total loss.
D
Which would you rather be responsible for, Brother Bear ($84m + $34m overseas) or Finding Nemo ($339m + overseas $504m)?
'nuff said.
D
when it comes to continuing to use old hardware. I have an old Sony monitor that's just about good as new. It has a D-Sub connector.
Why would I want to throw out the monitor or buy an overpriced adaptor just so I could use some new-fangled connector?
D-Sub will continue until the last D-Sub-using monitor is junked. Because, after all, there is no real reason to junk it; the part's trivial in cost, and people are used to it. Getting rid of it is just one more reason for people to decide not to buy what you're selling.
(Of course this is already happening in laptops, which can only "afford" one connector for space reasons. My PowerBook G4 1ghz came with a DVI connector and a D-Sub adaptor).
D
Well, KDE is a cheesy copy of Windows 2000, and Gnome is ... well, I'm not sure what it is since there are about a billion interfaces to it. Most of the attractive ones look like the designers were a bit too much into Goth, which isn't surprising since Gothic types may be morbid, but at least they're clever.
:-(.
I found it amusing that the Gothic designers would spend hours and hours on beautiful 3D rendering for their almost illegible Gothic fonts, leaving the fonts you actually had to use as unreadable as ever
So you have two type of people working on Gnome/KDE, the types who want to not frighten people by making their system look as much like Windows as humanly possible, and those who do want to frighten people with morbid images! What an unbeatable combination.
(I might sound less bitter if I'd succeeded in getting just one of the Gothic themes to actually work on my Linux PC. I actually like the Gothic types, but I can't resist poking some gentle fun at them).
Anyway, with that setting the stage, you can see how much of a breath of fresh air MacOS X was to me. It's an original interface, that looks lovely and owes debts to nothing save its NeXTian ancestors. The fonts are lovely out of the box; you don't have to install complex X-Windows extensions with elaborate 15 step procedures to make them look ok; you can make 'em look great without any effort whatsoever. You can use great applications like Final Cut Pro and GarageBand, together with Unix stalwarts like emacs and all the command line stuff I know and love.
I don't find MacOS X deficient in command line operation at all. There is emacs (although I wish there was a graphical version that used lovely Cocoa fonts), all my friends tar and ssh and gcc and so on are present and accounted for. It's true that command line administration is a bit obscure, but if you (like me) don't do a lot of administration on your personal computer, that's perfectly fine.
It looks like I echo a lot of MacOS X users, when I note my 10-odd terminal windows and my 10-odd web browser windows. The value of the GUI seems to be primarily in the web browser when I'm doing work. Of course that might be because I develop web sites.
There's definite value in having Unix and Photoshop on the same machine, and that alone makes MacOS X beat Linux and other Unix variants effortlessly.
It's one computer for functions that used to take two or more. Not bad at all.
D
The big advantage in my view is that I feel better and work better when my screen's an aesthetic delight than otherwise.
So I'm delighted with all my Macs - I switched almost totally away from Linux and Irix, my previous systems, and in terms of computing environment, I couldn't be happier. The Mac isn't perfect, but it's as close to a hassle-free computing environment as I can get.
And that's worth its weight in gold, at least for me.
Just out of curiosity, could you give a few examples of things you can't do from the command line? I'll bet there actually are ways around it that you haven't heard.
D
A good point, and one I hadn't thought of.
That being said, I'll bet 95% of the population thinks of their scroll wheel as a wheel, not a button.
And of course many of those people who use Linux don't realize a third button is a virtual requirement, or what it does.
You might say that even a cursory reading of documentation should tell them there is, but as you know that's pretty optimistic for the average person.
D
Office is the problem. I tried installing OpenOffice on a couple of computers, using the excuse that then we wouldn't have to pay license fees, and everyone hated it because it didn't read Office files well at all.
People do hate getting viruses and worms, but they seem to be slowly learning not to click on email attachments.
When I found my company, it will use exclusively Macs. You get Office and you don't have to deal with Windows. Best of both worlds, far as I'm concerned.
D
The problem is that most people don't have three-button mice.
I ran into this problem because I had a TrackPoint keyboard with my Linux system, and I loved the trackpoint and didn't want to stop using it just because it had the wrong number of buttons.
Emulate3Buttons didn't seem to work well in my case, so cut and paste was horribly frustrating.
Hope that helps understanding.
D
Normally, you would be right.
But with the G5s being in very short supply, I don't think it happened this time. Remember, at that moment everyone and his brother (including me!) was looking for one.
Virginia Tech had a huge time constraint, and Apple had a reason to delay delivery as much as possible. They compromised at an "educational list" deal, which is also not unheard of.
That being said, I'm sure they DID get a generous deal on the Xserves, since time pressure was not involved, and there was no pressing need to upgrade immediately.
D
I don't think most people are buying from the iTunes music store to make political points.
They're doing it because it's fun, easy, and cheap.
And because they don't like leaving artists with nothing. 10%-odd royalties aren't much, but they sure are better than what the artists get through Kazaa.
Those are my reasons, anyway.
D
Cuba IS a great place ... to visit.
... let's just say they don't reflect American reality unless you are A Jerrold Perenchio, billionnaire founder of Univision.
...
The weather's perfect. The environment's gorgeous. The fact that buildings are ready to collapse all around you is simply a frisson that makes life in Cuba more dramatic.
The people are friendly and inviting. The women are beautiful and, well, inviting.
But there's a reason they're inviting - the average salary is 200 pesos a month, which is about US$20. About half of this goes to a ration book of basic supplies. The other half can buy, well, about what $10 would bring in the US.
The housing is beautiful. It is also in disasterous shape. About 100 buildings in Central Havana collapse every year. My web page, The Fabulous Ruins of Cuba shows the heartbreaking details. All the buildings you see there are within a block or two of the ocean. They would be worth millions here in California; they're not even worth routine maintenance in Cuba.
The health service is rationed - it works well if you have connections, badly if you don't.
Cuba has enough money to buy shiny new $100,000 busses for tourists. But the busses Cubans ride are crude creations, packed to the gills with people. Cubans are not allowed in the tourist hotels, they are not allowed on the shiny tour busses, the Cuban government does its best to make sure Cubans and tourists don't mix.
Which is too bad, because the best thing about Cuba is the wonderful people who live there. I made good friends in Cuba. I thought it was a fantastic place.
But don't think the Communist government is some mildly extreme version of Canada. Policia were everywhere, and my Cuban girl was clearly scared of them. She was scared of being heard by the waiters in any resturant I visited. But she was lovely and charming and made my trip magical.
She could have gotten a three year sentence for endangering my morals, such as they were. There are accounts of tourists who get close to Cuban women and the Cuban women are then sent to jail. Nothing you can do about it.
However, to address the parent poster's point directly, Cubans are definitely influenced by American TV, specifically Univision. A few people have satellite TV, and you can see the awe in people's eyes at all the strange stuff available over on the other side. Cars! Paper towels! And Univision soap operas
I thought of taking my Cuban girl back to the US eventually. But as her eyes popped open while seeing Univision, I realized she wouldn't be able to stand my relatively humble home and ancient Mercedes. She wanted it all. Maybe someday she'll get it
The year after my trip, Castro cracked down on dissidents and sentenced them to jail terms ranging from 18 to 28 years. I loved Cuba and really wanted to return to see my Cuban friends. But I didn't want to support Castro, so I decided, with more than a couple of tears in my eyes, not to return.
For now.
D
PS Concerning the point of the actual article, I never saw anyone with Internet (or even a computer) at home. All the Internet access I saw was Internet cafes. The government runs one in the Capitolio that I visited that Cubans can use (most of them are in tourist hotels where Cubans are not allowed). I found service friendly, but Internet access sluggish. My girl did not find the Internet easy to use, probably because she had never seen a computer before.
Tatras were designed for the Czech elite, sort of like an Eastern European Porsche.
There is a cult following around the make that celebrates its engineering quality.
This is no Trabant or Lada, in other words, but a vehicle with genuine appeal.
D
... which means that any money we could give them could go a long way, especially if they have something now that could do the job.
D
When I got an Xserve for my company, I was quoted $995 for a year's onsite hardware service, and $995 for three years of OS updates.
D
I thought as you did about the menus at first, but the usability experts are right - it's easiest to swish your mouse to the top of the screen, since you don't have to worry about going up higher than the menu. Because of this, it's easiest by far to have menus at the top. It also saves a lot of screen space otherwise devoted to menus.
One nice thing about the Mac is that the lockin technology is largely benign. It simply gives you more choices without taking things away. You can use Fink, X-windows and all open source tools. If you want to totally avoid lockin, hey, no problem.
The real problem, of course, is that the whole system is so seductive. I tried using X-Windows and xemacs at first, but compared to all the gleaming beauty of the system, the X-Windows environment looks like a grade school painting assignment - too crude for words.
So you do wind up with vendor lockin in the end, but at least it's one who genuinely tries to do the right thing, accepts standards instead of rejecting them, and does its best to take design beauty to a new level.
I think it's a sweet deal for all but the least financially endowed among us.
D
I could picture someone writing a truly humungous program to get all known variations. You could get one or two variations with 10 lines of Perl, but there are hundreds of different NOSPAM schemes out there, and each one would need a few lines to parse.
M OC (with verbal instructions to reverse it)
...
davidNOSPAM@amazing.com
david at amazing.com
davidATamazingDOTcom
david@amazing.
etc
I don't bother spamguarding my address because I like to make it easy for people to contact me, and because my email address, in use since 1993, is pretty much everywhere anyway.
Quite honestly postal spam bothers me more than email, since I have to physically dispose of it all
D
I thought the same thing, but when I saw the actual site there's little on it dependent on the name. I would think he should get at least a few hundred bucks to make up a new name and change the logo.
... then it's worth real money.
However, if the name has been in use and has a high position in search engines appropriate for his site, his domain might have a very high intrinsic value.
Right now, for instance, the domain has a very high value because about half a million people have been checking it out, and thanks to the story it will have a good position on major search engines from now on. Since a lot of credible sites have linked to it, now it's worth hugely more than it was 24 hours ago.
It only takes one or two of those half million people to say "Hey, this guy is good, let's give him some work" to give him a very nice start no matter what domain name he eventually winds up with. But once that's happened, and people look for him at his name
Period.
D
Nice try.
Actually, I love Apple because they make computers that are more fun to use, and more trouble-free, than the competition.
I use Macs at home and work, and Windows systems at work. I've seen both sides, and the Mac side just blows the Windows side away.
The good results we get from our systems creates the fanatacism, not the other way around.
D