I did have contracts in all cases - I'm no dummy. However the risk is not the money you invest in the development, but the possibility that they will not deliver, plus very few professional shops will take on an assignment without being payed for the discovery process.
Then there is the problem of hirering someone in the first place. I have repetedly tried to hire an OOo developer for something which would seem to be a simple task, only to be told - rudely, and repeatedly, I might add - roughly "That should be easy - why don't you just code it yourself, dummy".
Honestly, I'm tired of the rudeness and smart-ass-ness of it all. You exhibit it too in your answer, by automaticaly and somewhat rudely assuming I didn't think it through, and investigate the options toroughly.
I never understand why people are so against using open source stuff when it's not exactly what they want, since they can get a programmer to add the functionality or appearance that they want.
It's all about paying money to reduce risk. If you pay for existing functionality, you trade money for risk (e.g., you pay up front for something you can check suits your situation in advance). If you hire someone to add or develop functionality from scratch, you often as not won't get what you want, or indeed anything at all, hence you pay AND accept a risk. I know all too well from personal experience: Half the times I have hired someone to do a task like this, they have dropped the project, even though they were all gung ho and sure it could be done. Meanwhile I am stuck having promised deliveries at certain deadlines to customers based on these contracters promises:(
Even worse: You often end up paying them for even trying, even tho it's surely their problem to either put up something worth paying for or shut up.
Anyway, I am not going down that road again if I can help it.
A warning that always (and often) shows up is worse than no warning at all. The user will eventually "chunk" it as part of the operation, as it becomes habit. Classic example is "Are you sure you want to delete this file?" It is much better not to ask, and instead to provide a recovery mechanism for the rare cases when you find out you acted in haste.
You always have that choice as a consumer, which is really what I said initially, but you've got to respect their choice to sell it the way they do - not react by stealing, cracking, distributing pirated versions...
"STEAL - the wrongful or willful taking of money or property belonging to someone else with intent to deprive the owner of its use or benefit either temporarily or permanently. No particular type of movement or carrying away is required."
Have they deprived apple of the use of OS X or directly removed money from apples online back account?
NO!
You have, however, deprived them of the income they would otherwise have gotten form you. I agree that that's not stealing in the legal sense, but in the sense that you are enjoying the fruits of someone elses labor without paying, despite their express wishes that you should not do so for free, you are at best freeloading, morally stealing, and obviously doing something "bad".
Arguing over what to call it exactly is interesting to lawyers, but to the rest of us - when we have to decide whether to do it or not - what matters is right and wrong.
I'll cheerfully admit to having broken US laws in several cases related to this... but then I am not in the US;) No DMCA. Reverse-engineering is legal. No software patents. And somehow the IT companies manage to make money here in Europe too.
Perhaps the problem is US laws, not whether copying software is stealing or not? The main issues people seem to have with it is the limited rights you have...
I'm telling you that they are in fact allowed to do just that. If you don't like it, tough. It does not excuse breaking laws and aiding others in doing so.
No matter what you call it, it's against at least one law. And morally, it's stealing. You are taking something you have no right to take without paying.
To the ones bitching over the (very very low, IMHO) possibility that Apple will NOT release OS-X for generix x86:
It's theirs. They made it. They can do with it whatever they want. They have that right. If you don't like it, go code a better OS yourself or something, but don't bitch at them - that only makes you sound like a kid who can't get his/her way.
Or in playground terms: It is indeed their ball, and they can take it home with them if they feel like it.
Yes, it's software, so you can copy it without taking the original away from someone, but that it still stealing. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that you have a right to have it - no matter how much you want it.
What you can do is charge for it, if it's good enough to charge for, or else "let" people steal it. The last bit is the really really clever bit of marketing.
I run a rather successful software business (for the niche, mind you), and early on made the decission not to copy protect the software per se, but to personalize each copy sold with a user name. This way, anyone who wants to steal it can, but will have to look at someone else's name every time they start it. If they can live with that, they either can't afford the software anyway, and are welcome to it - it's assistive technology, which no-one sane or normal uses for "fun" - or they are just the kind of people who don't pay for software, and never will, so why bother trying to stop them?
Make it easy for them to steal it: The thrill will make it seem even sweeter to the last category - the people who just have to try stuff - and make them love, and thus recommend, it even more. You can't stop them anyway, and trying is only going to make them mad and negative.
Hmm, I Switched and now keep a PC around for burning CD's (I burn hundreds pr. session on an array of 13 CD burners) and the occational game. The Mac is used for everything else. Much nicer. And it does the heavy lifting quite nicely too, thank you very much;)
Oh, and I got a PS2 for console games, to be the "grown up" machine to compliment the kids' Gamecube.
Well, if you are kind of person who actually uses his/her computer for productivity, rather than hacking, fiddeling and games, you are in for a treat.
I switched less than half a year ago, and I am so happy I finaly got around to it. I have saved incredible amounts of time, not to mention aggravation. The UI is not just pretty - it's fast, powerful and easy to use, and the new Spotlight feature is saving me at least an hour of work every single day.
Oh, I did use Linux for a while, and have the published glossy articles to prove it. Still a nice server OS though.
Unfortunately I make my money off win32 programs these days, but having a open mind prepares me for a shift in the market, which may (or may not) be coming.
Oh well. I guess it's great for IBM that they got paid, but what about the pain of all the BSOD's that we poor users had to contend with for - oh - a decade or so, where we could instead have been using a properly multitasking, threaded and memory protected OS.:( I don't think that pain is ever going to go away (even though it *is* soothed somewhat by the niceness and comfort of OS-X these days).
As I write earlier in the thread, that is not the case for me.
Look: I love the Macs in the household, and am going all-Mac as soon as possible, but it's not because of the performance in any other area than the metric of useability (efficiency, sufficiency, affordability, joy of using), which happens to be the most important one for me at this point in my life. I am a (HCI, computer and computational linguistics, in no particular order) scientist, so pure speed is actually important to me at times, but I can live with a difference of less than 50% either way no problem. It doesn't matter if some calculation takes 1 day (or week) on one machine, and half again as much on another - it matters if it can be done in less than a month or not;) If not, it's a/very/ hard problem (or a very badly coded program), and you want to try something else instead.
In short: YMMV, but for me the PPC-based macs are NOT performing better than comparable WinTel machines (at half the price, I might add) in terms of speed or calculations pr. watt or calculations pr. charge or - in fact - any other performance-oriented metric I have checked (casually, I'll admit). This is for MY workload, so for someone else (FP intensive?) it is very likely a different story.
...but that's not the metric I apply for buying a computer anymore.
But... But... But... it doesn't DO anything for you better than an x86 at the same price?
If being a geek is all about function over styling and form, then an architectural feature - no matter how theoretically sound - that doesn't result in better performance now or soon is not "good": It's just bad engineering. And RISC has had plenty of time to show that it would result in better performance "soon".
Brifly, the program infers rules for very simplified parts-of-speech tagging using the rule inference method popularized by Brill for this purpose. It does so by constructing every possible rule that can be found in a corpus of about 1.2 milion words, and then deciding which rules have the biggest positive effect iteratively.
I truly don't feel like doing an actual measurement of this, as it takes a LONG LONG time to run, but briefly we are talking about a single-threaded task, which negates the bonus of being dual-proc in wall-clock time. The speed was quite unscientifically measured by me starting the programs on each machine, and then checking in on them in the evening to see how far they had gotten on the calculations. The laptop was clearly ahead.
As to why this is, I already mentioned that there will be little or no benefit from being dual-CPU in this task (without a re-code that is). The G5 is clocked at 1.8GHz, and the laptop at (i think) 1.5 or 1.6. Finaly, the code is mainly integer operations, which the Intel chips tend to be better at clock-for-clock than the G5. In the final analysis, I guess it's not THAT surprising the laptop wins, given that the working set fits in memory. I would have expected that the faster memory bus of the G5 would have made a crucial difference tho, as the mem is really pounded by this task.
But that is the only and last Apple Hardware I will have. They announced last week, that they won't make good hardware anymore.
Isn't that a teeny bit hysterical? I mean: I know that the elder of us geeks were raised on the idea that the CPU was somehow the mystic soul of the computer (despite the fact that very differently souled computers were based on the same CPUs), but it's been a while since that was true, if it ever was.
As for the glory of the PPC: My Centrino-based, 512MB, 2 years old notebook performs on par with my G5 dual 1.8GHz with 2GB on CPU and memory intensive code that I wrote, despite desperate profiling (couldn't really believe that). Change could be good.
I mean: Jeezz! Is the beauty of the assembly language of the PPC really that important?
I have been using a Plextor DVD recorder on USB2 for quite a while now, with no problems at all. In fact, I have hooked up 10 external CD-R drives to my main machine, all on USB2, all working fine with Alcohol 120% for disk duplication on a semi-industrial scale.
Last I looked, USB 2 was on par with FireWire for most things, certaintly in terms of bandwith/throughput.
Slashdot Mirror
The Quadro Pounder!!!!
How about being able to walk down to the Blockbuster and charge the vPod with a dozen movies at one buck a pop? Now THAT would rock!
Then there is the problem of hirering someone in the first place. I have repetedly tried to hire an OOo developer for something which would seem to be a simple task, only to be told - rudely, and repeatedly, I might add - roughly "That should be easy - why don't you just code it yourself, dummy".
Honestly, I'm tired of the rudeness and smart-ass-ness of it all. You exhibit it too in your answer, by automaticaly and somewhat rudely assuming I didn't think it through, and investigate the options toroughly.
It's all about paying money to reduce risk. If you pay for existing functionality, you trade money for risk (e.g., you pay up front for something you can check suits your situation in advance). If you hire someone to add or develop functionality from scratch, you often as not won't get what you want, or indeed anything at all, hence you pay AND accept a risk. I know all too well from personal experience: Half the times I have hired someone to do a task like this, they have dropped the project, even though they were all gung ho and sure it could be done. Meanwhile I am stuck having promised deliveries at certain deadlines to customers based on these contracters promises :(
Even worse: You often end up paying them for even trying, even tho it's surely their problem to either put up something worth paying for or shut up.
Anyway, I am not going down that road again if I can help it.
See Raskin's works for more on this.
You always have that choice as a consumer, which is really what I said initially, but you've got to respect their choice to sell it the way they do - not react by stealing, cracking, distributing pirated versions...
Sorry, but I don't feed (obvious) trolls. Learn to debate without namecalling, and we can perhaps return to the issue in the future ;)
You take something that does not belong to you. You were supposed to pay for it. How is that not stealing?
Perhaps it's not in a courtroom in some countries, but that's really beside the point IMHO.
If you don't their rules, just don't buy it.
Please let me know what legitimate use you feel you are being prevented from at this point by Apple. I am curious...
No matter what you call it, it's against at least one law. And morally, it's stealing. You are taking something you have no right to take without paying.
To the ones bitching over the (very very low, IMHO) possibility that Apple will NOT release OS-X for generix x86:
It's theirs. They made it. They can do with it whatever they want. They have that right. If you don't like it, go code a better OS yourself or something, but don't bitch at them - that only makes you sound like a kid who can't get his/her way.
Or in playground terms: It is indeed their ball, and they can take it home with them if they feel like it.
Yes, it's software, so you can copy it without taking the original away from someone, but that it still stealing. Just because you want it, doesn't mean that you have a right to have it - no matter how much you want it.
People are going to wonder what's wrong with it
What you can do is charge for it, if it's good enough to charge for, or else "let" people steal it. The last bit is the really really clever bit of marketing.
I run a rather successful software business (for the niche, mind you), and early on made the decission not to copy protect the software per se, but to personalize each copy sold with a user name. This way, anyone who wants to steal it can, but will have to look at someone else's name every time they start it. If they can live with that, they either can't afford the software anyway, and are welcome to it - it's assistive technology, which no-one sane or normal uses for "fun" - or they are just the kind of people who don't pay for software, and never will, so why bother trying to stop them?
Make it easy for them to steal it: The thrill will make it seem even sweeter to the last category - the people who just have to try stuff - and make them love, and thus recommend, it even more. You can't stop them anyway, and trying is only going to make them mad and negative.
Oh, and I got a PS2 for console games, to be the "grown up" machine to compliment the kids' Gamecube.
I switched less than half a year ago, and I am so happy I finaly got around to it. I have saved incredible amounts of time, not to mention aggravation. The UI is not just pretty - it's fast, powerful and easy to use, and the new Spotlight feature is saving me at least an hour of work every single day.
Unfortunately I make my money off win32 programs these days, but having a open mind prepares me for a shift in the market, which may (or may not) be coming.
...hahahahahaha!
:( I don't think that pain is ever going to go away (even though it *is* soothed somewhat by the niceness and comfort of OS-X these days).
hahahahahahaha!
hahahahahaha!
hahahahahahaha!
hahahahahaha!
hahahahahahaha!
Aaaa-hahahahahaaaa...
Aaaaaaa-hahahahahaaaaahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa....
Oh well. I guess it's great for IBM that they got paid, but what about the pain of all the BSOD's that we poor users had to contend with for - oh - a decade or so, where we could instead have been using a properly multitasking, threaded and memory protected OS.
Look: I love the Macs in the household, and am going all-Mac as soon as possible, but it's not because of the performance in any other area than the metric of useability (efficiency, sufficiency, affordability, joy of using), which happens to be the most important one for me at this point in my life. I am a (HCI, computer and computational linguistics, in no particular order) scientist, so pure speed is actually important to me at times, but I can live with a difference of less than 50% either way no problem. It doesn't matter if some calculation takes 1 day (or week) on one machine, and half again as much on another - it matters if it can be done in less than a month or not ;) If not, it's a /very/ hard problem (or a very badly coded program), and you want to try something else instead.
In short: YMMV, but for me the PPC-based macs are NOT performing better than comparable WinTel machines (at half the price, I might add) in terms of speed or calculations pr. watt or calculations pr. charge or - in fact - any other performance-oriented metric I have checked (casually, I'll admit). This is for MY workload, so for someone else (FP intensive?) it is very likely a different story.
If being a geek is all about function over styling and form, then an architectural feature - no matter how theoretically sound - that doesn't result in better performance now or soon is not "good": It's just bad engineering. And RISC has had plenty of time to show that it would result in better performance "soon".
I truly don't feel like doing an actual measurement of this, as it takes a LONG LONG time to run, but briefly we are talking about a single-threaded task, which negates the bonus of being dual-proc in wall-clock time. The speed was quite unscientifically measured by me starting the programs on each machine, and then checking in on them in the evening to see how far they had gotten on the calculations. The laptop was clearly ahead.
As to why this is, I already mentioned that there will be little or no benefit from being dual-CPU in this task (without a re-code that is). The G5 is clocked at 1.8GHz, and the laptop at (i think) 1.5 or 1.6. Finaly, the code is mainly integer operations, which the Intel chips tend to be better at clock-for-clock than the G5. In the final analysis, I guess it's not THAT surprising the laptop wins, given that the working set fits in memory. I would have expected that the faster memory bus of the G5 would have made a crucial difference tho, as the mem is really pounded by this task.
Isn't that a teeny bit hysterical? I mean: I know that the elder of us geeks were raised on the idea that the CPU was somehow the mystic soul of the computer (despite the fact that very differently souled computers were based on the same CPUs), but it's been a while since that was true, if it ever was.
As for the glory of the PPC: My Centrino-based, 512MB, 2 years old notebook performs on par with my G5 dual 1.8GHz with 2GB on CPU and memory intensive code that I wrote, despite desperate profiling (couldn't really believe that). Change could be good.
I mean: Jeezz! Is the beauty of the assembly language of the PPC really that important?
It *is* possible to overdo it! I for one have had enough . Please seed a story with some substance next time.
You must be thinking about the C64...
I have been using a Plextor DVD recorder on USB2 for quite a while now, with no problems at all. In fact, I have hooked up 10 external CD-R drives to my main machine, all on USB2, all working fine with Alcohol 120% for disk duplication on a semi-industrial scale.
Last I looked, USB 2 was on par with FireWire for most things, certaintly in terms of bandwith/throughput.