Because the government wants to control all financial transactions down to the penny. They don't like cash either. And no, it's not just about taxes. It's about controlling the populace.
Yay! This is what I've been saying for years! It's great to have someone agree with me. You've laid it out in a much more eloquent way than I ever had.
I'm a musician and an inventor. Everything I create I give away for free. I do the standard: Make a video of how to do it and post it. Thing. When I write a song I upload all the individual tracks so other people can, for example, take out the guitar and jam along if it helps them. etc... The art world would be far richer if more people did the same. Just try to go online and find just the drum track for some song so you can practice along with it... it's very rare.
I find it disgusting when I go to conventions or clubs and some dudes made a cool jig or tool, I ask him how he did it and he tells me its a trade secret but he can sell me one. I think the whole handyman community is thankfully turning that way. Imagine if Galileo had kept the telescope a secret...
Starting off with... "fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics"
But the real application is... "water-soluble nail polish.'"
This is what I don't like about submitting to slashdot. It reads like I wrote that. Like that's a quote from me. That's not what I submitted at all. They basically cut the last half of my post off, typed something totally different and provided an entirely different link. For once the editors did edit the story before posting it, but instead of improving it they mangled it.
In the paper, if you read it, this isn't really about the 2 materials the editors stuck in. Those are just the result of the real breakthrough. Which is IBM has designed modeling software that can design plastics to order. Previously they would just create a plastic, play with it, and see what it was good for. This is how accidents like Silly Putty and Post-it notes came about. But with this new software you can put in characteristics you want the plastic to have and it will spit out which plastics to make and how to make them. It will be revolutionary to every field in industry. The 2 materials mentioned in the Editors link were what they created with the software as a test. Their properties, while interesting, are incidental to the real discovery which is the software.
This situation smells of BS. By default it routes to SMS when iMessage fails to send to a phone.
Actually this sounds exactly like a typical Apple problem. There was a time that was not that long ago when you couldn't use anything apple with anything else. It was a totally closed ecosystem. That was completely intentional. They changed, a bit, to get back into the market... and have done well because of that. But they're still pretty much the most closed down, locked in ecosystem there is. I've always found it strange how open source people could support Apple at all. They're the most anti-choice software company out there.
Text Messages USED to cost money. Now, nobody actually uses TXT, as we no longer have dumb phones. We use Hangouts, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, GoogleVoice, email....
Txt was good when all you had was a feature phone.
Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.
I'll never get over peoples myopic view of the world.
Attention, this is a public service announcement...
The way "The cloud" works. A Cloud or SASS provider will schedule meetings with your management and give a flashy presentation bragging about their up-time, reliability and how your company will no longer need to maintain software or even have an IT department! They'll even migrate you to their servers FOR FREE! Yay!
You company will sign a 3 year contract and brag about all the savings the project will lead to. It will be fantastic!
You'll begin the migration project and quickly realize that the provider outsourced the conversion project to a random IT team from their "Trusted Partners Network" that consists of 2 people (1 manager, 1 employee) that are clearly located in some other country but refuse to admit which one. Having worked with competent people from other countries before you'll shrug this off as not that big of a deal.
Shortly after that they'll start stalling and delay. You may or may not get finished with the project before your management goes back to the Provider and demands the "Free" migration... only to find out the contract stated something to the effect of "Migration Assistance" and by that, they meant you have to do it with the help of those people on the phone you couldn't understand. Your management will resign itself to just getting it done so they can start saving money and dump it all in your lap.
Liking your job, and knowing that managements on a "Lets save money!" kick you'll do it without complaint. After all, once it's done, its done right?
Unfortunately, once it's done is when the problems will start. Since you did most of the migration work the provider will quickly move to blame the problem entirely on you. You'll start to realize that patching together their garbage product with bubblegum and duct tape might not have been such a good idea. But, you have a good reputation, you logged all the previous issues you'd had, and you eventually win management over and they realize that the product is garbage and you'd better start thinking of long term alternatives. But you're stuck in a 3yr contract so you have time to plan.
Then you get an update from the provider: "In an effort to improve server reliability and security we are deprecating ODBC/SQL connections to the database in 6 months" You'll question this and the provider will come back to you and say "Fear not! We've created our own API! It's great! It even uses our own proprietary version of SQL!!!"
So you'll start reviewing this and find out that their "new" version of SQL differs from the only version in 2 ways: 1. you can't do table joins. 2. you can only retrieve 10,000 rows at a time
You'll take this to management and explain that once this happens, moving your data off their servers will be nearly impossible. Migrating to another product will be very difficult. So your mangement will bring this concern to the provider who will say "If you need help migrating, we have a team that can help you! They only charge $200/hr!" and they'll send you right back to the 2 people that failed in the original migration.
Eventually the products customers will all realize it was a giant scam, and start dumping it. The products parent company will shut down the product, buy a startup that does the exact same thing, re-brand it and start all over again.
Well, I don't know what you want to use it for. I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're trying to manage work, tickets, or something to that effect.
I'd try SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/ It's open source and free (without support) It's the biggest open source CRM I know of.
Every alternative to Access I've seen is terrible. So I'd stop looking for something that replicates Access and start looking for something that does what you're wanting access to do. You might even settle on several applications if you're using access for multiple things.
you are funny, AutoDesk has 85% market share, they are the de factor standard. The are certainty The Relevant ones. The cost of their software is nothing to the companies that use them to make millions to billions a year in profits.
The open source CAD alternatives are crap, sad to say. There is no credible threat to AutoDesk on the horizon for at least the next decade
Yes, the industry uses Autocad. Just like Artists used to use Apple almost to exclusion. But now the indi-people are moving to other things because Autocad is insanely expensive. (and yes, the price really is insane) So what happened when all the indi-people started doing graphic art and recording on IBM PCs in the late 90s early 2000s? It didn't go so well for the apple desktop. Teenagers couldn't learn on ultra-expensive apple computers and apple software so they learned on PCs. When they got to school they took that knowledge with them and the idustry realized they could get away with buying stuff that was 1/10th the price. The market now is rife with PC art and recording software that's every bit as good as anything apple has.
I think the same thing is going on with Autocad now. Highschool kids in their basement with a 3D printer aren't playing around with Autocad... and that should be very worrying to Autodesk. And the next decade? You're probobly right there... I'm talking 5 to 10 years out. But do you think Autodesk isn't planning that far? They'd be foolish if they weren't.
99% of slashdot doesn't even want to admit there's a problem.
Netlfix (and yes, this is entirely about netflix and almost no-one else) has no finacial reason to be responsible with how they transmit data. Every ISP out there hates them. Not because they compete. Netflix is one of the few reasons people haven't gone entirely to their cellphones for the internet. What they hate is that Netflix is completely irresponsible when it comes to how they handle transmitting their data. No Cache. No real peering. They switch networks seemingly at random with no notification. All at tremendous detriment to the ISPs network.
The ISPs don't want to end net neutrality. Quite the opposite. Traffic shaping and bandwidth caps are expensive. You need equipment and people to deal with that. But they have to make Netflix poor network decisions hurt netflix. It's the only way they can see to reign them in. The FCC's answer is what you see here. I think it's a terrible idea.
What I'd suggest is something a bit more reasonable. Why is it that Netflix is unregulated? They're basically a broadcaster right? Why not get the ISPs together with Netflix and come up with some industry standards? If you're going to supply 34% of the content during peak usage, why shouldn't you be under some obligation to do it in a way that wasn't going to harm the network? Wouldn't that be more reasonable than the insanity they're suggesting now?
Or are we going to continue to pretend there's this vast ISP conspiracy to stop you from using the internet because losing customers is somehow possible?
A better analogy would be: 5% of people are driving RVs that take up both lanes and they drive like old ladies. The road builder doesn't want to tick anyone off so they went to the RV manufacturer and asked "Could you keep the size of your RVs to a single lane so people can pass them and not get stuck behind them?" to which the RV manufacture said "Yea, no"
So then other road builders built parallel roads, that only had one lane and were cheaper. All the people that didn't have RVs (average facebook user) moved over to those roads if they could to get away from the RVs
The road builder was then stuck with all the RV people, and 5% of the revenue and still having to maintain 2 lane roads. They panicked and begged the government to let them put in a bypass so the non-RV people had a way to get around the RVs and the road builder wouldn't lose ALL of their customers over night.
Now the road builders roads are congested by hippies with picket signs yelling "Fascist" and "We are the 99%!!!" Rather than do something about the totally uncooperative RV manufacture flouting industry standards, they expect all the road builders to expand all the roads to 8 lane highways for free, and not raise the price. They cite the Autoban as an example of how "all of Europe" is better than what we have. Meanwhile the road builder is accepting offers on the road and quietly trying to buy a chain of pizza places because this is just to infuriating to deal with anymore.
Support is Redhats only real product... (ok, they probably do development work to if you pay them to)
I'm sure they would support competitors products if you put it in your support contract. This is more like them clarifying "Our cheapest support contracts doesn't cover 3rd party stuff" but I guarantee if you're a top tier customer they're going to bend over backwards to help you. It's not like their Oracle and you're stuck with them. Their competitors OS's are compatible and just as free as theirs.
Google is only installing fiber in major metropolitan areas. They have a few thousand people served. At best you'll see major markets like New York, Chicago, Austin, etc...
Most places in this country will literally never get fiber. ISPs are slowing deployment of it due to expense. I suspect the ISPs are concerned a wireless tech breakthrough could torpedo their business... and they very well may be right.
Customers always go with the cheapest provider, so they can't afford infrastructure improvements without cutting themselves out of the market.
Actually, as long as you force them to disclose the transfer caps, it becomes a potential selling point. When I was forced to transfer to an ISP with a cap, it didn't take me more than a month to see my usage. I certainly know that transfer was an important point when I was shopping for my VPS.
Yes, but the ISP doesn't want you. They want you to go away. They want your parents. You moving to a provider with a higher cap is a good thing. (at least for now)
As for 'infrastructure', I'd have to point out that much of the rest of the developed world manages to offer 10-1000 mbit to 'everyone'.
Not even remotely true. Only 1 country on earth has above 50% broadband coverage: Liechtenstein http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... It's all about population density. The more tightly your population is packed in, the cheaper it is to serve them.
My 'free market' solution is to start removing artificial barriers towards companies running their own infrastructure. I'd downright subsidize 'neighborhood cooperatives'. It's a known fact that if you even threaten these guys with competition that suddenly it's profitable to offer 100X the service at the same price.
Actually, I think you're kind of right there. With the FCC starting to regulate things I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them just give up the infrastructure. It's expensive and difficult. Local municipalities could start doing it but they're going to have to buy back the franchise agreements they sold to the ISPs (what you call a monopoly)
lol, as entertaining as these conspiracy theories are, I can't help but blow my karma correcting uniformed nonsense.
The vast majority of ISPs in this country do not offer any (or very little) TV service at all.
The majority of the money you pay for your cable television goes to the the content providers and re-transmit fees. Local stations re-transmit fees are huge. The ISPs make the most money off services. Like voip, cloud storage, antivirus, DVRs, equipment rentals, etc...
Despite this, every ISP that I've worked with over the past 5 years or so has bandwidth cap projects going now. It's coming to everyone, everywhere. regardless of if your ISP provides TV or not.
and no, this doesn't have anything to do with Net Neutrality. It was coming either way. They're locked in a race to the bottom with prices. Customers always go with the cheapest provider, so they can't afford infrastructure improvements without cutting themselves out of the market. Most customers are like your parents. They just want to get onto facebook. People that do streaming suck up tons of bandwidth yet pay the same. It's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet and we're the fat guys. The sizzlers trying to narrow the front door so we can't get in.
They aren't This is marketing BS. Autodesk is about as closed source as you can get. They open source their document formats so any competitor will use them and further solidify Autodesks leadership position. But that has nothing to do with being open and everything to do with trying to lock in customers. Go install Autocad... It should elicit memories of installing Microsoft software in the 1990s. You enter keys and serials, verify things on-line over and over... You better hope nothing gets screwed up in your registry because you'll never get it running again. Oh, and you have to pay a yearly subscription that's hundreds of dollars./rollseyes
I'm not into 3D printers yet, they're not much more than toys at the moment. I'm not paying $1k for a toy. A CNC Mill is a lot more useful and not that much more expensive (granted it wouldn't be a great CNC mill) But I can see it coming, and I'm sure Autodesk does as well. All it will take is the discovery of a new kind of plastic and 3D printers will change things over night. The 3D printer crowd is a pretty big market though in regards to CAD software. Autdesks products are ridiculously expensive. People doing 3D printing just blew all their money on a printer, they cant afford to pay thousands for autocad. So they're either pirating it or switching to Linux which has a couple dozens truly open source cad programs.
This is just an attempt by them to stay relevant. But they stopped being relevant due to their sales model about 10 years ago. The only advantage they still have is being taught in schools. Which isn't a bad advantage... remember Apple in the 80's/90's? Schools didn't even have Dos! But that will only last for so long.
If you lie while making your argument, all anyone will talk about is the lie. There's nothing quite so stupid as hading your enemy a dagger right before your fight.
Dear George R R. Martin,
I don't mean to burst your "Grumpy old man" shtick, but you can turn all of those features off in just about every program that has them. If you don't want to be bothered with that, let me introduce you to a little piece of revolutionary software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Slashdot Mirror
Because the government wants to control all financial transactions down to the penny. They don't like cash either. And no, it's not just about taxes. It's about controlling the populace.
I'd argue that your interest in having the data be removed would be evidence enough that it's relevant. If it were irrelevant, why would you care?
There are plenty of things I've done in my life that I'd like to forget. Sadly, we must all live with our own choices. Penitence sucks.
http://online.wsj.com/article/...
Yay! This is what I've been saying for years! It's great to have someone agree with me. You've laid it out in a much more eloquent way than I ever had.
I'm a musician and an inventor. Everything I create I give away for free. I do the standard: Make a video of how to do it and post it. Thing. When I write a song I upload all the individual tracks so other people can, for example, take out the guitar and jam along if it helps them. etc... The art world would be far richer if more people did the same. Just try to go online and find just the drum track for some song so you can practice along with it... it's very rare.
I find it disgusting when I go to conventions or clubs and some dudes made a cool jig or tool, I ask him how he did it and he tells me its a trade secret but he can sell me one. I think the whole handyman community is thankfully turning that way. Imagine if Galileo had kept the telescope a secret...
Starting off with ... "fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics"
But the real application is ... "water-soluble nail polish.'"
This is what I don't like about submitting to slashdot. It reads like I wrote that. Like that's a quote from me. That's not what I submitted at all. They basically cut the last half of my post off, typed something totally different and provided an entirely different link. For once the editors did edit the story before posting it, but instead of improving it they mangled it.
In the paper, if you read it, this isn't really about the 2 materials the editors stuck in. Those are just the result of the real breakthrough. Which is IBM has designed modeling software that can design plastics to order. Previously they would just create a plastic, play with it, and see what it was good for. This is how accidents like Silly Putty and Post-it notes came about. But with this new software you can put in characteristics you want the plastic to have and it will spit out which plastics to make and how to make them. It will be revolutionary to every field in industry. The 2 materials mentioned in the Editors link were what they created with the software as a test. Their properties, while interesting, are incidental to the real discovery which is the software.
You shouldn't have to do ANYTHING to switch phones.
I take it you're one of those "Steve Jobs is Jesus!" people?
This situation smells of BS. By default it routes to SMS when iMessage fails to send to a phone.
Actually this sounds exactly like a typical Apple problem. There was a time that was not that long ago when you couldn't use anything apple with anything else. It was a totally closed ecosystem. That was completely intentional. They changed, a bit, to get back into the market... and have done well because of that. But they're still pretty much the most closed down, locked in ecosystem there is. I've always found it strange how open source people could support Apple at all. They're the most anti-choice software company out there.
Text Messages USED to cost money. Now, nobody actually uses TXT, as we no longer have dumb phones. We use Hangouts, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, GoogleVoice, email ....
Txt was good when all you had was a feature phone.
Congrats on living in a major metropolitan area. The other 99% of the world still has to pay for texts.
I'll never get over peoples myopic view of the world.
Attention, this is a public service announcement...
The way "The cloud" works.
A Cloud or SASS provider will schedule meetings with your management and give a flashy presentation bragging about their up-time, reliability and how your company will no longer need to maintain software or even have an IT department! They'll even migrate you to their servers FOR FREE! Yay!
You company will sign a 3 year contract and brag about all the savings the project will lead to. It will be fantastic!
You'll begin the migration project and quickly realize that the provider outsourced the conversion project to a random IT team from their "Trusted Partners Network" that consists of 2 people (1 manager, 1 employee) that are clearly located in some other country but refuse to admit which one. Having worked with competent people from other countries before you'll shrug this off as not that big of a deal.
Shortly after that they'll start stalling and delay. You may or may not get finished with the project before your management goes back to the Provider and demands the "Free" migration... only to find out the contract stated something to the effect of "Migration Assistance" and by that, they meant you have to do it with the help of those people on the phone you couldn't understand. Your management will resign itself to just getting it done so they can start saving money and dump it all in your lap.
Liking your job, and knowing that managements on a "Lets save money!" kick you'll do it without complaint. After all, once it's done, its done right?
Unfortunately, once it's done is when the problems will start. Since you did most of the migration work the provider will quickly move to blame the problem entirely on you. You'll start to realize that patching together their garbage product with bubblegum and duct tape might not have been such a good idea. But, you have a good reputation, you logged all the previous issues you'd had, and you eventually win management over and they realize that the product is garbage and you'd better start thinking of long term alternatives. But you're stuck in a 3yr contract so you have time to plan.
Then you get an update from the provider: "In an effort to improve server reliability and security we are deprecating ODBC/SQL connections to the database in 6 months" You'll question this and the provider will come back to you and say "Fear not! We've created our own API! It's great! It even uses our own proprietary version of SQL!!!"
So you'll start reviewing this and find out that their "new" version of SQL differs from the only version in 2 ways: 1. you can't do table joins. 2. you can only retrieve 10,000 rows at a time
You'll take this to management and explain that once this happens, moving your data off their servers will be nearly impossible. Migrating to another product will be very difficult. So your mangement will bring this concern to the provider who will say "If you need help migrating, we have a team that can help you! They only charge $200/hr!" and they'll send you right back to the 2 people that failed in the original migration.
Eventually the products customers will all realize it was a giant scam, and start dumping it. The products parent company will shut down the product, buy a startup that does the exact same thing, re-brand it and start all over again.
Rinse and Repeat.
Ask me how I know this... :-)
Its friggen terrible. Really... try it out. I like most of Open Office but Base is a buggy joke.
Well, I don't know what you want to use it for.
I'm going to take a wild guess and say you're trying to manage work, tickets, or something to that effect.
I'd try SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/
It's open source and free (without support)
It's the biggest open source CRM I know of.
Every alternative to Access I've seen is terrible. So I'd stop looking for something that replicates Access and start looking for something that does what you're wanting access to do. You might even settle on several applications if you're using access for multiple things.
you are funny, AutoDesk has 85% market share, they are the de factor standard. The are certainty The Relevant ones. The cost of their software is nothing to the companies that use them to make millions to billions a year in profits.
The open source CAD alternatives are crap, sad to say. There is no credible threat to AutoDesk on the horizon for at least the next decade
Yes, the industry uses Autocad. Just like Artists used to use Apple almost to exclusion. But now the indi-people are moving to other things because Autocad is insanely expensive. (and yes, the price really is insane) So what happened when all the indi-people started doing graphic art and recording on IBM PCs in the late 90s early 2000s? It didn't go so well for the apple desktop. Teenagers couldn't learn on ultra-expensive apple computers and apple software so they learned on PCs. When they got to school they took that knowledge with them and the idustry realized they could get away with buying stuff that was 1/10th the price. The market now is rife with PC art and recording software that's every bit as good as anything apple has.
I think the same thing is going on with Autocad now. Highschool kids in their basement with a 3D printer aren't playing around with Autocad... and that should be very worrying to Autodesk. And the next decade? You're probobly right there... I'm talking 5 to 10 years out. But do you think Autodesk isn't planning that far? They'd be foolish if they weren't.
Lets regulate netflix instead.
99% of slashdot doesn't even want to admit there's a problem.
Netlfix (and yes, this is entirely about netflix and almost no-one else) has no finacial reason to be responsible with how they transmit data. Every ISP out there hates them. Not because they compete. Netflix is one of the few reasons people haven't gone entirely to their cellphones for the internet. What they hate is that Netflix is completely irresponsible when it comes to how they handle transmitting their data. No Cache. No real peering. They switch networks seemingly at random with no notification. All at tremendous detriment to the ISPs network.
The ISPs don't want to end net neutrality. Quite the opposite. Traffic shaping and bandwidth caps are expensive. You need equipment and people to deal with that. But they have to make Netflix poor network decisions hurt netflix. It's the only way they can see to reign them in. The FCC's answer is what you see here. I think it's a terrible idea.
What I'd suggest is something a bit more reasonable. Why is it that Netflix is unregulated? They're basically a broadcaster right? Why not get the ISPs together with Netflix and come up with some industry standards? If you're going to supply 34% of the content during peak usage, why shouldn't you be under some obligation to do it in a way that wasn't going to harm the network? Wouldn't that be more reasonable than the insanity they're suggesting now?
Or are we going to continue to pretend there's this vast ISP conspiracy to stop you from using the internet because losing customers is somehow possible?
A better analogy would be:
5% of people are driving RVs that take up both lanes and they drive like old ladies.
The road builder doesn't want to tick anyone off so they went to the RV manufacturer and asked "Could you keep the size of your RVs to a single lane so people can pass them and not get stuck behind them?" to which the RV manufacture said "Yea, no"
So then other road builders built parallel roads, that only had one lane and were cheaper. All the people that didn't have RVs (average facebook user) moved over to those roads if they could to get away from the RVs
The road builder was then stuck with all the RV people, and 5% of the revenue and still having to maintain 2 lane roads. They panicked and begged the government to let them put in a bypass so the non-RV people had a way to get around the RVs and the road builder wouldn't lose ALL of their customers over night.
Now the road builders roads are congested by hippies with picket signs yelling "Fascist" and "We are the 99%!!!" Rather than do something about the totally uncooperative RV manufacture flouting industry standards, they expect all the road builders to expand all the roads to 8 lane highways for free, and not raise the price. They cite the Autoban as an example of how "all of Europe" is better than what we have. Meanwhile the road builder is accepting offers on the road and quietly trying to buy a chain of pizza places because this is just to infuriating to deal with anymore.
To me, the real question is: why is this self-described (and, to be sure, described by others as) Democrat acting so much like a fascist?
you seem to be making a distinction between a democrats and republicans. Answer: there is none.
Support is Redhats only real product... (ok, they probably do development work to if you pay them to)
I'm sure they would support competitors products if you put it in your support contract. This is more like them clarifying "Our cheapest support contracts doesn't cover 3rd party stuff" but I guarantee if you're a top tier customer they're going to bend over backwards to help you. It's not like their Oracle and you're stuck with them. Their competitors OS's are compatible and just as free as theirs.
The mailman was clearly on medical leave.
Google is only installing fiber in major metropolitan areas. They have a few thousand people served. At best you'll see major markets like New York, Chicago, Austin, etc...
Most places in this country will literally never get fiber. ISPs are slowing deployment of it due to expense. I suspect the ISPs are concerned a wireless tech breakthrough could torpedo their business... and they very well may be right.
Customers always go with the cheapest provider, so they can't afford infrastructure improvements without cutting themselves out of the market.
Actually, as long as you force them to disclose the transfer caps, it becomes a potential selling point. When I was forced to transfer to an ISP with a cap, it didn't take me more than a month to see my usage. I certainly know that transfer was an important point when I was shopping for my VPS.
Yes, but the ISP doesn't want you. They want you to go away. They want your parents. You moving to a provider with a higher cap is a good thing. (at least for now)
As for 'infrastructure', I'd have to point out that much of the rest of the developed world manages to offer 10-1000 mbit to 'everyone'.
Not even remotely true. Only 1 country on earth has above 50% broadband coverage: Liechtenstein
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
It's all about population density. The more tightly your population is packed in, the cheaper it is to serve them.
My 'free market' solution is to start removing artificial barriers towards companies running their own infrastructure. I'd downright subsidize 'neighborhood cooperatives'. It's a known fact that if you even threaten these guys with competition that suddenly it's profitable to offer 100X the service at the same price.
Actually, I think you're kind of right there. With the FCC starting to regulate things I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them just give up the infrastructure. It's expensive and difficult. Local municipalities could start doing it but they're going to have to buy back the franchise agreements they sold to the ISPs (what you call a monopoly)
lol, as entertaining as these conspiracy theories are, I can't help but blow my karma correcting uniformed nonsense.
The vast majority of ISPs in this country do not offer any (or very little) TV service at all.
The majority of the money you pay for your cable television goes to the the content providers and re-transmit fees. Local stations re-transmit fees are huge. The ISPs make the most money off services. Like voip, cloud storage, antivirus, DVRs, equipment rentals, etc...
Despite this, every ISP that I've worked with over the past 5 years or so has bandwidth cap projects going now. It's coming to everyone, everywhere. regardless of if your ISP provides TV or not.
Want to know why? http://time.com/98987/netflix-...
That's why.
and no, this doesn't have anything to do with Net Neutrality. It was coming either way. They're locked in a race to the bottom with prices. Customers always go with the cheapest provider, so they can't afford infrastructure improvements without cutting themselves out of the market. Most customers are like your parents. They just want to get onto facebook. People that do streaming suck up tons of bandwidth yet pay the same. It's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet and we're the fat guys. The sizzlers trying to narrow the front door so we can't get in.
They aren't This is marketing BS. Autodesk is about as closed source as you can get. They open source their document formats so any competitor will use them and further solidify Autodesks leadership position. But that has nothing to do with being open and everything to do with trying to lock in customers. Go install Autocad... It should elicit memories of installing Microsoft software in the 1990s. You enter keys and serials, verify things on-line over and over... You better hope nothing gets screwed up in your registry because you'll never get it running again. Oh, and you have to pay a yearly subscription that's hundreds of dollars. /rollseyes
I'm not into 3D printers yet, they're not much more than toys at the moment. I'm not paying $1k for a toy. A CNC Mill is a lot more useful and not that much more expensive (granted it wouldn't be a great CNC mill) But I can see it coming, and I'm sure Autodesk does as well. All it will take is the discovery of a new kind of plastic and 3D printers will change things over night. The 3D printer crowd is a pretty big market though in regards to CAD software. Autdesks products are ridiculously expensive. People doing 3D printing just blew all their money on a printer, they cant afford to pay thousands for autocad. So they're either pirating it or switching to Linux which has a couple dozens truly open source cad programs.
This is just an attempt by them to stay relevant. But they stopped being relevant due to their sales model about 10 years ago. The only advantage they still have is being taught in schools. Which isn't a bad advantage... remember Apple in the 80's/90's? Schools didn't even have Dos! But that will only last for so long.
If you lie while making your argument, all anyone will talk about is the lie. There's nothing quite so stupid as hading your enemy a dagger right before your fight.
real money.
No its not.
Dear George R R. Martin,
I don't mean to burst your "Grumpy old man" shtick, but you can turn all of those features off in just about every program that has them. If you don't want to be bothered with that, let me introduce you to a little piece of revolutionary software:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Oh cool. Then I have no problem with this at all. It's just the content industry screwing themselves out of a market yet again.