The customer/vendor relationship is not a one way street. Just as there are bad vendors, there are also bad customers. Any successful business seeks good customers and sheds bad customers just as any good consumer seeks good vendors and shuns bad ones.
If a customer is not making you money, you should not do business with them. They are ripping you off. That's all Best Buy is up to here.
Everyone thought Coleman's campaign was over after Wellstone died. In fact, it was until the heavily politicized Wellstone memorial that turned off the Minnesota public.
You see, it is impossible to campaign against a dead man when you have only a week to campaign.
I fail to see how a company deciding they like a president as extremely pro-business as Bush is a conspiracy.
That's not the conspiracy. First, my guess is Eisner is a Kerry guy. Second, accusing Disney of pulling a movie because of a feared backlash from Bush is a conspiracy.
Corporate executives LOVE Bush.
Some do, some don't. You are treating corporate executives as if they are some amorphous lump. They aren't. There is a group of them, including George Soros and Warren Buffet, who would like to see Bush out of office.
Bush is not likely to change his corporate policies because Disney does or does not distribute this film. Distribution of the film, however, is likely to harm Disney's image among a lot of Americans who don't particularly like Michael Moore to start with.
Again, I ask which explanation is simpler? The evil corporation in bed with Bush explanation or the rational corporation protecting its brand explanation?
Bush does not "feed" Disney. I seriously doubt Disney's decision has anything to do with the Bush administration. It has more to do with its brand as a producer of family-oriented entertainment.
Disney has ALWAYS been uncomfortable with the potential impact of Miramax productions on its brand. I think this time they feel that this movie goes over the line on their brand.
Why look for conspiracies when a simpler explanation will do?
First off, if I plan on such a company, and such load, I don't gripe about a mainstream sound card that won't work in Linux on my server.
First off, he was talking about a desktop system, not a server.
Second, today it's a sound card, tomorrow its a SCSI driver.
I just make perfectly sure that the hardware I'm going to use can perfectly well support the dedicated software of my service
How do you do that? You verify with the vendors that the hardware works with your OS of choice. Oddly enough, that is exactly what he did.
Linux has absolutely no value whatsoever. I am amazed when people choose to use it. Well, except poor people who cannot afford real hardware. Let them eat cake.
In my recollection, Linux evangelists have always been immature, elitist, assholes. I am not sure what is different today that makes you suspect a conspiracy.
No one thought Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. That was not the rationale behind the war. The rationale was WMD that did not exist, yet many people including the UN weapon inspectors and European nations did believe existed.
It would be ironic if it were true. In spite of your paranoid and highly selective thinking, the United States is one of the most free nations on earth (more free than most of its European counterparts bitching about this new program). Furthermore, given Sept 11, it should be highly concerned about who is entering the country.
We have the right to know who is entering our country. People don't have the right to visit freely. We also happen to be a country at war with Islamic fundamentalist, so it is kinda critical at the moment that we control our borders.
I know the knee-jerk reaction is to say, "I'll go to DirecTV". But it is also the hypocritical reaction of the/. crowd. The problem here is Viacom. They are trying to leverage their over the air stations to force DishNetwork to carry cable stations that people just don't want. These "over the air" stations are Viacom's use of the people's airwaves. This is a severe abuse of a government granted position and I applaud DishNetwork for having the balls to stand up to Viacom.
When my book, Java Database Best Practices first came out, before anyone could possibly have read it, someone posted a recommendation instead for another, competing book that had not yet been published.
In spite of this obvious attempt to mislead readers, Amazon chose to do nothing. That recommendation is still up there!
I have used DirecTV, Comcast Digital Cable, and Dish Network. In that order. I absolutely hated digital cable.
DirecTV
Initially, I got DirecTV. The only trouble I had with reception was during terrible snow storms. Otherwise everything was just fine. In the end though, I hated being limited (as I was at the time) to two receivers. So I got digital cable.
Comcast
The program guide that ships with Comcast digital cable boxes is so horrible that it drives me absolutely nuts. Fortunately, on one of my TV's I had ReplayTV and could effectively ignore the Comcast program guide. On the others, however, I had to live through its slowness and the fact that ads take up a majority of the screen space.
Very few channels with digital cable are actually digital. There is a noticeable quality difference between satelite and cable, even if you are not big into home theatre systems. I especially had problems with ghosting on one of the local channels!
DishNetwork
When I moved, I went back to satellite. I went with DishNetwork because I could get four receivers and not pay for the receivers. It was the best of both worlds. Honestly, now that I believe DirecTV offers similar deals (up to 4 receivers, no paying for the receiver), I doubt there is any difference between the two services. I like the program guide for DTV best, but DishNetwork is good enough--especially that I now have two ReplayTV units. I would flip a coin between choosing which sat network, but I would never in a million years go back to digital cable.
It is not at all a ridiculous article. From your quote:
"Its really quite a pointless article for me in terms of product. Its not going to convince me to buy an iPod mini either just because Apple have an inventive pricing scheme..."
It is clear you missed the entire point of the article. The article is not about convincing you to buy a mini. It is about the pricing strategy of a particular product. ANY product on earth has a pricing strategy. NO ONE on earth buys on pricing strategy. However, you have to determine a pricing strategy before you set a price that will work in a given market. This article was an analysis of that strategy.
That approach works only when the margins are high. If the margins are low, you cannot afford to pay people who add very little value great wages and benefits.
The only reason that Apple seems to have any advantage they didn't come out with faster CPUs for almost 2 whole years. Most people would find little reason to spend $3000 upgrading from 500Mhz to 1250Mhz.
The only reason CPU matters is because the software that runs on it no longer supports slower CPUs. This is a consistent problem with Windows--and OS that gets slower every version.
In fact, I believe that 500 Mhz to 1GHz was exactly what my last PC upgrade was. Only to find out that video editing on PC hardware was painful as hell and I could not add a DVD burner (this is Jan 2001). Apple's at the time, however, came with SuperDrive's.
Now that Apple's got a real CPU supplier, things will change. A 1.2Ghz PowerBook won't look so hot compared to the 4 Ghz PowerBooks out in 2005.
As I noted in my original post, I have no incentive to move from a G4 to a G5. The only reason I might consider moving from a 500 MHz G4 to a G5 laptop when they come out is simply because a G5 laptop would be too cool.
The real factors that have always caused me to upgrade in the PC world are not cool, but sheer utility. Things like having a motherboard with what seemed like enough RAM at the time, yet I later find I maxed it out and can add no more. Or the need for firewire ports or Gigabit ethernet or supported video cards in a recent OS release.
A 5 year old 500Mhz PIII system is still perfectly usable for everything except games.
Yeah, if you replaced all of the original parts (video cards, sound cards, etc) and added firewire cards and pray that your motherboard can support 1/2 GB RAM or more. At that point, however, you have paid for a new computer.
One thing people seem to forget about when you compare pricing is how often you have to replace your windows box versus an apple box. For the purposes of this discussion, I will define obsolete as needing to buy a new system in order run the newest software or add on the newest hardware changes.
Prior to switching to an apple, my laptop systems were obviously obsolete after 2 years and my desktop systems after 2.5 years (well, I would convert the desktop systems to FreeBSD servers--no GUI--or use them as firewalls).
I bought my Apple TiBook in June 2001. I am not even beginning to feel the itch to buy a new one. Maybe when the G5 comes out, but that is an issue of cool, not obsolescense. It has fireware and USB, something many cheaper PC laptops still do not ship with! All my software runs perfectly well, even though it is a 500MHz machine that was slower than its PC friends when it came out. You see, OS X has actually performed BETTER on the same hardware with each release. Windows and Linux should learn from that.
On the desktop side, I bought a dual G4 1GHz system in January 2002. It is almost 2 years old. It is fast enough, comes with Giga ethernet, firewire, usb, 1.5 GB RAM, 2 monitors, and runs all my software at once without any speed issues. I honestly don't expect to be upgrading any time soon. I have no idea what would make me upgrade given that the G5's do not seem to provide enough incentive.
While rendering USED TO take up a lot of your NLE time (the only aspect of editing that can utilize a cluster), these days most of NLE is just tedious interactive work with the system. What matters most about an NLE system is the UI, something people in the free software world know jack crap about.
Regardless of the legality of property rights, these morons have never been off this planet. Thus, they have no business claiming any asteriod. Someone has to physically claim the thing before it can be bartered. Then, that locale has to fall under the jurisdiction of some country to be enforced.
Can someone actually answer me simple question: Why? Does anyone know what MS has done is technically wrong?
They are a monopoly and they abused that monopoly position. Though it is not wrong to be a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse your monopoly position.
Chances are, you didn't purchase your copy of Windows.
Actually, chances are you have been forced to buy copies of Windows you do not even legally need.
Steve Jobs had the monopoly going first.
No, he did not. Apple is not a monopoly. You have to control an overwhelming portion of the market and the barriers to entry in the market have to be significant. Apple has never been in that position, though one could argue it could have placed itself in that position. Maybe.
I apoligize. I obviously misread your original statement./. is filled with vitriolic speech towards business and managers when business and managers are largely why most of these people can put food on the table. Too often, technologists forget that technology exists to make life easier, life does not exist to use technology.
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The customer/vendor relationship is not a one way street. Just as there are bad vendors, there are also bad customers. Any successful business seeks good customers and sheds bad customers just as any good consumer seeks good vendors and shuns bad ones.
If a customer is not making you money, you should not do business with them. They are ripping you off. That's all Best Buy is up to here.
You guys are serious morons.
Everyone thought Coleman's campaign was over after Wellstone died. In fact, it was until the heavily politicized Wellstone memorial that turned off the Minnesota public.
You see, it is impossible to campaign against a dead man when you have only a week to campaign.
You get paid, don't you?
And I assume you would like to motivate them to continue paying you?
Or do you think you automatically should be paid for your glowing charm?
That's not the conspiracy. First, my guess is Eisner is a Kerry guy. Second, accusing Disney of pulling a movie because of a feared backlash from Bush is a conspiracy.
Corporate executives LOVE Bush.
Some do, some don't. You are treating corporate executives as if they are some amorphous lump. They aren't. There is a group of them, including George Soros and Warren Buffet, who would like to see Bush out of office.
Bush is not likely to change his corporate policies because Disney does or does not distribute this film. Distribution of the film, however, is likely to harm Disney's image among a lot of Americans who don't particularly like Michael Moore to start with.
Again, I ask which explanation is simpler? The evil corporation in bed with Bush explanation or the rational corporation protecting its brand explanation?
Bush does not "feed" Disney. I seriously doubt Disney's decision has anything to do with the Bush administration. It has more to do with its brand as a producer of family-oriented entertainment.
Disney has ALWAYS been uncomfortable with the potential impact of Miramax productions on its brand. I think this time they feel that this movie goes over the line on their brand.
Why look for conspiracies when a simpler explanation will do?
And if he is pissed off about lack of sound card support for his Linux box, he should write the driver himself!
First off, he was talking about a desktop system, not a server.
Second, today it's a sound card, tomorrow its a SCSI driver.
I just make perfectly sure that the hardware I'm going to use can perfectly well support the dedicated software of my service
How do you do that? You verify with the vendors that the hardware works with your OS of choice. Oddly enough, that is exactly what he did.
Linux has absolutely no value whatsoever. I am amazed when people choose to use it. Well, except poor people who cannot afford real hardware. Let them eat cake.
In my recollection, Linux evangelists have always been immature, elitist, assholes. I am not sure what is different today that makes you suspect a conspiracy.
Yet you will go to China where you are spied on constantly?
No one thought Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. That was not the rationale behind the war. The rationale was WMD that did not exist, yet many people including the UN weapon inspectors and European nations did believe existed.
It would be ironic if it were true. In spite of your paranoid and highly selective thinking, the United States is one of the most free nations on earth (more free than most of its European counterparts bitching about this new program). Furthermore, given Sept 11, it should be highly concerned about who is entering the country.
I like the system. I think we need to do our best to know exactly who is coming and going out of this country.
Having said that, George Bush is otherwise the worst President of my life time, save Nixon.
We have the right to know who is entering our country. People don't have the right to visit freely. We also happen to be a country at war with Islamic fundamentalist, so it is kinda critical at the moment that we control our borders.
Get over it or just don't come here.
I won't be switching to DirecTV.
In spite of this obvious attempt to mislead readers, Amazon chose to do nothing. That recommendation is still up there!
DirecTV
Initially, I got DirecTV. The only trouble I had with reception was during terrible snow storms. Otherwise everything was just fine. In the end though, I hated being limited (as I was at the time) to two receivers. So I got digital cable.
Comcast
The program guide that ships with Comcast digital cable boxes is so horrible that it drives me absolutely nuts. Fortunately, on one of my TV's I had ReplayTV and could effectively ignore the Comcast program guide. On the others, however, I had to live through its slowness and the fact that ads take up a majority of the screen space.
Very few channels with digital cable are actually digital. There is a noticeable quality difference between satelite and cable, even if you are not big into home theatre systems. I especially had problems with ghosting on one of the local channels!
DishNetwork
When I moved, I went back to satellite. I went with DishNetwork because I could get four receivers and not pay for the receivers. It was the best of both worlds. Honestly, now that I believe DirecTV offers similar deals (up to 4 receivers, no paying for the receiver), I doubt there is any difference between the two services. I like the program guide for DTV best, but DishNetwork is good enough--especially that I now have two ReplayTV units. I would flip a coin between choosing which sat network, but I would never in a million years go back to digital cable.
"Its really quite a pointless article for me in terms of product. Its not going to convince me to buy an iPod mini either just because Apple have an inventive pricing scheme..."
It is clear you missed the entire point of the article. The article is not about convincing you to buy a mini. It is about the pricing strategy of a particular product. ANY product on earth has a pricing strategy. NO ONE on earth buys on pricing strategy. However, you have to determine a pricing strategy before you set a price that will work in a given market. This article was an analysis of that strategy.
That approach works only when the margins are high. If the margins are low, you cannot afford to pay people who add very little value great wages and benefits.
The only reason CPU matters is because the software that runs on it no longer supports slower CPUs. This is a consistent problem with Windows--and OS that gets slower every version.
In fact, I believe that 500 Mhz to 1GHz was exactly what my last PC upgrade was. Only to find out that video editing on PC hardware was painful as hell and I could not add a DVD burner (this is Jan 2001). Apple's at the time, however, came with SuperDrive's.
Now that Apple's got a real CPU supplier, things will change. A 1.2Ghz PowerBook won't look so hot compared to the 4 Ghz PowerBooks out in 2005.
As I noted in my original post, I have no incentive to move from a G4 to a G5. The only reason I might consider moving from a 500 MHz G4 to a G5 laptop when they come out is simply because a G5 laptop would be too cool.
The real factors that have always caused me to upgrade in the PC world are not cool, but sheer utility. Things like having a motherboard with what seemed like enough RAM at the time, yet I later find I maxed it out and can add no more. Or the need for firewire ports or Gigabit ethernet or supported video cards in a recent OS release.
A 5 year old 500Mhz PIII system is still perfectly usable for everything except games.
Yeah, if you replaced all of the original parts (video cards, sound cards, etc) and added firewire cards and pray that your motherboard can support 1/2 GB RAM or more. At that point, however, you have paid for a new computer.
Prior to switching to an apple, my laptop systems were obviously obsolete after 2 years and my desktop systems after 2.5 years (well, I would convert the desktop systems to FreeBSD servers--no GUI--or use them as firewalls).
I bought my Apple TiBook in June 2001. I am not even beginning to feel the itch to buy a new one. Maybe when the G5 comes out, but that is an issue of cool, not obsolescense. It has fireware and USB, something many cheaper PC laptops still do not ship with! All my software runs perfectly well, even though it is a 500MHz machine that was slower than its PC friends when it came out. You see, OS X has actually performed BETTER on the same hardware with each release. Windows and Linux should learn from that.
On the desktop side, I bought a dual G4 1GHz system in January 2002. It is almost 2 years old. It is fast enough, comes with Giga ethernet, firewire, usb, 1.5 GB RAM, 2 monitors, and runs all my software at once without any speed issues. I honestly don't expect to be upgrading any time soon. I have no idea what would make me upgrade given that the G5's do not seem to provide enough incentive.
While rendering USED TO take up a lot of your NLE time (the only aspect of editing that can utilize a cluster), these days most of NLE is just tedious interactive work with the system. What matters most about an NLE system is the UI, something people in the free software world know jack crap about.
OrbDev is nothing more than a looney bin.
They are a monopoly and they abused that monopoly position. Though it is not wrong to be a monopoly, it is illegal to abuse your monopoly position.
Chances are, you didn't purchase your copy of Windows.
Actually, chances are you have been forced to buy copies of Windows you do not even legally need.
Steve Jobs had the monopoly going first.
No, he did not. Apple is not a monopoly. You have to control an overwhelming portion of the market and the barriers to entry in the market have to be significant. Apple has never been in that position, though one could argue it could have placed itself in that position. Maybe.
The government rolled over when George Bush became President. Can anyone think of one positive accomplishment of this President? I can't.
I apoligize. I obviously misread your original statement. /. is filled with vitriolic speech towards business and managers when business and managers are largely why most of these people can put food on the table. Too often, technologists forget that technology exists to make life easier, life does not exist to use technology.