Nice of them to charge $120 for a book that has virtually no useful content but is required to get the assignments out of and then refuse to buy back the books because they are out-dated supposedly.
I've taken to looking for PDF versions of all my text books and tech books both because of price and because I want to be able to carry massive amounts of useful books around on a laptop or a e-book so I have them when I need them. Even the books I actually buy I try to find a torrent for because I don't want to pay twice for the same book just because I also want it as a PDF.
I think all publishers should make a PDF version available for free to people who own a legit hard copy of a book. It'd make me more likely to buy the hard copy and would be extremely useful to me.
I totally agree. I often install pirate copies of software I own because I don't have to mess with stupid copy protection stuff like finding my cd and inserting it.
Any software product without good documentation is difficult to use. Proprietary programs are potentially a lot worse than open source because you don't have an easy option for figuring out the hard bits for yourself.
My example would be Activant Eclipse (formally Intuit) - the ERP software the company I work for uses. It's expensive, performs poorly (even on the expensive IBM mini that is required), is buggy, is largely undocumented, is hard/expensive to customize and is completely required to keep our business running. We pay for an expensive support contract and support is still often a joke - complicated issues are usually figured out by our staff because their support staff isn't able to do much. A horrible painful experience.
A decent secure, easy to use, fee free, Internet-friendly currency is still needed. We saw a lot of flops in the 90's which seems to have given a cold fusion like slant to the concept but PayPal, e-checks, and credit cards all kind of suck.
The government SHOULD issue an e-currency but since they decline to do so I think it's appropriate for someone else to do so. I've thought of offering such an option where the only profit center for the company is in any interest earned while the money is in it's procession. As a retailer I know I'd make a lot more bank from my online sales if I didn't have to pay credit card fees and it'd be easier for small businesses to start if there was no start-up or monthly fees for using the system. I used to use PayPal but their fees aren't much better and they've proven to not be trustworthy or reliable.
In the 90's lots of digital money concepts got floated around and I never heard of them being illegal in the US.
I think the two great fortunes to be made, in the near future, from e-commerce are a better online currency and a better method of distribution and shipping of products. We have kind of crappy adaptions of pre-net technologies filling these needs right now but there is a lot of room for improvement. Unfortunately it'll take a fortune to make a fortune in these cases.
I've written a few games (classic arcade style stuff) in Javascript and they are painfully slow - shows the limitations of Javascript today. I hope these new faster JS implementations make Javascript speedier and less resource intensive. I think faster JS is a good step towards freedom from Flash/Java/Silverlight.
I've cut and paste other peoples sigs on documents to bypass having to actually talk to them to get what I wanted done. Exactly why the sigs are worthless. I've used that method to transfer property between parties, get loans, sign my own time cards, etc.
I have to agree. What the heck are they doing using an XBOX as their web server. Why not just plug the coffee machine in too so you can at least run Java. Doh.
I imagine a time hundreds of years from now when our civilization has fallen and been reborn and we are studying Mars and scientists are getting excited by the strange patterns they're seeing drawn onto the surface of Mars. Weird geometric lines that must mean that intelligent life has lived on Mars - quite forgetting the time we drew the lines ourselves with a messed up rover.
Of course this takes the fun away for everyone that wants to see themselves in things like this. I know people that like to pick their car out in Google Maps/Earth so I suppose it'd be just as fun to see their faces.
Brings up another point - should Google recognize and blur obvious personal identifiers like license plates?
I guess it depends on how they classify a face. Does a bit of an ear count as a face or only what a modern camera would count as a face by face recognition. If they're not silly then it should be pretty easy to blur faces.
Which less popular operating systems? I use Mac OS and Linux and don't have anything like the problems I have with Windows (although SP3 caused me no problems).
I have an AIX server too but upgrades are handled by IBM so I can't fairly say it goes smoothly or not.;)
I did several upgrades and didn't have any problems. Of course all my Windows machines are virtual machines (VMWare) so maybe that is why I had such good luck. I used my snapshot feature but didn't need to revert at all.
Just remember, nerds can work out and learn social grace. Jocks and pretty faces can't get smarter.
I think geeks should band together in a get-buff campaign. Go work out together, join toast masters together, etc. It's like American Pie for geeks - help each other in your effort to get laid. It's a lot less embarassing at the gym if everyone else isn't studly and mocking you.
You should do something with your homepage. If I came to your website looking for new music I'd probably leave before giving it a fair chance. No reason to sell yourself short. Your music is interesting. I wouldn't mind hearing more. Have you tried anything besides the piano?
It's like victimizing royalty by taking away land they aren't using so that commoners can hunt for food. Sure then they might not have quite so much bounty going to waste but then who cares? I'm not going to spend my time, energy, and money defending them.
Being civilized means respecting the rights of others to life and liberty - it doesn't mean giving others the right to be rich. I have no problem with people being rich but I feel no need to defend their wealth. I don't believe that being rich makes them more productive so from my point of view it's better if they have to continue struggling for their wealth by doing useful things like producing more music, movies, and other cultural resources. Sitting on their ass enjoying their wealth isn't really a boon for humanity although most of us wouldn't mind being able to do so.
Yeah but Sun is a multi-headed beast like most corporations. One head doesn't know what the other is doing or always go along with the same behaviors.
Besides, if OpenOffice didn't basically suck then Sun probably would bundle the better features into a closed source version. Luckily, OpenOffice is such a bit of crap that nobody is very likely to pay for it when they could just pay for M$ Office.
PayPal sucks for seller's too. They have the bad habit of doing things like deciding to lock your account and refund all your recent transactions without adequate explanation or any means of recourse. Who knows if they actually give this money back to the buyers or if they just keep it.
I for one refuse to use PayPal ever again. I think we need something better than credit cards for buying and selling online but PayPal isn't the solution. It's became very evil since eBay bought it. I've considered creating my own alternative but I think to compete with PayPal and credit cards any alternative needs several major backers such as Amazon and iTunes if it is to have any hope. I'm surprised none of them have formed together to form an alternative as it'd seem they could easily boost their profits by cutting the expense of PayPal and credit card processing fees. If they saved a dime per transaction with the volume they do it'd be a fair savings.
A free, easy to use, well advertised, auction/store + online cash alternative to eBay + PayPal is a killer app waiting to happen. Lots of people hate eBay and PayPal. Lots of alternatives exist but none I've seen are both easy to use and well advertised.
I don't really care a lot about player price once it's under $500. What is keeping me back is the price of movies and copy protection. Now that copy protection has been broken all they need is to make movies $5-$20 like DVDs and I'll start buying tons.
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I'm quite a bit older and Google's developer centric environment is appealing to me. When I'm even more ancient maybe I'll try to get a job there.
Nice of them to charge $120 for a book that has virtually no useful content but is required to get the assignments out of and then refuse to buy back the books because they are out-dated supposedly.
I've taken to looking for PDF versions of all my text books and tech books both because of price and because I want to be able to carry massive amounts of useful books around on a laptop or a e-book so I have them when I need them. Even the books I actually buy I try to find a torrent for because I don't want to pay twice for the same book just because I also want it as a PDF.
I think all publishers should make a PDF version available for free to people who own a legit hard copy of a book. It'd make me more likely to buy the hard copy and would be extremely useful to me.
I totally agree. I often install pirate copies of software I own because I don't have to mess with stupid copy protection stuff like finding my cd and inserting it.
Any software product without good documentation is difficult to use. Proprietary programs are potentially a lot worse than open source because you don't have an easy option for figuring out the hard bits for yourself.
My example would be Activant Eclipse (formally Intuit) - the ERP software the company I work for uses. It's expensive, performs poorly (even on the expensive IBM mini that is required), is buggy, is largely undocumented, is hard/expensive to customize and is completely required to keep our business running. We pay for an expensive support contract and support is still often a joke - complicated issues are usually figured out by our staff because their support staff isn't able to do much. A horrible painful experience.
I assume it doesn't but IMO it should. That'd make it about perfect. Build in a camera and it'd be my ideal device.
What I really want is for this to work over an iPod Touch. I'd like to use an iPod as a phone when I have wifi coverage.
A decent secure, easy to use, fee free, Internet-friendly currency is still needed. We saw a lot of flops in the 90's which seems to have given a cold fusion like slant to the concept but PayPal, e-checks, and credit cards all kind of suck.
The government SHOULD issue an e-currency but since they decline to do so I think it's appropriate for someone else to do so. I've thought of offering such an option where the only profit center for the company is in any interest earned while the money is in it's procession. As a retailer I know I'd make a lot more bank from my online sales if I didn't have to pay credit card fees and it'd be easier for small businesses to start if there was no start-up or monthly fees for using the system. I used to use PayPal but their fees aren't much better and they've proven to not be trustworthy or reliable.
In the 90's lots of digital money concepts got floated around and I never heard of them being illegal in the US.
I think the two great fortunes to be made, in the near future, from e-commerce are a better online currency and a better method of distribution and shipping of products. We have kind of crappy adaptions of pre-net technologies filling these needs right now but there is a lot of room for improvement. Unfortunately it'll take a fortune to make a fortune in these cases.
I've written a few games (classic arcade style stuff) in Javascript and they are painfully slow - shows the limitations of Javascript today. I hope these new faster JS implementations make Javascript speedier and less resource intensive. I think faster JS is a good step towards freedom from Flash/Java/Silverlight.
I've cut and paste other peoples sigs on documents to bypass having to actually talk to them to get what I wanted done. Exactly why the sigs are worthless. I've used that method to transfer property between parties, get loans, sign my own time cards, etc.
I have to agree. What the heck are they doing using an XBOX as their web server. Why not just plug the coffee machine in too so you can at least run Java. Doh.
I imagine a time hundreds of years from now when our civilization has fallen and been reborn and we are studying Mars and scientists are getting excited by the strange patterns they're seeing drawn onto the surface of Mars. Weird geometric lines that must mean that intelligent life has lived on Mars - quite forgetting the time we drew the lines ourselves with a messed up rover.
Of course this takes the fun away for everyone that wants to see themselves in things like this. I know people that like to pick their car out in Google Maps/Earth so I suppose it'd be just as fun to see their faces.
Brings up another point - should Google recognize and blur obvious personal identifiers like license plates?
I guess it depends on how they classify a face. Does a bit of an ear count as a face or only what a modern camera would count as a face by face recognition. If they're not silly then it should be pretty easy to blur faces.
Which less popular operating systems? I use Mac OS and Linux and don't have anything like the problems I have with Windows (although SP3 caused me no problems).
;)
I have an AIX server too but upgrades are handled by IBM so I can't fairly say it goes smoothly or not.
It'd be more efficient to list the features that aren't so bad.
I did several upgrades and didn't have any problems. Of course all my Windows machines are virtual machines (VMWare) so maybe that is why I had such good luck. I used my snapshot feature but didn't need to revert at all.
Just remember, nerds can work out and learn social grace. Jocks and pretty faces can't get smarter.
I think geeks should band together in a get-buff campaign. Go work out together, join toast masters together, etc. It's like American Pie for geeks - help each other in your effort to get laid. It's a lot less embarassing at the gym if everyone else isn't studly and mocking you.
I'd suggest the most outrageous efforts to dress like your favorite jocks. Dumb looks, oversized muscles, barf down your front, etc.
You should do something with your homepage. If I came to your website looking for new music I'd probably leave before giving it a fair chance. No reason to sell yourself short. Your music is interesting. I wouldn't mind hearing more. Have you tried anything besides the piano?
It's like victimizing royalty by taking away land they aren't using so that commoners can hunt for food. Sure then they might not have quite so much bounty going to waste but then who cares? I'm not going to spend my time, energy, and money defending them.
Being civilized means respecting the rights of others to life and liberty - it doesn't mean giving others the right to be rich. I have no problem with people being rich but I feel no need to defend their wealth. I don't believe that being rich makes them more productive so from my point of view it's better if they have to continue struggling for their wealth by doing useful things like producing more music, movies, and other cultural resources. Sitting on their ass enjoying their wealth isn't really a boon for humanity although most of us wouldn't mind being able to do so.
Yeah but Sun is a multi-headed beast like most corporations. One head doesn't know what the other is doing or always go along with the same behaviors.
Besides, if OpenOffice didn't basically suck then Sun probably would bundle the better features into a closed source version. Luckily, OpenOffice is such a bit of crap that nobody is very likely to pay for it when they could just pay for M$ Office.
Except that in the open source world terrorism consists of installing Windows on your friend's computer. Scary but hardly action packed. :)
PayPal sucks for seller's too. They have the bad habit of doing things like deciding to lock your account and refund all your recent transactions without adequate explanation or any means of recourse. Who knows if they actually give this money back to the buyers or if they just keep it.
I for one refuse to use PayPal ever again. I think we need something better than credit cards for buying and selling online but PayPal isn't the solution. It's became very evil since eBay bought it. I've considered creating my own alternative but I think to compete with PayPal and credit cards any alternative needs several major backers such as Amazon and iTunes if it is to have any hope. I'm surprised none of them have formed together to form an alternative as it'd seem they could easily boost their profits by cutting the expense of PayPal and credit card processing fees. If they saved a dime per transaction with the volume they do it'd be a fair savings.
A free, easy to use, well advertised, auction/store + online cash alternative to eBay + PayPal is a killer app waiting to happen. Lots of people hate eBay and PayPal. Lots of alternatives exist but none I've seen are both easy to use and well advertised.
I use green on black for my consoles and programming because I never sleep and it's easier on my eyes.
I don't really care a lot about player price once it's under $500. What is keeping me back is the price of movies and copy protection. Now that copy protection has been broken all they need is to make movies $5-$20 like DVDs and I'll start buying tons.