Nobody wants to pay $300 for thier printer when they can pay $100 for it (and later pay $40 for the cartridges).
I'd be more than happy to buy one, provided I could refill the cartridges with a bottle. Presently I'm paying 30 U$S per liter for Epson replacemennt ink, so the ink cost is negligible, but the syringe process is an awful mess.
I think I'm not alone hoping for an ink-jet printer that's easily serviceable, ink refill and head change wise.
It will take years and probably longer than a decade, but in the end Windows and MS Office (not Microsoft, they have enough money to survive virtually forever) is doomed.
1) No amount of money (even 40 B last forever).
2) The fabled 40 B are really much, much less.
3) When the shit hits the fan, youl see a class action suit from MSFT shareholders in order to distribute the mytical 40 B as dividend faster that you can say "cookie jar accounting".
I thought that alot of their income comes from selling the embedded version of opera to other companies to include in their products, like celphones, pda, etc.
I agree, so the question is: Why don't they make the browser free (as in beer), and own the field. It's really that good, but nobody pays for browsers anymore. I know there are a lot of people here saying they've registered Opera, but they sound like Opera employees astroturfing.
Opera makes its well-deserved money from embedded, cell-phones, and the like. They have (almost) nothing to lose.
So, Opera, PLEASE: make the Opera browser free (gratis) and end the browser wars.
What in the world is intuitive about base 12? (unless you have 6 fingers on each hand)
The intuitive part is that you can divide a dozen by 2, 3, 4 and 6 and get a whole number as a result. This may mean little to you, but if you think of a world of small quantities of anything, and mostly illiterate people (that is, most of human history) you see it was a HUGE advantage.
More so, if you forget your fixation with fingers (friendly pun), base-10 arithmetic was a bitch until the adoption of arabic numerals, sometime around the 10th. century. If you have ever had the painful experience of calculating in, say , Roman numerals you know what I'm talking about..
because unlike the ancient Babylonians, I was raised in a base-10 world.
But you have a lot in common with ancient Babylonians, because base-10 is artificial and must be learned, but base-12 is intuitive, natural and (pardon me) just easy.
There's a reason people have used base-12 systems for milennia.
Cheers,
Re:Lets hope that the result is progress
on
Google v. Microsoft
·
· Score: 1
But then again, what is it that they want to accomplice?
Can you imagine the accountability headaches associated with asking a "community" to write custom tax logic?
Yes, but in most countries there's an accountants "college", the equivalent to the lawyer's "bar", that would be more than happy to provide the tax logic if you were willing to do the programmong part.
I think that in the future you're going to see a lot of these collaborations between OSS programmers and interested parties.
I write software for local governments, and at least in this state (which is one of the richest in the US), OSS wouldn't save any money nor eliminate any problems.
And you raise an interesting point: in most of the rest of the world, Governments, local or otherwise, wouldn't DREAM of paying Billy G anything unless there was a big kickback involved.
So, the battle outside the USA will be OSS vs. pirated MS vs. envelope under the table.
It will be interesting to watch, and that's an understatement.
I think you live in Argentina ( ? ) so you probably have seen a good demonstration of how it can all go wrong and if you can see the same thing happening the US then I'm not going to argue with you.
Good guess! Right on target. I'm not suggesting the USA are going to hell in a basket like us, but from the outside there seem to be some disturbing trends. One of them is the increasing distance between the rich and the poor, that is much more like in the third world than in Europe. I guess that these company-raping CEOs (their OWN company, by God) that grace the covers of Fortune or Forbes wouldn't be tolerated in Europe either.
Rather than my standard of living dropping to 3rd world levels
Not knowing you I can hardly talk about your living standard, but in case you're interested in a more general point of view...
I've been travelling to the USA regularly for quite a few years (decades, in fact), and from the outside it's very obious the hollowing of the middle class. The USA seems to be splitting in two classes: one well-to-do, and an underclass. This is a typical Thirld World model of society.
Until now, programmers believed they were part of the Well-to-dos, but then the outsourcing of tech jobs began, and suddenly life wasn't so good anymore.
I mean, you have lawyers and investment bankers on one side, and McRobots and Walt-Slaves on the other. Manufacturing jobs went away long ago. What jobs are left to sustain a middle class standard of living? Not so many and the shrinkage has just begun.
This kind of glosses over the fact that this price was available only for government program offering low-cost computers to Thais.... Prices for regular software dropped somewhat shortly after, but not to the level quoted in the article.
Dropped to the regular Thirld World street price for Windows and MS Office, $5?
since they have 40 to 60 billion dollars in their kitty, how long will they take to burn through all of their cash reserves, even if they never sold another product ever again say, from Jan 2004?
As long as it takes their shareholders to file a class action suit in order to have the cash distributed as dividend, as it should.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody wants to pay $300 for thier printer when they can pay $100 for it (and later pay $40 for the cartridges).
I'd be more than happy to buy one, provided I could refill the cartridges with a bottle.
Presently I'm paying 30 U$S per liter for Epson replacemennt ink, so the ink cost is negligible, but the syringe process is an awful mess.
I think I'm not alone hoping for an ink-jet printer that's easily serviceable, ink refill and head change wise.
Cheers,
Got news for you...
YOU may be (past) 30, but somewhere out there, there's a twenty-something fellow, getting ready to start writing some great free software.
You're toast. Get over it.
Best wishes,
Well. even as a token gesture it would be great if they said: here, we Open Sourced all OUR code. Fill the empty places!
It would be great PR, and almost free (I can't believe IBM is making money from SmartSuite)
Disclaimer: back then, I was a fan of Ami Pro (oh, the memories!)
Cheers,
I'm not doubting your word, but are we talking about the same US?
Last time I was there, they were using miles, inches, etc.
Please clarify.
Utterly confused,
I think this is normal human behaviour and does not only apply to people's choices in computing.
It may look like NHB to you, but in my part of the world we call them "morons.
Cheers,
No, it's not off topic, it's Funny. Some people don't know their Roman history.
No, Gertseni, no. Some of us know our Roman history pretty well, and still think this post is -1, Offtopic.
Cheers,
It will take years and probably longer than a decade, but in the end Windows and MS Office (not Microsoft, they have enough money to survive virtually forever) is doomed.
1) No amount of money (even 40 B last forever).
2) The fabled 40 B are really much, much less.
3) When the shit hits the fan, youl see a class action suit from MSFT shareholders in order to distribute the mytical 40 B as dividend faster that you can say "cookie jar accounting".
4) ???
5 Profit!!!
Cheers,
I really believe it is much more than just talk to negotiate better license terms from Microsoft.
No, it's just talk to increase the size of the bribe.
Cheers (from South America),
I thought that alot of their income comes from selling the embedded version of opera to other companies to include in their products, like celphones, pda, etc.
I agree, so the question is: Why don't they make the browser free (as in beer), and own the field.
It's really that good, but nobody pays for browsers anymore.
I know there are a lot of people here saying they've registered Opera, but they sound like Opera employees astroturfing.
Opera makes its well-deserved money from embedded, cell-phones, and the like. They have (almost) nothing to lose.
So, Opera, PLEASE: make the Opera browser free (gratis) and end the browser wars.
Cheers, posted from Opera 7.23.
On the other hand, germany is still a shitty place to live, and it's getting worse.
Care to elaborate?
Just interested.
Cheers,
What in the world is intuitive about base 12? (unless you have 6 fingers on each hand)
The intuitive part is that you can divide a dozen by 2, 3, 4 and 6 and get a whole number as a result.
This may mean little to you, but if you think of a world of small quantities of anything, and mostly illiterate people (that is, most of human history) you see it was a HUGE advantage.
More so, if you forget your fixation with fingers (friendly pun), base-10 arithmetic was a bitch until the adoption of arabic numerals, sometime around the 10th. century.
If you have ever had the painful experience of calculating in, say , Roman numerals you know what I'm talking about..
Cheers,
because unlike the ancient Babylonians, I was raised in a base-10 world.
But you have a lot in common with ancient Babylonians, because base-10 is artificial and must be learned, but base-12 is intuitive, natural and (pardon me) just easy.
There's a reason people have used base-12 systems for milennia.
Cheers,
But then again, what is it that they want to accomplice?
I guess you mean accomplish
Cheers,
Can you imagine the accountability headaches associated with asking a "community" to write custom tax logic?
Yes, but in most countries there's an accountants "college", the equivalent to the lawyer's "bar", that would be more than happy to provide the tax logic if you were willing to do the programmong part.
I think that in the future you're going to see a lot of these collaborations between OSS programmers and interested parties.
Cheers,
I write software for local governments, and at least in this state (which is one of the richest in the US), OSS wouldn't save any money nor eliminate any problems.
And you raise an interesting point: in most of the rest of the world, Governments, local or otherwise, wouldn't DREAM of paying Billy G anything unless there was a big kickback involved.
So, the battle outside the USA will be OSS vs. pirated MS vs. envelope under the table.
It will be interesting to watch, and that's an understatement.
Cheers,
The gub-ment could provide tax incentives to keep employees in the states, etc.
And who will supply the money for the tax incentives, the martians?
Folks, you're just learning what the rest of us have known for a long time: there's no easy way out.
Welcome to reality.
Signed: the rest of the World.
Cheers,
So you'd be sitting at home posting in a slashdot forum? Work seems more fun.
Having done both, I can certify that from home is better.
Cheers,
Trolling? Why does every post have to fall into the dichotomy of trolls/karma whores?
+1, Insightful.
I'm bothered by Moderator points all the time, except when I need them.
Cheers,
Why funny?
It's Insightful.
Cheers,
I don't think the picture is as grim as you paint it here.
Sure, the rich get rich and the poor stay poor sometimes, but there's still ample opportunity to find a comfortable life in the United States.
I wasn only suggesting there's a trend showing.
I'd point that even in your own writing there's a kind of diminished expectation.
best wishes,
I think you live in Argentina ( ? ) so you probably have seen a good demonstration of how it can all go wrong and if you can see the same thing happening the US then I'm not going to argue with you.
Good guess! Right on target.
I'm not suggesting the USA are going to hell in a basket like us, but from the outside there seem to be some disturbing trends.
One of them is the increasing distance between the rich and the poor, that is much more like in the third world than in Europe.
I guess that these company-raping CEOs (their OWN company, by God) that grace the covers of Fortune or Forbes wouldn't be tolerated in Europe either.
Best wishes,
Keep in mind that most of what I know about seafaring comes from reading Shogun and Tai-Pan.
It shows.
Cheers,
Rather than my standard of living dropping to 3rd world levels
Not knowing you I can hardly talk about your living standard, but in case you're interested in a more general point of view...
I've been travelling to the USA regularly for quite a few years (decades, in fact), and from the outside it's very obious the hollowing of the middle class.
The USA seems to be splitting in two classes: one well-to-do, and an underclass. This is a typical Thirld World model of society.
Until now, programmers believed they were part of the Well-to-dos, but then the outsourcing of tech jobs began, and suddenly life wasn't so good anymore.
I mean, you have lawyers and investment bankers on one side, and McRobots and Walt-Slaves on the other. Manufacturing jobs went away long ago. What jobs are left to sustain a middle class standard of living? Not so many and the shrinkage has just begun.
Believe me, I saw it happen down here.
Best wishes,
This kind of glosses over the fact that this price was available only for government program offering low-cost computers to Thais. ... Prices for regular software dropped somewhat shortly after, but not to the level quoted in the article.
Dropped to the regular Thirld World street price for Windows and MS Office, $5?
Cheers,
since they have 40 to 60 billion dollars in their kitty, how long will they take to burn through all of their cash reserves, even if they never sold another product ever again say, from Jan 2004?
As long as it takes their shareholders to file a class action suit in order to have the cash distributed as dividend, as it should.
Cheers,