It "should" cost what people are willing to pay, just like every other product.
Which is exactly the point I made. Most Windows users AREN'T willing to pay that much for it. They either just use whatever OS came with the computer they bought until they buy a new one or they pirate it. If it was reasonably priced, people would buy it instead of just using it when they get it for free.
As for your argument about competition, that's absolutely correct. Except you're ignoring that most software (especially games) for Windows. So yes, you can easily use a different OS (I've run Ubuntu and other linux distros on my laptop for years), but you won't be able to use most of your software (yes, WINE runs some things, but it's far from perfect). As a result, unless people want to have to buy some new software (if they use program X that's Windows only and then they have to buy a Mac version if they switch to Mac) or, in the case of gamers, pretty much just give up a hobby completely, they're stuck having to use Windows. I can tell you 100% that if I could run my games on linux, I'd switch to linux only and never look back - I love linux and it kills me when I'm stuck trying to figure out how to do something in windows that I can do easily in linux, but I'm not going to give up one of my favorite hobbies just because MS overcharges. So that leaves me with the option of sticking with the $15 student copy of XP I got years ago in college or pirate Win 7. Either way, MS won't make any money off of me because they charge too damn much. The same goes for why I'll probably never buy an iMac or a Macbook / Macbook Pro -- they're ridiculously overpriced (though the new iMac's are much better priced for the hardware than they used to be).
I think "an" OS is easily worth $100 or more per year to me.
Then you have more money than you know what to do with if. You sound like my friend who thinks it's perfectly acceptable that his $150 external hard drive died after 3 years.
There's a reason most people don't buy a copy of Windows off the shelf and only get it when they buy a new computer - because it's not worth spending a few hundred dollars on. The same thing goes for why people go so long between upgrading their copy of Office - because the prices is too damn high and as long as it gets the job done, they're not going to shell out a few hundred dollars for it. That's also a big reason why the piracy rate on Windows & Office are so high.
An Ultimate edition of Windows should be $100 - that way normal people who don't want all the features don't over pay and people who do want all those features don't just use linux of pirate Windows. A Professional version say $75, and then the Home POS edition $50. You argue that people should pay a fortune because "it makes you computer actually work!" - that's the exact reason why it SHOULDN'T cost a fortune. With the average system costing only around $600 (including monitor and everything), it's insane to think that Windows should cost up to $300. That's like having the starter on your car cost $10,000+.
Users won't like having to shell out for a new windows every 6 months to a year.
Which is why MS needs to drop their prices to reasonable levels. Ever notice how tons of people are still running Office 2003? Because as long as it works, they're not going to shell out $200 for Office 2007 or Office 2010. If it was $50, then they'd be much more likely to upgrade. The same goes for an OS. My brother in law got a student copy of Win 7 through his college for $30, which he put on his desktop. He mentioned going out and buying Win 7 for his laptop and after I told him how much even a Home Upgrade version costs he said "screw that, the laptop works fine, it's not worth spending that much money on it".
I totally agree. I buy tons of dvds (but only ones I know are worth buying) and I've bought many movies / season of tv shows because of a friend of mine who pirates. If I'd never seen them for free at his place, I'd never have bought them.
Jailbreaking is NOT acting irresponsibly - writing viruses / malware is. I say mandatory 20 year sentences for anyone who writes a virus / malware and while they are in prison they aren't allowed anywhere near a computer or near books on computers. That way by the time they get out, virtually everything they knew about computers will be so outdated that they'll have a damn hard time trying to catch up. Also, they should openly tie them up in the prison yard for Bubba and Co to rape the shit out of. Maybe then those assholes will stop writing viruses.
I did not talk about health care - I mentioned that you cannot provide "free" health care or "free" education - I was talking about taxes. YOU started talking about "this country versus that countries health care".
Secondly, if you did read it, you have serious reading comprehension problems or else you wouldn't have linked to a fallacious article on wikipedia right after I discussed why that argument is false.
First off, YOU mentioned health care. Secondly, I already explained the fallacy of the "people in the US pay tons for healthcare" argument - which you didn't read.
First, again, you're still paying for it. Just because they don't hand you a bill right now (since you're not paying taxes) doesn't mean that you won't pay for it once you start paying taxes. That is no different than using a credit card - you're just postponing the payments.
Secondly, us expenses on health care are mainly paid for by insurance companies. That is why most people never notice much of a difference when hospital costs go up, because (as long as you're not frequently seriously ill) your insurance rates don't change much from year to year. That numbers you are looking at are skewed and assume that people pay those amounts out of pocket. They don't. I know people who had insurance that cost them about $50 a month, got massively ill and spent a year in the hospital that costs several hundred thousand dollars, and their rates only went up to $58 a month. They paid very little for the health care, but those numbers would falsely attribute what their insurance companies spent as money that they directly spent.
Also, the US problem with life expectancy has nothing to do with quality of health care and has to do with us having so many fat bastards that drop dead because they refuse to get exercise and eat anything even remotely healthy.
Wow, what a wonderful argument. You make a ridiculous claim that they limit how many people can enter / exit med school each year in a vast conspiracy to up doctors pay, then when asked to provide a shred of evidence for your claims, you make childish insults.
First off, you're assuming that they limit how many people can get in. As I asked the person who posted above me, prove it. Secondly, if they are not limiting how many people can get in (which they most likely aren't), then forcing them to accept people that they'd normally turn away (due to lack of ability to do the work), then you're forcing them to have unqualified students.
I'd LOVE to see proof that they limit how many people can enter med school / graduate from med school every year. Otherwise, you're just flat out lying to justify a broken system. I've heard similar arguments from people like yourself that "they manipulate interest rates to make sure poor people stay poor". That is just a laughbly false.
If you have a shortage of doctors, it's much more likely that it's because the Canadian doctors are paid far less, therefore many say "It's not worth going through the hell that is med school for that little money".
Also, if the government "mandated" that there were more doctors certified each year, you'd just have a bunch of unqualified doctors running around.......which is much, MUCH worse than having a shortage of doctors.
Wellburtrin sapped what little will I had to get out of bed and was the reason that I ended up saying "fuck pills and counselors, I'm going to find a way to get over this myself". That's also the experience of everyone I know who's taken anti-depressants - they just make it worse.
iGloves and iMask are an extra $55 on your repair bill.
You must never have gone into an Apple Store before - the iGloves and iMask are $450 each and there is also a $250 iTraining fee for training the repairman on how to properly use the iGloves and iMask.
And yes, I say this as an owner of multiple Apple products....
In Norway for instance education is free. Yes FREE.
No, it is not. Also the fact that you think it's free brings in to question just how good the education system is. A government is not capable of providing anything for free - it must be paid for with taxes. Taxes that are paid by the citizens. You yourself are one of those citizens paying taxes. That means every day that you work and earn money, you pay for that "free" education (and if your country has socialist health care, "free" health care as well). That means that over the course of your life, you pay much, MUCH more for education and health care than people do in a country (such as the US, until Obama destroys the country) where you pay for your own education and medical treatment. Just because they never had you a bill doesn't mean that you aren't paying for it.
It amazes me that so many people do not graps the concept of taxes and how the government pays for things. My mom is a social studies teacher and she gave the students a project where they had to create government policies for things like education, health care, and all sorts of other things. One girl said "The government should just pay for everything, that way taxpayers don't have to". *facepalm*
Something is wrong when you think that the more a person makes, the larger a portion of their income should be taken away from them.
Liberals always want to try to claim that it's ok to punish people for being successful because it makes them pay "their faire share" - yet only about half of the people in the US even pay income taxes anymore and of those, the top 10% pays the majority of the taxes. That is not fair in the slightest. A flat tax rate of X% for everyone would be fair - then the more you make, the more you pay in taxes - but the portion of your income lost is still the same, therefore it's fair.
If the tax rate for everyone is 10%, then someone making $20,000 a year pays only $2,000 in taxes. Someone making $200,000 pays $20,000 in taxes - see how they still pay way more? It's not even remotely fair to claim that someone making $200,000 should have to pay $60,000+.
Before we get the people trying to claim I'm rich, at the end of the year I"ll have made about $25,000 for the year - so I'm far from rich - I just understand that it's not fair to take away a larger portion of a persons income just because they make more than you.
Third hand smoke? Jeez, you don't even know. The REAL danger is forty-second hand smoke!
On an more serious note, lets look at the real world people. It is impossible for smoking to be as dangerous as the media claims it is. It used to be very common for people to smoke and a few decades ago it was considered rude to not let someone smoke in your home. Hell, everyone on slashdot except maybe those currently in college grew up with restaraunts that allowed smoking, so we breathed it in. If smoking is as dangerous as they claim it is, people 50+ would be dying from lung problems and other smoking related problems in droves - but they're not.
I'm not saying smoking it healthy for you, because it's not. I hate being around smokers. However, the reality is that they highly exaggerate how dangerous it is.
A big part of California's budget problems are because they used the liberal ideal for their income tax policy (rape the rich and successful) and since most rich people have their wealth in stocks, when the stock market went to shit, the tax revenues started to dry up a lot faster than they would have if they'd have a more fair tax policy. But yes, they also suffer from the same stupidity as the rest of the world's governments and spend more than they bring in.
Bingo. My friends mock me
for not being excessively wasteful. I recycle, avoid wasting electricity, drive a car that gets almost 40mpg, but I'm not going to lower my quality of life to "save the planet" when 1) the planet is not in any danger and 2) the people who push for these laws live like kings and waste more in a year than the average person does in a decade.
Your email is not "all data". Or are you one of those people who thinks that Internet Explorer it the internet?
There's a big difference between a company controlling your access to your email and them controlling your access to every fucking file you own.
Oh, and for the jackass who modded me "redundant", why don't you learn what redundant means? Because when I posted that, I hadn't read a single comment complaining about them storing all of your personal data in the cloud. Redundant would mean that someone had already commented on that in the current thread. Ok? Got that? Need me to buy a dictionary for you for Christmas?
Slashdot Mirror
It "should" cost what people are willing to pay, just like every other product.
Which is exactly the point I made. Most Windows users AREN'T willing to pay that much for it. They either just use whatever OS came with the computer they bought until they buy a new one or they pirate it. If it was reasonably priced, people would buy it instead of just using it when they get it for free.
As for your argument about competition, that's absolutely correct. Except you're ignoring that most software (especially games) for Windows. So yes, you can easily use a different OS (I've run Ubuntu and other linux distros on my laptop for years), but you won't be able to use most of your software (yes, WINE runs some things, but it's far from perfect). As a result, unless people want to have to buy some new software (if they use program X that's Windows only and then they have to buy a Mac version if they switch to Mac) or, in the case of gamers, pretty much just give up a hobby completely, they're stuck having to use Windows. I can tell you 100% that if I could run my games on linux, I'd switch to linux only and never look back - I love linux and it kills me when I'm stuck trying to figure out how to do something in windows that I can do easily in linux, but I'm not going to give up one of my favorite hobbies just because MS overcharges. So that leaves me with the option of sticking with the $15 student copy of XP I got years ago in college or pirate Win 7. Either way, MS won't make any money off of me because they charge too damn much. The same goes for why I'll probably never buy an iMac or a Macbook / Macbook Pro -- they're ridiculously overpriced (though the new iMac's are much better priced for the hardware than they used to be).
Wouldn't it be "JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBS!" (since he's the enemy of MS). Or perhaps "TORVALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLDS!"
I think "an" OS is easily worth $100 or more per year to me.
Then you have more money than you know what to do with if. You sound like my friend who thinks it's perfectly acceptable that his $150 external hard drive died after 3 years.
There's a reason most people don't buy a copy of Windows off the shelf and only get it when they buy a new computer - because it's not worth spending a few hundred dollars on. The same thing goes for why people go so long between upgrading their copy of Office - because the prices is too damn high and as long as it gets the job done, they're not going to shell out a few hundred dollars for it. That's also a big reason why the piracy rate on Windows & Office are so high.
An Ultimate edition of Windows should be $100 - that way normal people who don't want all the features don't over pay and people who do want all those features don't just use linux of pirate Windows. A Professional version say $75, and then the Home POS edition $50. You argue that people should pay a fortune because "it makes you computer actually work!" - that's the exact reason why it SHOULDN'T cost a fortune. With the average system costing only around $600 (including monitor and everything), it's insane to think that Windows should cost up to $300. That's like having the starter on your car cost $10,000+.
Users won't like having to shell out for a new windows every 6 months to a year.
Which is why MS needs to drop their prices to reasonable levels. Ever notice how tons of people are still running Office 2003? Because as long as it works, they're not going to shell out $200 for Office 2007 or Office 2010. If it was $50, then they'd be much more likely to upgrade. The same goes for an OS. My brother in law got a student copy of Win 7 through his college for $30, which he put on his desktop. He mentioned going out and buying Win 7 for his laptop and after I told him how much even a Home Upgrade version costs he said "screw that, the laptop works fine, it's not worth spending that much money on it".
Save yourself the frustration. Just browse at -1 and ignore the troll-mods.
I've been on slashdot for I don't know how many years and have looked many times for the setting to control that - where the frak is it?!
I totally agree. I buy tons of dvds (but only ones I know are worth buying) and I've bought many movies / season of tv shows because of a friend of mine who pirates. If I'd never seen them for free at his place, I'd never have bought them.
Making and changing laws is actually their job.
No, their job is to uphold / enforce the law.
Jailbreaking is NOT acting irresponsibly - writing viruses / malware is. I say mandatory 20 year sentences for anyone who writes a virus / malware and while they are in prison they aren't allowed anywhere near a computer or near books on computers. That way by the time they get out, virtually everything they knew about computers will be so outdated that they'll have a damn hard time trying to catch up. Also, they should openly tie them up in the prison yard for Bubba and Co to rape the shit out of. Maybe then those assholes will stop writing viruses.
Antivirus for Palm? Wow, I thought it was secure without it since people stopped using it about 10 years ago..... (mostly joking :D)
You're assuming that the RIAA/MPAA/ISP's/governments care about the law -- they don't.
I did not talk about health care - I mentioned that you cannot provide "free" health care or "free" education - I was talking about taxes. YOU started talking about "this country versus that countries health care".
Secondly, if you did read it, you have serious reading comprehension problems or else you wouldn't have linked to a fallacious article on wikipedia right after I discussed why that argument is false.
First off, YOU mentioned health care. Secondly, I already explained the fallacy of the "people in the US pay tons for healthcare" argument - which you didn't read.
First, again, you're still paying for it. Just because they don't hand you a bill right now (since you're not paying taxes) doesn't mean that you won't pay for it once you start paying taxes. That is no different than using a credit card - you're just postponing the payments.
Secondly, us expenses on health care are mainly paid for by insurance companies. That is why most people never notice much of a difference when hospital costs go up, because (as long as you're not frequently seriously ill) your insurance rates don't change much from year to year. That numbers you are looking at are skewed and assume that people pay those amounts out of pocket. They don't. I know people who had insurance that cost them about $50 a month, got massively ill and spent a year in the hospital that costs several hundred thousand dollars, and their rates only went up to $58 a month. They paid very little for the health care, but those numbers would falsely attribute what their insurance companies spent as money that they directly spent.
Also, the US problem with life expectancy has nothing to do with quality of health care and has to do with us having so many fat bastards that drop dead because they refuse to get exercise and eat anything even remotely healthy.
Wow, what a wonderful argument. You make a ridiculous claim that they limit how many people can enter / exit med school each year in a vast conspiracy to up doctors pay, then when asked to provide a shred of evidence for your claims, you make childish insults.
First off, you're assuming that they limit how many people can get in. As I asked the person who posted above me, prove it. Secondly, if they are not limiting how many people can get in (which they most likely aren't), then forcing them to accept people that they'd normally turn away (due to lack of ability to do the work), then you're forcing them to have unqualified students.
I'd LOVE to see proof that they limit how many people can enter med school / graduate from med school every year. Otherwise, you're just flat out lying to justify a broken system. I've heard similar arguments from people like yourself that "they manipulate interest rates to make sure poor people stay poor". That is just a laughbly false.
If you have a shortage of doctors, it's much more likely that it's because the Canadian doctors are paid far less, therefore many say "It's not worth going through the hell that is med school for that little money".
Also, if the government "mandated" that there were more doctors certified each year, you'd just have a bunch of unqualified doctors running around.......which is much, MUCH worse than having a shortage of doctors.
Wellburtrin sapped what little will I had to get out of bed and was the reason that I ended up saying "fuck pills and counselors, I'm going to find a way to get over this myself". That's also the experience of everyone I know who's taken anti-depressants - they just make it worse.
iGloves and iMask are an extra $55 on your repair bill.
You must never have gone into an Apple Store before - the iGloves and iMask are $450 each and there is also a $250 iTraining fee for training the repairman on how to properly use the iGloves and iMask.
And yes, I say this as an owner of multiple Apple products....
In Norway for instance education is free. Yes FREE.
No, it is not. Also the fact that you think it's free brings in to question just how good the education system is. A government is not capable of providing anything for free - it must be paid for with taxes. Taxes that are paid by the citizens. You yourself are one of those citizens paying taxes. That means every day that you work and earn money, you pay for that "free" education (and if your country has socialist health care, "free" health care as well). That means that over the course of your life, you pay much, MUCH more for education and health care than people do in a country (such as the US, until Obama destroys the country) where you pay for your own education and medical treatment. Just because they never had you a bill doesn't mean that you aren't paying for it.
It amazes me that so many people do not graps the concept of taxes and how the government pays for things. My mom is a social studies teacher and she gave the students a project where they had to create government policies for things like education, health care, and all sorts of other things. One girl said "The government should just pay for everything, that way taxpayers don't have to". *facepalm*
Something is wrong when you think that the more a person makes, the larger a portion of their income should be taken away from them.
Liberals always want to try to claim that it's ok to punish people for being successful because it makes them pay "their faire share" - yet only about half of the people in the US even pay income taxes anymore and of those, the top 10% pays the majority of the taxes. That is not fair in the slightest. A flat tax rate of X% for everyone would be fair - then the more you make, the more you pay in taxes - but the portion of your income lost is still the same, therefore it's fair.
If the tax rate for everyone is 10%, then someone making $20,000 a year pays only $2,000 in taxes. Someone making $200,000 pays $20,000 in taxes - see how they still pay way more? It's not even remotely fair to claim that someone making $200,000 should have to pay $60,000+.
Before we get the people trying to claim I'm rich, at the end of the year I"ll have made about $25,000 for the year - so I'm far from rich - I just understand that it's not fair to take away a larger portion of a persons income just because they make more than you.
Third hand smoke? Jeez, you don't even know. The REAL danger is forty-second hand smoke!
On an more serious note, lets look at the real world people. It is impossible for smoking to be as dangerous as the media claims it is. It used to be very common for people to smoke and a few decades ago it was considered rude to not let someone smoke in your home. Hell, everyone on slashdot except maybe those currently in college grew up with restaraunts that allowed smoking, so we breathed it in. If smoking is as dangerous as they claim it is, people 50+ would be dying from lung problems and other smoking related problems in droves - but they're not.
I'm not saying smoking it healthy for you, because it's not. I hate being around smokers. However, the reality is that they highly exaggerate how dangerous it is.
A big part of California's budget problems are because they used the liberal ideal for their income tax policy (rape the rich and successful) and since most rich people have their wealth in stocks, when the stock market went to shit, the tax revenues started to dry up a lot faster than they would have if they'd have a more fair tax policy. But yes, they also suffer from the same stupidity as the rest of the world's governments and spend more than they bring in.
Bingo. My friends mock me for not being excessively wasteful. I recycle, avoid wasting electricity, drive a car that gets almost 40mpg, but I'm not going to lower my quality of life to "save the planet" when 1) the planet is not in any danger and 2) the people who push for these laws live like kings and waste more in a year than the average person does in a decade.
What's the big deal with large TV's anyway.
Call me crazy, but I enjoy actually being able to see the picture...otherwise, why not just go back to radio shows?
Your email is not "all data". Or are you one of those people who thinks that Internet Explorer it the internet?
There's a big difference between a company controlling your access to your email and them controlling your access to every fucking file you own.
Oh, and for the jackass who modded me "redundant", why don't you learn what redundant means? Because when I posted that, I hadn't read a single comment complaining about them storing all of your personal data in the cloud. Redundant would mean that someone had already commented on that in the current thread. Ok? Got that? Need me to buy a dictionary for you for Christmas?