Why do both have to be mutually exclusive? Why can't the problem be approached from both sides by different groups whose skillsets are appropriate for what they're doing?
You forgot that they also change just enough of the networking code to make it completely unusable with the "real" PC versions. Rainbow Six 3, I'm looking at you.
Well, first off, love him or hate him, Stallman is a lunatic. Secondly, I'm assuming that he would use a pop or imap client to make a request to a remote box, which wgets the page and then emails it back. I seriously doubt anyone is using a human readable client to request web pages over email outside the scope of the system mentioned in TFA. The advantage of this system is that its theoretically as hard to monitor and kill as spam is.
I would argue that "guided evolution" per the literal definition of the term is exactly what is going on, and is something we're causing. Think about it: People take sick animals in and nurse them back to health. We even research diseases and find solutions to allow those who would normally have died out in nature to continue to live in spite of it. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but merely an observation of how 'progress' is guided by the urge for as complete of preservation as possible. If science progresses further, Intelligent Design could in fact become a reality, but it would be we that perform the intelligent designing. Kind of makes us our own gods, if you ask me. This kind of thinking bugs Christian Zealots, which is why I like it.
Well, any more, I'd consider $1000+ laptops to be nearing very high end. Where did you get the 91% from? The wonderful thing about statistics is that they can be unhelpful at best, misleading at worst. Apple doesn't make a laptop under $1000 that I'm aware of. A cursory glance at Dell's website shows that all but 2 of their featured laptops that are considered consumer grade or small business are $1000 or lower. Hell, even the latitudes have half the listed laptops under $1000. A glance at the Apple website shows that $999 is the minimum price you will shell out for a MacBook. Technically, you could get a mac mini and that be a mere $600, but I'm assuming that non laptop computers wouldn't have the shock and liquid sensors in them, so I'm excluding them for the purpose of this exercise. Based upon this information, I can conclude that your statistic is about as helpful as if you would have said "100% of Laptops sold that are Apples are Apples". What would be more valuable to know in this case would be the total percentage of laptops sold that are over $1000. I would like to contrast that versus the total number of Apple laptops that are sold against all price ranges.
And where do you get the Honda from? I always figured the netbooks were the Honda of the laptop world: Utilitarian, relatively cheap, and easy to rice out.
Well, in this case Apple should just go ahead and raise their prices so they can compensate for people abusing the warranty terms.
I thought that was the base assumption that you had initially made in your first post:
I know people that really abuse the vendors by returning products that have been used in non-warranty covered conditions and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.
Apple is far from that, it is still driven by mass market rules.
I agree with this for the most part, except they're not driven by the same mass market rules as Dell (or whatever bargin basement companies sell exclusively in Wal-Mart). Those companies are directly competing for each other's business in cost and utility. However, Apple isn't really competing with the rest of the (low-mid range) PC market. If they were, I could walk into an Apple store and buy a low end MacBook for $500. I agree that they're operating by a similar profit margin curve; I just think that it is modeled differently than any other company because of the fact that they offer the "Apple experience", something they've tried very hard to keep away from any other company. Obviously, if any other company was able to successfully deliver clones of their equipment, they would have to radically drop price to stay competitive, otherwise there would be no one buying them.
Would you rather buy an Apple for $2000, or an Apple for $300?
If you're selling fenceposts or apples, then being as competitive as possible is vital to survival.
If you're selling status symbols to turtleneck-wearing yuppies, they're not going to worry about the price. Why do you think that BMW doesn't try to out-price a Chevy Cobalt? Sure, part of it is the quality of the parts, but another part of it is the name.
If you or your teacher has a problem with any of that, I recommend reading about luxury goods.
I'm not saying that its right to deprive a company of profit. Companies have a right to collect a profit on a service or product that they vend. I'm speaking against the "I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product" mentality that so many people seem to be unable to shake. It's the same argument I have against the trickle-down theory, which is the idea that the savings would actually make it down to the consumer.
Well, okay, fair enough. I rescind my prior post, and I will post this corrected version:
Do you honestly think that the company (not any company, just Apple) would charge you less if people did not do this? The difference is going to boost their profit margin, and since people already have no problems overpaying for a product, they will see no need to lower the price at all. They're a niche market that sells based upon targeted advertising and specific name recognition, and as a result, have no need/desire to try to target the low-end PC and consumer app market, otherwise, they would have made some effort to do so years ago.
and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.
Do you honestly think that the company (any company, not just Apple) would charge you less if people did not do this? The difference is going to boost their profit margin, and since people already have no problems overpaying for a product, they will see no need to lower the price at all.
Takes up less space overall maybe, but what about options per space used? You could have a half the size of the ribbon and say it takes up less space, but if you only put a single button on it, it is pretty useless.
Its a nice idea, I guess, and I understand that if you keep it closer to that one big name competitor, then you can make it easier for people to transition, but I prefer to dedicate my limited real estate on my screen to what I'm actually trying to work on, not the tools that I can use to get the job done. I can't imagine this interface on my eeePc. I think the only thing I'll be trying out on this interface is the option to set it back to the old one.
The opt-out is pretty easy, and I've also sent an email to comcast regarding this.
Hello lothos,
We received your email regarding the easy opt-out, and we would like to take the time to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to make this much more difficult. We apologize for any conveniance you may have encountered, and thank you for being a valued Comcast customer!
Seriously though, there are a lot of people who are saying that educational games aren't fun, but I remember some from my childhood that I always enjoyed. Gizmos and Gadgets was one. I also enjoyed the Math Blaster ones. Maybe its because I was a nerd, maybe they just tried harder back then, but I think they made you think and you enjoyed the game at the same time.
Sometimes I'm not so sure people aren't animals either.
A State sanctioned murder is morally worse than a sociopath's, because we know better.
Revenge is NOT justice.
So you are saying that instead of killing people who will remorselessly kill as much as they get the chance* to, we should spend thousands of dollars a year securing them and keeping them alive in a high security prison, where we'll have to potentially staff extra to keep them away from other inmates?
* Chance dictated by whatever sort of trigger that particular crazy happens to have. It varies from person to person and we will have no clue the extent of it. It could be anything from people who wear hats to people who post on websites with the handles 'P0ltergeist333', 'dyingtolive', and 'Anonymous Coward'.
How about this one: If you don't buy that loaf of bread (or anything else), do you get charged a cover charge by the grocery store for walking in and looking around? It cost money for them to keep the store maintained. They have to keep it cleaned, stocked, staffed, secured, insured, powered, and paid for assuming there is a lease or taxes on the property. Have you ever ducked in somewhere just because you had to use the restroom? I shudder to think how much money the store lost in "maintenance" from that. Technically, they're even losing money in every person who walks in the store and asks a question of the shopkeep, because that deprives the store of someone who could be either doing more work elsewhere or assisting other customers. Why do you keep stealing from stores? Those costs are absorbed by the other shoppers who buy things, effectively increasing their rates.
It seems to me that the electric company is just in the same place that the music industry is. It is a dying business too accustomed to their business model providing them a sense of entitlement for it to quit now, and they're looking for a way to secure their revenue beyond their usefulness.
Bottom Line, as any store owner firmly rooted in reality would say: Its the cost of doing business.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do both have to be mutually exclusive? Why can't the problem be approached from both sides by different groups whose skillsets are appropriate for what they're doing?
You forgot that they also change just enough of the networking code to make it completely unusable with the "real" PC versions. Rainbow Six 3, I'm looking at you.
Don't blame me. I still play nethack. Gonna get that fucking amulet too if it kills me.
I don't believe that for a second. No one has had a 'hankering' for at least 40 years.
Well, first off, love him or hate him, Stallman is a lunatic. Secondly, I'm assuming that he would use a pop or imap client to make a request to a remote box, which wgets the page and then emails it back. I seriously doubt anyone is using a human readable client to request web pages over email outside the scope of the system mentioned in TFA. The advantage of this system is that its theoretically as hard to monitor and kill as spam is.
Arguably, you wouldn't lose much today either.
I had a feeling those Dam plans were going to be trouble.
I blame the Dam engineers.
But you should take all the Dam pictures you want.
I would argue that "guided evolution" per the literal definition of the term is exactly what is going on, and is something we're causing. Think about it: People take sick animals in and nurse them back to health. We even research diseases and find solutions to allow those who would normally have died out in nature to continue to live in spite of it. I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, but merely an observation of how 'progress' is guided by the urge for as complete of preservation as possible. If science progresses further, Intelligent Design could in fact become a reality, but it would be we that perform the intelligent designing. Kind of makes us our own gods, if you ask me. This kind of thinking bugs Christian Zealots, which is why I like it.
This just in, it's official, Iphone users are revolting!!!
Actually, the funny thing is that jailbreaking and an underground app store almost makes me WANT to buy one. Too bad Apple will shut them down.
Well, any more, I'd consider $1000+ laptops to be nearing very high end. Where did you get the 91% from? The wonderful thing about statistics is that they can be unhelpful at best, misleading at worst. Apple doesn't make a laptop under $1000 that I'm aware of. A cursory glance at Dell's website shows that all but 2 of their featured laptops that are considered consumer grade or small business are $1000 or lower. Hell, even the latitudes have half the listed laptops under $1000. A glance at the Apple website shows that $999 is the minimum price you will shell out for a MacBook. Technically, you could get a mac mini and that be a mere $600, but I'm assuming that non laptop computers wouldn't have the shock and liquid sensors in them, so I'm excluding them for the purpose of this exercise. Based upon this information, I can conclude that your statistic is about as helpful as if you would have said "100% of Laptops sold that are Apples are Apples". What would be more valuable to know in this case would be the total percentage of laptops sold that are over $1000. I would like to contrast that versus the total number of Apple laptops that are sold against all price ranges.
And where do you get the Honda from? I always figured the netbooks were the Honda of the laptop world: Utilitarian, relatively cheap, and easy to rice out.
Well, in this case Apple should just go ahead and raise their prices so they can compensate for people abusing the warranty terms.
I thought that was the base assumption that you had initially made in your first post:
I know people that really abuse the vendors by returning products that have been used in non-warranty covered conditions and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.
Apple is far from that, it is still driven by mass market rules.
I agree with this for the most part, except they're not driven by the same mass market rules as Dell (or whatever bargin basement companies sell exclusively in Wal-Mart). Those companies are directly competing for each other's business in cost and utility. However, Apple isn't really competing with the rest of the (low-mid range) PC market. If they were, I could walk into an Apple store and buy a low end MacBook for $500. I agree that they're operating by a similar profit margin curve; I just think that it is modeled differently than any other company because of the fact that they offer the "Apple experience", something they've tried very hard to keep away from any other company. Obviously, if any other company was able to successfully deliver clones of their equipment, they would have to radically drop price to stay competitive, otherwise there would be no one buying them.
Would you rather buy an Apple for $2000, or an Apple for $300?
If you're selling fenceposts or apples, then being as competitive as possible is vital to survival.
If you're selling status symbols to turtleneck-wearing yuppies, they're not going to worry about the price.
Why do you think that BMW doesn't try to out-price a Chevy Cobalt? Sure, part of it is the quality of the parts, but another part of it is the name.
If you or your teacher has a problem with any of that, I recommend reading about luxury goods.
I'm not saying that its right to deprive a company of profit. Companies have a right to collect a profit on a service or product that they vend. I'm speaking against the "I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product" mentality that so many people seem to be unable to shake. It's the same argument I have against the trickle-down theory, which is the idea that the savings would actually make it down to the consumer.
Well, okay, fair enough. I rescind my prior post, and I will post this corrected version:
Do you honestly think that the company (not any company, just Apple) would charge you less if people did not do this? The difference is going to boost their profit margin, and since people already have no problems overpaying for a product, they will see no need to lower the price at all. They're a niche market that sells based upon targeted advertising and specific name recognition, and as a result, have no need/desire to try to target the low-end PC and consumer app market, otherwise, they would have made some effort to do so years ago.
and I have always known that I am indirectly paying for them when I buy a new product.
Do you honestly think that the company (any company, not just Apple) would charge you less if people did not do this? The difference is going to boost their profit margin, and since people already have no problems overpaying for a product, they will see no need to lower the price at all.
And then there was that hacking game that has a name that escapes me at the moment.
I think it was Uplink.
Takes up less space overall maybe, but what about options per space used? You could have a half the size of the ribbon and say it takes up less space, but if you only put a single button on it, it is pretty useless.
Fair enough. I still think a regular prison is too good for them though. I think that something along the lines of superjail might be more effective.
Its a nice idea, I guess, and I understand that if you keep it closer to that one big name competitor, then you can make it easier for people to transition, but I prefer to dedicate my limited real estate on my screen to what I'm actually trying to work on, not the tools that I can use to get the job done. I can't imagine this interface on my eeePc. I think the only thing I'll be trying out on this interface is the option to set it back to the old one.
The opt-out is pretty easy, and I've also sent an email to comcast regarding this.
Hello lothos,
We received your email regarding the easy opt-out, and we would like to take the time to assure you that we are doing everything in our power to make this much more difficult. We apologize for any conveniance you may have encountered, and thank you for being a valued Comcast customer!
Best Regards,
Comcast Support
Code. Some pictures. Maybe a couple sounds.
Next?
Seriously though, there are a lot of people who are saying that educational games aren't fun, but I remember some from my childhood that I always enjoyed. Gizmos and Gadgets was one. I also enjoyed the Math Blaster ones. Maybe its because I was a nerd, maybe they just tried harder back then, but I think they made you think and you enjoyed the game at the same time.
THIS. This is the way to go. I strictly followed this policy with my fiance, and I have been happily single for 8 months as a result.
That bitch was crazy.
Because dogs are animals...
Sometimes I'm not so sure people aren't animals either.
A State sanctioned murder is morally worse than a sociopath's, because we know better.
Revenge is NOT justice.
So you are saying that instead of killing people who will remorselessly kill as much as they get the chance* to, we should spend thousands of dollars a year securing them and keeping them alive in a high security prison, where we'll have to potentially staff extra to keep them away from other inmates?
* Chance dictated by whatever sort of trigger that particular crazy happens to have. It varies from person to person and we will have no clue the extent of it. It could be anything from people who wear hats to people who post on websites with the handles 'P0ltergeist333', 'dyingtolive', and 'Anonymous Coward'.
Well, would YOU want to be the one accused of not accepting the bribes of the group "thinking about the children"?
How about this one: If you don't buy that loaf of bread (or anything else), do you get charged a cover charge by the grocery store for walking in and looking around? It cost money for them to keep the store maintained. They have to keep it cleaned, stocked, staffed, secured, insured, powered, and paid for assuming there is a lease or taxes on the property. Have you ever ducked in somewhere just because you had to use the restroom? I shudder to think how much money the store lost in "maintenance" from that. Technically, they're even losing money in every person who walks in the store and asks a question of the shopkeep, because that deprives the store of someone who could be either doing more work elsewhere or assisting other customers. Why do you keep stealing from stores? Those costs are absorbed by the other shoppers who buy things, effectively increasing their rates.
It seems to me that the electric company is just in the same place that the music industry is. It is a dying business too accustomed to their business model providing them a sense of entitlement for it to quit now, and they're looking for a way to secure their revenue beyond their usefulness. Bottom Line, as any store owner firmly rooted in reality would say: Its the cost of doing business.