"Upselling" is what our sales guys tend to use when talking about getting a client in for eg a usability study, or hosting, or whatever, with a view to gradually selling them more of our services. So, we start out small, they get to know us, then we sell them a whole new website with support, etc.
Same thing here - go in (relatively) small with the basics, at a smaller margin, then sell sell sell on the extras, where the real profit is.
It's *not* bait and switch, because you are getting exactly what's advertised - it's just not quite as useful on its own as you thought it was. That's not really the company's fault though.
Not for democracy though - too stupid to vote (or at least make an informed choice), or too apathetic (ditto), what's the difference in the end? You still get people either not voting at all, or voting for the same party that they always have, or their parents voted for, etc.
Presumably, their lawyers don't think that they've got a very good case. The site, offering gay porn, presumably does in fact supply pictures of hot males, and so "hotmale" is a reasonable domain. Hell, you could even probably try arguing that hotmail isn't really that hot...
Yes, of course it does - and placing the patent in the public domain (if that makes sense legally, IANAPL) means that
a) anyone can use the subject of the patent b) no-one else can patent it and so seek to prevent others from using it
You can achieve the same effect by just handing out free licences, but then there's nothing to stop you (or a change of management) from suddenly deciding to stop handing them out at a later date.
llegally? How so? I'm assuming that you're talking about introducing deliberate incompatibilities in their software, thus reducing the market for their competitors.
Now, I grant you that that's illegal for a monopoly, but by your own admission, they were not a monopoly at the time, so anti-trust laws don't apply. Unless of course I'm confused (perfectly possible), and you mean something else.
If you are going to write to the harddrive, it might as well be a full featured Linux distro, such as SuSE or RedHat. Why the hell not?
Because the Knoppix image is/read only/ - so you cannot possibly install crap on it, or corrupt/delete system files, etc. I don't know how stuff like home dirs work (as I've not used Knoppix personally), but at the very least you can't mess up the system for other people.
doing stuff in English hardly qualifies as internationalization.
No - internationalisation is the process by which you prepare an application to be localised. Localisation means using icons, images, text, etc that is appropriate for a given country/culture. Internationalisation means making these things configurable - ie having text strings, image paths, etc come out of a config file, instead of being hard-coded. It is localisation that requires translators, but internationalisation needs to take account of things like direction of writing (right-left or left-right), what colours should be configurable (red in some countries is lucky, not danger/warning), etc. You need people from other cultures to point these things out, or you may miss something, and create an application that can only be partially localised.
That was what I thought immediately on reading this question. My girlfriend used to be a legal secretary, and one of the things she had to do was exactly this - transcribe dictation recorded on to audio tape. She never had to do quite so much at one time, of course, but most secretaries are trained in this skill.
Being able to get a computer to do it would be cool, but there's a reason why companies hire people with this skill - the technology just isn't there yet. Even if it were possible to buy/build a system to do this, chances are it would be cheaper just to hire someone to do it manually, especially if this is a one-off.
I run Gentoo with a lot of beta programs and it still has better stability than Windows.
I've been using XP Pro on a number of machines for the past 18 months or so, and I get about as many crashes as I do on the machines running Mandrake - that is to say, almost none.
Windows stability has come a long, long way, and for everyday use is easily on a par with that of Linux.
Keeping up with MS security patches... leads to several reboots a week.
Bullshit. They aren't even releasing security patches at anything like that rate, and not all patches require a reboot. From memory, I've rebooted my machine due to applying a patch once in the last couple of months (and yes, I stay current).
Besides, what does it matter? This isn't a server OS, and it isn't on a server. My XP Pro machine at work stays on 24/7 except for infrequent patch-required reboots. Even when I do have to reboot, it's back up in a matter of seconds - not even enough time to go grab a coffee from the kitchen 10 feet away.
As for *program installation* requiring a reboot, you're really talking crap. No program should *ever* require a reboot to install/uninstall. Reboots are only required if a file that is in use has to be overwritten, and no program should be replacing system files. If you have one that does, I'd think seriously about seeking an alternative.
Well, that may well all be true (and I assume that it is), but it doesn't change the fact that on my machine, XP Pro and Mandrake 9.2 feel like they boot in a comparable amount of time. I've not timed them, but I sure as hell haven't been sat waiting for either thinking "ffs, the other one boots faster than this, what's wrong with these people?!"
So while I'll accept that you know what you're talking about, I think your data is a good few years out of date. Unless, of course, you're comparing boot times for Windows to GUI and stripped-down Linux to prompt, which would hardly be fair.
Quite a few updates don't require a reboot. These days (= for the last two years at least) reboots have only been required when you're replacing files that are in use, which is not always the case.
Alternatively, 'phone their helpdesk and ask if the mail is genuine. If it isn't, they'll almost certainly want to know that someone is trying to scam their customers, so they can warn the rest. If it is, well, you've spent a couple of minutes and the cost of a phone call to get peace of mind that you're not about to be ripped off.
Going to the site as usual is a good idea, but if you can't find the page you're expecting, you may just go back to the mail and click the link anyway, believing that you just can't find it, rather than that it doesn't exist because it's a scam.
The article is extremely light on details, but I can think of one way in which they may be able to sue for copyright infringement.
*If* the Kazaa licence explicitly forbids using it for such purposes, then the RIAA's agents are in violation of the licence agreement. That means that, as I understand copyright law, they have no right to have even installed the software, and so are infringing on Sharman Network's copyright.
Well, like I said, "entry level" does sound increasingly like a misnomer. What's entry level now would have been far beyond the top of the range just 5 years ago.
I define entry level, though, roughly as the cheapest PC you can buy off the shelf without too much hunting around. Right now, it seems to me that is around the spec I quoted, plus or minus a bit.
For what it's worth, I've had a P4 2.4B with 512 meg of RAM for a year now, and I generally buy at the sweet spot of the price/performance ratio. So yes, I consider my PC to be more or less entry level:-)
But it would have been nice to try to cooperate a bit more.
Well, not to flame or anything, but cooperation works both ways. The FSF appears (to me) to be completely unbending in its interpretation of the spirit of the GPL, and what is and isn't compatible with it. They'll help you to change your licence to make it compatible, but they won't shift a millimetre on their own position.
Okay, so their philosphical and moral stance more or less requires that behaviour, but it does seem a little unfair to criticise other groups for not cooperating.
There's absolutely no legal requirement for them to charge a licence fee just because they've patented their xml file formats.
Most large companies have portfolios of patents that they have no intention of enforcing, unless pushed into doing so (eg someone sues them for infringing on one of their patents, etc).
Now, I'm not saying that MS definitely won't charge a fee for using this, I'm just pointing out that it's a little early to be saying that they definitely will, too. Let's just all wait until the licencing scheme is announced before screaming at them, shall we?
You've worked with some crap PCs in that case. These days, 2.4GHz and 256meg of RAM is pretty-much entry level, but XP will fly on that sort of spec.
(Yeah, I know, that's a lot of power to be called "entry level", but that's the way PC tech goes; just try going to a high-street shop and buying a lower-specced desktop. You won't find very many of them.)
there's also a lot of good music that is part of the RIAA... You may have to go back a decade or two or three
That all depends on your tastes. One of my personal favourite bands at the moment is Rammstein, but apparently their record label is also a member of the RIAA.
An anti-neutron may still count as a nucleon, but I'm betting it would annhilate with one of the neutrons, so what you'd actually get would be a disparate collection of the remaining particles...:-)
ctrl-alt-+/- changes the resolution, but not the "size" of the desktop; effectively, it zooms you in or out. That's absolutely not what the majority of people would expect or want to happen.
Yes, you can argue that that's because the majority of people are used to the way that Windows (and MacOS/OSX?) does it, but that's not the point. That's a niggling little irritation to some of us, but to people trying to come from Windows it's a show stopper. For them, it seems as though you have to choose your resolution when you install the OS, and from then on you're stuck either with that, or some weird half-way between thing.
Hell, I once hand-crafted mode lines because an install didn't have them for my monitor, and *I* can't be bothered to have to shut down X, log in as root, edit the XF86Config file to set the resolution, log out and restart X. No, it's not something you have to do very often, but when you do, it's a pain.
once you get sucked into a windows way of life, upgrades and re-installs and tweaks and fixes all seem to be 'normal' ways to use the computer
Rubbish. I installed XP Pro on my machine at home when I upgraded it last January, and it just works. I've not had to upgrade it, tweak it or re-install it once I got it how I liked it. My gf's machine (bought December 2002) came with XP Home pre-installed, and that too just works, with none of the problems you cite.
I got it working, and now that it works, I use it. No need to constantly service it as you say. Sure, my Linux install is the same way, but that's beside the point.
Slashdot Mirror
"Upselling" is what our sales guys tend to use when talking about getting a client in for eg a usability study, or hosting, or whatever, with a view to gradually selling them more of our services. So, we start out small, they get to know us, then we sell them a whole new website with support, etc.
Same thing here - go in (relatively) small with the basics, at a smaller margin, then sell sell sell on the extras, where the real profit is.
It's *not* bait and switch, because you are getting exactly what's advertised - it's just not quite as useful on its own as you thought it was. That's not really the company's fault though.
Not for democracy though - too stupid to vote (or at least make an informed choice), or too apathetic (ditto), what's the difference in the end? You still get people either not voting at all, or voting for the same party that they always have, or their parents voted for, etc.
Presumably, their lawyers don't think that they've got a very good case. The site, offering gay porn, presumably does in fact supply pictures of hot males, and so "hotmale" is a reasonable domain. Hell, you could even probably try arguing that hotmail isn't really that hot...
Yes, of course it does - and placing the patent in the public domain (if that makes sense legally, IANAPL) means that
a) anyone can use the subject of the patent
b) no-one else can patent it and so seek to prevent others from using it
You can achieve the same effect by just handing out free licences, but then there's nothing to stop you (or a change of management) from suddenly deciding to stop handing them out at a later date.
llegally? How so? I'm assuming that you're talking about introducing deliberate incompatibilities in their software, thus reducing the market for their competitors.
Now, I grant you that that's illegal for a monopoly, but by your own admission, they were not a monopoly at the time, so anti-trust laws don't apply. Unless of course I'm confused (perfectly possible), and you mean something else.
If you are going to write to the harddrive, it might as well be a full featured Linux distro, such as SuSE or RedHat. Why the hell not?
/read only/ - so you cannot possibly install crap on it, or corrupt/delete system files, etc. I don't know how stuff like home dirs work (as I've not used Knoppix personally), but at the very least you can't mess up the system for other people.
Because the Knoppix image is
doing stuff in English hardly qualifies as internationalization.
No - internationalisation is the process by which you prepare an application to be localised. Localisation means using icons, images, text, etc that is appropriate for a given country/culture. Internationalisation means making these things configurable - ie having text strings, image paths, etc come out of a config file, instead of being hard-coded. It is localisation that requires translators, but internationalisation needs to take account of things like direction of writing (right-left or left-right), what colours should be configurable (red in some countries is lucky, not danger/warning), etc. You need people from other cultures to point these things out, or you may miss something, and create an application that can only be partially localised.
That was what I thought immediately on reading this question. My girlfriend used to be a legal secretary, and one of the things she had to do was exactly this - transcribe dictation recorded on to audio tape. She never had to do quite so much at one time, of course, but most secretaries are trained in this skill.
Being able to get a computer to do it would be cool, but there's a reason why companies hire people with this skill - the technology just isn't there yet. Even if it were possible to buy/build a system to do this, chances are it would be cheaper just to hire someone to do it manually, especially if this is a one-off.
I run Gentoo with a lot of beta programs and it still has better stability than Windows.
I've been using XP Pro on a number of machines for the past 18 months or so, and I get about as many crashes as I do on the machines running Mandrake - that is to say, almost none.
Windows stability has come a long, long way, and for everyday use is easily on a par with that of Linux.
Keeping up with MS security patches... leads to several reboots a week.
Bullshit. They aren't even releasing security patches at anything like that rate, and not all patches require a reboot. From memory, I've rebooted my machine due to applying a patch once in the last couple of months (and yes, I stay current).
Besides, what does it matter? This isn't a server OS, and it isn't on a server. My XP Pro machine at work stays on 24/7 except for infrequent patch-required reboots. Even when I do have to reboot, it's back up in a matter of seconds - not even enough time to go grab a coffee from the kitchen 10 feet away.
As for *program installation* requiring a reboot, you're really talking crap. No program should *ever* require a reboot to install/uninstall. Reboots are only required if a file that is in use has to be overwritten, and no program should be replacing system files. If you have one that does, I'd think seriously about seeking an alternative.
Well, that may well all be true (and I assume that it is), but it doesn't change the fact that on my machine, XP Pro and Mandrake 9.2 feel like they boot in a comparable amount of time. I've not timed them, but I sure as hell haven't been sat waiting for either thinking "ffs, the other one boots faster than this, what's wrong with these people?!"
So while I'll accept that you know what you're talking about, I think your data is a good few years out of date. Unless, of course, you're comparing boot times for Windows to GUI and stripped-down Linux to prompt, which would hardly be fair.
Quite a few updates don't require a reboot. These days (= for the last two years at least) reboots have only been required when you're replacing files that are in use, which is not always the case.
Alternatively, 'phone their helpdesk and ask if the mail is genuine. If it isn't, they'll almost certainly want to know that someone is trying to scam their customers, so they can warn the rest. If it is, well, you've spent a couple of minutes and the cost of a phone call to get peace of mind that you're not about to be ripped off.
Going to the site as usual is a good idea, but if you can't find the page you're expecting, you may just go back to the mail and click the link anyway, believing that you just can't find it, rather than that it doesn't exist because it's a scam.
The article is extremely light on details, but I can think of one way in which they may be able to sue for copyright infringement.
*If* the Kazaa licence explicitly forbids using it for such purposes, then the RIAA's agents are in violation of the licence agreement. That means that, as I understand copyright law, they have no right to have even installed the software, and so are infringing on Sharman Network's copyright.
I've seen that exact same comment before, attached to a comment on a different story.
It's a troll, move along, nothing to see here.
Well, like I said, "entry level" does sound increasingly like a misnomer. What's entry level now would have been far beyond the top of the range just 5 years ago.
:-)
I define entry level, though, roughly as the cheapest PC you can buy off the shelf without too much hunting around. Right now, it seems to me that is around the spec I quoted, plus or minus a bit.
For what it's worth, I've had a P4 2.4B with 512 meg of RAM for a year now, and I generally buy at the sweet spot of the price/performance ratio. So yes, I consider my PC to be more or less entry level
But it would have been nice to try to cooperate a bit more.
Well, not to flame or anything, but cooperation works both ways. The FSF appears (to me) to be completely unbending in its interpretation of the spirit of the GPL, and what is and isn't compatible with it. They'll help you to change your licence to make it compatible, but they won't shift a millimetre on their own position.
Okay, so their philosphical and moral stance more or less requires that behaviour, but it does seem a little unfair to criticise other groups for not cooperating.
There's absolutely no legal requirement for them to charge a licence fee just because they've patented their xml file formats.
Most large companies have portfolios of patents that they have no intention of enforcing, unless pushed into doing so (eg someone sues them for infringing on one of their patents, etc).
Now, I'm not saying that MS definitely won't charge a fee for using this, I'm just pointing out that it's a little early to be saying that they definitely will, too. Let's just all wait until the licencing scheme is announced before screaming at them, shall we?
You've worked with some crap PCs in that case. These days, 2.4GHz and 256meg of RAM is pretty-much entry level, but XP will fly on that sort of spec.
(Yeah, I know, that's a lot of power to be called "entry level", but that's the way PC tech goes; just try going to a high-street shop and buying a lower-specced desktop. You won't find very many of them.)
there's also a lot of good music that is part of the RIAA... You may have to go back a decade or two or three
That all depends on your tastes. One of my personal favourite bands at the moment is Rammstein, but apparently their record label is also a member of the RIAA.
Sucks to be me and like a current band, huh?
Honestly, why would I accuse someone I don't know of plagiarism if it weren't true?
Why would you make the accusation as an AC if it were true?
No, negative temperatures on the Kelvin scale are possible, sort of. See this page or this page for example.
current nuclear reactor designs would never have the same type of accident Chernobyl had. The designs have made it impossible.
So they'll have different ones.
I'm not against nuclear power, but it's foolish to say "X can never happen!", as chances are it (or something similar) most certainly can.
An anti-neutron may still count as a nucleon, but I'm betting it would annhilate with one of the neutrons, so what you'd actually get would be a disparate collection of the remaining particles... :-)
ctrl-alt-+/- changes the resolution, but not the "size" of the desktop; effectively, it zooms you in or out. That's absolutely not what the majority of people would expect or want to happen.
Yes, you can argue that that's because the majority of people are used to the way that Windows (and MacOS/OSX?) does it, but that's not the point. That's a niggling little irritation to some of us, but to people trying to come from Windows it's a show stopper. For them, it seems as though you have to choose your resolution when you install the OS, and from then on you're stuck either with that, or some weird half-way between thing.
Hell, I once hand-crafted mode lines because an install didn't have them for my monitor, and *I* can't be bothered to have to shut down X, log in as root, edit the XF86Config file to set the resolution, log out and restart X. No, it's not something you have to do very often, but when you do, it's a pain.
once you get sucked into a windows way of life, upgrades and re-installs and tweaks and fixes all seem to be 'normal' ways to use the computer
Rubbish. I installed XP Pro on my machine at home when I upgraded it last January, and it just works. I've not had to upgrade it, tweak it or re-install it once I got it how I liked it. My gf's machine (bought December 2002) came with XP Home pre-installed, and that too just works, with none of the problems you cite.
I got it working, and now that it works, I use it. No need to constantly service it as you say. Sure, my Linux install is the same way, but that's beside the point.