Very, very few corporations have CEO's raking in multimillion dollar bonuses.
And, as a directory of the corporation, the CEO has a LOT more risk than the employees. The CEO has a personal stake in corporate losses, and can be held liable for corporate mistakes.
And yes, CEOs of successful companies are very busy people. If the company isn't successful, then they're probably not busy (or maybe too busy). Then they lose their shirt as punishment.
Would you stake your house on the success of the company you work for? Your car? Your lifestyle? No?
Then stop whining. Otherwise, mortgage your house, sell your car, and put the money where your mouth is, in the company's stocks.
>We'll just have to layoff another 100 people to pay for that bonus, but they were just the factory workers/engineers who actually built/designed our products. How have they helped the company anyway?
Yes, they helped, and they were paid for it. Unless their paycheques were illegally garnished, I don't see how they couldn't have been. If they felt they were unfairly compensated, then why didn't they take their ideas elsewhere?
Don't say it was because they "needed to pay the bills". It isn't the company's job to take care of your finances. If you didn't prepare for quitting your job, that's your problem, NOT the company's; and to be honest, if you're intelligent enough to be an engineer, you SHOULD be intelligent enough to have a big fat savings account.
>Bunch of ingrates.
If you want money for nothing (as in, more money for work that's already been completed and fully paid for) then yeah, you're pretty much right.
>But when we told our plans to the person who was leasing the building, he told us he wouldn't lease to us.
Well... a lot of leases include non-compete agreements. Meaning that the landlord will not lease space to two clients selling similar products/services.
That and, while you might not like to hear it, Blockbuster pretty much has it sewn up as far as what it takes to get the maximum profit and maximum customers on DVD rental.
Basically, unless your plan included a special, never done before way that you could beat blockbuster's business plan, it's a hard sell to convince the landlord that you'd be successful and be able to pay him
Of course, that being said, if there's no non-compete agreement and you agreed to sign the lease with full personal liability, and you had good credit, there's no good reason to say no.
>As another example, has anyone ever tried to get a wholesale deal on DVDs for resale? If you're not one of the big-wigs, you're not going to get a deal.
Well, I hear this, but then I see a local electronics store that happens to rent DVDs (Steve's TV) and they have at least 300 DVDs for rent. I know it probably isn't easy, but where there's a will, there's a way.;-)
(It's the same problem trying to get good deals on computer parts wholesale...)
>That's why businesses really get compensated so much if they're successful. Monopoly power.
Yes and no. Blockbuster is a natural monopoly, unlike some other ones, such as most phone companies. They're a monopoly because most customers like them (although I don't), not because they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete.
I generally have no problems with natural monopolies. Of course, perhaps I missed something, and Blockbuster is really a big bully...
Don't like it?
on
Working Hard?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Don't work.
You can all bitch and moan all you like about no vacation time, not enough overtime pay, etc, but the more you take, the more you'll end up paying.
The only way you'll get ahead is to start contracting for yourself. But that's scary and risky!
Guess what... running a business is too. That's why they get compensated so much if they're successful.
>Who the hell cares if the X-Box runs Linux? It's got some really fun games on it, isn't that enough?
Not really.
But you are missing the whole point entirely, as many others here have. Let's compare:
XBOX: 3D acceleration, good TV out, good audio out, hard drive, controller, ethernet, memory, DVD/CD drive. $200.
PC:
- Hard drive: $50.
- Motherboard with quality built in sound: $100.
- Case with power supply: $30.
- Medium-High end 3d accelerator with TV out: $250.
- Memory: $20.
- Low end CPU with fan: $60.
- Game controller: $40.
- DVD/CD: $40.
- Ethernet: $10.
Total: $600.
But sure, maybe you're right. Maybe people running linux have so much money, $400 means nothing and the only reason they want the XBOX is to spite microsoft.
>TFA says you need a 'dollop' of solder between the two pins.
Then what's the point of the article then?
If you are still opening the X-Box, then what's the big deal? The fact is you _always_ could reflash the BIOS if you hooked up the write flash line -- the point of modchips is to keep you from screwing up your X-BOX by not putting the correct flash in.
This entire atricle is a waste of space. I don't understand why this is "news". This hasn't removed any difficulty, and isn't new. Even high school electronics students had this figured out from day one.
No. I'm beginning to think you haven't worked with tools like ghost yet...
If I have a 220 GB HDD, but only 50 GB of data, and the drive explodes in flames and all I have left is a spare 80 GB drive, with your method, I'm screwed.
With something like ghost, you aren't. You just put the image on the new drive, and wait until you get some drive space. And, as an added benefit, you get complete defragmentation, too.
>In the end, it's not the uptime of one machine that matters so much as the uptime of the service. Don't confuse the two.
So, in that case, windows 95 has 100% availability, as long as you patch it fully before deploying it (there are no new patches, ever) and ensure you always have someone ready to hotswap a machine in every 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds.
Wow! I guess overheating C64s can also acheive that, considering if you have 3 or 4 on at a time, one's always going to be available in a pinch.
>You said you wanted to watch TV on it, I gave you three solutions.
Yeah, but part of watching TV with a DVB card is time shifting... and I'm not spending hundreds + monthly licensing fees on a TiVO!:-)
That and I enjoy recording the MPEG-2 feeds...
>Have you tried using a PC/Linux DVB card and VideoLAN?
No, but I might try. I've found the windows solutions work pretty well for me, though. I'm totally "satisfied".:)
My luck with video on linux is bad, though. I run slackware, and very few video packages seem to support it well (oh, the hell when they assume all linuxes have a SysV init), and most of the packages use the latest alpha/CVS versions of libraries, and that normally means upgrading a dozen things, rather than just one.
Oh well... Maybe I'll give it another try if I build a special Red-Hat box for video. Streaming certainly sounds nice.
>Well, there was the Macintosh TV, which was released in 1993.
That's not a DVB card.
>Youc could also get the El Gato EyeTV for $199. It let's you watch and record.
Also not a DVB card.
>Or you could get the Formac Studio TVR for watching TV and analog to DV conversions for high-quality copies of your TV programs/videos, that's $399.
And also not a DVB card.
Perhaps an example of what a consumer DVB card is, and what DVB is itself would probably be helpful.
I did find, myself, one DVB card for a Macintosh, but it's over 5 years old... I doubt there's any OSX drivers for it.
Oh well... I'm pretty sure when it comes to semi-specialized equipment, Mac isn't the way to go, but that doesn't come as much of a surprise to me or most Mac owners.
Right on. What you are talking about is exactly why Macs sell. People who buy Macs just want it to work.
So why do over 90% of people still buy PCs?
They want it to work well with all their favourite (and their friend's favourite) applications. They want a no BS OS that'll run the CD on their kids cereal box, and will let them run the latest, greatest versions of all their games. And they want their $25 printer and scanner to work with it too.
And they're not afraid to pay $100 in support yearly to make this happen. They know that over the lifetime of the PC, they're still saving wads of cash over the price of the Mac, and they can always upgrade later.
I still don't see the benefit of the Mac, unless you live somewhere where getting a PC fixed is going to cost you a thousand dollars.
>Our small business has nearly thirty Macs. I'm the lone IT person, spending an entire hour a week on supporting a bunch of artists and their Macs. What similarly-sized Windows-based business can make that claim?
My college?
We supported over 1,500 PCs with 7 full time support staff. That's over 200 computers per staff member. In my experience, this isn't at all unusual.
Then again, ghost has been about for the PC for so long, I didn't work there before it existed, so I really don't know how many people were there then. Probably 1 per 30 computers, like we needed for the mac lab for years before we found a ghost-like solution.
And I also buy well integrated tools that get my job done. That's why my motherboard has integrated Firewire, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, IDE to Serial ATA convertor, 2 regular IDE ports, Floppy port, 2 serial ports, a parallel port, diagnostic LEDs, SPDIF in/out, mouse port, and keyboard port, not to mention integrated optical sound output, all for under $500, and all drivers installed with one CD automatically. Because I don't like to muck around with crap anymore than the next guy. I just need it to work with everything I buy at my local Best Buy / FutureShop. And I needed it 6 months ago.
I don't have much against Macs anymore, I just wish people would stop implying PCs can't do what they do. Because if there's anything worth doing, it can be done on the PC. And no, PCI-X isn't worth doing yet at all, as far as I can tell, for a consumer.
BTW: Can you do DVB video on a Mac yet? Just wondering when Apple plans to catch up on this (many years old) activity... If I bought a Mac the least I'd expect to be able to do is watch TV on it. Perferrably for under $200, but I'd be willing to spend as much as $400.
>Keyboard, speakers and mouse with a wholesale cost of 66 cents each?
Yup. My college has had small scale wholesale deals on 3 button mice... they were 66 cents CDN a button. It wouldn't surprise me if in very large quantities you couldn't buy the entire mouse at 66 cents US, and I know you can buy speakers for $1 wholesale (qty 1 pricing) and keyboards, feh, not difficult to get for that price either in large quantities.
>A very cheap wholesale mouse might be $1-2, a cheap keyboard maybe $3, and incredibly crappy unamplified speakers maybe $2.
Hmmm. Well, if you don't believe me, phone up Comtronic Canada and ask them what their wholesale cost for 1 million of their cheapest mice would be. You'll be very surprised at the answer, I think. And they appear to be a second tier distributor of those. Learn Chinese, ask the Chinese sweat shop to make them for cargo shipment... even cheaper.
Plastic is a lot cheaper than you think... and the mouse doesn't actually have to work for more than an hour. No sane user will pay to ship a $1 mouse back to the company for warranty replacement.
Yes, most price lists from distributors are heavily inflated for small potatoes buyers. As soon as you buy in bulk, though, you can do neat things like sell 17" brand-name monitors new for $150 CDN.
>On the other hand, you may have overestimated the cost of the case and power supply, I've bought cases and power supplies retail for about $12 that came with what they claimed was a 300watt PS (although judging by the weight, it was probably more like 100-150 watts).
You're probably right... but being as this seems to be an american company, they'd be smart to invest a few dollars in getting them UL approved for lawsuit protection. Most cheap chinese power supplies, despite the fact they usually carry the UL sticker, really aren't approved (I stuck some of the stickers on myself... and then there's the mispelled stickers...;-)
Last bust not least... $199 US doesn't sound like such a good deal compared against this for $299 CDN.
That's an XP 1800+ system, sound, video, LAN, etc included. 256 MB RAM. 30 Gig HDD. FDD. 52x CD-ROM. Keyboard, mouse, etc. 20 programs + Office Suite included.
And that's just a small local shop. Anywhere decent should be able to do this for you... (and people still buy Dells made with the same parts... wow)
Really, I'd almost say anyone buying this is getting ripped off. Almost...
Re:wont work , support costs to much
on
More Cheap Linux PCs
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Easy!
- 1 GHz VIA Processor with Motherboard (built in everything) - $50 US
- 20 GB JTS (heh... probably not that bad) HDD - $40 US
- Keyboard + Speakers + Mouse - $2
- Case with 100 watt power supply - $15
- 128 MB RAM - $15
1% of accidents are reported as having been caused by speeding -- and the few that are caused by such driving are usually caused by people doing positively insane speeds (like 220 km/h on a 50 km/h road).
Data. (BTW: "Driving too fast for conditions" in Ontario means doing 40 km/h on a 60 km/h road when the entire road is iced over, it does NOT indicate driving above the speed limit).
I'm sure someone can find me some statistics that show that speeding has been used to avoid over 1% of all accidents. I'm pretty sure Young Drivers even mentioned that once...
>It is sad to me that a programmer capable of writing stuff like this is unable to find a job right now
It's sad, yes.
Surprising? No.
You don't catch flies with vinegar.
If he has a MAJOR attitude re-adjustment, he might find work, that's if he really _wants_ to work for another company (he doesn't seem the type, to me). But if he's working for someone else, getting $200,000 a year for it (yes, you said 6 years, but he specifically said the part he wanted the money for was his past 6 months of development of version 5.0) is simply not going to happen unless he's a programming God. And even then, it's next to impossible.
If his project is really that popular, why doesn't he start shilling himself out? He could offer consulting on his project, sell installs, sell patches / improvements to the project. I'm thinking of doing this with some open source software (that I *didn't* write, but seems somewhat unsupported) right now. It's money for the taking.
And no, he shouldn't just say he offers it and expect business to come to him. That's simply not how it works (if only it did). He needs to pound some pavement, so to speak. I don't even see his business name (if he has one) listed in his rant!
Unfortunately he's suffering from "Build it and they will come" syndrome, and "every user is a potential customer" beliefs. Time for him to do some market research and target who wants to cough up the dough, and if it is possible for that to happen while the project is free.
>That is mainly what his complaint is about.
Then he's on the wrong track. You just can't give something away for free and expect people to give you money. Even RMS explains this.
>Having special electronics to run the bulb with lower current when the light isn't needed might make some sense as it should worn less as the temperature drops with the current......Such electronics would often cost more than changing the bulb, though.
Actually, it's very cheap. A standard diode in series with the bulb will reduce consumption by either 30% or 70% (I can't remember which, but I do know it isn't 50%). Diodes generally have expected lifetimes in the millions of hours, so they never get replaced.
The problem is that the cooler light bulbs run, the shorter their expected life span. That's why those "15 watt" bulbs you see are always designed so ruggedly -- they would have a very short (maybe under 1000 hours) lifetime otherwise.
Most light bulbs would last far longer than the standard life (perhaps as much as 10x, if not more) if left on forever. How many light bulbs have you seen die while they've been on for a while? All the ones I've seen die immediately when power is supplied.
Certain items (such as light bulbs, and possibly fluorescent tubes) are actually damaged each time they are turned on, but aren't damaged while they are left on.
If the energy cost (transport, manufacture, etc) of replacing the item is high enough, it may be more efficient to leave the item on to save it from damage.
>I'd like to hope someone with 6 figure$ to burn wants this to happen
HAHAHAHA.
One more time:
AHAHAHAH.
ROTFLMAO.
Oh, please, $100,000? For half a year's work? If you're worth that much, you'd have started your own business already based on this software.
>but I need to grow up and move on instead of continuing to wait on the tooth fairy to show up to help me persue my artistic dreams.
Yes, you do. Part of growing up is realising what you're worth, and what you're skills are in. Seems you already know the latter, but hit the proverbial brick wall with the former.
Very few people are worth $200k+ per year, and the few that are don't go off on tirades like that.
>Didn't work in the sense that my DVD player does nothing but grind, and the entire computer is unresponsive to any input, including the CTRL-ALT-DEL or the soft-off switch (have to hold it for 4 seconds to have the BIOS kick in and sort things out).
If you feed PowerDVD XP 4.0 an MPEG-2 file (or DVD) with an incorrect size in the first header it will lock and BSOD in any windows.
It's a realiably consistent, and never fixed problem.
WinDVD simply plays the file squashed or clipped to the specified resolution (as should happen).
And if you're wondering why this would happen, anybody who has recorded a DVB stream has had the idea of burning it to DVD. Unfortunately, most DVB streams aren't valid DVD resolutions and have to be patched to see if your player can cope with the file.
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Yes, and people scamming the military have done the same thing with $600 hammers.
I don't see your point. Scammers are scammers, whether they are illegally collecting welfare, or bringing down banks.
>Rent: $1400/month
>Food: $500/month
>Taxes: $1500/month
>Auto: $250/month (not counting repairs or payments)
Holy shit! No wonder I don't live in the US.
In KW, Ontario $1400 a month will rent you an entire house.
Rent: $400
Food: $75
Taxes: $100
Auto: (beats me... but not for long)
That's $575 US, with medical (of course), and a family, totally no-frills.
Maybe you need to move up north for a while.
Very, very few corporations have CEO's raking in multimillion dollar bonuses.
And, as a directory of the corporation, the CEO has a LOT more risk than the employees. The CEO has a personal stake in corporate losses, and can be held liable for corporate mistakes.
And yes, CEOs of successful companies are very busy people. If the company isn't successful, then they're probably not busy (or maybe too busy). Then they lose their shirt as punishment.
Would you stake your house on the success of the company you work for? Your car? Your lifestyle? No?
Then stop whining. Otherwise, mortgage your house, sell your car, and put the money where your mouth is, in the company's stocks.
>We'll just have to layoff another 100 people to pay for that bonus, but they were just the factory workers/engineers who actually built/designed our products. How have they helped the company anyway?
Yes, they helped, and they were paid for it. Unless their paycheques were illegally garnished, I don't see how they couldn't have been. If they felt they were unfairly compensated, then why didn't they take their ideas elsewhere?
Don't say it was because they "needed to pay the bills". It isn't the company's job to take care of your finances. If you didn't prepare for quitting your job, that's your problem, NOT the company's; and to be honest, if you're intelligent enough to be an engineer, you SHOULD be intelligent enough to have a big fat savings account.
>Bunch of ingrates.
If you want money for nothing (as in, more money for work that's already been completed and fully paid for) then yeah, you're pretty much right.
>But when we told our plans to the person who was leasing the building, he told us he wouldn't lease to us.
;-)
Well... a lot of leases include non-compete agreements. Meaning that the landlord will not lease space to two clients selling similar products/services.
That and, while you might not like to hear it, Blockbuster pretty much has it sewn up as far as what it takes to get the maximum profit and maximum customers on DVD rental.
Basically, unless your plan included a special, never done before way that you could beat blockbuster's business plan, it's a hard sell to convince the landlord that you'd be successful and be able to pay him
Of course, that being said, if there's no non-compete agreement and you agreed to sign the lease with full personal liability, and you had good credit, there's no good reason to say no.
>As another example, has anyone ever tried to get a wholesale deal on DVDs for resale? If you're not one of the big-wigs, you're not going to get a deal.
Well, I hear this, but then I see a local electronics store that happens to rent DVDs (Steve's TV) and they have at least 300 DVDs for rent. I know it probably isn't easy, but where there's a will, there's a way.
(It's the same problem trying to get good deals on computer parts wholesale...)
>That's why businesses really get compensated so much if they're successful. Monopoly power.
Yes and no. Blockbuster is a natural monopoly, unlike some other ones, such as most phone companies. They're a monopoly because most customers like them (although I don't), not because they use underhanded tactics to force others from being unable to compete.
I generally have no problems with natural monopolies. Of course, perhaps I missed something, and Blockbuster is really a big bully...
Don't work.
You can all bitch and moan all you like about no vacation time, not enough overtime pay, etc, but the more you take, the more you'll end up paying.
The only way you'll get ahead is to start contracting for yourself. But that's scary and risky!
Guess what... running a business is too. That's why they get compensated so much if they're successful.
>Who the hell cares if the X-Box runs Linux? It's got some really fun games on it, isn't that enough?
Not really.
But you are missing the whole point entirely, as many others here have. Let's compare:
XBOX: 3D acceleration, good TV out, good audio out, hard drive, controller, ethernet, memory, DVD/CD drive. $200.
PC:
- Hard drive: $50.
- Motherboard with quality built in sound: $100.
- Case with power supply: $30.
- Medium-High end 3d accelerator with TV out: $250.
- Memory: $20.
- Low end CPU with fan: $60.
- Game controller: $40.
- DVD/CD: $40.
- Ethernet: $10.
Total: $600.
But sure, maybe you're right. Maybe people running linux have so much money, $400 means nothing and the only reason they want the XBOX is to spite microsoft.
>TFA says you need a 'dollop' of solder between the two pins.
Then what's the point of the article then?
If you are still opening the X-Box, then what's the big deal? The fact is you _always_ could reflash the BIOS if you hooked up the write flash line -- the point of modchips is to keep you from screwing up your X-BOX by not putting the correct flash in.
This entire atricle is a waste of space. I don't understand why this is "news". This hasn't removed any difficulty, and isn't new. Even high school electronics students had this figured out from day one.
>...the exploits would let anyone with even a slight technical knowledge "reflash" the Xbox BIOS, allowing users to pirate games
Say that again? You mean they've found a way for a mechanical arm to reach inside the X-BOX and hook up the write line on the flash?
No wonder M$ is going to call their bluff.
>It will still be readable and I believe if you chkdsk -r it, it will drop the unaccessable clusters.
Does this work with ReiserFS, XFS, or any of the many other new non EXT filesystems?
>Is that some kind of joke?
No. I'm beginning to think you haven't worked with tools like ghost yet...
If I have a 220 GB HDD, but only 50 GB of data, and the drive explodes in flames and all I have left is a spare 80 GB drive, with your method, I'm screwed.
With something like ghost, you aren't. You just put the image on the new drive, and wait until you get some drive space. And, as an added benefit, you get complete defragmentation, too.
So, if the new hard drive is smaller... what then?
Unfortunately, this is only useful if the replacement hard drive is identical to the original.
:-/
This often isn't the case.
>In the end, it's not the uptime of one machine that matters so much as the uptime of the service. Don't confuse the two.
So, in that case, windows 95 has 100% availability, as long as you patch it fully before deploying it (there are no new patches, ever) and ensure you always have someone ready to hotswap a machine in every 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds.
Wow! I guess overheating C64s can also acheive that, considering if you have 3 or 4 on at a time, one's always going to be available in a pinch.
W00T! I love stats!
>You said you wanted to watch TV on it, I gave you three solutions.
:-)
:)
Yeah, but part of watching TV with a DVB card is time shifting... and I'm not spending hundreds + monthly licensing fees on a TiVO!
That and I enjoy recording the MPEG-2 feeds...
>Have you tried using a PC/Linux DVB card and VideoLAN?
No, but I might try. I've found the windows solutions work pretty well for me, though. I'm totally "satisfied".
My luck with video on linux is bad, though. I run slackware, and very few video packages seem to support it well (oh, the hell when they assume all linuxes have a SysV init), and most of the packages use the latest alpha/CVS versions of libraries, and that normally means upgrading a dozen things, rather than just one.
Oh well... Maybe I'll give it another try if I build a special Red-Hat box for video. Streaming certainly sounds nice.
>Well, there was the Macintosh TV, which was released in 1993.
That's not a DVB card.
>Youc could also get the El Gato EyeTV for $199. It let's you watch and record.
Also not a DVB card.
>Or you could get the Formac Studio TVR for watching TV and analog to DV conversions for high-quality copies of your TV programs/videos, that's $399.
And also not a DVB card.
Perhaps an example of what a consumer DVB card is, and what DVB is itself would probably be helpful.
I did find, myself, one DVB card for a Macintosh, but it's over 5 years old... I doubt there's any OSX drivers for it.
Oh well... I'm pretty sure when it comes to semi-specialized equipment, Mac isn't the way to go, but that doesn't come as much of a surprise to me or most Mac owners.
Right on. What you are talking about is exactly why Macs sell. People who buy Macs just want it to work.
So why do over 90% of people still buy PCs?
They want it to work well with all their favourite (and their friend's favourite) applications. They want a no BS OS that'll run the CD on their kids cereal box, and will let them run the latest, greatest versions of all their games. And they want their $25 printer and scanner to work with it too.
And they're not afraid to pay $100 in support yearly to make this happen. They know that over the lifetime of the PC, they're still saving wads of cash over the price of the Mac, and they can always upgrade later.
I still don't see the benefit of the Mac, unless you live somewhere where getting a PC fixed is going to cost you a thousand dollars.
>Our small business has nearly thirty Macs. I'm the lone IT person, spending an entire hour a week on supporting a bunch of artists and their Macs. What similarly-sized Windows-based business can make that claim?
My college?
We supported over 1,500 PCs with 7 full time support staff. That's over 200 computers per staff member. In my experience, this isn't at all unusual.
Then again, ghost has been about for the PC for so long, I didn't work there before it existed, so I really don't know how many people were there then. Probably 1 per 30 computers, like we needed for the mac lab for years before we found a ghost-like solution.
And I also buy well integrated tools that get my job done. That's why my motherboard has integrated Firewire, USB 2.0, Serial ATA, IDE to Serial ATA convertor, 2 regular IDE ports, Floppy port, 2 serial ports, a parallel port, diagnostic LEDs, SPDIF in/out, mouse port, and keyboard port, not to mention integrated optical sound output, all for under $500, and all drivers installed with one CD automatically. Because I don't like to muck around with crap anymore than the next guy. I just need it to work with everything I buy at my local Best Buy / FutureShop. And I needed it 6 months ago.
I don't have much against Macs anymore, I just wish people would stop implying PCs can't do what they do. Because if there's anything worth doing, it can be done on the PC. And no, PCI-X isn't worth doing yet at all, as far as I can tell, for a consumer.
BTW: Can you do DVB video on a Mac yet? Just wondering when Apple plans to catch up on this (many years old) activity... If I bought a Mac the least I'd expect to be able to do is watch TV on it. Perferrably for under $200, but I'd be willing to spend as much as $400.
>Keyboard, speakers and mouse with a wholesale cost of 66 cents each?
;-)
Yup. My college has had small scale wholesale deals on 3 button mice... they were 66 cents CDN a button. It wouldn't surprise me if in very large quantities you couldn't buy the entire mouse at 66 cents US, and I know you can buy speakers for $1 wholesale (qty 1 pricing) and keyboards, feh, not difficult to get for that price either in large quantities.
>A very cheap wholesale mouse might be $1-2, a cheap keyboard maybe $3, and incredibly crappy unamplified speakers maybe $2.
Hmmm. Well, if you don't believe me, phone up Comtronic Canada and ask them what their wholesale cost for 1 million of their cheapest mice would be. You'll be very surprised at the answer, I think. And they appear to be a second tier distributor of those. Learn Chinese, ask the Chinese sweat shop to make them for cargo shipment... even cheaper.
Plastic is a lot cheaper than you think... and the mouse doesn't actually have to work for more than an hour. No sane user will pay to ship a $1 mouse back to the company for warranty replacement.
Yes, most price lists from distributors are heavily inflated for small potatoes buyers. As soon as you buy in bulk, though, you can do neat things like sell 17" brand-name monitors new for $150 CDN.
>On the other hand, you may have overestimated the cost of the case and power supply, I've bought cases and power supplies retail for about $12 that came with what they claimed was a 300watt PS (although judging by the weight, it was probably more like 100-150 watts).
You're probably right... but being as this seems to be an american company, they'd be smart to invest a few dollars in getting them UL approved for lawsuit protection. Most cheap chinese power supplies, despite the fact they usually carry the UL sticker, really aren't approved (I stuck some of the stickers on myself... and then there's the mispelled stickers...
Last bust not least... $199 US doesn't sound like such a good deal compared against this for $299 CDN.
That's an XP 1800+ system, sound, video, LAN, etc included. 256 MB RAM. 30 Gig HDD. FDD. 52x CD-ROM. Keyboard, mouse, etc. 20 programs + Office Suite included.
And that's just a small local shop. Anywhere decent should be able to do this for you... (and people still buy Dells made with the same parts... wow)
Really, I'd almost say anyone buying this is getting ripped off. Almost...
Easy!
- 1 GHz VIA Processor with Motherboard (built in everything) - $50 US
- 20 GB JTS (heh... probably not that bad) HDD - $40 US
- Keyboard + Speakers + Mouse - $2
- Case with 100 watt power supply - $15
- 128 MB RAM - $15
(wholesale prices, of course)
Total: $122.
Lots of room for profit.
1% of accidents are reported as having been caused by speeding -- and the few that are caused by such driving are usually caused by people doing positively insane speeds (like 220 km/h on a 50 km/h road).
Data. (BTW: "Driving too fast for conditions" in Ontario means doing 40 km/h on a 60 km/h road when the entire road is iced over, it does NOT indicate driving above the speed limit).
I'm sure someone can find me some statistics that show that speeding has been used to avoid over 1% of all accidents. I'm pretty sure Young Drivers even mentioned that once...
>It is sad to me that a programmer capable of writing stuff like this is unable to find a job right now
It's sad, yes.
Surprising? No.
You don't catch flies with vinegar.
If he has a MAJOR attitude re-adjustment, he might find work, that's if he really _wants_ to work for another company (he doesn't seem the type, to me). But if he's working for someone else, getting $200,000 a year for it (yes, you said 6 years, but he specifically said the part he wanted the money for was his past 6 months of development of version 5.0) is simply not going to happen unless he's a programming God. And even then, it's next to impossible.
If his project is really that popular, why doesn't he start shilling himself out? He could offer consulting on his project, sell installs, sell patches / improvements to the project. I'm thinking of doing this with some open source software (that I *didn't* write, but seems somewhat unsupported) right now. It's money for the taking.
And no, he shouldn't just say he offers it and expect business to come to him. That's simply not how it works (if only it did). He needs to pound some pavement, so to speak. I don't even see his business name (if he has one) listed in his rant!
Unfortunately he's suffering from "Build it and they will come" syndrome, and "every user is a potential customer" beliefs. Time for him to do some market research and target who wants to cough up the dough, and if it is possible for that to happen while the project is free.
>That is mainly what his complaint is about.
Then he's on the wrong track. You just can't give something away for free and expect people to give you money. Even RMS explains this.
>Having special electronics to run the bulb with lower current when the light isn't needed might make some sense as it should worn less as the temperature drops with the current... ...Such electronics would often cost more than changing the bulb, though.
Actually, it's very cheap. A standard diode in series with the bulb will reduce consumption by either 30% or 70% (I can't remember which, but I do know it isn't 50%). Diodes generally have expected lifetimes in the millions of hours, so they never get replaced.
The problem is that the cooler light bulbs run, the shorter their expected life span. That's why those "15 watt" bulbs you see are always designed so ruggedly -- they would have a very short (maybe under 1000 hours) lifetime otherwise.
Most light bulbs would last far longer than the standard life (perhaps as much as 10x, if not more) if left on forever. How many light bulbs have you seen die while they've been on for a while? All the ones I've seen die immediately when power is supplied.
But then again, that's just me...
I've been through this one once before, but...
Certain items (such as light bulbs, and possibly fluorescent tubes) are actually damaged each time they are turned on, but aren't damaged while they are left on.
If the energy cost (transport, manufacture, etc) of replacing the item is high enough, it may be more efficient to leave the item on to save it from damage.
>I'd like to hope someone with 6 figure$ to burn wants this to happen
HAHAHAHA.
One more time:
AHAHAHAH.
ROTFLMAO.
Oh, please, $100,000? For half a year's work? If you're worth that much, you'd have started your own business already based on this software.
>but I need to grow up and move on instead of continuing to wait on the tooth fairy to show up to help me persue my artistic dreams.
Yes, you do. Part of growing up is realising what you're worth, and what you're skills are in. Seems you already know the latter, but hit the proverbial brick wall with the former.
Very few people are worth $200k+ per year, and the few that are don't go off on tirades like that.
Sorry to be blunt, but get real.
>Didn't work in the sense that my DVD player does nothing but grind, and the entire computer is unresponsive to any input, including the CTRL-ALT-DEL or the soft-off switch (have to hold it for 4 seconds to have the BIOS kick in and sort things out).
If you feed PowerDVD XP 4.0 an MPEG-2 file (or DVD) with an incorrect size in the first header it will lock and BSOD in any windows.
It's a realiably consistent, and never fixed problem.
WinDVD simply plays the file squashed or clipped to the specified resolution (as should happen).
And if you're wondering why this would happen, anybody who has recorded a DVB stream has had the idea of burning it to DVD. Unfortunately, most DVB streams aren't valid DVD resolutions and have to be patched to see if your player can cope with the file.
>I like to take walks too, but I don't tell everyone on /. about it.
:-)
Yes, people who drive Paseos are often found walking instead. Although that isn't anything to be proud of, this is the internet.
Don't forget to check out some of the rice mobiles on that page.