Would work... if I had the driving license for it... I don't, it's going to be hard to convince that the motorcycle was an impulse buy if I don't have the license for it;-)
Yeah, it's yet another purchase, yet another insurance. Mileage is great of course. Evidently, the scooter isn't allowed on the bicycle road and thus would force me to take the road with all the cars, making it very very dangerous.
I don't even want to imagine how it handles on snow and ice... Even if I would take the bicycle road, do you really think that the bicycle road has a "priority status" for cleaning up? Nah, don't think so. Besides, my wife would kill me if I bought anything resembling a motorcycle. She already forces me to wear one of those silly bike helmets. Bah!
The day, I'll work in the same office as you, I'll promise to take the bike to work every day. I hope you'll sit within one metre of me....:-D
Very funny, but I suspect this thing is going to be controlled with a keycard coded to your aparment. Insert keycard, you and your car go to the parking, you leave car, open door and you're in your hallway. So, no button-pushing pranksters, I fear.
Too many cars isn't going to result in less cars. High gas prices, on the other hand, might
Perhaps, but only perhaps. Over here in Europe (assuming you're American, sorry) gas prices are already very high. Filling up my car is a good 70€ these days, and I live in one of the "cheaper" countries in Europe.
Yet, every morning, there is a steel queue in direction of the closest city. All going to work. It's 8:15 now. Would I leave for work now, getting to my workplace, would take about 35 to 40 minutes. Leaving in an hour or so, will cut that back to 15 minutes or less. Parking is no problem for me, my workplace provides those. Others are less lucky and easily pay 15€ or more a day.
Of course, I'm one of the bad guys in the game too. My workplace is 10km from here, I have a bicycle road practially from my home to my workplace. I used it a few times in the summer. It's fun, but you get at work completely sweaty (it's a hilly country and most of the time I'm going uphill). There are no showers at my workplace, and you see where I'm going.:-(
Public transportation you say? Takes ~50 minutes. 25 minutes walking to the train station, 10minutes train, waiting for the bus another 5 minutes, the bus standing in traffic 10 minutes. That's of course when I'm lucky and don't miss a train or a bus. Yes, I also did this before.
So, just jacking up the gas prices won't help much. From my point of view the time saved is worth the price, so unless gas prices become unaffordable for the common man, nothing will change.
You weren't around in the eigthies, I see. It was a much nice time. Besides, having written installers that had to behave on 9x and NT in the same way, I can tell you that it isn't that simple. (The process model isn't the same at all, which screwed up some nifty stuff I did in NT, which would not work on 9x without making code specific for that platform)
Actually, the Linux model is much better. Look at the software available for Linux. If it's worth anything, you'll find ports for FreeBSD, Mac OSX, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc... Just load from repository and you get the software tailored for your system.
You only got used to the fact that the same program can be installed anywhere. That is the wrong approach. What we really need is open standards, file formats that are implementable by Free software and as such you'll find one or more programs that will render a given file correctly. We want interoperability, not monoculture. Monoculture is the reason we have so much problems with Viruses. The outbreaks would never be that bad when there was a nice distribution of operating systems.
So, you mistake interoperability with "everybody needs the same". It's a common mistake, usually made by PHBs. I would have expected more from a slashdot reader.
You forgot the dreaded snow white iBook logic board failure. They had an extended warranty on it, but mine failed just after the extended warranty run out. That and I heard that many of those that were repaired under warranty, got the same logic board failure months later again.
I was a full Mac convert when I had that levely iBook, but the Intel accouncement came out, and buying a G4 laptop seemed a dumb thing to do, but the Intel laptops were far away. So, I did what any price conscious person would do in such a situation: I bough a second hand P-III 600MHz / 256Meg RAM / 6Gig HD laptop for 100€ and over time, I upgraded it with another 256Meg I had lying around, a 80Gig harddisk for 117€ and a wireless PCMCIA card for 25€. Grand total: 242€ for a laptop that ran XP perfectly fine. Sure, it died after nearly 2 years of abuse, but that was mainly the plastic breaking. The internals were fully functional.
So, when time to replace it came, I bought one of the cheapest dual core laptops I could find with XP on it. That was January this year and with the upcoming release of Vista many laptops were on sale because they were merely "Vista Capable", which means "Won't run Vista".
The damned thing now dual boots XP and Ubuntu... Thank you very much. I'll consider another Apple, the day I have more money than brains. (Or am really really drunk while going on a shopping spree)
You probably checked this out already, but the cause may be that you have to more rare BGR subpixel configuration on your laptop, instead of the more common RGB subpixel configuration. See here, scroll down to Sub-Pixel Order Sensitivity.
The average spend per year for iTunes users is $10, remember iTunes charges $1+ per song. The average spend per year for eMusic customers is $168, they charge $0.33 per song and even less if you spend more.
I think you are overlooking something, and from this comment I assume you are a music lover. I'm pretty sure that emusic would be something for my sister who loves music more than anything in life. I am, on the other hand a casual buyer. Back in my CD days, I bought two, three albums a year... tops. I think I have not more than 150CDs, perhaps 200 if I'm being very very liberal.
My current iTunes purchases are not bigger than my former CD purchases, plus I can pick and choose songs. I spent 30€ on songs in iTunes in 2007. For a comparable subscription, I would have had paid alread 90€ just for the subscription at emusic. Now, frankly, which one is better from *my* perspective.
I understand subscription models for music lovers, that would spend over 120€ per year on CDs. I don't I'm not a music lover and to me 120€ per year is too much. So let's just agree that the current music services cater to different publics. iTunes is ideal for me, emusic is ideal for you. If you would use iTunes it would turn out to be more expensive than emusic, but for me the reverse is true.
Also keep in mind that I do not fixate on iTunes. Yesterday, I bought the complete works of Jonathan Coulton, directly from him. That's the best way to support an artists, but not all of them give you that possibility.
Again, instead of saying that I don't get it or should read on the subject, try seeing it from my point. I already understand your point and agree that from your point of view iTunes is a complete ripoff.
If people continue to purchase songs at inflated prices the record companies will think this is what people are willing to pay and will not change.
I have a question for you: I am paying right? While I do agree that it's a bit too expensive, I also agree that gas is too expensive. I still pay. This means, that I am willing to pay (albeit grudgingly) and that the pricepoint is okay for *me*. Now people with less money that me, or people that have a stronger feeling that they are overpaying, those will not pay. If they want to expand their market (more sales), then they'll need to lower prices.
Supply and demand works in both ways. Think of it: back in the day CD players were extremely expensive. I only knew one kid with a very very rich dad that had access to it. Years later, CD players became much cheaper so that everyone could have one. While I do realise this is due to production costs getting lower, the market expanded because the product got cheaper. Since music prices are essentially fixed by the record companies, they can choose the size of their market.
That also is economy 101. I doubt you had economy in 1st grade though...
And yet, that's exactly the answer I would have given. AVG is free as in beer, lightweight and has all features one needs.
I liked the concept from yonder days where personal users got their antivirus programs for free and companies had to pay for it. McAfee was like that.... That's a long time ago though, but it is the business model that Grisoft uses for AVG.
As said, it requires "special knowledge". Often you need to go into the registry editor and adapt security settings for certain registry keys ("Edit"-"Permissions..."). The same for filesystems: games that write savegames in their own directoy will need write access for limited users. You can do this with cacls on a XP Home system, XP Pro has the appropriate tabs in the properties of the file/directory.
There are some other caveats, like the "User"/"All Users" separation in the Start menu that you have to adapt in some cases. In the end it's all a matter of experience.
I learnt this over the years, and every new game will be trial and error all over again. It's login to admin mode, change keys, login to user, try game, rinse repeat lather.... It's hard, but not impossible. Some games require patches: for example The Sims 2 doesn't work without Admin rights out of the box, but bring it to a certain patch level and it will work. This was one of the most asked features for the game, IIRC.
You do not understand. This is about principle.... If people reject the only legal way to get DRM free music, they will say that there is no market for it. (Or blame piracy, the price, something but not themselves) As for your alternative: AllOfMP3 is kind of shady. eMusic doesn't have popular mainstream music. (I coulnd't check, for some reason their page won't load: just a gray background) It's not that I look down on that, just that you can't get normal people to those sites if the music they want isn't there.
So, it may be expensive, but I'm willing to pay *because* they do the right thing. I pay for the "right thing", not because I'm a cheapass. This is about moral choices, not about economic choices.
On the other hand, the virus update doesn't seem to work unless the administrator is logged on.
The you have a crappy antivirus program. Even AVG Free does this in Limited User. I used Limited User everywhere on my computers, I rarely log in as Admin. Of course, I do have the knowledge to set up a machine that way. Something most -normal- people cannot...
Think again! Most budget computers come with a 30 day trail. Don't pay that one, and you're screwed... If you pay, you are screwed too because those Antivirus programs (Symantec, I'm looking at you) are crappy overpriced products.
Your only hope is knowing a Geek/Nerd that is willing too help. Contrary to popular belief on slashdot, not everybody has that luxury.
Oh, I understand. I'm even worse off: I pay 1.29€/song. The thing is, I know that I vote with my dollar, ehm, euro.
That said, I'm probably an exception. I was looking for Jonathan Coulton songs lately and found him on iTunes. DMRed and all. So I didn't buy. Today, I had some spare time and googled him and found that he got them DRM-free on his site, guess who I will be paying some euros tonight. For me it's a deal... all songs for 70$, is only 50€ for me!
Yes, "Plus" is too expensive, but if we don't support it at all, piracy will be blamed and we will get even more DRM shoved through our throats. As for CDs: I live in a cramped apartment. I already put all my CDs in the basement to save space. For me download-only actually is an advantage.
At least in my opinion. I stopped buying iTunes songs that were protected after that EMI and Apple introduced the Plus songs. If it isn't plus, I won't buy it. That simple. I have a playlist called "To Buy" in iTunes. It contains links to songs I'd like to buy but that aren't Plus. I review them from time to time if anything has changed. Never happened, tough shit for them. If I find a Plus song that I like, I buy the whole album, just to support the idea.
All songs before I started boycotting non-Plus songs, have been cracked with Hymn.
I don't want to do illegal downloading, besides it's a pain in the neck. Give me an easy way to download and honest prices, and I'll be happy. I can't be alone.
I hope you said this as a second language speaker, right?;-)
For the record, I learnt the obscure language that my wife speaks, of course, it's what a large amount of the population speaks here. For my kids, my mother tongue will be unknown. With their grandparents, they'll speak something else than I do with my parents. Sadly enough, the language my wife speaks is spoken by about 300000 people. My mother tongue is spoken by 30 million people, but right here locally, it doesn't help my kids to know it.
That's what happense when a minority language is heavily promoted by a government. Sad, but true...
Various words just have no real translation. "Gesellig" (Dutch) just means so much more than the dictionary equivalents: genial, social.
At least spell it right, mmmkay? It's written with a "z": "gezellig". The word also exists in German, where it is indeed written with an "s", however "gemütlich" is more common. That said, they aren't one to one translations (as you said) because the Dutch have a tendency to overuse it...;-) A dutch person might use it to describe a fun evening where everyone got drunk on Bols, which I couldn't call "gezellig" in whatever context. They have to be excused, after all they're Dutch;-)) (Note: my mother tongue is Dutch)
Spoken like a true monolinguist. The same could be said for many languages.
I'm sure you're right... My native language isn't English and I prefer to use English everywhere anyway because it's convenient. For the record, I'm a quintilingual. I'm not a language whiz, I just learned the languages that are important in my environment. I couldn't for my life learn a new language without having a purpose for it.
That said, one of these languages is only spoken by about 300000 people. It's used as an "integration language" in school and it introduces much more problems that it solves (coupled with another miserable language decision of our government). This has the effect that in class, kids speak another language than on the playground. A big part of the solution, would be to kill off that language and get over with it, that it's too small. Fat chance, nobody want to meddle with that issue in politics. *sigh*
Okay, two things: Linux would run on biodiesel, vaporized coal, alchohol and enriched uranium.
As for "reliable sports cars".... I drive an Audi TT. I have never had a big reliability problem, ever.... Sure, it isn't a Ferrari, and it's "just an Audi", but a Porsche is reliability pure. I just can't afford one.
Slashdot Mirror
Would work... if I had the driving license for it... I don't, it's going to be hard to convince that the motorcycle was an impulse buy if I don't have the license for it ;-)
Yeah, it's yet another purchase, yet another insurance. Mileage is great of course. Evidently, the scooter isn't allowed on the bicycle road and thus would force me to take the road with all the cars, making it very very dangerous.
I don't even want to imagine how it handles on snow and ice... Even if I would take the bicycle road, do you really think that the bicycle road has a "priority status" for cleaning up? Nah, don't think so. Besides, my wife would kill me if I bought anything resembling a motorcycle. She already forces me to wear one of those silly bike helmets. Bah!
The day, I'll work in the same office as you, I'll promise to take the bike to work every day. I hope you'll sit within one metre of me.... :-D
Very funny, but I suspect this thing is going to be controlled with a keycard coded to your aparment. Insert keycard, you and your car go to the parking, you leave car, open door and you're in your hallway. So, no button-pushing pranksters, I fear.
Too many cars isn't going to result in less cars. High gas prices, on the other hand, might
Perhaps, but only perhaps. Over here in Europe (assuming you're American, sorry) gas prices are already very high. Filling up my car is a good 70€ these days, and I live in one of the "cheaper" countries in Europe.
Yet, every morning, there is a steel queue in direction of the closest city. All going to work. It's 8:15 now. Would I leave for work now, getting to my workplace, would take about 35 to 40 minutes. Leaving in an hour or so, will cut that back to 15 minutes or less. Parking is no problem for me, my workplace provides those. Others are less lucky and easily pay 15€ or more a day.
Of course, I'm one of the bad guys in the game too. My workplace is 10km from here, I have a bicycle road practially from my home to my workplace. I used it a few times in the summer. It's fun, but you get at work completely sweaty (it's a hilly country and most of the time I'm going uphill). There are no showers at my workplace, and you see where I'm going. :-(
Public transportation you say? Takes ~50 minutes. 25 minutes walking to the train station, 10minutes train, waiting for the bus another 5 minutes, the bus standing in traffic 10 minutes. That's of course when I'm lucky and don't miss a train or a bus. Yes, I also did this before.
So, just jacking up the gas prices won't help much. From my point of view the time saved is worth the price, so unless gas prices become unaffordable for the common man, nothing will change.
You weren't around in the eigthies, I see. It was a much nice time. Besides, having written installers that had to behave on 9x and NT in the same way, I can tell you that it isn't that simple. (The process model isn't the same at all, which screwed up some nifty stuff I did in NT, which would not work on 9x without making code specific for that platform)
Actually, the Linux model is much better. Look at the software available for Linux. If it's worth anything, you'll find ports for FreeBSD, Mac OSX, OpenBSD, Solaris, etc... Just load from repository and you get the software tailored for your system.
You only got used to the fact that the same program can be installed anywhere. That is the wrong approach. What we really need is open standards, file formats that are implementable by Free software and as such you'll find one or more programs that will render a given file correctly. We want interoperability, not monoculture. Monoculture is the reason we have so much problems with Viruses. The outbreaks would never be that bad when there was a nice distribution of operating systems.
So, you mistake interoperability with "everybody needs the same". It's a common mistake, usually made by PHBs. I would have expected more from a slashdot reader.
So essentially you prefer a monoculture.... Great Irish Famine anyone?....
You forgot the dreaded snow white iBook logic board failure. They had an extended warranty on it, but mine failed just after the extended warranty run out. That and I heard that many of those that were repaired under warranty, got the same logic board failure months later again.
I was a full Mac convert when I had that levely iBook, but the Intel accouncement came out, and buying a G4 laptop seemed a dumb thing to do, but the Intel laptops were far away. So, I did what any price conscious person would do in such a situation: I bough a second hand P-III 600MHz / 256Meg RAM / 6Gig HD laptop for 100€ and over time, I upgraded it with another 256Meg I had lying around, a 80Gig harddisk for 117€ and a wireless PCMCIA card for 25€. Grand total: 242€ for a laptop that ran XP perfectly fine. Sure, it died after nearly 2 years of abuse, but that was mainly the plastic breaking. The internals were fully functional.
So, when time to replace it came, I bought one of the cheapest dual core laptops I could find with XP on it. That was January this year and with the upcoming release of Vista many laptops were on sale because they were merely "Vista Capable", which means "Won't run Vista".
The damned thing now dual boots XP and Ubuntu... Thank you very much. I'll consider another Apple, the day I have more money than brains. (Or am really really drunk while going on a shopping spree)
You probably checked this out already, but the cause may be that you have to more rare BGR subpixel configuration on your laptop, instead of the more common RGB subpixel configuration. See here, scroll down to Sub-Pixel Order Sensitivity.
The average spend per year for iTunes users is $10, remember iTunes charges $1+ per song. The average spend per year for eMusic customers is $168, they charge $0.33 per song and even less if you spend more.
I think you are overlooking something, and from this comment I assume you are a music lover. I'm pretty sure that emusic would be something for my sister who loves music more than anything in life. I am, on the other hand a casual buyer. Back in my CD days, I bought two, three albums a year... tops. I think I have not more than 150CDs, perhaps 200 if I'm being very very liberal.
My current iTunes purchases are not bigger than my former CD purchases, plus I can pick and choose songs. I spent 30€ on songs in iTunes in 2007. For a comparable subscription, I would have had paid alread 90€ just for the subscription at emusic. Now, frankly, which one is better from *my* perspective.
I understand subscription models for music lovers, that would spend over 120€ per year on CDs. I don't I'm not a music lover and to me 120€ per year is too much. So let's just agree that the current music services cater to different publics. iTunes is ideal for me, emusic is ideal for you. If you would use iTunes it would turn out to be more expensive than emusic, but for me the reverse is true.
Also keep in mind that I do not fixate on iTunes. Yesterday, I bought the complete works of Jonathan Coulton, directly from him. That's the best way to support an artists, but not all of them give you that possibility.
Again, instead of saying that I don't get it or should read on the subject, try seeing it from my point. I already understand your point and agree that from your point of view iTunes is a complete ripoff.
If people continue to purchase songs at inflated prices the record companies will think this is what people are willing to pay and will not change.
I have a question for you: I am paying right? While I do agree that it's a bit too expensive, I also agree that gas is too expensive. I still pay. This means, that I am willing to pay (albeit grudgingly) and that the pricepoint is okay for *me*. Now people with less money that me, or people that have a stronger feeling that they are overpaying, those will not pay. If they want to expand their market (more sales), then they'll need to lower prices.
Supply and demand works in both ways. Think of it: back in the day CD players were extremely expensive. I only knew one kid with a very very rich dad that had access to it. Years later, CD players became much cheaper so that everyone could have one. While I do realise this is due to production costs getting lower, the market expanded because the product got cheaper. Since music prices are essentially fixed by the record companies, they can choose the size of their market.
That also is economy 101. I doubt you had economy in 1st grade though...
And yet, that's exactly the answer I would have given. AVG is free as in beer, lightweight and has all features one needs.
I liked the concept from yonder days where personal users got their antivirus programs for free and companies had to pay for it. McAfee was like that.... That's a long time ago though, but it is the business model that Grisoft uses for AVG.
Read my replies to the other poster. I'm not going to repeat the same things twice.
As said, it requires "special knowledge". Often you need to go into the registry editor and adapt security settings for certain registry keys ("Edit"-"Permissions..."). The same for filesystems: games that write savegames in their own directoy will need write access for limited users. You can do this with cacls on a XP Home system, XP Pro has the appropriate tabs in the properties of the file/directory.
There are some other caveats, like the "User"/"All Users" separation in the Start menu that you have to adapt in some cases. In the end it's all a matter of experience.
I learnt this over the years, and every new game will be trial and error all over again. It's login to admin mode, change keys, login to user, try game, rinse repeat lather.... It's hard, but not impossible. Some games require patches: for example The Sims 2 doesn't work without Admin rights out of the box, but bring it to a certain patch level and it will work. This was one of the most asked features for the game, IIRC.
You do not understand. This is about principle.... If people reject the only legal way to get DRM free music, they will say that there is no market for it. (Or blame piracy, the price, something but not themselves) As for your alternative: AllOfMP3 is kind of shady. eMusic doesn't have popular mainstream music. (I coulnd't check, for some reason their page won't load: just a gray background) It's not that I look down on that, just that you can't get normal people to those sites if the music they want isn't there.
So, it may be expensive, but I'm willing to pay *because* they do the right thing. I pay for the "right thing", not because I'm a cheapass. This is about moral choices, not about economic choices.
On the other hand, the virus update doesn't seem to work unless the administrator is logged on.
The you have a crappy antivirus program. Even AVG Free does this in Limited User. I used Limited User everywhere on my computers, I rarely log in as Admin. Of course, I do have the knowledge to set up a machine that way. Something most -normal- people cannot...
Think again! Most budget computers come with a 30 day trail. Don't pay that one, and you're screwed... If you pay, you are screwed too because those Antivirus programs (Symantec, I'm looking at you) are crappy overpriced products.
Your only hope is knowing a Geek/Nerd that is willing too help. Contrary to popular belief on slashdot, not everybody has that luxury.
Oh, I understand. I'm even worse off: I pay 1.29€/song. The thing is, I know that I vote with my dollar, ehm, euro.
That said, I'm probably an exception. I was looking for Jonathan Coulton songs lately and found him on iTunes. DMRed and all. So I didn't buy. Today, I had some spare time and googled him and found that he got them DRM-free on his site, guess who I will be paying some euros tonight. For me it's a deal... all songs for 70$, is only 50€ for me!
Yes, "Plus" is too expensive, but if we don't support it at all, piracy will be blamed and we will get even more DRM shoved through our throats. As for CDs: I live in a cramped apartment. I already put all my CDs in the basement to save space. For me download-only actually is an advantage.
At least in my opinion. I stopped buying iTunes songs that were protected after that EMI and Apple introduced the Plus songs. If it isn't plus, I won't buy it. That simple. I have a playlist called "To Buy" in iTunes. It contains links to songs I'd like to buy but that aren't Plus. I review them from time to time if anything has changed. Never happened, tough shit for them. If I find a Plus song that I like, I buy the whole album, just to support the idea.
All songs before I started boycotting non-Plus songs, have been cracked with Hymn.
I don't want to do illegal downloading, besides it's a pain in the neck. Give me an easy way to download and honest prices, and I'll be happy. I can't be alone.
....Surprised, I am not.
Good riddence .
I hope you said this as a second language speaker, right? ;-)
For the record, I learnt the obscure language that my wife speaks, of course, it's what a large amount of the population speaks here. For my kids, my mother tongue will be unknown. With their grandparents, they'll speak something else than I do with my parents. Sadly enough, the language my wife speaks is spoken by about 300000 people. My mother tongue is spoken by 30 million people, but right here locally, it doesn't help my kids to know it.
That's what happense when a minority language is heavily promoted by a government. Sad, but true...
Various words just have no real translation. "Gesellig" (Dutch) just means so much more than the dictionary equivalents: genial, social.
At least spell it right, mmmkay? It's written with a "z": "gezellig". The word also exists in German, where it is indeed written with an "s", however "gemütlich" is more common. That said, they aren't one to one translations (as you said) because the Dutch have a tendency to overuse it... ;-) A dutch person might use it to describe a fun evening where everyone got drunk on Bols, which I couldn't call "gezellig" in whatever context. They have to be excused, after all they're Dutch ;-)) (Note: my mother tongue is Dutch)
Spoken like a true monolinguist. The same could be said for many languages.
I'm sure you're right... My native language isn't English and I prefer to use English everywhere anyway because it's convenient. For the record, I'm a quintilingual. I'm not a language whiz, I just learned the languages that are important in my environment. I couldn't for my life learn a new language without having a purpose for it.
That said, one of these languages is only spoken by about 300000 people. It's used as an "integration language" in school and it introduces much more problems that it solves (coupled with another miserable language decision of our government). This has the effect that in class, kids speak another language than on the playground. A big part of the solution, would be to kill off that language and get over with it, that it's too small. Fat chance, nobody want to meddle with that issue in politics. *sigh*
Work in the US.... Not where I live.
Okay, two things: Linux would run on biodiesel, vaporized coal, alchohol and enriched uranium.
As for "reliable sports cars".... I drive an Audi TT. I have never had a big reliability problem, ever.... Sure, it isn't a Ferrari, and it's "just an Audi", but a Porsche is reliability pure. I just can't afford one.
XP, SP2 is good... Before that, W2k was way better. I switched to XP in 2005, but I'm very conservative in these things.