No doubt. Although the actual comparison is probably with the estimated value of enticing a customer into a restaurant. A single transaction will probably make more profit than the cost of power, even after other overheads are taken into account.
Apple have a monopoly on the digital download market. Yes, there are other options but there are alternatives to Windows as well. This didn't protect them against claims they have a monopoly. iTunes clearly makes up most of the market.
To use it, you need to buy a second piece of hardware. This is a lot more of a problem for the cinsumer than MS bundling a browser. This is arguably part of the system, and only an incremental step after also supplying a text editor and other applications. iTunes users actually have to go out and buy another product which is only tangentially related. They have a choice of just one because Apple refuse to either licence their DRM, or offer an alternative format from iTunes. If you wanta portable digital music player, apple prevent you from having a choice. This is quite clearly product tying. This is illegal abuse of a monopoly.
The fact that there are other services isn't significant. Since Apple has such a large proportion of the customer base, there is clearly a good reason for this. Copying to CD, then reencoding to mp3 also isn't a reasonable option. This is very inconvenient, for those who aren't tech savvy, and loses track information for those who are.
Why are people defending Apple for reducing consumer choice?
I love the way "communist" is considered such a dirty word in America.
Perhaps it should be upgraded to full expletive status. e.g "It's totally comminised", "What a communist piece of software" or "Eat communism, motherfucker"
He doesn't say what it's for. He may simply be using a laptop because he needs something portable. Or maybe he has other reasons. If the suggestion is useless it can be ignored.
It's like you asking me what movie to watch tonight and I tell you to read a book because it's just as good.
Likewise, with this suggestion, I might consider it a viable alternative. If I simply want to be entertained, the fact that I can buy a good book for the cost of a video rental may not have occurred to me.
Perhaps. I'm just not convinced they would have used a 4 figure year if they could store several megabytes on the card. Generally, which century it is is not a consideration in most people's lives.
Not really. A startup has no spare money. Just debts and some vapourware which may or may not be worth something. Any money they can get their hands on, they'll want to put into marketing and development.
Yeah, but even then it's not about saving space. Just about any system that was had space to waste on using BCD had enough space to waste on those extra 2 digits. The clock on a PC BIOS certainly never had such space restrictions that that extra byte would have made a difference.
Lots of systems would have had peculiar behaviour. Many would have been quite subtle. Financial systems were probably most at risk, and a few other systems would have shown odd glitches.
The problem was that by the time the media got hold of this, the story had become every system with a processor in it will simultaneously stop working at the strike of midnight. Suddenly , people assumed that their home PCs, cars and microwave ovens would sbruptly stop working. Clearly this didn't happen.
There was one other lie. That the using 2 years to store the date was done to save space. If the space was that much of an issue, then the programmers wouldn't have stored the date using BCD. They would have simply had a count of days. a 16 bit value would have given 179 years, whereas a 3 digit date using BCD would take up 24 bits and only give 100 years. The only reason they used a 2 digit date was becaase programmers knew the users were lazy.
It's been a whilke since I've seen any IDE with an interface I like. I marginally prefer this splattered all over the screen format over the Visual studio interface. Simply close windows when you're not using them and usually you'll only have a project and editor window.
I simply find the MDI a little cluttered. What I really want is two windows - one for the editor, and one for all the other stuff. Multiple windows with their own icon bars that components can be shuffled between would be nice.
A company I worked for had a perfectly good kettle. Sadly, between the 60 or so of us, an electric kettle would not kast long. We didn't really care. Every couple of months a company dogsbody would be dispatched to the nearby electrical shop to buy a replacement.
Then the disaster happened. They replaced it with a horrible slow oversized industrial kettle. This took forever to boil and was impossible to fill. Naturally the comapny soon went bankrupt. When I was looking for another job, I had a choice of two offers. One of them was with a company that had an identical kettle. So I chose the other. I seem to have chosen correctly. The company I rejected only had another 5 months left to live.
Is it al down to the kettle? No, of course not. Sometimes it's all about the fridge. But it's usually the kettle.
As evidence that the corollory is also true, a friend of mine works in an office that was previously used by a manufacturer for testing kettles. When the previous tenants moved out, they left several dozen prototypes behind. The company is going from strength to strength.
When you crash your car, will you see radiactive waste spread all over the country?
What about when a nuclear rocket explodes?
Not sure how bad it would actually be. The amounts used aren't that great, but I'd like to have some figures on just how much environmental damage a nuclear rocket stage could do.
I know what you mean. In the 80's and early 90's there was some great stuff happening. Computers, then better computers (not just faster, but decent sound and graphics), new mobile phone technology, more and more portable devices, and those funky shiney digital music discs.
Now we just seem to be getting software. The PC as a games machine. The PC as a music player. the PC as a "home entertainment system". The internet - which the tech industry seems to be trying to convert to TV.
Oh, and your sexbot - what I think we need is internet sex. With a portable version. I need something for the daily commute.
From what I've read, porting MFC-based utilities (such as game editors) is more of a pain than switching 3D APIs.
Yep. D3D and OpenGL both do more or less the same thing, and generally aren't a huge portion of the application. And if things are done properly, the renderer will be its own module. When you get down to it, all you're doing is drawing a lot of textured shaded triangles, and changing state.
The official line is that they're cleaning up as part of a process to make the data more easily accessible. This is perfectly reasonable if true. I like the fact that the government isn't wasting time storing heaps of obsolete usless information.
which you can then send via regular postal mail on diskette, CD-ROM, or as an OCR-able print-out (as the GPL does stipulate "machine readable"), for a fee of $100.
Not quite.
From the GPL: "[3]b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange"
The OCR-able printout would probably be borderline as well since it isn;t really a medium customarily used for software interchange.
Someone challlenged a vendor over this some time ago.
Here's the link to someone who managed. But he won because the defendant didn't show up. The company could argue that they are only entitled to give a full refund if he returns the entire computer, since the original contract was for the sale of a PC with windows installed at $1000. Companies are not obliged to offer partial refunds for components. For example, I couldn't demand a refund for just the Hard drive if it was in some way inadequate.
Well, I don't think this has been proved. The software companies' argue that installing the software on a computer involves making a copy. And running it involves making another copy.
This is the sort of thing that fair use was meant to address. The main arguments being that installing it doesn't cost them a sale, and is absolutely essential in order to run the software so we can assume that we have implicit permission when we buy the software, but there seems to be an attitude to copyright - encouraged by the media organisations - where actually copying something is considered a henious crime. Plus, the courts are often business friendly, and would be reluctant to force all software comapnies to change their business strategies.
Anyway, my point is that there isn't a lot of legal precedent either way, but if you wanted to challenge an EULA, you'd have a bit of a legal fight on your hands.
How do you measure how "free" a country is? The alleged freedom in the US is just propaganda spread by politicians for people who have never been outside the US.
You have a point, and I see no reason not to offer food as an option, but I think many people would prefer a cheaper flight. Those that want food can pay the extra.
Several of the biggies started charging for their poor quality meals.
As long as they pass the saving on to me, this is not something I have a problem with. Especially on short distance routes. Why is it that an airline seems to be obliged to provide food for a 2 hour flight whereas I've been on a much longer train journey without needing to eat at all.
So I'm wondering how these same airlines are going to implement and charge for this new service. Just because Boeing is offering it, doesn't mean that every airline is going to automatically buy and install these systems and not charge the passengers!
They're going to be courting the frequent travellers. Some people are willing to pay a few dollars more for a little more to do on a flight, or failing that they'll at least switch if they know that airline A offers TV on board and Airline B doesn't.
If American Airlines can't figure out how to serve a *large* dish of ice cream in first class, then I don't see how they're going to find the value in onboard streaming data and video.
Airline caterers have some terminology. "Doable on ground" and "doable on board". Planes have all sorts of problems, like the space taken up with refrigeration, and the power needed for it.
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No doubt. Although the actual comparison is probably with the estimated value of enticing a customer into a restaurant. A single transaction will probably make more profit than the cost of power, even after other overheads are taken into account.
Apple have a monopoly on the digital download market. Yes, there are other options but there are alternatives to Windows as well. This didn't protect them against claims they have a monopoly. iTunes clearly makes up most of the market.
To use it, you need to buy a second piece of hardware. This is a lot more of a problem for the cinsumer than MS bundling a browser. This is arguably part of the system, and only an incremental step after also supplying a text editor and other applications. iTunes users actually have to go out and buy another product which is only tangentially related. They have a choice of just one because Apple refuse to either licence their DRM, or offer an alternative format from iTunes. If you wanta portable digital music player, apple prevent you from having a choice. This is quite clearly product tying. This is illegal abuse of a monopoly.
The fact that there are other services isn't significant. Since Apple has such a large proportion of the customer base, there is clearly a good reason for this. Copying to CD, then reencoding to mp3 also isn't a reasonable option. This is very inconvenient, for those who aren't tech savvy, and loses track information for those who are.
Why are people defending Apple for reducing consumer choice?
I love the way "communist" is considered such a dirty word in America.
Perhaps it should be upgraded to full expletive status. e.g "It's totally comminised", "What a communist piece of software" or "Eat communism, motherfucker"
Few of the businesses seem to care about leeching he electricity. Presumably they feel the same way.
He doesn't say what it's for. He may simply be using a laptop because he needs something portable. Or maybe he has other reasons. If the suggestion is useless it can be ignored.
It's like you asking me what movie to watch tonight and I tell you to read a book because it's just as good.
Likewise, with this suggestion, I might consider it a viable alternative. If I simply want to be entertained, the fact that I can buy a good book for the cost of a video rental may not have occurred to me.
Perhaps. I'm just not convinced they would have used a 4 figure year if they could store several megabytes on the card. Generally, which century it is is not a consideration in most people's lives.
It its just portability you need, an ITX case should solve the problem. Some cases even have carrying handles.
Am I missing something here? Can someone please explain to me how to use a laser pointer to look at stars?
Two ways.
Point it at the star. The one that reflects after several decades is the one you're looking at.
Spend several million on one of these
Not really. A startup has no spare money. Just debts and some vapourware which may or may not be worth something. Any money they can get their hands on, they'll want to put into marketing and development.
IRQ conflicts? What version of Windows were you using!? Or were you using an old ISA network card?
Yeah, but even then it's not about saving space. Just about any system that was had space to waste on using BCD had enough space to waste on those extra 2 digits. The clock on a PC BIOS certainly never had such space restrictions that that extra byte would have made a difference.
It was overhyped.
Lots of systems would have had peculiar behaviour. Many would have been quite subtle. Financial systems were probably most at risk, and a few other systems would have shown odd glitches.
The problem was that by the time the media got hold of this, the story had become every system with a processor in it will simultaneously stop working at the strike of midnight. Suddenly , people assumed that their home PCs, cars and microwave ovens would sbruptly stop working. Clearly this didn't happen.
There was one other lie. That the using 2 years to store the date was done to save space. If the space was that much of an issue, then the programmers wouldn't have stored the date using BCD. They would have simply had a count of days. a 16 bit value would have given 179 years, whereas a 3 digit date using BCD would take up 24 bits and only give 100 years. The only reason they used a 2 digit date was becaase programmers knew the users were lazy.
It's been a whilke since I've seen any IDE with an interface I like. I marginally prefer this splattered all over the screen format over the Visual studio interface. Simply close windows when you're not using them and usually you'll only have a project and editor window.
I simply find the MDI a little cluttered. What I really want is two windows - one for the editor, and one for all the other stuff. Multiple windows with their own icon bars that components can be shuffled between would be nice.
A company I worked for had a perfectly good kettle. Sadly, between the 60 or so of us, an electric kettle would not kast long. We didn't really care. Every couple of months a company dogsbody would be dispatched to the nearby electrical shop to buy a replacement.
Then the disaster happened. They replaced it with a horrible slow oversized industrial kettle. This took forever to boil and was impossible to fill. Naturally the comapny soon went bankrupt. When I was looking for another job, I had a choice of two offers. One of them was with a company that had an identical kettle. So I chose the other. I seem to have chosen correctly. The company I rejected only had another 5 months left to live.
Is it al down to the kettle? No, of course not. Sometimes it's all about the fridge. But it's usually the kettle.
As evidence that the corollory is also true, a friend of mine works in an office that was previously used by a manufacturer for testing kettles. When the previous tenants moved out, they left several dozen prototypes behind. The company is going from strength to strength.
It's all about white goods.
When you crash your car, will you see radiactive waste spread all over the country?
What about when a nuclear rocket explodes?
Not sure how bad it would actually be. The amounts used aren't that great, but I'd like to have some figures on just how much environmental damage a nuclear rocket stage could do.
I thought this was how the business model was meant to work with free software. You make your changes. You get paid for the work done.
The free software philosophy has never meant you have an obligation to distribute. Simply that you don't prevent others from doing so.
I know what you mean. In the 80's and early 90's there was some great stuff happening. Computers, then better computers (not just faster, but decent sound and graphics), new mobile phone technology, more and more portable devices, and those funky shiney digital music discs.
Now we just seem to be getting software. The PC as a games machine. The PC as a music player. the PC as a "home entertainment system". The internet - which the tech industry seems to be trying to convert to TV.
Oh, and your sexbot - what I think we need is internet sex. With a portable version. I need something for the daily commute.
From what I've read, porting MFC-based utilities (such as game editors) is more of a pain than switching 3D APIs.
Yep. D3D and OpenGL both do more or less the same thing, and generally aren't a huge portion of the application. And if things are done properly, the renderer will be its own module. When you get down to it, all you're doing is drawing a lot of textured shaded triangles, and changing state.
The official line is that they're cleaning up as part of a process to make the data more easily accessible. This is perfectly reasonable if true. I like the fact that the government isn't wasting time storing heaps of obsolete usless information.
which you can then send via regular postal mail on diskette, CD-ROM, or as an OCR-able print-out (as the GPL does stipulate "machine readable"), for a fee of $100.
Not quite.
From the GPL: "[3]b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange"
The OCR-able printout would probably be borderline as well since it isn;t really a medium customarily used for software interchange.
Then you ask for 10 copies of Windows at $0 each.
Someone challlenged a vendor over this some time ago.
Here's the link to someone who managed. But he won because the defendant didn't show up. The company could argue that they are only entitled to give a full refund if he returns the entire computer, since the original contract was for the sale of a PC with windows installed at $1000. Companies are not obliged to offer partial refunds for components. For example, I couldn't demand a refund for just the Hard drive if it was in some way inadequate.
Breaking an EULA: Perfectly legal.
Well, I don't think this has been proved. The software companies' argue that installing the software on a computer involves making a copy. And running it involves making another copy.
This is the sort of thing that fair use was meant to address. The main arguments being that installing it doesn't cost them a sale, and is absolutely essential in order to run the software so we can assume that we have implicit permission when we buy the software, but there seems to be an attitude to copyright - encouraged by the media organisations - where actually copying something is considered a henious crime. Plus, the courts are often business friendly, and would be reluctant to force all software comapnies to change their business strategies.
Anyway, my point is that there isn't a lot of legal precedent either way, but if you wanted to challenge an EULA, you'd have a bit of a legal fight on your hands.
How do you measure how "free" a country is? The alleged freedom in the US is just propaganda spread by politicians for people who have never been outside the US.
You have a point, and I see no reason not to offer food as an option, but I think many people would prefer a cheaper flight. Those that want food can pay the extra.
Several of the biggies started charging for their poor quality meals.
As long as they pass the saving on to me, this is not something I have a problem with. Especially on short distance routes. Why is it that an airline seems to be obliged to provide food for a 2 hour flight whereas I've been on a much longer train journey without needing to eat at all.
So I'm wondering how these same airlines are going to implement and charge for this new service. Just because Boeing is offering it, doesn't mean that every airline is going to automatically buy and install these systems and not charge the passengers!
They're going to be courting the frequent travellers. Some people are willing to pay a few dollars more for a little more to do on a flight, or failing that they'll at least switch if they know that airline A offers TV on board and Airline B doesn't.
If American Airlines can't figure out how to serve a *large* dish of ice cream in first class, then I don't see how they're going to find the value in onboard streaming data and video.
Airline caterers have some terminology. "Doable on ground" and "doable on board". Planes have all sorts of problems, like the space taken up with refrigeration, and the power needed for it.