It is all relative. $10k is chump change. If $X a gallon is too much for you to pay, down grade your transportation. I'd like a personal Lear Jet. Can't afford it...yet. But I keep trying. I haven't really given much thought to the increase in gas prices, or food prices or, pick your need here, because my income easily supports those costs. I understand others are struggling, but to them I would suggest a Korean product like a Hyundai or Kia. Those cars represent a great value for the $. I have a Hyundai Elantra. It was bought as a throw away car that gets great mileage. We call it the scoot. But I also like driving my indulgences because my years in school and later my career choices brought me the ability to enjoy the things I want. Sunday, rode 50 miles to breakfast on my BMW motorcycle. My wife went with me. We burned lots of fuel for no reason.
Actually, the price of gas will be coming back down. The cost of gas has risen due to futures trading. Not because there is scarcity. Inventory has been rising as big oil holds it back in anticipation of even higher prices. Problem is, everyone is rushing to buy little ecomobiles. Demand will continue down and when supply is really backed up, watch for the dam to burst.
BTW, I just bought a 2008 Yukon XL for $10k under blue book. It's a great vehicle and gets 17 in the city. That's even better than my Acura MDX and Toyota Tundra but worse than my motorcycle and Hyundai Elantra. BTW, I'll smile and wave as you go under.
Sprint or Verizon offers it. I live in the country away from cable and DSL. I have a CradlePoint MBR1000 access point, a Novatel Express Card with EVDO Rev A and a directional antenna pointed at the nearest cell tower. Without the antenna, I get zero to 1 bars. With the antenna, I get 4 out of 5 bars. The house shares the connection and everyone downloads their YouTube videos and what not with no impact. The cost for unlimited with Sprint is $60 a month. I am EXTREMELY satisfied with the setup. An added bonus is that with a power inverter, I can take a road trip and power the MBR1000. Everyone in the car has high speed internet access while we drive. IT is an AWESOME solution.
------> OS/X : Hereround 155$. Probably nicest user interface, at least at Panther level very stable, rock solid foundation (BSD) a real shell and real scripting. Oh and it gives me fanboy privileges.
--->People knock Linux / Windows UIs; I find Macs to be infurating. Why exactly would you want to be a fanboy? Fanboy is just another word for zealot.
Fanboy zealots don't exist on the Windows platform? Reread your post for an answer to that question.
If you have help or will keep the scope set up, a Meade LX200 10" will cost you a bit over a grand on ebay. An LX200 8" is manageable by one person and about $400 cheaper on ebay but you will give up significant light gathering ability. I've had both. Check the software on the LX200. You want a later version, 3.34 if memory serves me right. There was a problem with earlier scopes burning out the RA motor drive.
With time, you can aquire some excellent eyepieces as well. I would recommend saving for the Meade 24.5. It was my favorite lense.
The Orion Optic 10 x 50 binoculars are made by the same company that makes the Carton Aderblicks. I have the Aderblicks and think they are phenomenal.
Get the book on Backyard Astronomy. Browse the book store. There are others that are interesting as well.
There is simply alot of people getting sick of locked up software then interfers with the use of that software. Just because it hasn't affected you doesn't make it irrelevant. Maybe the problem is bigger than you can grasp.
This is exactly correct. I will buy Bioshock because I have the 360. Halo 3, again 360.
For me, I'm not going to be buying PC games unless there is an EXTREMELY compelling reason to do so. I guess the games manufactures can claim this as a victory as they can control the proliferation of thier products...or can they? Hackers rip this stuff apart in no time. IT is a waste of effort and only annoys your paying customers.
Game producers: I am your perfect demographic market. I'm a middle age gamer with lots of disposable income with kids. You make it hard for me to purchase your games by locking them up so that your game authorisation looks like'x XP or Vistas authentication, you will not be getting my $.
I was on DSL. Went away from DSL. They were attached to STEAM because that is how you get the updates. When my kids comes to me and tell me that his game isn't working, why do I have to figure how to get the game to work? Uninstall the stuff and roll back to the orginal without Steam? I give up the updates and the new artwork. Simple solution, any game that requires an authentication system for the stuff I bought is out. I don't use XP or Vista. I use a Mac. It doesn't threaten me with system declination if I don't authenticate because my environment changed.
Amen to this. Developers have been doing this crap since 1980. They are so paranoid that people are going to steal their games. Enough already. Those who copy the game weren't going to buy it from you anyway.
Now, I am a customer who does buy games. I bought Half Life and about 4 sequels to it (blue shift...ect) . I recently moved from the city to the country. Wouldn't you know it, my kids and I can't play the games because they can't be authenticated through an internet we don't have. I've already bought the games. They are on cds but I can't use them. I've considered finding a lawyer who might be willing to do a class action.
I won't be buying any games from anyone who engages in this type of activity. Valve and anyone else thinking about distributing through Steam, your market is smaller. So now you won't get my money or they guy who was going to copy it from you anyway. So, no Bioshock.
If I'm feeling this way, others are feeling this way too.
Forget Capitol. Concentrate on the company that has the most to lose.
Replace RIAA with the word Sony. I have the opinion that "Sony sues kids and grandmas...and kitty cats" Sony is into many things; TVs, camcorders, computer peripherals... Let the goodwill, or lack there of, spill over into their brand name. I've stopped buying Sony products a long time ago after I purchased a string of bad Sony products. Plus they graced us with their rootkit. Seems like Sony is very active in working to alienate their customers. Help them self destruct.
When Sony learns to put the customer first, then start doing business with them.
You are wrong. Most of the music would never be purchased if one had to pay full price. Burning CDs is cheap enough that you can afford to grab a whole lot of crap in order to find something interesting. Would you pay $1000 for a CD, $100 for a CD, $10 for a CD or $1 for a CD. Simple demand side of a supply and demand curve. The community has just voted that they are not willing to pay $15 for a CD but are willing to put out 50 cents for a disk to burn music. The reason is that there is a good chance that the music you burn is schmarmy trash that you will be tired of in a week. It has no real value as music that endures. So, take away the 50 cent solution and you will find that many people won't bother with it. Just so much of today's music is trash. The studios aren't losing money. The money wasn't going to be theirs to begin with.
Kids in high school and college have limited funds. They can afford 50 cent disks. They can't and won't afford $15 CDs when it cuts into their beer money.
Demand and what the market will bear, BTW, is the reason that iTunes works. I can buy the occasional tune for my iPod that I don't get tired of listening to. Every once in a while, I even buy the album because there is enough material on it that makes have the whole thing more cost effective than the separate tracks.
You haven't used QT based on your comment. You don't use malloc. QStrings and QByteArray hide the inner workings of string manipulation, slots and signals make event handling trivial and the layout managers just work.
I've done alot of GUI development going back to System 7 on the Mac, OWL, MFC 1.0, MacApp, ET++, Starview..ect.
QT is by far the best C++ UI (and more) development environment for doing cross-platform development. And, it's a better ActiveX development than ATL or MFC.
It is not just adult goods, but anything that PayPal deems sinful; alcohol, guns, dating sites...ect. If PayPal wants to be taken seriously, they need to let an individual purchase anything that cash would purchase. If Google does that, good bye Paypal.
I noticed the delays when I was using Netflix. The more I ordered, the longer it took for them to send me my next DVD. I dropped them for that reason. No amount of "special" emails is going to draw me back to them.
Can't cite the reference but there was a case where the FBI was going through a guy's trash for evidence. The guys sued that it was personal property. The courts sided with the Government saying that when he put the trash out, he made it public. In the case of the mall, it is a public place.
My policy is to always remove and carry, ATM receipts, credit card slips and anything else with personal information. The stuff gets shredded and burned when I get home.
When you purchase and install a Win2K product, you give Microsoft the right to "audit" you. They performed one of these audits on a company I worked for. I am certain we owned all of the software that was on our machines. We had a corporate policy of no piracy, buy what we need.
We just couldn't produce EULAs for 13 out of over 600 products. Their lawyers also wanted $6000 for the MSDN copies we had. These guys don't seem to even understand Microsoft licensing and appear to be trying to squeeze you for every cent. I had to fax the MSDN user agreement stating that MSDN CDs could be freely distributed within the company. It did not seem to matter to the law firm that we could produce the CD covers for the other products. No EULA, no credit. It cost the company $13,000 to settle. The lawyers got 2/3rds of that for their "work". The remaining third went for purchasing software which I feel we already owned.
I felt scammed and violated. This ticked me off so I looked for alternatives. I discovered FreeBSD. I installed SAMBA and had the same fuctionality as a Windows Server without the risk. I had to buy 2 Samba books to figure it out. I had to reinstall FreeBSD multiple times until I figured out how to do it. I can do it now in my sleep. It is not that FreeBSD is harder, it was just unfamiliar.
If you think this is an isolated incident, it is not. Audits happen everyday. Sometimes, the target really deserves the attention, sometimes it is just Microsoft biting a hand that feeds them. Sometimes, Microsoft's lawyers go over board and put the squeeze on a non profit or school and then people squak at Microsoft. Then there are a number of small companies that, unwittingly, find themselves in a bind.
There are alternatives to some of the Microsoft software. I suggest to everyone that will listen to use the alternatives first.
I think that you have that backwards. Greed caused higher prices which causes more piracy.
The effort to find alternatives to Microsoft is rooted in Microsoft's antipiracy efforts. I was Director of Technology at a dot com. We got one of Microsoft's little compliance notices and my predecessor had foolishly complied. Out of 600+ Microsoft products we were using in house, we could not account for 12 licenses(EULAS). Someone probably stole them. It as obvious that we owned the package as we had the manuals, but without the EULA, the Microsoft lawyers wanted money. It cost us $13,000 to the lawyers to pay for something we already owned. The lawyers were not interested in doing the right thing. They were only interested in getting paid. I'm familiar with this tactic happening repeated both personally and on Slashdot.
The result of this "encounter"? I don't run Microsoft products any longer. We switched our servers to FreeBSD and Samba. We switched our databases to Postgres. A little bit of pain but it was worth it knowing that Microsoft got it's last $13,000 from my company. I suspect that many others are doing the same. Whole countries are rejecting Microsoft.
If you run a tech department, you owe it to your organization to minimize your exposure to Microsoft. Be especially careful with your servers. FreeBSD, Linux and OSX can provide you with equivelent funtionality while limiting your financial risk exposure to Microsoft.
Going without Word is a problem. That will not be solved until an Open Solution takes the place of the Word format. That will not happen until the geeks take a stand and start refusing to use, route and disseminate Word documents.
Slashdot Mirror
It is all relative. $10k is chump change. If $X a gallon is too much for you to pay, down grade your transportation. I'd like a personal Lear Jet. Can't afford it...yet. But I keep trying. I haven't really given much thought to the increase in gas prices, or food prices or, pick your need here, because my income easily supports those costs. I understand others are struggling, but to them I would suggest a Korean product like a Hyundai or Kia. Those cars represent a great value for the $. I have a Hyundai Elantra. It was bought as a throw away car that gets great mileage. We call it the scoot. But I also like driving my indulgences because my years in school and later my career choices brought me the ability to enjoy the things I want. Sunday, rode 50 miles to breakfast on my BMW motorcycle. My wife went with me. We burned lots of fuel for no reason.
Actually, the price of gas will be coming back down. The cost of gas has risen due to futures trading. Not because there is scarcity. Inventory has been rising as big oil holds it back in anticipation of even higher prices. Problem is, everyone is rushing to buy little ecomobiles. Demand will continue down and when supply is really backed up, watch for the dam to burst.
BTW, I just bought a 2008 Yukon XL for $10k under blue book. It's a great vehicle and gets 17 in the city. That's even better than my Acura MDX and Toyota Tundra but worse than my motorcycle and Hyundai Elantra. BTW, I'll smile and wave as you go under.
Sprint or Verizon offers it. I live in the country away from cable and DSL. I have a CradlePoint MBR1000 access point, a Novatel Express Card with EVDO Rev A and a directional antenna pointed at the nearest cell tower. Without the antenna, I get zero to 1 bars. With the antenna, I get 4 out of 5 bars. The house shares the connection and everyone downloads their YouTube videos and what not with no impact. The cost for unlimited with Sprint is $60 a month. I am EXTREMELY satisfied with the setup. An added bonus is that with a power inverter, I can take a road trip and power the MBR1000. Everyone in the car has high speed internet access while we drive. IT is an AWESOME solution.
------> OS/X : Hereround 155$. Probably nicest user interface, at least at Panther level very stable, rock solid foundation (BSD) a real shell and real scripting. Oh and it gives me fanboy privileges.
--->People knock Linux / Windows UIs; I find Macs to be infurating. Why exactly would you want to be a fanboy? Fanboy is just another word for zealot.
Fanboy zealots don't exist on the Windows platform? Reread your post for an answer to that question.
He could have and it would have taken half the time....
If you have help or will keep the scope set up, a Meade LX200 10" will cost you a bit over a grand on ebay. An LX200 8" is manageable by one person and about $400 cheaper on ebay but you will give up significant light gathering ability. I've had both. Check the software on the LX200. You want a later version, 3.34 if memory serves me right. There was a problem with earlier scopes burning out the RA motor drive.
With time, you can aquire some excellent eyepieces as well. I would recommend saving for the Meade 24.5. It was my favorite lense.
The Orion Optic 10 x 50 binoculars are made by the same company that makes the Carton Aderblicks. I have the Aderblicks and think they are phenomenal.
Get the book on Backyard Astronomy. Browse the book store. There are others that are interesting as well.
M
LOL. Great, don't read it.
There is simply alot of people getting sick of locked up software then interfers with the use of that software. Just because it hasn't affected you doesn't make it irrelevant. Maybe the problem is bigger than you can grasp.
This is exactly correct. I will buy Bioshock because I have the 360. Halo 3, again 360.
For me, I'm not going to be buying PC games unless there is an EXTREMELY compelling reason to do so. I guess the games manufactures can claim this as a victory as they can control the proliferation of thier products...or can they? Hackers rip this stuff apart in no time. IT is a waste of effort and only annoys your paying customers.
Game producers: I am your perfect demographic market. I'm a middle age gamer with lots of disposable income with kids. You make it hard for me to purchase your games by locking them up so that your game authorisation looks like'x XP or Vistas authentication, you will not be getting my $.
I was on DSL. Went away from DSL. They were attached to STEAM because that is how you get the updates. When my kids comes to me and tell me that his game isn't working, why do I have to figure how to get the game to work? Uninstall the stuff and roll back to the orginal without Steam? I give up the updates and the new artwork. Simple solution, any game that requires an authentication system for the stuff I bought is out. I don't use XP or Vista. I use a Mac. It doesn't threaten me with system declination if I don't authenticate because my environment changed.
WTF to your WTF?
Amen to this. Developers have been doing this crap since 1980. They are so paranoid that people are going to steal their games. Enough already. Those who copy the game weren't going to buy it from you anyway.
Now, I am a customer who does buy games. I bought Half Life and about 4 sequels to it (blue shift...ect) . I recently moved from the city to the country. Wouldn't you know it, my kids and I can't play the games because they can't be authenticated through an internet we don't have. I've already bought the games. They are on cds but I can't use them. I've considered finding a lawyer who might be willing to do a class action.
I won't be buying any games from anyone who engages in this type of activity. Valve and anyone else thinking about distributing through Steam, your market is smaller. So now you won't get my money or they guy who was going to copy it from you anyway. So, no Bioshock.
If I'm feeling this way, others are feeling this way too.
Forget Capitol. Concentrate on the company that has the most to lose.
Replace RIAA with the word Sony. I have the opinion that "Sony sues kids and grandmas...and kitty cats" Sony is into many things; TVs, camcorders, computer peripherals... Let the goodwill, or lack there of, spill over into their brand name. I've stopped buying Sony products a long time ago after I purchased a string of bad Sony products. Plus they graced us with their rootkit. Seems like Sony is very active in working to alienate their customers. Help them self destruct.
When Sony learns to put the customer first, then start doing business with them.
M
You are wrong. Most of the music would never be purchased if one had to pay full price. Burning CDs is cheap enough that you can afford to grab a whole lot of crap in order to find something interesting. Would you pay $1000 for a CD, $100 for a CD, $10 for a CD or $1 for a CD. Simple demand side of a supply and demand curve. The community has just voted that they are not willing to pay $15 for a CD but are willing to put out 50 cents for a disk to burn music. The reason is that there is a good chance that the music you burn is schmarmy trash that you will be tired of in a week. It has no real value as music that endures. So, take away the 50 cent solution and you will find that many people won't bother with it. Just so much of today's music is trash. The studios aren't losing money. The money wasn't going to be theirs to begin with.
Kids in high school and college have limited funds. They can afford 50 cent disks. They can't and won't afford $15 CDs when it cuts into their beer money.
Demand and what the market will bear, BTW, is the reason that iTunes works. I can buy the occasional tune for my iPod that I don't get tired of listening to. Every once in a while, I even buy the album because there is enough material on it that makes have the whole thing more cost effective than the separate tracks.
If I had moderator right now, I would mod you as funny.
You haven't used QT based on your comment. You don't use malloc. QStrings and QByteArray hide the inner workings of string manipulation, slots and signals make event handling trivial and the layout managers just work.
I've done alot of GUI development going back to System 7 on the Mac, OWL, MFC 1.0, MacApp, ET++, Starview..ect.
QT is by far the best C++ UI (and more) development environment for doing cross-platform development. And, it's a better ActiveX development than ATL or MFC.
M
It is not just adult goods, but anything that PayPal deems sinful; alcohol, guns, dating sites...ect. If PayPal wants to be taken seriously, they need to let an individual purchase anything that cash would purchase. If Google does that, good bye Paypal.
M
Was it Roland Oklahoma?
I noticed the delays when I was using Netflix. The more I ordered, the longer it took for them to send me my next DVD. I dropped them for that reason. No amount of "special" emails is going to draw me back to them.
I think Jesus, himself, would have laughed at that one.
It might if convictions were followed by public executions.... :-)
Can't cite the reference but there was a case where the FBI was going through a guy's trash for evidence. The guys sued that it was personal property. The courts sided with the Government saying that when he put the trash out, he made it public. In the case of the mall, it is a public place.
My policy is to always remove and carry, ATM receipts, credit card slips and anything else with personal information. The stuff gets shredded and burned when I get home.
As soon as your wife threw the application in the trash, she made it public knowledge. She is lucky that all you are recieving is the spam.
When you purchase and install a Win2K product, you give Microsoft the right to "audit" you. They performed one of these audits on a company I worked for. I am certain we owned all of the software that was on our machines. We had a corporate policy of no piracy, buy what we need.
We just couldn't produce EULAs for 13 out of over 600 products. Their lawyers also wanted $6000 for the MSDN copies we had. These guys don't seem to even understand Microsoft licensing and appear to be trying to squeeze you for every cent. I had to fax the MSDN user agreement stating that MSDN CDs could be freely distributed within the company. It did not seem to matter to the law firm that we could produce the CD covers for the other products. No EULA, no credit. It cost the company $13,000 to settle. The lawyers got 2/3rds of that for their "work". The remaining third went for purchasing software which I feel we already owned.
I felt scammed and violated. This ticked me off so I looked for alternatives. I discovered FreeBSD. I installed SAMBA and had the same fuctionality as a Windows Server without the risk. I had to buy 2 Samba books to figure it out. I had to reinstall FreeBSD multiple times until I figured out how to do it. I can do it now in my sleep. It is not that FreeBSD is harder, it was just unfamiliar.
If you think this is an isolated incident, it is not. Audits happen everyday. Sometimes, the target really deserves the attention, sometimes it is just Microsoft biting a hand that feeds them. Sometimes, Microsoft's lawyers go over board and put the squeeze on a non profit or school and then people squak at Microsoft. Then there are a number of small companies that, unwittingly, find themselves in a bind.
There are alternatives to some of the Microsoft software. I suggest to everyone that will listen to use the alternatives first.
Now, because of higher prices caused by piracy
.02
I think that you have that backwards. Greed caused higher prices which causes more piracy.
The effort to find alternatives to Microsoft is rooted in Microsoft's antipiracy efforts. I was Director of Technology at a dot com. We got one of Microsoft's little compliance notices and my predecessor had foolishly complied. Out of 600+ Microsoft products we were using in house, we could not account for 12 licenses(EULAS). Someone probably stole them. It as obvious that we owned the package as we had the manuals, but without the EULA, the Microsoft lawyers wanted money. It cost us $13,000 to the lawyers to pay for something we already owned. The lawyers were not interested in doing the right thing. They were only interested in getting paid. I'm familiar with this tactic happening repeated both personally and on Slashdot.
The result of this "encounter"? I don't run Microsoft products any longer. We switched our servers to FreeBSD and Samba. We switched our databases to Postgres. A little bit of pain but it was worth it knowing that Microsoft got it's last $13,000 from my company. I suspect that many others are doing the same. Whole countries are rejecting Microsoft.
If you run a tech department, you owe it to your organization to minimize your exposure to Microsoft. Be especially careful with your servers. FreeBSD, Linux and OSX can provide you with equivelent funtionality while limiting your financial risk exposure to Microsoft.
Going without Word is a problem. That will not be solved until an Open Solution takes the place of the Word format. That will not happen until the geeks take a stand and start refusing to use, route and disseminate Word documents.
My
I always find it vaguely amusing when some Slashdot nobody... As opposed to an anonymous nobody telling all of us his opinion? Classic.
Nice Ring. When I heard you designed it, it brought back memories of a previous fiance that had designed her ring. It was garish.