So we just need a free way to set up a corporation.
Odds are some country has had the bright idea (well, not really) of allowing companies to incorporate for free online.
Don't really need to. A lot of companies are incorporated in Delaware even though that's about their only association with the state. Because Delaware has been an extremely corporate-friendly state.
It used to be cheaper (relatively speaking) in the state where I live to incorporate than to register a domain name. It isn't anymore, but with 49 states left to go, you might still find a deal.
Here in the US we recognize the corporations are collections of people. Citizens United recognized that if congress cannot restrict the rights of a person, then it can't restrict the rights of a collection of people either. And btw, thank god they did that. This is why the Supreme Court is immune to the mob mentality of elections.
Try this experiment:
Stand out in front of the Lincoln Memorial and shout out "The USA Sucks!".
Now (assume you're one of the 5 remaining US IBM employees) stand out in front of IBM HQ and shout out "IBM Sucks!"
Let's compare results and see if a corporation can restrict the rights of a person.
And before the quibblerbots quack out the Standard Reply #347; for the purposes of this experiment, I'm going to equate being fired with having one's citizenship yanked.
I'd rather have a tablet than a laptop myself - for "real" mouse/typing work I want a desktop with a keyboard that isn't little mushed things
Let me guess: you don't do any "real" typing work while riding public transit. My habits appear to differ from yours, and I would be disappointed if small laptops went away even more than they already have.
You've got me dead to rights. Although considering how buses bounce, I hope you're on a train.
I read the newspaper while commuting. Typing is something I do at a desk. And since it's always the same desk, a laptop isn't all that useful for me.
Well, stylus input may be slower than a good keyboard, but at least it's prone to being either unreadable, or needing lots of error correction if converted into text.
I've never done stylus input on a tablet, so I can't say. On a PDA, I could input faster and more accurately with Grafitti than I can keyboard (on a real keyboard, that is). The downside to stylii was always that it's easy to lose them. Although a toothpick often does surprisingly well in a pinch.
Most tablets lack what an analog of a clipboard needs - a good digitizer instead of finger-oriented touchscreen. If I'm going to take notes in a meeting, I'd much prefer a keyboard, tyvm.
I can see tablets as useful in the workspace when they're in hands of a warehouse worker or automechanic or a doctor (given, again, a good digitizer or voice recognition) or a lot of other jobs with lots of walking and/or only needing a reference, but meeting or any other office job? That'd be just fashion statement.
In a meeting, a tablet is an opportunity to have all your important documents at your fingertips, plus a place to take quick notes. Done well, it can be tidy, convenient, and less distracting than folders and notebooks and stuff. Done poorly, of course, it's like anything else done poorly.
I have yet to meet anyone who has gotten a tablet for any kinds of real reason other than a toy. Now that's fine, nothing wrong with toys, but everyone I know who has gotten a tablet already has a laptop and smartphone, and they've kept the laptop and smartphone after getting it, and kept using them.
Those would be what tablets would replace. The argument seems to be that you don't need a laptop, a tablet will do fine, so you get one instead of your laptop. Another argument could be that a laptop isn't portable enough but a tablet is, so you can take it with you and thus don't need a smart phone, just a regular one.
However in actual practice, nobody seems to do that. They have a laptop and a tablet, and a smartphone.
I'm still not convinced tablets are here to stay. They seem to be fancy toys and status symbols right now (really there's an iPad market, not a tablet market) and little in the way of actual use. I could well see them dying off and people continuing to use laptops and smartphones.
That's why I don't have one: I asked myself where I would use a tablet that I wouldn't rather use my laptop or smartphone and I can't come up with an answer. I don't want it enough just as a toy.
Well, if it's a toy, it has to be just about my favorite toy. I'd rather have a tablet than a laptop myself - for "real" mouse/typing work I want a desktop with a keyboard that isn't little mushed things that I have to reach over a fat "sand bar" to get at while broadcasting false mouse events as my hands pass over the touchpad.
The advantage of the tablet is that it can wander around with me easily (I have a 7-inch unit). It's what I use when I want computer resources without the rituals. I don't have to wander into the computer room, wake up a machine, sit down and assume the position. I can just pick up the tablet, unlock it and go. Literally go, since you can wander around with it in one hand - a bit of a challenge with a laptop.
I primarily use the tablet to access data, not to input it. So I use it as an e-reader (much easier on the eyes than a desk/laptop display), email reader, RSS reader, Wikipedia/google/recipe database lookup-and-display, stuff like that where I can tap in at a whim. I CAN do short email replies and so forth, but like I said, the operative word here is "reader". It does do streaming multi-media pretty well in take-along form also.
There's still a place in my life for the desktop (heavy-duty input) and my phone (fits-in-the-pocket), but an awful lot of what I do is a good match for the tablet. Add the current low prices and the ability to store it in a small convenient space like shelving a book, and it's hard to resist.
One of the main reasons for this is LEGO cannot patent it's bricks. But they can copyright a licensed set like starwars.
Actually, Lego did patent their bricks. However, the patent system hasn't yet had a Sonny Bono, so patents expire. Theirs did.
They probably can (and possible do) patent the unique brick shapes that customize the shape of a Star Wars or Harry Potter Lego product.
I'm kind of old-school, though. If you can't do it with the basic shape set, it's kind of cheating. The less "Lego-like" the final product, the more I sneer.
None of Ada's facilities have any bearing on the common kinds of bugs that cause web applications to leak private information. And the time you spend satisfying Ada's pointless static checks is time you don't have for developing meaningful security audits and test cases. So, given the same budget and time constraints, it is pretty much a given that an Ada based web application would be worse, not better, in terms of privacy and security.
Ada tried to address a problem that really existed in the 1980's: the lack of an efficient, strongly typed language. That ceased to be a problem long ago, and Ada is kind of a relic now.
I really cannot agree. Historically, one of the most common ways to pwn a machine was to exploit buffer overruns. Languages such as Ada and Java are virtually immune to that sort of exploit.
You are also assuming that time spent making the compiler happy is time "lost". I came to quite a different conclusion long ago. I have worked with a large number of languages, and my observations are that with the possible exception of assembly language, the amount of time and effort to make a secure, robust application is more or less independent of the programming language used. The difference lies in where you spend your time.
Sadly, management these days doesn't take that into account, and they see late-binding languages as "more productive" because they get pixels in front of eyeballs faster. That's a good thing for prototyping, where you don't need security or robustness, but not so good for more critical apps. Because there's less checking done at design/compile time, sloppier code slips in, and it blows up in production. In some cases, the defective code can lie dormant for months, even years before 4th of July occurs.
I prefer my embarrassments to happen at my desk, not where the entire planet can see them, so I favor strongly-typed languages, although I realize that I'm swimming against the tide at the moment. Strongly-typed languages are no cure-all, but because I know that if it compiles it's going to run, I'm freed up to worry more about the more problematic aspects of the system.
Probably because flash, java, and other plugin makers are so slow to move to 64 bits. Not to mention many out there feel a browser should not use more than 4 gigs of ram and is a light text and graphics reader. Not a minature operating system running complex ajax applications
..But most products are created by small teams of programmers, have a lifetime of a few years, don't need to be anywhere as reliable
Because, after all, who cares if people's credit card numbers, SSN's, home phone numbers and other items leak out all over the Internet? Just as long as the software got written fast and cheap.
Are you kidding? I do systems programming code all day In C/C++, and the hacker code in the ANSI C book is a steamy pile of crap. We would have security problems, and hard to find bugs all over the place. This is not to mention that our static analysis tools would prevent such code getting into our code base.
Try the Enterprise Java books, instead. J2EE has a built-in security framework. It's not very sophisticated, but it's well-tested and it intercepts many types of exploits before they can get anywhere near the application code.
On the other hand, I've seen many DIY login/security systems over the years and most of them are total tissue paper security-wise.
So what do all the Enterprise Java books use for examples? DIY login screens!
This just in: real world a lot harder than school.
Gee, thanks Slashdot!
PHB: Nonsense! Programming is dead easy. My 10-year-old nephew wrote a program just the other day. It makes a little square box bounce around on the screen. We don't need these overpriced prima-donnas spouting techno-babble about Separations of Concerns or stuff like that. A half-hour and you can have web pages on the screen and ready for production tomorrow. All You Have To Do Is...
But nit-picking over whitespace is simply annoying. Any person who insists on that much compliance might be trying to compensate for lack of performance in more important areas.
Or they could be of an autistic persuasion. Which means that such apparently minor things are major irritants to them.
Not, of course, that anyone would expect to find ASD people gravitating towards software development. Much.
All well and good except mixed martial arts apparently was part of the evolutionary process until quite recently. Guess what, shooting someone is easier still so obviously that would be how primates attacked each other... The fact that a bee often dies when stinging gives you a pretty good example of how evolution and theoretically optimal aren't intrinsically linked!
Depends on what you mean by "theoretically optimal". Darwin's Evolution isn't about the survival of the individual, it's about the survival of the species. Anything that forwards the species is fair game, even if it's at the cost of individuals.
Actually it's pretty easy to say it. They have never thwarted an attack. Ever.
American nuclear weapons never successfully retaliated against a single attack from the Soviet Union. Not a single one. Nor did they ever stop inbound Soviet Missiles. Ever.
Sometimes the measure of a success for defense is in finding that the defense never seems necessary.
For example, I don't want America to build a wall on the Mexican border that allows us catch infiltrators. I want us to build a wall when people see it they give up and go home to apply for visa.
The difference between nuclear deterrence and the TSA is that attacks HAVE been attempted, despite the TSA. But it wasn't the TSA that thwarted them.
As for walls, I'd much rather we made the wall unnecessary. Like it used to be before we betrayed our principles. Although as far as it goes, a lot more people get caught at the borders making illegal entry for economic reasons than people with ill intent in mind, even today.
What is an anti-gun agenda. One that tries to reduce the number of guns, so that the government can become more totalitarian and control its population with the guns the military owns? Because I cannot see any other anti-gun agenda. He makes is pretty clear why he does not like guns, and there doesnt seem to be a hidden agenda.
The mere fact that there is a TSA as we know it tells me that the government doesn't need to control its population with the guns the military owns.
They get by on fear alone. "If you don't give up your freedoms, the terrorists will eat you!"
It doesn't matter how many guns you own. Or nuclear weapons or aircraft carriers for that matter. If you insist on living as a slave, you're a slave.
Comments aren't supposed to (redundantly) tell you what the code does. They're to tell you why the code had to be written, or the reason one coding choice was made over another, or known issues and todos.
Not all code is quite as self-evident as that. Even in the less cryptic languages. However, I agree that when the comments are redundant, they are not merely useless, they add noise to the equation.
Most comments - as I and others here have often noted - shouldn't be telling "what" code does, but why it is doing it and what it produces.
...how does it help you as a programmer to know Spanish? Not a lot, I think...
Considering that the Latino segment of the US population is about the fastest-growing? Sure, we expect Americans to speak "American", but let's be realistic. Chances are that if you look closely at products in the local grocery store, you'll find a few whose actual names are Spanish, and more than a few whose labels are bilingual English/Spanish. Savvy (compare sp. "sabe", to know) businesses reach out to their target markets, whether they are American-hispanic or American-Vietnamese.
Besides, you might get sent to a developer's conference in Miami.
They aren't "giving up" on Android, they just realized they can make more money foisting WindBlowz 8 on an unsuspecting populace. There's a wider profit margin when you can pretend that the reason it costs more is that you have to send money to Misrosoft, and jack the price up a little higher.
Why else would someone give up on something free, and popular, that's more secure and actually works, for some shit you have to pay for, is less secure, and doesn't work. Misrosoft. What a joke.
Dell is a computer company. Windows is a computer OS. I don't find it at all surprizing that Dell would go the Windows route.
Their bigger problem is that the market for "computers" is shrinking.
The luxury sandwich uses higher quality ingredients, so while it does have a higher margin it actually costs more to produce... Software on the other hand will typically have the fully featured version developed first, and then extra work is done to disable features and produce an artificially crippled version, thus the cheaper version actually cost more to produce.
I find such a practice despicable, to do extra work to make intentional changes that make the product less useful to paying customers!
No, you're wrong. Software products are more often crippled from day one, luxury version or not. And the only "artificial" thing about it is that the stuff is crippled because they were developed in too little time with too many "cost savings".
The myth of deep pockets is that they are stupid. They didn't get deep pockets by being stupid. They know value when they see it, and Windows 8 ain't it.
You don't get deep pockets by being stupid, no. But I swear that once you get there, stupid waltzes in the front door.
How else can you explain the infestations of Dogbert-style consultants, over-priced/under-performing product acquisitions, and expensive projects that fail more often than not in the larger enterprises? It's like they took all the money they saved by leveraging their synergies and went looking for ways to piss it away?
Iomega Jaz drives had about a 2-week lifespan. Where I worked, we had a period of time where we needed to ship about 1 GB of data at a time to/from clients on short notice, and they were the only option.
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly, I'd rather NEVER have to use my insurance, any of it.
Your insurance company agrees with you whole-heartedly.
Insurance exists, however, because occasionally people do have to use it, given that the alternatives are mostly even worse.
So we just need a free way to set up a corporation.
Odds are some country has had the bright idea (well, not really) of allowing companies to incorporate for free online.
Don't really need to. A lot of companies are incorporated in Delaware even though that's about their only association with the state. Because Delaware has been an extremely corporate-friendly state.
It used to be cheaper (relatively speaking) in the state where I live to incorporate than to register a domain name. It isn't anymore, but with 49 states left to go, you might still find a deal.
Here in the US we recognize the corporations are collections of people. Citizens United recognized that if congress cannot restrict the rights of a person, then it can't restrict the rights of a collection of people either. And btw, thank god they did that. This is why the Supreme Court is immune to the mob mentality of elections.
Try this experiment:
Stand out in front of the Lincoln Memorial and shout out "The USA Sucks!".
Now (assume you're one of the 5 remaining US IBM employees) stand out in front of IBM HQ and shout out "IBM Sucks!"
Let's compare results and see if a corporation can restrict the rights of a person.
And before the quibblerbots quack out the Standard Reply #347; for the purposes of this experiment, I'm going to equate being fired with having one's citizenship yanked.
I'd rather have a tablet than a laptop myself - for "real" mouse/typing work I want a desktop with a keyboard that isn't little mushed things
Let me guess: you don't do any "real" typing work while riding public transit. My habits appear to differ from yours, and I would be disappointed if small laptops went away even more than they already have.
You've got me dead to rights. Although considering how buses bounce, I hope you're on a train.
I read the newspaper while commuting. Typing is something I do at a desk. And since it's always the same desk, a laptop isn't all that useful for me.
Different (key)strokes for different folks!
Well, stylus input may be slower than a good keyboard, but at least it's prone to being either unreadable, or needing lots of error correction if converted into text.
I've never done stylus input on a tablet, so I can't say. On a PDA, I could input faster and more accurately with Grafitti than I can keyboard (on a real keyboard, that is). The downside to stylii was always that it's easy to lose them. Although a toothpick often does surprisingly well in a pinch.
Most tablets lack what an analog of a clipboard needs - a good digitizer instead of finger-oriented touchscreen. If I'm going to take notes in a meeting, I'd much prefer a keyboard, tyvm.
I can see tablets as useful in the workspace when they're in hands of a warehouse worker or automechanic or a doctor (given, again, a good digitizer or voice recognition) or a lot of other jobs with lots of walking and/or only needing a reference, but meeting or any other office job? That'd be just fashion statement.
In a meeting, a tablet is an opportunity to have all your important documents at your fingertips, plus a place to take quick notes. Done well, it can be tidy, convenient, and less distracting than folders and notebooks and stuff. Done poorly, of course, it's like anything else done poorly.
I have yet to meet anyone who has gotten a tablet for any kinds of real reason other than a toy. Now that's fine, nothing wrong with toys, but everyone I know who has gotten a tablet already has a laptop and smartphone, and they've kept the laptop and smartphone after getting it, and kept using them.
Those would be what tablets would replace. The argument seems to be that you don't need a laptop, a tablet will do fine, so you get one instead of your laptop. Another argument could be that a laptop isn't portable enough but a tablet is, so you can take it with you and thus don't need a smart phone, just a regular one.
However in actual practice, nobody seems to do that. They have a laptop and a tablet, and a smartphone.
I'm still not convinced tablets are here to stay. They seem to be fancy toys and status symbols right now (really there's an iPad market, not a tablet market) and little in the way of actual use. I could well see them dying off and people continuing to use laptops and smartphones.
That's why I don't have one: I asked myself where I would use a tablet that I wouldn't rather use my laptop or smartphone and I can't come up with an answer. I don't want it enough just as a toy.
Well, if it's a toy, it has to be just about my favorite toy. I'd rather have a tablet than a laptop myself - for "real" mouse/typing work I want a desktop with a keyboard that isn't little mushed things that I have to reach over a fat "sand bar" to get at while broadcasting false mouse events as my hands pass over the touchpad.
The advantage of the tablet is that it can wander around with me easily (I have a 7-inch unit). It's what I use when I want computer resources without the rituals. I don't have to wander into the computer room, wake up a machine, sit down and assume the position. I can just pick up the tablet, unlock it and go. Literally go, since you can wander around with it in one hand - a bit of a challenge with a laptop.
I primarily use the tablet to access data, not to input it. So I use it as an e-reader (much easier on the eyes than a desk/laptop display), email reader, RSS reader, Wikipedia/google/recipe database lookup-and-display, stuff like that where I can tap in at a whim. I CAN do short email replies and so forth, but like I said, the operative word here is "reader". It does do streaming multi-media pretty well in take-along form also.
There's still a place in my life for the desktop (heavy-duty input) and my phone (fits-in-the-pocket), but an awful lot of what I do is a good match for the tablet. Add the current low prices and the ability to store it in a small convenient space like shelving a book, and it's hard to resist.
One of the main reasons for this is LEGO cannot patent it's bricks. But they can copyright a licensed set like starwars.
Actually, Lego did patent their bricks. However, the patent system hasn't yet had a Sonny Bono, so patents expire. Theirs did.
They probably can (and possible do) patent the unique brick shapes that customize the shape of a Star Wars or Harry Potter Lego product.
I'm kind of old-school, though. If you can't do it with the basic shape set, it's kind of cheating. The less "Lego-like" the final product, the more I sneer.
None of Ada's facilities have any bearing on the common kinds of bugs that cause web applications to leak private information. And the time you spend satisfying Ada's pointless static checks is time you don't have for developing meaningful security audits and test cases. So, given the same budget and time constraints, it is pretty much a given that an Ada based web application would be worse, not better, in terms of privacy and security.
Ada tried to address a problem that really existed in the 1980's: the lack of an efficient, strongly typed language. That ceased to be a problem long ago, and Ada is kind of a relic now.
I really cannot agree. Historically, one of the most common ways to pwn a machine was to exploit buffer overruns. Languages such as Ada and Java are virtually immune to that sort of exploit.
You are also assuming that time spent making the compiler happy is time "lost". I came to quite a different conclusion long ago. I have worked with a large number of languages, and my observations are that with the possible exception of assembly language, the amount of time and effort to make a secure, robust application is more or less independent of the programming language used. The difference lies in where you spend your time.
Sadly, management these days doesn't take that into account, and they see late-binding languages as "more productive" because they get pixels in front of eyeballs faster. That's a good thing for prototyping, where you don't need security or robustness, but not so good for more critical apps. Because there's less checking done at design/compile time, sloppier code slips in, and it blows up in production. In some cases, the defective code can lie dormant for months, even years before 4th of July occurs.
I prefer my embarrassments to happen at my desk, not where the entire planet can see them, so I favor strongly-typed languages, although I realize that I'm swimming against the tide at the moment. Strongly-typed languages are no cure-all, but because I know that if it compiles it's going to run, I'm freed up to worry more about the more problematic aspects of the system.
Probably because flash, java, and other plugin makers are so slow to move to 64 bits. Not to mention many out there feel a browser should not use more than 4 gigs of ram and is a light text and graphics reader. Not a minature operating system running complex ajax applications
That, after all, is a job for Emacs.
Irony. You'd think that a country home to so many Jews would remember how well that worked in Germany.
..But most products are created by small teams of programmers, have a lifetime of a few years, don't need to be anywhere as reliable
Because, after all, who cares if people's credit card numbers, SSN's, home phone numbers and other items leak out all over the Internet? Just as long as the software got written fast and cheap.
Are you kidding? I do systems programming code all day In C/C++, and the hacker code in the ANSI C book is a steamy pile of crap. We would have security problems, and hard to find bugs all over the place. This is not to mention that our static analysis tools would prevent such code getting into our code base.
Try the Enterprise Java books, instead. J2EE has a built-in security framework. It's not very sophisticated, but it's well-tested and it intercepts many types of exploits before they can get anywhere near the application code.
On the other hand, I've seen many DIY login/security systems over the years and most of them are total tissue paper security-wise.
So what do all the Enterprise Java books use for examples? DIY login screens!
This just in: real world a lot harder than school.
Gee, thanks Slashdot!
PHB: Nonsense! Programming is dead easy. My 10-year-old nephew wrote a program just the other day. It makes a little square box bounce around on the screen. We don't need these overpriced prima-donnas spouting techno-babble about Separations of Concerns or stuff like that. A half-hour and you can have web pages on the screen and ready for production tomorrow. All You Have To Do Is...
But nit-picking over whitespace is simply annoying. Any person who insists on that much compliance might be trying to compensate for lack of performance in more important areas.
Or they could be of an autistic persuasion. Which means that such apparently minor things are major irritants to them.
Not, of course, that anyone would expect to find ASD people gravitating towards software development. Much.
Obviously the author had never experienced a chimpanzee attack.
All well and good except mixed martial arts apparently was part of the evolutionary process until quite recently. Guess what, shooting someone is easier still so obviously that would be how primates attacked each other... The fact that a bee often dies when stinging gives you a pretty good example of how evolution and theoretically optimal aren't intrinsically linked!
Depends on what you mean by "theoretically optimal". Darwin's Evolution isn't about the survival of the individual, it's about the survival of the species. Anything that forwards the species is fair game, even if it's at the cost of individuals.
Besides, the bees with stingers aren't breeders.
Actually it's pretty easy to say it. They have never thwarted an attack. Ever.
American nuclear weapons never successfully retaliated against a single attack from the Soviet Union. Not a single one. Nor did they ever stop inbound Soviet Missiles. Ever.
Sometimes the measure of a success for defense is in finding that the defense never seems necessary.
For example, I don't want America to build a wall on the Mexican border that allows us catch infiltrators. I want us to build a wall when people see it they give up and go home to apply for visa.
The difference between nuclear deterrence and the TSA is that attacks HAVE been attempted, despite the TSA. But it wasn't the TSA that thwarted them.
As for walls, I'd much rather we made the wall unnecessary. Like it used to be before we betrayed our principles. Although as far as it goes, a lot more people get caught at the borders making illegal entry for economic reasons than people with ill intent in mind, even today.
What is an anti-gun agenda. One that tries to reduce the number of guns, so that the government can become more totalitarian and control its population with the guns the military owns? Because I cannot see any other anti-gun agenda. He makes is pretty clear why he does not like guns, and there doesnt seem to be a hidden agenda.
The mere fact that there is a TSA as we know it tells me that the government doesn't need to control its population with the guns the military owns.
They get by on fear alone. "If you don't give up your freedoms, the terrorists will eat you!"
It doesn't matter how many guns you own. Or nuclear weapons or aircraft carriers for that matter. If you insist on living as a slave, you're a slave.
Comments aren't supposed to (redundantly) tell you what the code does. They're to tell you why the code had to be written, or the reason one coding choice was made over another, or known issues and todos.
Not all code is quite as self-evident as that. Even in the less cryptic languages. However, I agree that when the comments are redundant, they are not merely useless, they add noise to the equation.
Most comments - as I and others here have often noted - shouldn't be telling "what" code does, but why it is doing it and what it produces.
...how does it help you as a programmer to know Spanish? Not a lot, I think...
Considering that the Latino segment of the US population is about the fastest-growing? Sure, we expect Americans to speak "American", but let's be realistic. Chances are that if you look closely at products in the local grocery store, you'll find a few whose actual names are Spanish, and more than a few whose labels are bilingual English/Spanish. Savvy (compare sp. "sabe", to know) businesses reach out to their target markets, whether they are American-hispanic or American-Vietnamese.
Besides, you might get sent to a developer's conference in Miami.
They aren't "giving up" on Android, they just realized they can make more money foisting WindBlowz 8 on an unsuspecting populace. There's a wider profit margin when you can pretend that the reason it costs more is that you have to send money to Misrosoft, and jack the price up a little higher.
Why else would someone give up on something free, and popular, that's more secure and actually works, for some shit you have to pay for, is less secure, and doesn't work. Misrosoft. What a joke.
Dell is a computer company. Windows is a computer OS. I don't find it at all surprizing that Dell would go the Windows route.
Their bigger problem is that the market for "computers" is shrinking.
The luxury sandwich uses higher quality ingredients, so while it does have a higher margin it actually costs more to produce...
Software on the other hand will typically have the fully featured version developed first, and then extra work is done to disable features and produce an artificially crippled version, thus the cheaper version actually cost more to produce.
I find such a practice despicable, to do extra work to make intentional changes that make the product less useful to paying customers!
No, you're wrong. Software products are more often crippled from day one, luxury version or not. And the only "artificial" thing about it is that the stuff is crippled because they were developed in too little time with too many "cost savings".
The myth of deep pockets is that they are stupid. They didn't get deep pockets by being stupid. They know value when they see it, and Windows 8 ain't it.
You don't get deep pockets by being stupid, no. But I swear that once you get there, stupid waltzes in the front door.
How else can you explain the infestations of Dogbert-style consultants, over-priced/under-performing product acquisitions, and expensive projects that fail more often than not in the larger enterprises? It's like they took all the money they saved by leveraging their synergies and went looking for ways to piss it away?
Iomega Jaz drives had about a 2-week lifespan. Where I worked, we had a period of time where we needed to ship about 1 GB of data at a time to/from clients on short notice, and they were the only option.
We treated them as disposables.