The levy currently applies to recording media for audio. I believe it is something like 15 cents per tape , and 25 cents per "Audio CD". Normal blank CDs for "data" are not covered by this levy. Normal CDs are covered. In fact it's mentioned in the link you included. They're 21 cents.
It's already gone to court and in Canada P2P is legal for music. The court case concluded that it was legal to download. It is still considered illegal to upload.
You don't ever stop supporting your customers. You just switch to paid support after your warranty or contracted support period has expired.
I'll disagree with this. The company I work for recently stopped support for some software we wrote in 1999. We provided more than 2 years notice, and a reasonable upgrade path.
Our entire code base was rewritten in 2000 and once again in 2005. Supporting 3 different code bases is not practical.
First of all, for front line support people, have them trained on 3 different products is simply not practical.(While the 3 pieces of software are similar in general functionality, they're are significant differences in how the achieve that functionality.)
More importantly, the number of developers that are familiar with the original code base is small. And these are the most senior developers and having them spend the their time looking at the old case base is not a productive use of their time.
I suppose we could have offered a support contract to the customers of the older version that represented the realistic cost of what it would be to support the older code base. But, the number would have been ridiculously high and would probably be seen as quite insulting by the customer.
It made more sense to announce the sunset of the product with a large amount of advance notice, and provide a reasonable upgrade path.
5. BING muting. Have you been in these elevators that have to BING at every floor, even when you're going to the 33rd from the 1st? Yeesh, give me a mute button.
I believe this is for the blind, so that they can count what floor the elevator is currently on. To keep things fair, should we also include a button which turns out the lights?:)
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I'll disagree with this. The company I work for recently stopped support for some software we wrote in 1999. We provided more than 2 years notice, and a reasonable upgrade path.
Our entire code base was rewritten in 2000 and once again in 2005. Supporting 3 different code bases is not practical.
First of all, for front line support people, have them trained on 3 different products is simply not practical.(While the 3 pieces of software are similar in general functionality, they're are significant differences in how the achieve that functionality.)
More importantly, the number of developers that are familiar with the original code base is small. And these are the most senior developers and having them spend the their time looking at the old case base is not a productive use of their time.
I suppose we could have offered a support contract to the customers of the older version that represented the realistic cost of what it would be to support the older code base. But, the number would have been ridiculously high and would probably be seen as quite insulting by the customer.
It made more sense to announce the sunset of the product with a large amount of advance notice, and provide a reasonable upgrade path.
I believe this is for the blind, so that they can count what floor the elevator is currently on. To keep things fair, should we also include a button which turns out the lights? :)