Now, sure, if this is done in your average American city, that isn't a bad thing, the average American could afford to do a bit more exercise
I was just thinking along those same lines, then I came to the conclusion that this will fail in at least one of a few ways:
Will not slim down the population: people will "reward themselves" for having been a good citizen and for all the hard work they put in walking across that floor
Will fail to generate energy: people will drive themselves rather than use transit because "it is sooooo exhausting"
Will lose out to law suits: some crafty lawyer (let's face it, every one of 'em thinks they are crafty) will angle a class-action suit because of (a) breach of contract [I paid for mass transit, not to generate free energy], (b) duress/distress from "inefficient" flooring, (c) excessive strain/wear-and-tear to body, yada-yada-yada. I'm sure they'll work out a patent issue in there too...
how many anti-war (or anti anything) folks are going to be transferring money overseas, exporting goods or monies intended to oppose Iraq's reconstruction
I think you misread that. It says that the assets of any individual deemed to be a "problem" are blocked...not just the assets that have been transfered/exported/imported. ALL assets are blocked:
all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt...
i.e. if they don't like you or your looks or your politics, all of your assets under U.S. control are frozen.
With material goods it is usually based on some base cost to produce each individual unit. But software isn't about goods, it is about intellectual property.
Plus the cost of the raw materials, the cost of the factory, administration/marketing/sales/executives/investor profit margin, storage space, transportation, distributor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, retailor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, yada-yada-yada.
When you pay $1.97 at Wal-mart, you just bought a material good that in and of itself cost less than $.50 to make...likely less than that. Wal-mart's markup alone will be 100%...and they are FANTASTIC at keeping their suppliers' profit margin to a minimum.
So a good chunk of what people are paying for is not the software itself, but rather the cost of having people pay for that software? That's kind of messed up.
Welcome to the world of goods distribution? Name anything else that you buy, short of High Schooler's Lawn Mowing, that doesn't offer similar huge overheads built into the price? [Though I note you may come up with an example or two, recognize that the lion's share of examples are based on the above model, not some "pay what it costs" model].
SOMEONE has to pay for the "the cost of doing business", so unless it's Daddy's factory you are running, you gotta bill it to your customers.
I just think it is somewhat silly to "polish" up a trivial utility and try to sell it as if it is some amazing piece of software that people should pay for nearly as much as they might pay for, say, a Xbox 360 game.
I haven't seen many non-trivial console games that I can buy for $20...but then, I don't own a console. But the problem with your argument (or the source of confusion/frustration) is that YOUR definition of "trivial" and that of the s/w author's paying customer base is like Quite Different.
For someone to drop $20 on a utility that they themselves don't have a clue on how to develop, if it saves them time and/or aggrevation, then it is very worthwhile to them.
If the product is not worth the $20, then likely the s/w author goes out of business, or worse they become a scammer.
But providing people an advertised good at the advertised price with both parties receiving the advertised benefit is The (fictitious) American Way[tm].
But you still miss the point (and I'd argue that you've switched yours).
Triviality has nothing to do with it. It took time to make, hours according to you. So someone charging $20 is not outrageous IMO.
Yes, the price is "arbitrary", as are almost ALL prices. Set the price, watch the market react, adjust accordingly, repeat. How else can anyone possibly come up with a price?
If the author sells one copy, they have lost money (as per your experience). If they sell 5, then they've broken even IF they simply ship the s/w and walk away. However, if they then have to collect the funds (chase down bad orders, give up a cut of the order to auto-pay systems), support the software (id10t problems as well as s/w bugs), market (websites don't get built for free), sell (someone has to accept the orders, ship the goods), and on top of all this come up with a new version, then there is potentially a lot of time put into individual orders, whereas there may be next-to-none put into others.
So, what price should said software sell for? What criteria do you think should be used so as not to make the initial price arbitrary?
Don't confuse F/OSS with commercial software. Though there is a fair number of F/OSS packages that are created under the ESR "bazaar" model, most of the polished packages are actually created under the commercial model. There are the packages made with "enterprise acceptible versions" that they sell (OpenOffice.org vs. StarOffice), and there are those packages that are set up to sell support and/or hardware and/or services. These softwares may be "free", but they most definitely raise monies for their authors (or at least for their major corporate backers).
you've also incited two of the world's major religions
I'm wondering which two you are referring to. I'm also puzzled as to why landing in the US would not "incite" at least one of the world's major religions, and dozens of sects thereof.
a) choose a lousy representative
b) choose a horrible representative
c) make a stand that you oppose bad representation in the hope that this time, or the next, or the next, the majority realize they don't have to accept the status quo.
Sounds like you advocate selection (a). You believe this to be "wise". I strongly suspect that this is the kind of thinking that leads to long-standing oppressive regimes.
I'm going to take a wild stab and say that this "wise" approach is not exactly inline with what the "american founding fathers" had in mind, nor what those who participated in the american revolution would have thought.
Sounds like your definition of "wisdom" includes something to do with egocentrism, pessimism and short sightedness...though maybe I've just spent time studying history.
What I am saying is that they have used their dominant search engine to drive users to their maps program which has taken a huge share from mapquest because of this
I do know that from time to time I see a result with links to Google Maps. However, when I made the switch from Mapquest to Google Maps, it was not because of the search engine. I heard about a fantastic new web mapping application (probably on/. or techdirt or someplace), tried it out directly and never looked back.
It isn't Google's search engine that took me away from Mapquest, it was a superior product. Same goes for Gmail vs. Hotmail.
I haven't made the switch to some other Google products yet (e.g. Google Finance), but friends of mine are trying to convince me to update my bookmarks that way. There may even be links to GF in search results, but I don't find myself using them.......... yet.
I cannot comment for everywhere in North America, or at all for any parts of the world outside thereof, but I would argue that said cutback has already happened.
To be more specific, I'm using it to debug Java, Perl, php, ruby, and NSIS (Windows installers). It's also my database front-end (currently used with Oracle, MySQL, and SQL Server), and subversion client (with the best 3-way merging interface I've ever found),
Off topic, I know, but which plugins are you using for the RDBMSes and for SVN ?
My browser and other browsers are downloading this exact same page.. look it's parallel programming and no one had to do anything special.
I'm gonna bet there are a lot of groups and developers that completely disagree with that statement. I'm thinking of the ApacheGroup, MySQL developers, Perl developers, Slashcode developers, Linux developers, etc...
It may be because I am in Canada and we have the presumption of honesty and innocence
Oh hogwash, eh? You are dealing with a store that doesn't follow the credit card merchant's agreement. I've just looked at all of the "merchant services" sites listed on Visa Canada's website (such as this TD Canada Trust one), and all of them have a fraud prevention tips document that explicitly point out about comparing the Visa card, its information, calling for authorization, Code 10, signature comparison and additional identification when necessary.
Our Canadian retailers have the same issues as any other nation: improperly trained or lazy staff and/or merchants. There ain't nothin' particularly Canadian (or flattering) in that.
safety of linux is not a property of linux itself, but merely a byproduct of its relative popularity in the world
If said were true, then don't you think that MS (fan boys) would be working night and day to break a hole in Linux that spread like wildfire, take out 60% of the web, and the let the press run wild with the story? It would literally kill the potential of Linux adoption with one single program.
The MKS Toolkit had its day. For quite some time it was The Bomb. But other tools now exist that match and exceed the Toolkit (though maybe MKS's support is stronger...it was back when I was there).
MKS continued to milk the Toolkit revenue to pay for development of its SCM products (MKS Source Integrity, Web Integrity, Code Integrity, Track Integrity, Name That Product Integrity,...). I've not seen much Integrity in the wild these days, but it does show up at the odd customer site from time to time (yes, "odd" as in "infrequent" AND "odd" as in "non-standard";-)).
Backup software cannot confirm that your restore process will work. Only a test restore will.
The software might be able to ensure that all the bits put on the backup medium were recorded correctly, but it cannot possibly tell you that restoring that database and firing up the application will "work", or even that the resulting blob restored to disc would be even usable.
but I can whip up apps in C#.NET faster than I can in Java
Just to clarify: I cannot believe that it is the language (C#) that you are faster in than Java. I strongly suspect you are talking about the IDEs and/or GUI development tools of the C#/.NET platform. If I'm wrong, could you highlight what you mean by "whip up apps" ?
The world is not broken. There are infrequent incidents that occur (that are widely reported) that are knee-jerk reactions to other infrequent incidents (that are widely reported) to which people put too much weight because CNN is their "window to the world".
Slashdot Mirror
I was just thinking along those same lines, then I came to the conclusion that this will fail in at least one of a few ways:
They are leading the race for a patch. They have one (PATCH) ready in their database.
I think you misread that. It says that the assets of any individual deemed to be a "problem" are blocked...not just the assets that have been transfered/exported/imported. ALL assets are blocked:
i.e. if they don't like you or your looks or your politics, all of your assets under U.S. control are frozen.
Plus the cost of the raw materials, the cost of the factory, administration/marketing/sales/executives/investor profit margin, storage space, transportation, distributor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, retailor's storage/administration/marketing/sales/profit, yada-yada-yada.
When you pay $1.97 at Wal-mart, you just bought a material good that in and of itself cost less than $.50 to make...likely less than that. Wal-mart's markup alone will be 100%...and they are FANTASTIC at keeping their suppliers' profit margin to a minimum.
Welcome to the world of goods distribution? Name anything else that you buy, short of High Schooler's Lawn Mowing, that doesn't offer similar huge overheads built into the price? [Though I note you may come up with an example or two, recognize that the lion's share of examples are based on the above model, not some "pay what it costs" model].
SOMEONE has to pay for the "the cost of doing business", so unless it's Daddy's factory you are running, you gotta bill it to your customers.
I haven't seen many non-trivial console games that I can buy for $20...but then, I don't own a console. But the problem with your argument (or the source of confusion/frustration) is that YOUR definition of "trivial" and that of the s/w author's paying customer base is like Quite Different.
For someone to drop $20 on a utility that they themselves don't have a clue on how to develop, if it saves them time and/or aggrevation, then it is very worthwhile to them.
If the product is not worth the $20, then likely the s/w author goes out of business, or worse they become a scammer.
But providing people an advertised good at the advertised price with both parties receiving the advertised benefit is The (fictitious) American Way[tm].
Triviality has nothing to do with it. It took time to make, hours according to you. So someone charging $20 is not outrageous IMO.
Yes, the price is "arbitrary", as are almost ALL prices. Set the price, watch the market react, adjust accordingly, repeat. How else can anyone possibly come up with a price?
If the author sells one copy, they have lost money (as per your experience). If they sell 5, then they've broken even IF they simply ship the s/w and walk away. However, if they then have to collect the funds (chase down bad orders, give up a cut of the order to auto-pay systems), support the software (id10t problems as well as s/w bugs), market (websites don't get built for free), sell (someone has to accept the orders, ship the goods), and on top of all this come up with a new version, then there is potentially a lot of time put into individual orders, whereas there may be next-to-none put into others.
So, what price should said software sell for? What criteria do you think should be used so as not to make the initial price arbitrary?
Don't confuse F/OSS with commercial software. Though there is a fair number of F/OSS packages that are created under the ESR "bazaar" model, most of the polished packages are actually created under the commercial model. There are the packages made with "enterprise acceptible versions" that they sell (OpenOffice.org vs. StarOffice), and there are those packages that are set up to sell support and/or hardware and/or services. These softwares may be "free", but they most definitely raise monies for their authors (or at least for their major corporate backers).
You mean a super hero like this? (!!!)
I'm wondering which two you are referring to. I'm also puzzled as to why landing in the US would not "incite" at least one of the world's major religions, and dozens of sects thereof.
Imagine you have a choice to make:
a) choose a lousy representative
b) choose a horrible representative
c) make a stand that you oppose bad representation in the hope that this time, or the next, or the next, the majority realize they don't have to accept the status quo.
Sounds like you advocate selection (a). You believe this to be "wise". I strongly suspect that this is the kind of thinking that leads to long-standing oppressive regimes.
I'm going to take a wild stab and say that this "wise" approach is not exactly inline with what the "american founding fathers" had in mind, nor what those who participated in the american revolution would have thought.
Sounds like your definition of "wisdom" includes something to do with egocentrism, pessimism and short sightedness...though maybe I've just spent time studying history.
I do know that from time to time I see a result with links to Google Maps. However, when I made the switch from Mapquest to Google Maps, it was not because of the search engine. I heard about a fantastic new web mapping application (probably on /. or techdirt or someplace), tried it out directly and never looked back.
It isn't Google's search engine that took me away from Mapquest, it was a superior product. Same goes for Gmail vs. Hotmail.
I haven't made the switch to some other Google products yet (e.g. Google Finance), but friends of mine are trying to convince me to update my bookmarks that way. There may even be links to GF in search results, but I don't find myself using them. ... ... ... yet.
[Searching for tinfoil, a wire hanger and some crazy glue (or duct tape)]
I cannot comment for everywhere in North America, or at all for any parts of the world outside thereof, but I would argue that said cutback has already happened.
Cool. Now, what services would you like your government to cut back on in order to provide that train service?
Off topic, I know, but which plugins are you using for the RDBMSes and for SVN ?
Thanks in advance.
I'm gonna bet there are a lot of groups and developers that completely disagree with that statement. I'm thinking of the Apache Group, MySQL developers, Perl developers, Slashcode developers, Linux developers, etc...
Oh hogwash, eh? You are dealing with a store that doesn't follow the credit card merchant's agreement. I've just looked at all of the "merchant services" sites listed on Visa Canada's website (such as this TD Canada Trust one), and all of them have a fraud prevention tips document that explicitly point out about comparing the Visa card, its information, calling for authorization, Code 10, signature comparison and additional identification when necessary.
Our Canadian retailers have the same issues as any other nation: improperly trained or lazy staff and/or merchants. There ain't nothin' particularly Canadian (or flattering) in that.
If said were true, then don't you think that MS (fan boys) would be working night and day to break a hole in Linux that spread like wildfire, take out 60% of the web, and the let the press run wild with the story? It would literally kill the potential of Linux adoption with one single program.
"Excel & the power of CSV files"
"Bottleneck your CPU: How to gain MASSIVE performance improvements in any computer: defrag.exe"
"Make your data manageable: separating content from style the CSS way!!"
"FREE SOFTWARE! The best 10...er...20...er...100...free (and open source) software products"
The same goes for "MS-Windows" instead of "Windows" and "MS-Word" instead of "Word".
MKS continued to milk the Toolkit revenue to pay for development of its SCM products (MKS Source Integrity, Web Integrity, Code Integrity, Track Integrity, Name That Product Integrity,...). I've not seen much Integrity in the wild these days, but it does show up at the odd customer site from time to time (yes, "odd" as in "infrequent" AND "odd" as in "non-standard" ;-)).
The software might be able to ensure that all the bits put on the backup medium were recorded correctly, but it cannot possibly tell you that restoring that database and firing up the application will "work", or even that the resulting blob restored to disc would be even usable.
Just to clarify: I cannot believe that it is the language (C#) that you are faster in than Java. I strongly suspect you are talking about the IDEs and/or GUI development tools of the C#/.NET platform. If I'm wrong, could you highlight what you mean by "whip up apps" ?
Which version are you using?
No it is not. BSD kernel, bash shell, but not the bash kernel.
The world is not broken. There are infrequent incidents that occur (that are widely reported) that are knee-jerk reactions to other infrequent incidents (that are widely reported) to which people put too much weight because CNN is their "window to the world".