This one was recommended to me. I didn't really like Grip or WebRPG, and bare IRC wasn't quite enough. Your mileage may vary. http://www.rpol.net/rpol/
This suggests a neat strategy, "follow the pack". Just make a vehicle that follows either a) the leader or b) the largest group of vehicles, and let _them_ worry about the navigation issues.
Of course, this strategy assumes someone else will finish. Hmm... also, add a "kick in turboboost for the last 400 yards" feature to get a win. Boy that will tick off the others!
And, of course, fake AI etc to pass DARPA's initial checks so you get in the race after all. If someone actually did this and won, I wonder what DARPA would say:)
>I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.
Err, I think you summarized the entire Green platform with that last bit. Beware, due to pollution and toxins, you might mutate into a Green, oh no!
Myself, I'm not a libertarian, I just want less government. I'm not a republican, I just want lower taxes. I'm not a democrat, I just want a lower debt. And I'm not an anarchist, I just post to slashdot occassionally:)
In Maryland and DC, they issue the ticket to the driver of the car (according to registration), but said driver can fill out a section saying "I was not the driver, person X [license number here] was".
They then issue the ticket to person X.
What happens if person X complains, I don't know, but given that you need their driver's license number to do this, it's probably hard to fake.
Plus the language says you're basically making an affadavit of truth and so you'd be screwed for lying if the other person contests this.
So basically, they ticket the car and assume the owner was driving, and let the owner inform them otherwise by ratting on their friend or spouse. Scummy system.
Happened to me. Was common in the dot-com era. Include followup tactic of 'sue you if you try to use said assets yourself' (again a dot-com thing, since software or websites can exist in several hands simultaneously.)
One advantage of Russian being a "new" market (for MMORPGs, at least) is that 15,000 subscribers in 3 months can seem like a success. In the US, MMs are closing down because they only have 150k in a year.
Even a straight PC game that sells under 100k is seen as a 'failure'. In some ways this is perception; by being the first, they can survive with subscriber numbers that a bigger corporation would see as tiny.
"a whole re-arrangement of your thought processes to accept the difference in graphics quality."
I disagree. Doom is still quite playable. People don't 'rearrange their thought processes' to play cartoonish games like Jet Grind Radio, lower graphics quality doesn't require a shift. What does require a shift is 'how do they model the space'.
I think 'Doom' really nailed the spatial immersion aspect (and is still playable now). Quake et al added full 3D movement. It wasn't just the graphics, but the fact that Game Movement was like Real Life Movement.
So it's sort of a tactile thing. Once you were walking seamlessly (not in chunky steps), and could look around, things had 'arrived'. After that, things just got prettier.
And, they got the audio right-- you got spatial information from where the sound came from. (5.1 stuff has really helped boost that, but I can't pick 1 'pivotal' game that advanced it.)
So I think the next big leap isn't going to be graphical, but spatial. Perhaps handling peripherial vision, so you don't get the 'someone is hitting me but where?' effect, and there's more of a sense of placement.
Or some clever way to handle mapping and direction so you don't feel lost-- one can get lost in an FPS mall due to lack of spatial awareness, whereas it's harder to do in real life.
Or perhaps kinetic sense will be the next thing, actually feeling motion. We'll see.
Visit www.tcl.tk (a Wiki for the language Tcl/Tk, which is multi-platform and has excellent GUI tools), look in the "Games" category. That's basically a mix of how-to, game ideas, and partial or full implementations thereof.
Any CSI101 should be able to take them and run with it. In fact, any high schooler into computers can.
(Frankly, I think Tcl is vagually lisp-like, which is why it works so well for games, and Tk as a graphics handler is very OO, so it's a neat mix.)
> You can imagine what would happen if two of the crew had a messy break up omn Mars.
As usual, Larry Niven covered this. If you send a long-term all male crew... some of the men will engage in homosexuality, some will be violently opposed to it, and you'll get fights.
Basically, any colony will have sex, regardless of makeup. It's a hard drive to surpress.
A lot of astronomy data is looked at by its principal investigator (PI) for something specific. Really, data has 5 'lives'.
1) The original proposal by the PI, e.g. 'looking for cornonal emissions from DI Peg, an Algol-type system'. Sort of the pass/fail of the research world.
2) Survey. Someone decides to do a survey study among existing data, e.g. "Light curves from all Algol-type systems".
3) Unexpected. Someone finds a new thing to look for, sometimes due to better theoretical understanding. "Coronal sources should be iron-enhanced, so let's reanalyze DI Peg, specifically looking for iron lines."
4) Data-mining. Searching an archive for a given property. "Looking for all sources with X-ray emission above a given threshold... hey, DI Peg matched!"
5) Grad students. Doing their thesis on a topic, use archival data to support. "Dissertation on coronal systems, using data from DI Peg and others".
and I think now maybe this adds a new category:
6) Improved methods. Older data can be reanalyzed using newer methods to extract additional information. Rare: usually data analysis is limited by signal/noise, not tricky algorithms.
So data is often used beyond its initial acquisition!
During 'code orange', the center I worked out stopped me _every time_ I entered, because I had a non-picture ("temporary") badge. Despite that said badge requires an accompanying photo id and just getting the 'temp' badge took all the paperwork and processing that goes into the photo ones, and is valid for 3 months at a time.
I became very familiar with the search procedure. I knew exactly when and how the search went. Being searched twice a day for 2 weeks will do that for you.
An _effective_ search strategy would have been, oh, give the guards new instructions daily like 'today, search all green cars' or 'today, check all plates beginning with '1'".
Those ('true randoms', i.e. avoiding selection bias by guards and avoiding profiling holes), a no-goodnik wouldn't be able to predict, and yet it also wouldn't hit any one person frequently that they'd be intimately familiar with (and thus able to easily circumvent) the security protocols.
So yeah, CAPS II is worse than being 'a hassle', it's a hassle that provides _worse_ security than you get without it.
I'd be more impressed if you could choose an arbitrary starting point. It _is_ an interactive Java app, after all!
Imagine, a little initial mouse nudge to the east, and you could zoom in on Paris Hilton! A little further left on frame 1, and you could view an alien civilization! And 10^12 times out of 10^12+1... you'd end up zooming in on empty space for the entire thing once it gets to 'planetary' scale.
"Major publishers don't give $50k advances based on friendship."
True, but my point is, you don't even have access to a major publisher unless you have an 'in'.
It used to be, for SF, the magazines were a good way to get the attention of book publishers. SF mags aren't a good gateway anymore, though. Friend-of-a-friend is still the best way to get attention. (Then, as I mentioned, good work actually gets a fair chance at being considered).
So yeah, the work has to be good, but friendship gets it looked at. Yeah, a bad work and you 'lose the chance of using that path in the future'-- but how many people get that one chance? Not many.
Actually, I read your anecdote as the very accurate "if you know someone in the business, or a friend-of-a-friend, you can get published. Otherwise, you'd better be both good and topical."
Not a bad lesson, but a far cry from a meritocracy.
Gold Rush Games launched their POD/layout group, Golden Pillar Publishing (linked off goldrushgames.com somewhere), specifically for non-game stuff. Prices are good and they do nice layout work, basically everything except the writing.
But you're going to have to push your book. Best model is, self-publish, sell 1k copies, use that to shop the book (or similar books) to publishers as a way to differentiate you from the usual slush pile-- you're proven slush!
For game publishers, mind you, GRG started a service to actually rep and sell you via distribution (great for RPGs, not relevant for fiction or non-fiction writing).
Well, if it's anything like the university I went to, it's easy!
1) Put in a request to the building&grounds people that you need a new junction box placed within easy access of the racks.
2) They promise you a quick response.
3) After six weeks, realize you need power _now_ and run a few power strips through the floor panels.
4) Union rep appears 1 hour later, removes strips , fines your department for using non-union labor.
5) Wait 2 more months, still no response from union electrician. Run an extension cord from your office, across the hall, into the room, thus not violating Union reqs (no floor panels touched!)
6) Fire marshall appears, fines department for fire hazard.
7) Dean of department calls you in, explains they are firing you due to the trouble you've caused in fines and Union difficulties. Voila! Problem solved, you no longer need to worry about power to the racks!
>they're uncertain as to whether they want our opinions
From Paco Underhill's "Why We Buy", Sony did a marketing study to see which color walkman students preferred. Invited students in, talked to them, gave them a survey, etc, "yellow or black?", and the potential customers said 'yellow, definitely'. Sony said, 'on the way out, as a reward for being in this study, you get a free walkman!'.
All Sony had to do was count which ones the students actually took-- yellow or black. And indeed, they overwhelming chose black.
What people say they want, and what they really do, are rarely the same. Deeds, not words.
Good point. Bring a spring-loaded foam-wedge-ejecting device instead.
Fortunately, teachers have more free rein in what they can bring. Unfortunately, if I used the "g" word, even as a teacher, I'd be out.
Plus, since I only do guest lectures, I can leave the repercussions to the teachers. Wait, repercussions, that's a term from ballistics, which means "guns!" Someone shoot this man before he corrupts our children!:)
>Is this based on your belief that 99c of raw materials goes into a piece of music
Err... no, it's Apple's quote that, after paying fees to the music distribution companies and handling their own costs of business, they are barely breaking even.
If you happen to actually, you know, _study_ economics you'll find out things have something called 'cost' that go beyond raw materials.
Microsoft may drive the cost down through deals, but the recording industry is notorious for wanting to maintain their profit point. If they charge Microsoft X and Microsoft's own operations costs are Y, any price Z must be greater than X+Y for Microsoft to directly profit.
Sorry for using advanced math. Maybe next time you can learn to be more polite, and in turn I can be less condescending.
Given that Apple has said they barely break even at 0.99/song, and Microsoft says they plan a lower price point, it looks like Microsoft is going to eat costs to gain market share.
Given that the X-Box was rumored to cost Microsoft money for each box sold-- money they hoped to make up in software, it's not as clear how this will work for songs. Songs won't drive sales of Microsoft OS. That's the hazard of being a near-monopoly: everyone either has you, or already doesn't want you.
So how will they profit? Microsoft doesn't have a history of raising prices after driving off competitors; they're usually content to just rule marketshare and continue sales as usual. But they do have a tendency to use their clout to cut others out in deals.
So, prediction: Microsoft gains leverage in the market, then starts to cut deals with music companies saying "you only sell through us, not Apple or anyone else". Overall goal: ensure Windows Media Format (and DRM) become the standards, thus ensuring Windows is seen as the only OS for doing music.
Hazard: Apple already has a good media lock, so they won't be able to be un-entrenched in this.
This has some nice configuration management ideas. Given that a linux distribution is small, cloning them for each diskless is a neat approach to balance centralized management versus changing hardware.
That said... NFS is woefully insecure so, if subversion by an insider is a problem (as it would be with, say, disk workstations), NFS may not be the best choice for handling the disk management.
Err... I played trombone. Yeah, $400 or more new, but $100-$150 used. My used one ($100) lasted... let's see... I still have it.
Plus the school had loaners, I used that for a while. You had to leave it in the locker or sign it out for taking home to practice (think "time-share instruments"), but it meant we didn't have to buy one. Great for letting kids try before committing.
Oh, and not allowing sax until you start with clarinet, that's just plain bad teaching. My guess is the school is in an affluent enough area that no one really thought it out, or not enough parents complained.
Parental complaints are a great sanity check over insane school policies. But you need well-informed parents. A little band activism can help too.
As for finding used instruments, look at music shops near any colleges and such, also online. musiciansfriend.com has an 'instruments exchange' and online auction, plus new clarinets for $180 and up. Or use 'froggle.com' with 'clarinet', also has stuff in the $180 range-- that's half what you're being quoted.
Don't go to a shop near the high school (or whatever), or that doesn't also sell used ones. They thrive by charging high prices to naive parents who want 'the best' or 'what everyone else has'. You don't want 'the best', you want a beater that sounds good and works well for the student-- and any good music shop will have a range of brands and let you try first.
Hope this helps!
Relevance to, well, everything
on
Software Fashion
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I don't know, we just tiger teamed on this same paradigm at a standup meeting, and frankly most of their suggestions violate ISO 9000 and show no facility for CMI. Perhaps if they'd used a quality circle to better evaluate their stance, they'd actually have action items that would be meaningful.
Fortunately, we here in the business world don't have the same 'fashion trends' problem you software blokes seem to suffer.
Slashdot Mirror
This one was recommended to me. I didn't really like Grip or WebRPG, and bare IRC wasn't quite enough. Your mileage may vary.
http://www.rpol.net/rpol/
This suggests a neat strategy, "follow the pack". Just make a vehicle that follows either a) the leader or b) the largest group of vehicles, and let _them_ worry about the navigation issues.
:)
Of course, this strategy assumes someone else will finish. Hmm... also, add a "kick in turboboost for the last 400 yards" feature to get a win. Boy that will tick off the others!
And, of course, fake AI etc to pass DARPA's initial checks so you get in the race after all. If someone actually did this and won, I wonder what DARPA would say
>I'm not a Green but I do object to being poisoned for some companies bottom line.
:)
Err, I think you summarized the entire Green platform with that last bit. Beware, due to pollution and toxins, you might mutate into a Green, oh no!
Myself, I'm not a libertarian, I just want less government. I'm not a republican, I just want lower taxes. I'm not a democrat, I just want a lower debt. And I'm not an anarchist, I just post to slashdot occassionally
In Maryland and DC, they issue the ticket to the driver of the car (according to registration), but said driver can fill out a section saying "I was not the driver, person X [license number here] was".
They then issue the ticket to person X.
What happens if person X complains, I don't know, but given that you need their driver's license number to do this, it's probably hard to fake.
Plus the language says you're basically making an affadavit of truth and so you'd be screwed for lying if the other person contests this.
So basically, they ticket the car and assume the owner was driving, and let the owner inform them otherwise by ratting on their friend or spouse. Scummy system.
Happened to me. Was common in the dot-com era. Include followup tactic of 'sue you if you try to use said assets yourself' (again a dot-com thing, since software or websites can exist in several hands simultaneously.)
One advantage of Russian being a "new" market (for MMORPGs, at least) is that 15,000 subscribers in 3 months can seem like a success. In the US, MMs are closing down because they only have 150k in a year.
Even a straight PC game that sells under 100k is seen as a 'failure'. In some ways this is perception; by being the first, they can survive with subscriber numbers that a bigger corporation would see as tiny.
Go small startups!
"a whole re-arrangement of your thought processes to accept the difference in graphics quality."
I disagree. Doom is still quite playable. People don't 'rearrange their thought processes' to play cartoonish games like Jet Grind Radio, lower graphics quality doesn't require a shift. What does require a shift is 'how do they model the space'.
I think 'Doom' really nailed the spatial immersion aspect (and is still playable now). Quake et al added full 3D movement. It wasn't just the graphics, but the fact that Game Movement was like Real Life Movement.
So it's sort of a tactile thing. Once you were walking seamlessly (not in chunky steps), and could look around, things had 'arrived'. After that, things just got prettier.
And, they got the audio right-- you got spatial information from where the sound came from. (5.1 stuff has really helped boost that, but I can't pick 1 'pivotal' game that advanced it.)
So I think the next big leap isn't going to be graphical, but spatial. Perhaps handling peripherial vision, so you don't get the 'someone is hitting me but where?' effect, and there's more of a sense of placement.
Or some clever way to handle mapping and direction so you don't feel lost-- one can get lost in an FPS mall due to lack of spatial awareness, whereas it's harder to do in real life.
Or perhaps kinetic sense will be the next thing, actually feeling motion. We'll see.
Visit www.tcl.tk (a Wiki for the language Tcl/Tk, which is multi-platform and has excellent GUI tools), look in the "Games" category. That's basically a mix of how-to, game ideas, and partial or full implementations thereof.
Any CSI101 should be able to take them and run with it. In fact, any high schooler into computers can.
(Frankly, I think Tcl is vagually lisp-like, which is why it works so well for games, and Tk as a graphics handler is very OO, so it's a neat mix.)
> You can imagine what would happen if two of the crew had a messy break up omn Mars.
As usual, Larry Niven covered this. If you send a long-term all male crew... some of the men will engage in homosexuality, some will be violently opposed to it, and you'll get fights.
Basically, any colony will have sex, regardless of makeup. It's a hard drive to surpress.
A lot of astronomy data is looked at by its principal investigator (PI) for something specific. Really, data has 5 'lives'.
1) The original proposal by the PI, e.g. 'looking for cornonal emissions from DI Peg, an Algol-type system'. Sort of the pass/fail of the research world.
2) Survey. Someone decides to do a survey study among existing data, e.g. "Light curves from all Algol-type systems".
3) Unexpected. Someone finds a new thing to look for, sometimes due to better theoretical understanding. "Coronal sources should be iron-enhanced, so let's reanalyze DI Peg, specifically looking for iron lines."
4) Data-mining. Searching an archive for a given property. "Looking for all sources with X-ray emission above a given threshold... hey, DI Peg matched!"
5) Grad students. Doing their thesis on a topic, use archival data to support. "Dissertation on coronal systems, using data from DI Peg and others".
and I think now maybe this adds a new category:
6) Improved methods. Older data can be reanalyzed using newer methods to extract additional information. Rare: usually data analysis is limited by signal/noise, not tricky algorithms.
So data is often used beyond its initial acquisition!
(apologies if I've posted this before)
During 'code orange', the center I worked out stopped me _every time_ I entered, because I had a non-picture ("temporary") badge. Despite that said badge requires an accompanying photo id and just getting the 'temp' badge took all the paperwork and processing that goes into the photo ones, and is valid for 3 months at a time.
I became very familiar with the search procedure. I knew exactly when and how the search went. Being searched twice a day for 2 weeks will do that for you.
An _effective_ search strategy would have been, oh, give the guards new instructions daily like 'today, search all green cars' or 'today, check all plates beginning with '1'".
Those ('true randoms', i.e. avoiding selection bias by guards and avoiding profiling holes), a no-goodnik wouldn't be able to predict, and yet it also wouldn't hit any one person frequently that they'd be intimately familiar with (and thus able to easily circumvent) the security protocols.
So yeah, CAPS II is worse than being 'a hassle', it's a hassle that provides _worse_ security than you get without it.
I'd be more impressed if you could choose an arbitrary starting point. It _is_ an interactive Java app, after all!
Imagine, a little initial mouse nudge to the east, and you could zoom in on Paris Hilton! A little further left on frame 1, and you could view an alien civilization! And 10^12 times out of 10^12+1... you'd end up zooming in on empty space for the entire thing once it gets to 'planetary' scale.
Yep, I want me my Zoomable Universe[tm]!
"Major publishers don't give $50k advances based on friendship."
True, but my point is, you don't even have access to a major publisher unless you have an 'in'.
It used to be, for SF, the magazines were a good way to get the attention of book publishers. SF mags aren't a good gateway anymore, though. Friend-of-a-friend is still the best way to get attention. (Then, as I mentioned, good work actually gets a fair chance at being considered).
So yeah, the work has to be good, but friendship gets it looked at. Yeah, a bad work and you 'lose the chance of using that path in the future'-- but how many people get that one chance? Not many.
"If you are good, people will pay YOU"
Actually, I read your anecdote as the very accurate "if you know someone in the business, or a friend-of-a-friend, you can get published. Otherwise, you'd better be both good and topical."
Not a bad lesson, but a far cry from a meritocracy.
Gold Rush Games launched their POD/layout group, Golden Pillar Publishing (linked off goldrushgames.com somewhere), specifically for non-game stuff. Prices are good and they do nice layout work, basically everything except the writing.
But you're going to have to push your book. Best model is, self-publish, sell 1k copies, use that to shop the book (or similar books) to publishers as a way to differentiate you from the usual slush pile-- you're proven slush!
For game publishers, mind you, GRG started a service to actually rep and sell you via distribution (great for RPGs, not relevant for fiction or non-fiction writing).
Well, if it's anything like the university I went to, it's easy!
1) Put in a request to the building&grounds people that you need a new junction box placed within easy access of the racks.
2) They promise you a quick response.
3) After six weeks, realize you need power _now_ and run a few power strips through the floor panels.
4) Union rep appears 1 hour later, removes strips , fines your department for using non-union labor.
5) Wait 2 more months, still no response from union electrician. Run an extension cord from your office, across the hall, into the room, thus not violating Union reqs (no floor panels touched!)
6) Fire marshall appears, fines department for fire hazard.
7) Dean of department calls you in, explains they are firing you due to the trouble you've caused in fines and Union difficulties. Voila! Problem solved, you no longer need to worry about power to the racks!
(And oddly enough, I support unions in general!)
>they're uncertain as to whether they want our opinions
From Paco Underhill's "Why We Buy", Sony did a marketing study to see which color walkman students preferred. Invited students in, talked to them, gave them a survey, etc, "yellow or black?", and the potential customers said 'yellow, definitely'. Sony said, 'on the way out, as a reward for being in this study, you get a free walkman!'.
All Sony had to do was count which ones the students actually took-- yellow or black. And indeed, they overwhelming chose black.
What people say they want, and what they really do, are rarely the same. Deeds, not words.
> Toy gun? IN A SCHOOL???!!!
:)
Good point. Bring a spring-loaded foam-wedge-ejecting device instead.
Fortunately, teachers have more free rein in what they can bring. Unfortunately, if I used the "g" word, even as a teacher, I'd be out.
Plus, since I only do guest lectures, I can leave the repercussions to the teachers. Wait, repercussions, that's a term from ballistics, which means "guns!" Someone shoot this man before he corrupts our children!
In a typical physics classroom, you can:
Drop a monkye and fire a toy gun at it, and notice the bullet and the monkey fall at the same time (a classic physics demo).
You can roll a toy car down a track with a stopwatch and figure out its velocity.
You can do inelastic and elastic collisions with billard balls and clay, plus the classic tennis ball/beach ball supernova collision/bounce.
Seeing someone else do an experiment on a vid is not nearly as good as deducing the same principles _using a more reasonable experiment_ yourself.
Science isn't passive, it's about trying things.
Hi,
>Is this based on your belief that 99c of raw materials goes into a piece of music
Err... no, it's Apple's quote that, after paying fees to the music distribution companies and handling their own costs of business, they are barely breaking even.
If you happen to actually, you know, _study_ economics you'll find out things have something called 'cost' that go beyond raw materials.
Microsoft may drive the cost down through deals, but the recording industry is notorious for wanting to maintain their profit point. If they charge Microsoft X and Microsoft's own operations costs are Y, any price Z must be greater than X+Y for Microsoft to directly profit.
Sorry for using advanced math. Maybe next time you can learn to be more polite, and in turn I can be less condescending.
Given that Apple has said they barely break even at 0.99/song, and Microsoft says they plan a lower price point, it looks like Microsoft is going to eat costs to gain market share.
Given that the X-Box was rumored to cost Microsoft money for each box sold-- money they hoped to make up in software, it's not as clear how this will work for songs. Songs won't drive sales of Microsoft OS. That's the hazard of being a near-monopoly: everyone either has you, or already doesn't want you.
So how will they profit? Microsoft doesn't have a history of raising prices after driving off competitors; they're usually content to just rule marketshare and continue sales as usual. But they do have a tendency to use their clout to cut others out in deals.
So, prediction: Microsoft gains leverage in the market, then starts to cut deals with music companies saying "you only sell through us, not Apple or anyone else". Overall goal: ensure Windows Media Format (and DRM) become the standards, thus ensuring Windows is seen as the only OS for doing music.
Hazard: Apple already has a good media lock, so they won't be able to be un-entrenched in this.
Prediction: hell if I know.
This has some nice configuration management ideas. Given that a linux distribution is small, cloning them for each diskless is a neat approach to balance centralized management versus changing hardware.
That said... NFS is woefully insecure so, if subversion by an insider is a problem (as it would be with, say, disk workstations), NFS may not be the best choice for handling the disk management.
Basically, we're back to the classic idea of 'agents', things that hunt down info for you, then distill it and order it and present it to you.
Fascinating field, but darn tricky. New waves of paradigm shifts (okay, jargon changes) come and go, but the need for good agents remains.
Currently, the best agents are still, well, graduate students and secretaries.
Err... I played trombone. Yeah, $400 or more new, but $100-$150 used. My used one ($100) lasted... let's see... I still have it.
Plus the school had loaners, I used that for a while. You had to leave it in the locker or sign it out for taking home to practice (think "time-share instruments"), but it meant we didn't have to buy one. Great for letting kids try before committing.
Oh, and not allowing sax until you start with clarinet, that's just plain bad teaching. My guess is the school is in an affluent enough area that no one really thought it out, or not enough parents complained.
Parental complaints are a great sanity check over insane school policies. But you need well-informed parents. A little band activism can help too.
As for finding used instruments, look at music shops near any colleges and such, also online. musiciansfriend.com has an 'instruments exchange' and online auction, plus new clarinets for $180 and up. Or use 'froggle.com' with 'clarinet', also has stuff in the $180 range-- that's half what you're being quoted.
Don't go to a shop near the high school (or whatever), or that doesn't also sell used ones. They thrive by charging high prices to naive parents who want 'the best' or 'what everyone else has'. You don't want 'the best', you want a beater that sounds good and works well for the student-- and any good music shop will have a range of brands and let you try first.
Hope this helps!
I don't know, we just tiger teamed on this same paradigm at a standup meeting, and frankly most of their suggestions violate ISO 9000 and show no facility for CMI. Perhaps if they'd used a quality circle to better evaluate their stance, they'd actually have action items that would be meaningful.
Fortunately, we here in the business world don't have the same 'fashion trends' problem you software blokes seem to suffer.