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User: Bert64

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  1. No, i get paid for my work but i don't expect my grandkids to continue being paid for something i once produced...

  2. Capitalism actually encourages taking shortcuts and copying, and even producing cheaper copies yourself for a profit.
    It's only government regulation (which capitalists claim to hate) which enforces copyrights and patents.

  3. Re:B&N went from best-middle of the road on The Slow Demise of Barnes & Noble (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Both of those sell a *LOT* more than just books... You have to weigh up the cost of the membership fee against the total value of items you're going to buy there over the course of a year.

  4. Re:B&N went from best-middle of the road on The Slow Demise of Barnes & Noble (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Economies of scale, and convenience...
    You can have one large warehouse that serves deliveries to a wide area, but the area that a store can serve is limited by the distance people are willing to travel. So you end up with multiple smaller stores each with less stock.

    You can put the warehouse in a cheaper location, a store has to be where potential customers can reach it easily.

    A warehouse only needs sufficient parking for staff and waiting delivery trucks, a store needs parking for customers too.

    For a store the stock has to be displayed for customers, for a warehouse that's not the case so it can be stored more efficiently.

    A store has a greater risk of theft, as the public is able to enter the store and handle the goods. There is also a greater risk of goods being damaged in this way. While theft from a warehouse is not unheard of, a distribution warehouse is a private building only accessible to staff - thefts are less common, and the perpetrators are easier to catch.

  5. Re:B&N went from best-middle of the road on The Slow Demise of Barnes & Noble (techcrunch.com) · · Score: 2

    Less large shipments (and more personal journeys) would be replaced with more small shipments, people would still buy the goods and need to get them home.

    Brick and mortar stores provide the benefit of letting customers view the product before buying it, but often they will view in a store and then order it online for a lower price.

    There are also various actions which significantly hurt these stores, like lack or cost of parking or poor availability of transport. Going to a store could result in you wasting several hours of your time plus transport costs, only to find the store doesn't have stock of the item you wanted.

    A lot of places have also become greedy with parking, either charging extortionate fees for parking or making it difficult in order to generate more revenue from parking fines.

  6. Having to "trust someones commands" is not as bad as having to "trust someones binaries", or "trust any other form of instructions supplied on a website"... At least with commands, you can more easily research what the commands actually do before you execute them.
    With any platform you have to trust something, somewhere.

  7. Re:Yes and No on Ask Slashdot: Could Linux Ever Become Fully Compatible With Windows and Mac Software? · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you expect everything to work out of the box, get a mac...
    I've had just as many problems getting windows to support random hardware as linux, often the wifi or ethernet is not supported and i have to download the drivers on another system, often old hardware is not supported at all on 64bit windows but does work on 64bit linux. Having to hunt for windows drivers is just as painful, if not more so than linux.

    The advantage windows has is being either preinstalled, or provided with a custom made restore image thats already configured for the hardware it ships with. The same is true of macos, it's tailored specifically for the hardware it ships with.
    Linux is pretty much the only os that is downloaded and installed separately.

    If more general purpose linux systems were available preinstalled then it would be far easier for users. Noone has driver problems with preinstalled chromebooks, android phones or any of the thousands of embedded linux devices out there on the market.

  8. Re:Gross overestimate on New York Times CEO: Print Journalism Has Maybe Another 10 Years (cnbc.com) · · Score: 1

    If the font is smaller than you find comfortable, change the size... You can't do that with a paper book.
    If you have to scroll back and forth then the content is presented poorly, it should adapt to the width of the device you're using to view it and linewrap accordingly. Same goes for the columns...
    If properly setup, you should receive the raw text and then choose how you want it displayed to you - this is what user stylesheets in browsers were for etc.

  9. Re:Hey Samsung! on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    You can't install a third party ROM on your phone?
    The crapware is added by Samsung, it's not a part of stock Android... You can install a clean version of Android, and potentially you could install another linux-based os quite easily.
    Crapware added by OEMs has been a windows problem for many years too, crapware added by microsoft is whats getting worse.

  10. Re:Better yet... on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    So what you're saying, is that you've gotten used to unreliable software and can't understand people who expect their tools to work reliably?

  11. Re: This is 2018. on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    And they say Linux isn't ready for the desktop...

    You're expecting users to make registry edits following directions from a website?
    And how is the average user supposed to know that the directions posted on some arbitrary website actually do what they claim, and that they aren't installing some kind of malware?

  12. Re:This is 2018. on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    So dual boot, or have a separate machine for gaming.
    As a bonus, your gaming system will have less unrelated crap installed, and so will run the games more efficiently.

  13. Re: They did ask... on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    And i actively avoid prepaid cash-only parking for exactly this reason...

    Many parking lots are pay on exit, where you pay depending how long you were there. Others let you pay from your phone, so you can always extend without having to go back to the car.

    Vote with your wallet, even if there are no parking lots in the area like this you can favor other areas. Large out of town shopping malls are killing small town center shops and parking is a significant factor.

  14. Re:They did ask... on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    You don't, you just don't have a choice, or don't realise that any other options exist.
    If you ran a business, or owned shares in one where the choice was between:

    1, spend money to keep your customers happy, customers won't leave
    2, increase profit by alienating customers, knowing that they can't leave anyway

    Which would you choose?
    If you owned significant shares in a business, would you be happy to know that they were sacrificing potential profit unnecessarily?

    Microsoft have got into a position powerful enough that they can abuse their customers and get away with it, some people warned about this for years but many didn't listen.

  15. Re:They did ask... on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    Agreed, there are many games that are much easier to play with a keyboard/mouse, most games consoles have had usb and/or bluetooth support for years so there's nothing stopping you from connecting such devices, and most games also have a pc version so the code to support keyboard/mouse has to be written anyway.

  16. Re:Hey, Chris Hoffman on Hey Microsoft, Stop Installing Apps On My PC Without Asking (howtogeek.com) · · Score: 1

    It's never been that way, you can almost always repair a linux installation without having to reinstall - and it's much easier to do so than repairing a similarly broken windows installation.

    In both cases obviously you need to understand how the system works, which is also much easier in linux as you can read all the scripts and configs.

  17. Re:Shared schedules matter on Daylight Saving Time Isn't Worth It, European Parliament Members Say (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    While it's sensible for your assembly line workers to arrive at the same time every day, there is no reason why that time needs to be 9am. If your assembly line workers all arrived at 6am or 11am instead they would have wasted less time travelling to work and your assembly line would operate just the same (or better, because workers would be less stressed from their shorter commute).

    Hospitals are typically 24/7 operations, the staff don't all show up at 9am and leave at 5pm, you have various shifts and staff who remain there over night etc.
    Same thing for a restaurant, very few (if any) restaurants operate 9-5, most of them open shortly before lunchtime and close late evening.
    A restaurant worker who travels to work after the 9am rush has finished has a far easier journey to work than an office worker trying to arrive before 9am.

    I never advocated against schedules, i advocate against everyone arbitrarily being on the same schedule for no reason other than it's always been that way.

  18. In most cases the reason is simply inertia...

    Customers *expect* to reach you 8-5, but many would often like to be able to contact you at other times, and it might even be easier for them.
    You don't need to be in an office for customers to reach you, have you heard of this modern invention known as the cellular telephone?
    The world is far more connected now, many companies now have customers in different countries. If you insist on working 8-5 in the uk and your client insists on working 8-5 in australia then your working hours never overlap, so when can you talk to them?

  19. Re:Gross overestimate on New York Times CEO: Print Journalism Has Maybe Another 10 Years (cnbc.com) · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not really, a lot of people like to have a physical newspaper, especially the elderly.

    Of course the use of paper is terrible for the environment, all the millions of newspapers printed every day not to mention all the worthless advertising junk that gets delivered to people on a daily basis which gets thrown away without ever being read.

  20. Re:As a gear head - this is nirvana on Porsche Is 3D Printing Hard-To-Find Parts For The 959 And Other Classics (jalopnik.com) · · Score: 1

    Replicating a vehicle part will still have a significant cost, both in terms of actually making an accurate blueprint of the part, the time involved in 3d printing it, the cost of the required equipment and the cost of the raw materials. In many cases the 3d printed part might cost more than an original mass produced part, especially if that part is still being produced or the manufacturer has significant leftover stocks of it.

    If the manufacturer has given up selling those parts, then they'd have a harder time arguing against third party reproduction and are far less likely to care at that point too.

    Also there are already third party car parts available, even for current models of car. A lot of cars share common parts, even across different manufacturers and models.

  21. Clearly the specialised tools existed at the time the car was manufactured, so why do these tools no longer exist? Were they destroyed?
    Surely it would make sense to keep such things for production of classic parts, especially for a manufacturer like Porsche.

  22. Re:Day Light Savings no Longer meets todays needs on Daylight Saving Time Isn't Worth It, European Parliament Members Say (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 1

    The farm day started at sunrise, irrespective of what it said on the clock.
    There's no reason why the school day couldn't have started later, tying it to the arbitrary position of clock hands is stupid when you're in a location which results in the sunrise/sunset times changing significantly depending on the time of year.

  23. Re: Yes, finally. on Daylight Saving Time Isn't Worth It, European Parliament Members Say (arstechnica.com) · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And having fixed standard work times is just as idiotic as the idea of daylight saving...

    The majority of us don't work in fields or require natural daylight to do our jobs anymore.
    Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries who don't work at the same time anyway.
    Many businesses are intentionally open outside of regular working hours because that's the only time many customers can go there (retail, restaurants etc).
    Travel congestion is a serious problem in terms of time wasted, the unpleasantness of the congestion and environmental impact. You end up with transport infrastructure thats massively overcrowded for a few hours a day, and mostly idle for the rest of the day/night.
    Many businesses operate 24/7.
    Many call centers are located far away from the locations they serve (eg lots of indian call centers serve customers in the us and uk despite a huge timezone difference).

    Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that is still the best way.

  24. Re:Whats new? on Energy Riches Fuel Bitcoin Craze For Speculation-shy Iceland (apnews.com) · · Score: 1

    Not all locations have sales taxes, you don't think they bought their custom ASICs or GPUs in Iceland do you? Anyway I don't know how it works in the whole world but in the EU corporations don't pay sales taxes.

    If they aren't bought there, then Iceland will be charging them import taxes when they bring the hardware into the country...

    Financial companies are all about short term gains, and financial trading has ruined many other businesses by forcing them to concentrate on short term gains that make the financial traders happy rather than long term benefits that could give the company stability.

  25. And they've finally implemented exactly that, it's called "windows store" and they were the last major os vendor to do so.
    You can't just hook in tho, you have to publish through the store, and that comes with all kinds of strings attached.

    I find it amusing how the app store model is taking off, a few years ago this was one of the most common arguments against linux - the claim was that users want to buy software from a store or download from a random website and they won't like the repository model. Turns out the linux proponents were right, users do like being able to search and choose software from one place, but they were very bad at marketing this advantage linux had.