Actually, guns are very available in Canada. I believe we even have a per capita gun ownership that exceeds that of the US, though I'm not positive on that. Regardless, there's just some cultural difference that prevents us from killing each other the way you guys do, although there are gun deaths, don't get me wrong.
"Next Monday, the Intel Core I7 launches, and Iâ(TM)ve been using a system that Intel sent out which not only has the Core I7 and X58 chipset, but two 4870 X2 ATI graphics cards and two of the companyâ(TM)s new high-speed flash drives.
To say that this system, (which has 4 real cores, and 4 virtual cores through hyperthreading, for a total of 8) is fast would be vastly understating the experience. The word amazing comes to mind, and I can hardly wait to put Windows 7 on it (is there such a thing as blindingly fast, squared?)"
Rather horribly, I know a girl who believes that to be true - in fact, she thinks "They Live" is a sort of documentary thinly veiled as fiction. Not only is the government dropping stuff from high altitude jets onto its citizens, but it's also under the control of the Illuminati (she uses that word). Everywhere we go, she points out signs that the Illuminati are controlling us.
Last I heard, she was moving to a rural area to buy land and build a "compound" (again, her term). Even scarier is the fact that she's not alone in these beliefs - they are very common amongst certain groups (modern-day hippies, basically).
Fair enough. But in the meantime, hats off to him for making a bundle.
Come to think of it, the "alternative business model" could simply be the App Store itself. It's convenient and easy for any non-technical person to buy stuff there very cheaply. Maybe it's simply worth paying the five bucks for the sheer convenience of it all. I mean really, five dollars? It's just not worth it to look for the app elsewhere. It's not like he's charging $100 for the thing.
Anyway, it's here to stay until market forces say otherwise. Your argument boils down to "it's ethically wrong to make money from artificial scarcity", but the market doesn't care about your personal ethics.
And anyway, it's certainly not unethical to charge very little for a lot of convenience, which is what's happened here. People pay five dollars and have a lot of fun; the author makes a decent bundle and puts a down payment on a house. Everyone wins.
How do you suggest he be compensated? He wrote the software with the expectation of at least some financial reward, and he hit the jackpot. What's fair, in your opinion?
I'm sure the evolutionary biologists out there will be very surprised to hear that their lab experiments, as detailed in journals like the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, aren't scientific.
Macports works great, although unlike most Linux package systems it builds from source (it's essentially the BSD ports system). The OP is out to lunch, as installing Postgres and Django are one liners.
I regularly use Debian, Gentoo, and RHEL in the course of my work, and MacPorts is as easy and works as well as anything out there.
Yes, I think you are right on the money. It's no surprise at all that Google would drop a package that is a competitor to their own, getting-close-to-very-useable, online apps.
Don't forget that most of the people here are kids and computer hobby people, and have never worked in any sort of an enterprise situation. Therefore, they have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about.
Well, as someone who is currently writing C firmware code, I'd have to disagree. Most big projects (in terms of lines of code) these days are Java, I'd say. C is good for embedded stuff like what I'm getting paid for, and for low-level systems stuff like your operating system kernel, but when it comes to enterprise apps, desktop apps, etc., who is using C?
I am a developer, actually, and now an iPhone developer too.
While your criticisms are valid, the market has spoken differently. The iPhone and the app store have been very successful. The cost of the sdk is inconsequential compared to the money saved by not having to market your product yourself. The number of rejected apps is dwarfed by the number of apps available. So for the average consumer, it's just dandy.
Your needs don't sync up with what the great majority of people use their phones for, that's all. For you, the iPhone clearly isn't a good fit. To say it's a failure when it has the sorts of sales numbers it does is truly absurd, and to tell the truth you kind of come off smelling like an irrational Apple hater, "MacDork".
I agree with you. Their top-level management is way out of touch and still maintains that paranoid, on-the-edge-of-death mindset they had back in the '80s.
These medical inventions are sold by companies like Johnson and Johnson and are not exclusively for the rich - the AutoSyringe and the dialysis machine in particular are very common and were basically life-changing for a tremendous number of people. Or maybe I misread your reply?
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, guns are very available in Canada. I believe we even have a per capita gun ownership that exceeds that of the US, though I'm not positive on that. Regardless, there's just some cultural difference that prevents us from killing each other the way you guys do, although there are gun deaths, don't get me wrong.
Too bad you posted as an AC - awesome post. I wish we could mod this right up into the brains of policy-makers all over the western world.
Unfortunately, ActiveX is extremely common in corporate intranets, making it the one and only mandated browser for corporate use in a lot of places.
My favourite Enderle quote of late:
"Next Monday, the Intel Core I7 launches, and Iâ(TM)ve been using a system that Intel sent out which not only has the Core I7 and X58 chipset, but two 4870 X2 ATI graphics cards and two of the companyâ(TM)s new high-speed flash drives.
To say that this system, (which has 4 real cores, and 4 virtual cores through hyperthreading, for a total of 8) is fast would be vastly understating the experience. The word amazing comes to mind, and I can hardly wait to put Windows 7 on it (is there such a thing as blindingly fast, squared?)"
Hahahaha
No, "vim" is for the youngsters. Pressing "u" twice in vim doesn't undo the undo.
It does in vim-tiny ;)
Those darned youngsters you speak of simply lack vim! Not to mention vigour.
They aren't making money off that shit. Grow a brain.
Well, she believes the Illuminati are some sort of space aliens...so yeah, more than just somewhat crazy.
Rather horribly, I know a girl who believes that to be true - in fact, she thinks "They Live" is a sort of documentary thinly veiled as fiction. Not only is the government dropping stuff from high altitude jets onto its citizens, but it's also under the control of the Illuminati (she uses that word). Everywhere we go, she points out signs that the Illuminati are controlling us.
Last I heard, she was moving to a rural area to buy land and build a "compound" (again, her term). Even scarier is the fact that she's not alone in these beliefs - they are very common amongst certain groups (modern-day hippies, basically).
Can you properly define "evil" for the purposes of your comment?
Fair enough. But in the meantime, hats off to him for making a bundle.
Come to think of it, the "alternative business model" could simply be the App Store itself. It's convenient and easy for any non-technical person to buy stuff there very cheaply. Maybe it's simply worth paying the five bucks for the sheer convenience of it all. I mean really, five dollars? It's just not worth it to look for the app elsewhere. It's not like he's charging $100 for the thing.
Anyway, it's here to stay until market forces say otherwise. Your argument boils down to "it's ethically wrong to make money from artificial scarcity", but the market doesn't care about your personal ethics.
And anyway, it's certainly not unethical to charge very little for a lot of convenience, which is what's happened here. People pay five dollars and have a lot of fun; the author makes a decent bundle and puts a down payment on a house. Everyone wins.
How do you suggest he be compensated? He wrote the software with the expectation of at least some financial reward, and he hit the jackpot. What's fair, in your opinion?
Speaking of, where did the computer-science demographic on slashdot make off to?
I don't know. I wish I did, because I would go there too.
Or maybe they are still around, and it's just that the number of know-nothing posters has increased so hugely.
Here, let me get you some cheese to go with that whine.
I'm sure the evolutionary biologists out there will be very surprised to hear that their lab experiments, as detailed in journals like the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, aren't scientific.
Here's a random example: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/118631879/HTMLSTART
Or maybe you have no idea what you're talking about. I wonder which it could be.
but the focus of any company should be costumers: they are the people that make the company viable.
True enough, without a steady supply of clown suits, where would most companies be?
Evolutionary biology isn't a science
What is it, then?
Macports works great, although unlike most Linux package systems it builds from source (it's essentially the BSD ports system). The OP is out to lunch, as installing Postgres and Django are one liners.
I regularly use Debian, Gentoo, and RHEL in the course of my work, and MacPorts is as easy and works as well as anything out there.
Wrong, kid. http://www.macports.org/ports.php
Yes, I think you are right on the money. It's no surprise at all that Google would drop a package that is a competitor to their own, getting-close-to-very-useable, online apps.
Don't forget that most of the people here are kids and computer hobby people, and have never worked in any sort of an enterprise situation. Therefore, they have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about.
Well, as someone who is currently writing C firmware code, I'd have to disagree. Most big projects (in terms of lines of code) these days are Java, I'd say. C is good for embedded stuff like what I'm getting paid for, and for low-level systems stuff like your operating system kernel, but when it comes to enterprise apps, desktop apps, etc., who is using C?
Sorry for the late response.
I am a developer, actually, and now an iPhone developer too.
While your criticisms are valid, the market has spoken differently. The iPhone and the app store have been very successful. The cost of the sdk is inconsequential compared to the money saved by not having to market your product yourself. The number of rejected apps is dwarfed by the number of apps available. So for the average consumer, it's just dandy.
Your needs don't sync up with what the great majority of people use their phones for, that's all. For you, the iPhone clearly isn't a good fit. To say it's a failure when it has the sorts of sales numbers it does is truly absurd, and to tell the truth you kind of come off smelling like an irrational Apple hater, "MacDork".
I agree with you. Their top-level management is way out of touch and still maintains that paranoid, on-the-edge-of-death mindset they had back in the '80s.
These medical inventions are sold by companies like Johnson and Johnson and are not exclusively for the rich - the AutoSyringe and the dialysis machine in particular are very common and were basically life-changing for a tremendous number of people. Or maybe I misread your reply?