I don't really understand the hubbub.
The government can already get you to hand over your real keys. They can get a court order to open your safe deposit box. This is just an extension into virtual space of governmental power which ALREADY exists in physical space.
I would agree with you, but the article claim that "customer service reps assured her" is somewhat dubious. Many HP/Compaq models explicitly list "Linux Ready" on their product page, but the C304NR does not.
And that most of you didn't RTFA. Installing Linux did not "void" her warranty; she was simply informed that to receive warranty service she would first have to install Windows.
This is not at all dissimilar with the blanket experience I have had with HP/Compaq (and sometimes Dell) machines regarding hardware warranty service: that regardless of the problem (including such obvious hardware issues as a faulty battery and sticky keyboard), they required that I do a factory reset before honoring the warranty. This is clearly a PITA, but I don't think its unreasonable -- while I am tech saavy enough to know a hardware problem when I see it, for their purposes in order to successfully diagnose a hardware (vs. software) problem with their psuedo-incompetent service techs it might make sense to require a complete reformat/reinstall to factory settings. In this case, that would certainly not include Linux.
Setting aside the obvious flamebait nature of the parent, I'll take a moment to respond to this.
It is extremely difficult to become a US Citizen. Trying to attain citizenship while on an H1-B visa is a long and slow process, often up to 7 or 8 years. We should be letting people pursue citizenship more quickly, but we don't, at least if they are on H1-B status.
Well, I actually have been around long enough to remember both. You're right on the DOS front; Microsoft would have been stupid for DOS 3.x not to have been compatible with 1-2-3, as at the time of its release 1-2-3 was still the critical app.
But I'm actually talking about what happened LATER, when Microsoft released Windows 3.0 (and then 3.1, and then 3.11, and then WFW, and then NT), which conincided with the release of Excel, Word, etc., and the creation of the office "suite" idea by Microsoft.
It was the problems getting older versions of 1-2-3 (Windows versions, no less) to run under subsequent versions of Windows that was the problem. Seriously, it did seem like Windows (3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT) was getting less and less compatible with older versions of software that Microsoft had a current competitor with.
Yes, I realize that there's an extra apostrophe in my subject line. Yes, I realize that makes me look like a moron. No, I am not changing my sig.
That is all.
DVDJ's second point may not hold up. I would be willing to bet that the major labels have mandated that all music be sold with FairPlay, and that Jobs gave them a lock on content. Jobs couldn't destroy their entire business model in one fell swoop; allowing unrestricted competition from the Indies would have gone to far (in the eyes of the labels). But don't worry, I think its coming. Jobs doesn't care about the music business's model; he just wants to sell more iPods.
This is absolutely true. I got bored in trig/Algebra II when I was in high school, and so instead taught myself calculus using (a first-production-run) TI-89. The ability to differentiate and integrate symbolically was what let me do it, and I skipped/passed out of an entire semester of high school math.
I think you're mistaking my argument. I don't think what the schools are doing is necessarily right, though I do generally support any effort to combat plagiarism. What I'm saying is that the schools are well within their rights, which is not the same as saying they are right. The issue over whether what they are doing is right is significantly more complex, and quite frankly one I'm not sure we're really in a position to broadly comment on.
I do significantly disagree with your understanding of students as consumers of education; I think that philosophy is severely flawed and leads us down a pretty bad road. Even so, your say in how "the system" works only extends to your ability to bring your tuition dollars elsewhere, and not to have a say in how "the system" is run -- even if one were to accept your analogy as correct, you are attributing powers to consumers that would normally be attributed to shareholders. Still, the day we start allowing tuition payers to seriously interfere in university affairs is a sad day in higher education.
I do agree with what you're saying about the quality of education, and I may even agree with you that class size isn't really part of the problem. Teacher pay and the strictures of labor unions are far more likely candidates, which is why charter schools that have higher teacher pay, larger classes, and are union-free tend to be the most successful of charter schools (as well as the only ones, statistically speaking, that operate better than similar public schools).
Copyright is automatic, but why should the school have to grade a paper, any paper, they don't want to? Schools have rules restricting font, double-spacing, etc. Better yet, why not require that all papers submitted be placed in the public domain? I think you would have a hard time coming up with a substantive legal argument saying that schools are not within their rights to do so.
What I'm saying is, the school could simply refuse to grade papers unless students waived their copyright. It is not uncommon in contests and newspaper submissions for submitters/authors to be required to waive their copyright ("grant a non-exclusive license," "all works submitted become property of the New York Times Co.," etc.) The school would be well within its rights to do something similar. Furthermore, there is legal precedent supporting the notion that the publication need not necessarily pre-notify that submitted works become property of the publication; the act of submitting, in abscence of an explicit agreement stating otherwise, has in some cases been considered sufficient to grant a non-exclusive license.
Finally, as a side point: some universities already have IP waiver clauses in matriculation / tuition contracts or even distributed as part of a particular course. One of my colleagues signed such a document about six years ago; the terms were similar to a Creative Commons attribution license.
The school would be well within its rights simply to refuse that papers with copyright notices be submissible for a grade. They could just fail you outright.
The truth is, as a student you basically don't own the work you turn in for a grade.
You're absolutely right. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of not only supporting old versions of their files, but supporting old versions of *everybody else's* file formats as well. Word is just about the only thing that will open my WordStar documents from the early 80s. This is something I actually trust Microsoft to do. If you're paranoid about it, keep hard copies -- or print to PDF.
In my experience, you're the exception, not the rule.
My firm does ground-up consulting and installation services. We have customers who complain that at 1280 x 1024 native resolution on a 17-inch display, everything on the screen is too small. An absurd percentage of the time, I make site visits and see 17-inch LCDs with 1280 native resolution tuned down to 1024 -- and have customers complain about their monitors being "fuzzy" (because they've stopped down below native res.)
The optimal native res for a 19-inch display is 1280 x 1024. Any higher, customers complain about stuff on the screen being too small -- any lower, its a waste to get a 19-inch display.
With laptops, its different -- people tend to sit really close to their laptops when they are working on them. On top of which, you may have noticed that those absurdly high laptop screen resolutions are less common now than they were a few years ago -- seems like the industry has found a happy medium.
That sucks. I haven't had that experience with ZipZoom as far as holding my order, and I haven't had to call them on the phone for about nine months (a lot can happen in nine months).
My problem with NewEgg is that their prices are usually higher (or the same), and they charge for shipping. I also think that their new site is cumbersome; I like the simplicity of ZipZoom.
It's a usability issue. How far do you sit from your desktop display? How far do you sit from your laptop display? At the normal distance from desktop display, 1600 x 1200 is virtually unusable.
I rely on ZipZoomFly (formerly Googlegear) for all my off-the-shelf components and replacements -- in my mid-sized shop, that's quite a lot of components. Prices are fantastic and there is free two day shipping on pretty much everything (including a 19 inch CRT I ordered a while back). They're really good at shipping same-day and overnight rates are reasonable. Return policy is also pretty good; I've ordered enough from them that I've gotten the inevitable defective part and they've done a cross-ship (even talked them into next day so it didn't set me back too much).
The university can theoretically discipline you for whatever reasons it sees fit (provided that there's not discriminatory intent; even that's true only if the university recieves federal funding).
I know that this is true for instant rebates. I'm not sure about mail in rebates; does GAAP book them as a liability at TOS and then account for "unfiled rebates" over time (like uncollectable accounts). Interesting question...
Again, close to more than 20% of all US retail sales are gift purchases. We've already established that rebate terms make cashing in on a rebate for a gift near impossible -- so nearly 20% of sales are ineligible for rebates in the first place.
You can see the link in the other reply for a b-week article on 40% redemption. Its also worth noting that (and this is from an intro marketing textbook) packaged good (toothbrushes, for example) rebates average 2% fulfillment; if the nationwide average is about 40-60%, then rebate redemption on electronics is probably higher.
I tried to find the research about rising redemption rates, but it's not available online. I know there was an article about it last year in the Wall Street Journal (you need a subscription) and in some marketing journals. If you're really interested, it would probably take about two hours at your local public library to find the info (assuming you have a halfway decent local library).
What's also really interesting is that if retailers wanted to minimize rebate fulfillment, they would be doing a whole bunch of things they aren't doing. Primarily, they would be giving people 180 days to send in rebates, instead of 30 or 90. This may sound counterintuitive, but there's a recent and fairly well known (in the field of academic marketing) PhD thesis which proves the point: "Why Do We Buy but Fail to Redeem? Influencing Consumers' Subjective and Objective Probability of Redeeming Mail-in Rebates," Tim Silk, doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2004.
If you want more, I would get an MBA and take a few marketing and economics classes. Even if we assume 50% breakage, that means that rebates alone (as opposed to prominent advertising that accompanies them) have to *very* significantly drive up the sales of an item in order to cover the cost to retailers. I think there's a fair bit of evidence -- and too many other benefits to retailers for breakage to be the primary explanation for rebates.
This is another good point; makes solid intuitive sense. Have any idea if price discrimination with rebates has been studied in the real world? For a while, TigerDirect was offering items either at (consumer choice) $30 with no rebate or $40 with a $20 rebate. I would love to get my hands on their data.
Your point about the long term effect on earnings is generally correct -- but it does let retailers shuffle earnings around. When those "holiday" sales numbers come out after Black Friday, heavy rebate sales artificially inflate black friday numbers. I'm not entirely familiar with all the rules, but I seem to remember (unless this has changed since I went to my top-20 b-school) that GAAP doesn't require rebates to be booked as liabilities at point of sale (this may be wrong; some CPA please correct me if it is).
It also lets sales shift around. C.f. my final paragraph, retailers get a dollar sales gain on their income statement from manufacturer rebates. The retailer gets higher sales, even if their COGS are also higher -- but higher sales, higher COGS is better than lower sales, lower COGS, for most retailers. It is strongly to the advantage of the retailer to pay $100 for an item, sell it for $150 with a manufacturer rebate than to pay $50 for the item and sell for $100 with no rebate. Same profit to retailer, but higher sales in the first example.
This is a really big deal during the holidays (c.f. above), where retailers undergo tough comparative analysis, both to competitors and same-store figures from the previous year.
As any first-year MBA knows (and has been mentioned on in a few previous posts here on Slashdot) there are basically three reasons why rebates exist:
1) Breakage. But this reason has been in steady decline and is increasingly unjustifiable. While it used to be that only 40% of rebates were turned in, that number has been steadily climbing for the past ten years -- yet rebates are more popular than ever. Furthermore, quite a few retailers have streamlined the rebate process with the explicit goal of making rebates easier to file. Also -- and this is particularly interesting -- recent studies by marketing academics have shown that there is a practical ceiling on the percentage of sales that can be counted in rebate breakage. Specifically, rebate rules (tear out the UPC) basically prevent people who are buying gifts from filing rebates. It is estimated that 20-30% of all retail sales are gift items; so if only 40% of rebates are turned in (the number nowadays is closer to 60%), that's more than half of the people who could file rebates.
2) Accounting. This has been mentioned on Slashdot before, and it's now probably the #1 reason why retailers -- particularly during the holidays -- have rebates. A regular sale eats into margin AND sales. A rebate "sale" only eats into sales. CEOs look better on paper when all of their "sales" are rebate and not direct-price based. This is actually discussed in some accounting textbooks!
3) Marketing/positioning. For example: Circuit City buys a bunch of Western Digital hard drives. They don't sell well; in fact, they just sit in inventory. WD is concerned that CC won't buy from WD anymore, because their product isn't selling (probably because it is more expensive). So WD issues the rebate (or has CC issue the rebate). In effect, its letting CC put existing inventory "on sale" at no cost to CC -- and CC now has an incentive to put the rebate in its weekly flyer, etc. This reason is why so many rebates are store and not product-specific -- even if they are manufacturers rebates.
Anyway, like I said -- the poster doesn't know what he's talking about. When rebates were first concieved in the 80s, his analysis would be correct. But it isn't, not anymore.
Ok, so I lied -- I found the Fiscal Year 2004 balance sheets, instead of Google's most recent quarterly report. which you can find here. Google does have 7.1 billion in cash and marketable securities. 10 or 20 or even 30 million is rounding Error. Unless every man, woman, and child on the planet decides to download Firefox, Google is fine here.
The suggestion that Google might not be able to "pay for all those downloads" is absolutely rediculous. If there are 10 million Firefox downloads, and Google is paying $1 each, that's basically little more than a rounding error in Google's financial statements. You can check them out at the SEC if you don't believe me. Those numbers are in thousands. As in, Google has cash or marketable securities in the area of 2.1 billion dollars. 10 million is practically rounding error. Google's balance sheet is here: at the SEC
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I don't really understand the hubbub. The government can already get you to hand over your real keys. They can get a court order to open your safe deposit box. This is just an extension into virtual space of governmental power which ALREADY exists in physical space.
I would agree with you, but the article claim that "customer service reps assured her" is somewhat dubious. Many HP/Compaq models explicitly list "Linux Ready" on their product page, but the C304NR does not.
This is not at all dissimilar with the blanket experience I have had with HP/Compaq (and sometimes Dell) machines regarding hardware warranty service: that regardless of the problem (including such obvious hardware issues as a faulty battery and sticky keyboard), they required that I do a factory reset before honoring the warranty. This is clearly a PITA, but I don't think its unreasonable -- while I am tech saavy enough to know a hardware problem when I see it, for their purposes in order to successfully diagnose a hardware (vs. software) problem with their psuedo-incompetent service techs it might make sense to require a complete reformat/reinstall to factory settings. In this case, that would certainly not include Linux.
It is extremely difficult to become a US Citizen. Trying to attain citizenship while on an H1-B visa is a long and slow process, often up to 7 or 8 years. We should be letting people pursue citizenship more quickly, but we don't, at least if they are on H1-B status.
But I'm actually talking about what happened LATER, when Microsoft released Windows 3.0 (and then 3.1, and then 3.11, and then WFW, and then NT), which conincided with the release of Excel, Word, etc., and the creation of the office "suite" idea by Microsoft.
It was the problems getting older versions of 1-2-3 (Windows versions, no less) to run under subsequent versions of Windows that was the problem. Seriously, it did seem like Windows (3.0, 3.1, 3.11, NT) was getting less and less compatible with older versions of software that Microsoft had a current competitor with.
Yes, I realize that there's an extra apostrophe in my subject line. Yes, I realize that makes me look like a moron. No, I am not changing my sig. That is all.
...'till Lotus won't run. Anybody else been around long enough to remember that?
DVDJ's second point may not hold up. I would be willing to bet that the major labels have mandated that all music be sold with FairPlay, and that Jobs gave them a lock on content. Jobs couldn't destroy their entire business model in one fell swoop; allowing unrestricted competition from the Indies would have gone to far (in the eyes of the labels). But don't worry, I think its coming. Jobs doesn't care about the music business's model; he just wants to sell more iPods.
This is absolutely true. I got bored in trig/Algebra II when I was in high school, and so instead taught myself calculus using (a first-production-run) TI-89. The ability to differentiate and integrate symbolically was what let me do it, and I skipped/passed out of an entire semester of high school math.
I do significantly disagree with your understanding of students as consumers of education; I think that philosophy is severely flawed and leads us down a pretty bad road. Even so, your say in how "the system" works only extends to your ability to bring your tuition dollars elsewhere, and not to have a say in how "the system" is run -- even if one were to accept your analogy as correct, you are attributing powers to consumers that would normally be attributed to shareholders. Still, the day we start allowing tuition payers to seriously interfere in university affairs is a sad day in higher education.
I do agree with what you're saying about the quality of education, and I may even agree with you that class size isn't really part of the problem. Teacher pay and the strictures of labor unions are far more likely candidates, which is why charter schools that have higher teacher pay, larger classes, and are union-free tend to be the most successful of charter schools (as well as the only ones, statistically speaking, that operate better than similar public schools).
Copyright is automatic, but why should the school have to grade a paper, any paper, they don't want to? Schools have rules restricting font, double-spacing, etc. Better yet, why not require that all papers submitted be placed in the public domain? I think you would have a hard time coming up with a substantive legal argument saying that schools are not within their rights to do so. What I'm saying is, the school could simply refuse to grade papers unless students waived their copyright. It is not uncommon in contests and newspaper submissions for submitters/authors to be required to waive their copyright ("grant a non-exclusive license," "all works submitted become property of the New York Times Co.," etc.) The school would be well within its rights to do something similar. Furthermore, there is legal precedent supporting the notion that the publication need not necessarily pre-notify that submitted works become property of the publication; the act of submitting, in abscence of an explicit agreement stating otherwise, has in some cases been considered sufficient to grant a non-exclusive license. Finally, as a side point: some universities already have IP waiver clauses in matriculation / tuition contracts or even distributed as part of a particular course. One of my colleagues signed such a document about six years ago; the terms were similar to a Creative Commons attribution license.
The school would be well within its rights simply to refuse that papers with copyright notices be submissible for a grade. They could just fail you outright. The truth is, as a student you basically don't own the work you turn in for a grade.
You're absolutely right. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of not only supporting old versions of their files, but supporting old versions of *everybody else's* file formats as well. Word is just about the only thing that will open my WordStar documents from the early 80s. This is something I actually trust Microsoft to do. If you're paranoid about it, keep hard copies -- or print to PDF.
My firm does ground-up consulting and installation services. We have customers who complain that at 1280 x 1024 native resolution on a 17-inch display, everything on the screen is too small. An absurd percentage of the time, I make site visits and see 17-inch LCDs with 1280 native resolution tuned down to 1024 -- and have customers complain about their monitors being "fuzzy" (because they've stopped down below native res.)
The optimal native res for a 19-inch display is 1280 x 1024. Any higher, customers complain about stuff on the screen being too small -- any lower, its a waste to get a 19-inch display.
With laptops, its different -- people tend to sit really close to their laptops when they are working on them. On top of which, you may have noticed that those absurdly high laptop screen resolutions are less common now than they were a few years ago -- seems like the industry has found a happy medium.
My problem with NewEgg is that their prices are usually higher (or the same), and they charge for shipping. I also think that their new site is cumbersome; I like the simplicity of ZipZoom.
It's a usability issue. How far do you sit from your desktop display? How far do you sit from your laptop display? At the normal distance from desktop display, 1600 x 1200 is virtually unusable.
Stellar folks!
The university can theoretically discipline you for whatever reasons it sees fit (provided that there's not discriminatory intent; even that's true only if the university recieves federal funding).
I know that this is true for instant rebates. I'm not sure about mail in rebates; does GAAP book them as a liability at TOS and then account for "unfiled rebates" over time (like uncollectable accounts). Interesting question...
You can see the link in the other reply for a b-week article on 40% redemption. Its also worth noting that (and this is from an intro marketing textbook) packaged good (toothbrushes, for example) rebates average 2% fulfillment; if the nationwide average is about 40-60%, then rebate redemption on electronics is probably higher.
I tried to find the research about rising redemption rates, but it's not available online. I know there was an article about it last year in the Wall Street Journal (you need a subscription) and in some marketing journals. If you're really interested, it would probably take about two hours at your local public library to find the info (assuming you have a halfway decent local library).
What's also really interesting is that if retailers wanted to minimize rebate fulfillment, they would be doing a whole bunch of things they aren't doing. Primarily, they would be giving people 180 days to send in rebates, instead of 30 or 90. This may sound counterintuitive, but there's a recent and fairly well known (in the field of academic marketing) PhD thesis which proves the point: "Why Do We Buy but Fail to Redeem? Influencing Consumers' Subjective and Objective Probability of Redeeming Mail-in Rebates," Tim Silk, doctoral dissertation, University of Florida, 2004.
If you want more, I would get an MBA and take a few marketing and economics classes. Even if we assume 50% breakage, that means that rebates alone (as opposed to prominent advertising that accompanies them) have to *very* significantly drive up the sales of an item in order to cover the cost to retailers. I think there's a fair bit of evidence -- and too many other benefits to retailers for breakage to be the primary explanation for rebates.
This is another good point; makes solid intuitive sense. Have any idea if price discrimination with rebates has been studied in the real world? For a while, TigerDirect was offering items either at (consumer choice) $30 with no rebate or $40 with a $20 rebate. I would love to get my hands on their data.
It also lets sales shift around. C.f. my final paragraph, retailers get a dollar sales gain on their income statement from manufacturer rebates. The retailer gets higher sales, even if their COGS are also higher -- but higher sales, higher COGS is better than lower sales, lower COGS, for most retailers. It is strongly to the advantage of the retailer to pay $100 for an item, sell it for $150 with a manufacturer rebate than to pay $50 for the item and sell for $100 with no rebate. Same profit to retailer, but higher sales in the first example.
This is a really big deal during the holidays (c.f. above), where retailers undergo tough comparative analysis, both to competitors and same-store figures from the previous year.
As any first-year MBA knows (and has been mentioned on in a few previous posts here on Slashdot) there are basically three reasons why rebates exist:
1) Breakage. But this reason has been in steady decline and is increasingly unjustifiable. While it used to be that only 40% of rebates were turned in, that number has been steadily climbing for the past ten years -- yet rebates are more popular than ever. Furthermore, quite a few retailers have streamlined the rebate process with the explicit goal of making rebates easier to file. Also -- and this is particularly interesting -- recent studies by marketing academics have shown that there is a practical ceiling on the percentage of sales that can be counted in rebate breakage. Specifically, rebate rules (tear out the UPC) basically prevent people who are buying gifts from filing rebates. It is estimated that 20-30% of all retail sales are gift items; so if only 40% of rebates are turned in (the number nowadays is closer to 60%), that's more than half of the people who could file rebates.
2) Accounting. This has been mentioned on Slashdot before, and it's now probably the #1 reason why retailers -- particularly during the holidays -- have rebates. A regular sale eats into margin AND sales. A rebate "sale" only eats into sales. CEOs look better on paper when all of their "sales" are rebate and not direct-price based. This is actually discussed in some accounting textbooks!
3) Marketing/positioning. For example: Circuit City buys a bunch of Western Digital hard drives. They don't sell well; in fact, they just sit in inventory. WD is concerned that CC won't buy from WD anymore, because their product isn't selling (probably because it is more expensive). So WD issues the rebate (or has CC issue the rebate). In effect, its letting CC put existing inventory "on sale" at no cost to CC -- and CC now has an incentive to put the rebate in its weekly flyer, etc. This reason is why so many rebates are store and not product-specific -- even if they are manufacturers rebates.
Anyway, like I said -- the poster doesn't know what he's talking about. When rebates were first concieved in the 80s, his analysis would be correct. But it isn't, not anymore.
-Shylock
Ok, so I lied -- I found the Fiscal Year 2004 balance sheets, instead of Google's most recent quarterly report. which you can find here. Google does have 7.1 billion in cash and marketable securities. 10 or 20 or even 30 million is rounding Error. Unless every man, woman, and child on the planet decides to download Firefox, Google is fine here.
The suggestion that Google might not be able to "pay for all those downloads" is absolutely rediculous. If there are 10 million Firefox downloads, and Google is paying $1 each, that's basically little more than a rounding error in Google's financial statements. You can check them out at the SEC if you don't believe me. Those numbers are in thousands. As in, Google has cash or marketable securities in the area of 2.1 billion dollars. 10 million is practically rounding error. Google's balance sheet is here: at the SEC