actually, its eaiser for adobe to just let people pirate their stuff. just look at the reasons.
with a shareware demo, the install would be decently huge, and adobe would have to host that file somewhere. with piracy, its all on the p2p networks, so adobe pays no bandwidth costs.
some companies might just say "all we really need is the demo version" or something like that (my school did that with mcafee antivirus). not a smart way to run a business, but many business managers arent very smart about the technical aspects of such things. if you offer no shareware, or a shareware version thats crap, then companies cant do this.
with a shareware version of a product, you would still run the risk of not enough people using your software. they might opt to get something with all the features they need, and learn that, for much cheaper than adobe is prepared to offer. personally, i almost never use shareware, unless its fully functional even if i dont pay (WinZip). seems to me like adobe (and many other software companies) know exactly what theyre doing.
as a programmer, though, im not saying you should be happy people are pirating your stuff. im saying that you should be happy people are pirating your stuff if it means that it will cause your program to become an industry standard, and you can charge 10 to 29 times what you should to businesses who want to use it.
there is a difference between someone "pirating" something that they would never pay money for, and someone pirating something that, if it werent available for free, they would actually go out and buy the product. i dont really think the word "stealing" is accurate in describing the former, since stealing involves taking something from someone else. i, personally, wouldnt care if i made a program and tried to sell it, and some people who i know would never pay for the program got it for free. this might frustrate others who depend on such profits for their living, but if you took away all these "pirates", your profit margin wouldnt change at all.
in the case of photoshop, i dont know of anyone who is willing to drop 500-1000 bucks for a single program. do the makers of photoshop give a rats ass? i doubt it. the fact that photoshop can be downloaded for free by those gosh-darn pirates just means that more people know how to use photoshop. almost no one is going to buy photoshop on their own at that price. however, if most of the people who are into graphic design and what not can use photoshop well, then it goes a long way towards making photoshop the industry standard. what does this mean to adobe? damn near every graphic design business is going to buy copies of their software at huge prices. a business wont pirate the software because it can mean MUCH stiffer punishment for a business than for a simple home user. if adobe wanted, they could incorporate much better copy protection into their software other than "enter your serial number". but why would adobe want to do this, if it can enoy huge profit margins from business by practically letting all home users have their product.?
microsoft does this same thing. they barely have any copy protection built into windows. however, by being the industry standard, they can charge OEMs fees to install windows on the machines they sell. i dont know of a single person who has actually paid for an upgrade in windows, but i know of plenty who have bought new computers with windows preloaded.
these so called "land-lines" are connected to "phone companies", which charge "up the ass" for long distance. why pay (only!) 10 cents a minute, when i can pay 30 bucks a month and get unlimited long distance during nights and weekends. and the interLATA (near zone) calls are the ones that really kick your ass, since they charge a more than long distance for calling less of a distance, and more people have relatives and friends in this zone than in long distance zones.
i know you can use calling cards, but if you have the cell phone already, might as well use those free minutes.
seriously, though, why dont they make it so that cell phones have a jack where you can plug in an external antenna in them? or are there models that have this option?
with all the harddrivers running at 80gig, im sure theyre used for more than booting the operating system. the cool thing about a cluster of regular computers is that you can use them for more than just processing, such as holding massive amounts of pr0n or a wicked LAN party. im sure there is more legitimate uses, but you get my point.
ah, sorry. my bad. i could have sworn that congress allowed cable companies to keep their lines closed, as opposed to what happened to the telephone companies, but i havent read up on the issue in a long time. you are probably right. thanks for the heads up.
well, if most of the people who exceeded the cap left when the caps went into effect, then it might make sense to want to bring back those customers once you can make profit off them again. its really a matter of how many customers are willing to pay for the extra downloading, and how many leave.
the problem with "speaking with your wallet" is that, if you are one of the people where the cap is an issue, they dont want you on their service in the first place. i dont know the exact numbers, but i imagine that if all the people who used cable modems for more than 5 gig a month were to leave the service, then the cable companies would actually save money.
the good news is that, in a few years, technology will have made it so that its not so expensive for cable companies to let customers download to their hearts content every month. the bad news is, filesizes seem to generally increase with technology increases, too.
the FT protocol is said to be full of a lot of extra, unneeded bloat. gnutella is a bit redundant, but is nowhere near as bad. i wish someone would make a decent p2p program sometime. i was making one myself, that contained a very small protocol and allowed for compression, too, but im a lazy bastard and need to get back to work on it. too much counterstrike:P
unfortunately, this is not the case. see, thanks to some fools in congress, cable companies have no local competition in many areas that cannot recieve DSL (like mine). therefore, the cable company can do just about whatever it damn well pleases (to a point). and, even if makes a download cap around here, its still better than the dialup in the neighborhood.
personally, i hope they cap speeds, not download limits. my cable company (time warner, who privides road runner) already has an option for "business lines", cable lines that download twice as fast and upload several times faster, for about double the cost per month. there are even more choices beyond that. while i dont need the extra bandwidth, id gladly pay an extra 10 bucks a month for my service now.
very simple: charge whatever the company used to pay you, on average, per day, plus about 15% extra for being "on-call" or whatever. send them an invoice for this. if they dont pay it, threaten legal action.
"the court won't back him up."
who cares. almost any company would rather pay you for one days work, then to hire a lawyer for at least a week. you, on the other hand, can simply defend yourself. it costs nothing, and you have the free time, since you are unemployed.
best case scenario: youre up a few hundred bucks. worst case scenario: youre out 10 bucks for gas going to the courthouse.
this kind of stuff happens all the time for big companies: one big company threatens to sue a small company for some bullshit reason, the small company knows it would win such a lawsuit, but they still comply just so they dont have to pay legal bills. it would be nice to use this tactic to get some money out of a big company for once, instead of being screwed by those with more money than you.:)
i kinda get that too, thought i was the only one. however, for me, it just comes from a lack of sleep, and i go back and forth between that and the opposite: the screen seems to become 50 feet away, and i feel extremely large, like i was looming 50 feet above the screen. its really odd, and it isnt just a computer screen, its whatever i pay attention to. really odd, but since im so tired, any coding i do is really shitty.
oh come on. this poster is obiviously missing the point. we all know the real question is not about the motion or medium of which you wipe with, but whether you fold or you ball up that medium. seriously now.
actually, deep blue was the brute force one. after it played, IBM dismanteled it, because they had no further use for it (it was mainly publicity to begin with).
fritz cant compare to blue in the brute force department. blue was made specifically to brute force chess moves. fritz was made to specifically be a chess program, and just runs on a beefed up computer. it cant do nearly as much calculations per second as blue, so it therefore tries to pick the most strategic branches of moves, and brute force those. if blue was stronger, then fritz is more intelligent.
he said in a previous post that the house was his (soon to be) father in law's. theres a good chance he gets the house cheaper than he would if he rented from someone else, possibly even for free since he said the house was going to go on the market soon. if i had an extra house that i was going to sell soon, and had family members in need of a place to stay, i wouldnt hesitate to offer it to them until i sold it. unless they were slobs or something.
"...I've always wondered how many other people have had similar situations happen to them, where personal ethics and CEO heavyhanding came into play, and their job security suffered from the clash."
just because theres no question mark, doesnt mean that the person isnt asking for out input. flaimbait indeed, jeez...
"After searching for topics on Linux support for DVD backup systems..."
im pretty sure anyone that would submit an "ask slashdot" question to this site would be implying searching would involve google. this person is obviously asking for more information on the topic, possibly some real-world experience from some people using this site.
i hate how someone always assumes that if any information can be found on google retaining to the questions subject, then they should be told "ask google" and bitched at. sure, sometimes there are some questions that are pretty basic and shouldnt be on here, but if every question that turned up a google hit were banned from this page, the only questions would be those so specific that no one here could help out the person.
my first response was to try to pursuade the landlord to let you drill some new holes, and insist that the faceplates will be barely noticable and match nicely. however, i see from one of your posts that the landlord is your father in law (or soon to be, at any rate), so i imagine that that is out. someone else suggested that you use the existing holes, using dual power/cat5 or telephone/cat5 faceplates, which is the second thing i would suggest. however, this too might not be an option, and at the very least would still require asking your father in law. of course, you could always drill holes, then cover them up before you move out, as another post suggested. not very hard to do, but if you got caught, im sure your father in law wouldnt like it.
alternately, if your house is carpeted, it is very easy to put cable under carpet, and is unnoticable if put in the right spots (i.e. following the edges of walls). just dont place the cable straight across rooms, otherwise you can feel the cable when you walk on it.
if the carpet is not an option, you might want to check out the raceways someone suggested. personally, i dont think these look all that good, and they would be too expensive for me, but its an option.
also, check into painting your cables, and running them along non-noticable places. if you match the color right, you can eaisly place cable along the little thing of wood that sticks out that seperates the room from the trim below the ceiling. that is, if you have that to begin with; some people do, some dont. if you run cables along walls, though, make sure to match colors just right, attach them tightly, follow corners and unnoticable places, and make sure there is no slack. otherwise, it looks kinda shoddy.
i wouldnt suggest using the data-over-power or data-over-phone routes, personally. ive heard only mixed reviews about these. try them if youd like, though.
your last option is wireless, which is nice in the fact that you can take it with you when you move. too slow of data rates for me, but its damned convinent. a hassle to set it up, watching out for interference and everything, though.
the option id favor the most would be convincing the father in law to let you run cables through the walls. use dual faceplates, make them look nice, and cover all the costs yourself. i dont see how this would decrease the value of the home, and might even raise is slightly. if i think of anything else, though, ill post it.
as to all the "this topic is boring and i dont want to help out" people, why do you even take the time to post and bitch about it? just dont read the discussion. i dont bitch that some TV station is playing a boring show, i just change the channel. same concept.
i always remember what my high school chemistry teacher told us. when she was in college, they showed anyone wanting to be a science teacher why you should always test out your experiments before you do them in front of a class. it was a sort of "science experiments gone wrong" kind of video. anyways, my chem teacher always had a laugh whenever she described the video, because it had many different amateur videos of chem experiments that teachers decided to record for whatever reason while they did them in front of the class. her favorite was the one where the teacher decided to chuck some sodium into water, but didnt measure the amount out correctly before he started. she would always say "you just saw the teacher throw the sodium in, and then the camera got knocked over, and all you saw was students lying all over the ground"...
that same teacher showed us a kinda cool experiment herself. drain about 1/4 of the coke out of a 2-liter coke bottle, and drill a very small hole in its cap (the smaller, the better). next, take about a roll of mentos (the original kind, i think, test it out yourself), and place small holes through the center of each. now take some fishing wire and thread them through all the mentos in a line, and tie the ends with something heavy like steel nuts. make sure the mentos are tied together tight, and give a little extra fishing wire on one side. thread this extra fishing wire into the bottom of that coke cap with the hole in it, and screw the cap on the coke bottle, holding the fishing wire to make sure the mentos do not touch the coke inside. drop the wire to let the mentos drop into the coke, and move out of the way. some odd reaction takes place that causes the cap to shoot off and hit the ceiling, and pop spews close to 10 feet in the air. at least, thats what happened when my chem teacher did it. the janitor was pretty pissed that he had to clean the ceiling after that one.
alternately, you could just offer someone a coke while theyre eating several mentos:)
as many times as ive bent the pins on monitor cables, IDE inputs on CD-ROM drives, even processor pins, a good pair of needlenose plyers always helped me straighten em out and not have to replace whatever it is i fucked up to begin with. in a pinch, use tweasers, but they dont have the same force needed to straighen out a monitor cable pin accidentally bent into an S shape...
i think the main point of such a thing would be that, when a device got plugged into it, it would send the exact voltage and amps the device needed so the device has no need for some clunky AC adapter... it could decently lower the price of a few of your electronics, but not so much that you might save money versus the price of the UPB... anyways, this would probably never catch on because the average computer user is already confused enough when setting up a new computer (how someone can need extra help setting up wires that are coler coded, and for the most part only fit in one spot, is beyond me)... that same user will get pissed when you tell them that they need a seperate device to supply the electricity to their electronics, and complain that they cant just plug them into a standard power strip...
the way i see it, this bill is meant to be more of a counteract to Hollings CBDTPA bill, and not meant to go against the DMCA. sure, this overlaps a bit with the DMCA, but its supposed to allow people to circumvent copy-protection devices if the copy is for their own personal use. if the CBDTPA gets passed, everything and its mother will have copy-protection, so it would almost not be possible without some hardcore hacking to make a perfect digital copy for your own personal use.
personally, i think this bill is a great idea. i like making a copy of a CD the moment i buy it, so i can keep the original in its jewel case and put the copy in my CD binder and take it along with me in my car or to my friends houses. when the copy gets too scratched, i can make a new copy from the original, unscratched version. also, i rip the songs into ogg from the CD, and enjoy what is pretty much my own personal radio station when at my computer, thanks to winamp. if the CBDTPA passes, id probably have to buy multiple copies of the same CD, and i would never get to enjoy the songs on my computer.
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with a shareware demo, the install would be decently huge, and adobe would have to host that file somewhere. with piracy, its all on the p2p networks, so adobe pays no bandwidth costs.
some companies might just say "all we really need is the demo version" or something like that (my school did that with mcafee antivirus). not a smart way to run a business, but many business managers arent very smart about the technical aspects of such things. if you offer no shareware, or a shareware version thats crap, then companies cant do this.
with a shareware version of a product, you would still run the risk of not enough people using your software. they might opt to get something with all the features they need, and learn that, for much cheaper than adobe is prepared to offer. personally, i almost never use shareware, unless its fully functional even if i dont pay (WinZip). seems to me like adobe (and many other software companies) know exactly what theyre doing.
as a programmer, though, im not saying you should be happy people are pirating your stuff. im saying that you should be happy people are pirating your stuff if it means that it will cause your program to become an industry standard, and you can charge 10 to 29 times what you should to businesses who want to use it.
in the case of photoshop, i dont know of anyone who is willing to drop 500-1000 bucks for a single program. do the makers of photoshop give a rats ass? i doubt it. the fact that photoshop can be downloaded for free by those gosh-darn pirates just means that more people know how to use photoshop. almost no one is going to buy photoshop on their own at that price. however, if most of the people who are into graphic design and what not can use photoshop well, then it goes a long way towards making photoshop the industry standard. what does this mean to adobe? damn near every graphic design business is going to buy copies of their software at huge prices. a business wont pirate the software because it can mean MUCH stiffer punishment for a business than for a simple home user. if adobe wanted, they could incorporate much better copy protection into their software other than "enter your serial number". but why would adobe want to do this, if it can enoy huge profit margins from business by practically letting all home users have their product.?
microsoft does this same thing. they barely have any copy protection built into windows. however, by being the industry standard, they can charge OEMs fees to install windows on the machines they sell. i dont know of a single person who has actually paid for an upgrade in windows, but i know of plenty who have bought new computers with windows preloaded.
well, that answered my reply to the thread right above yours. what type of cell phone do you have?
i know you can use calling cards, but if you have the cell phone already, might as well use those free minutes.
seriously, though, why dont they make it so that cell phones have a jack where you can plug in an external antenna in them? or are there models that have this option?
as opposed to being a troll. sarcasim doesnt convey as well in text as it does in speech. i could be wrong, though, but lighten up.
with all the harddrivers running at 80gig, im sure theyre used for more than booting the operating system. the cool thing about a cluster of regular computers is that you can use them for more than just processing, such as holding massive amounts of pr0n or a wicked LAN party. im sure there is more legitimate uses, but you get my point.
ah, sorry. my bad. i could have sworn that congress allowed cable companies to keep their lines closed, as opposed to what happened to the telephone companies, but i havent read up on the issue in a long time. you are probably right. thanks for the heads up.
well, if most of the people who exceeded the cap left when the caps went into effect, then it might make sense to want to bring back those customers once you can make profit off them again. its really a matter of how many customers are willing to pay for the extra downloading, and how many leave.
the good news is that, in a few years, technology will have made it so that its not so expensive for cable companies to let customers download to their hearts content every month. the bad news is, filesizes seem to generally increase with technology increases, too.
the FT protocol is said to be full of a lot of extra, unneeded bloat. gnutella is a bit redundant, but is nowhere near as bad. i wish someone would make a decent p2p program sometime. i was making one myself, that contained a very small protocol and allowed for compression, too, but im a lazy bastard and need to get back to work on it. too much counterstrike :P
personally, i hope they cap speeds, not download limits. my cable company (time warner, who privides road runner) already has an option for "business lines", cable lines that download twice as fast and upload several times faster, for about double the cost per month. there are even more choices beyond that. while i dont need the extra bandwidth, id gladly pay an extra 10 bucks a month for my service now.
very simple: charge whatever the company used to pay you, on average, per day, plus about 15% extra for being "on-call" or whatever. send them an invoice for this. if they dont pay it, threaten legal action.
"the court won't back him up."
who cares. almost any company would rather pay you for one days work, then to hire a lawyer for at least a week. you, on the other hand, can simply defend yourself. it costs nothing, and you have the free time, since you are unemployed.
best case scenario: youre up a few hundred bucks. worst case scenario: youre out 10 bucks for gas going to the courthouse.
this kind of stuff happens all the time for big companies: one big company threatens to sue a small company for some bullshit reason, the small company knows it would win such a lawsuit, but they still comply just so they dont have to pay legal bills. it would be nice to use this tactic to get some money out of a big company for once, instead of being screwed by those with more money than you. :)
i kinda get that too, thought i was the only one. however, for me, it just comes from a lack of sleep, and i go back and forth between that and the opposite: the screen seems to become 50 feet away, and i feel extremely large, like i was looming 50 feet above the screen. its really odd, and it isnt just a computer screen, its whatever i pay attention to. really odd, but since im so tired, any coding i do is really shitty.
oh come on. this poster is obiviously missing the point. we all know the real question is not about the motion or medium of which you wipe with, but whether you fold or you ball up that medium. seriously now.
actually, deep blue was the brute force one. after it played, IBM dismanteled it, because they had no further use for it (it was mainly publicity to begin with). fritz cant compare to blue in the brute force department. blue was made specifically to brute force chess moves. fritz was made to specifically be a chess program, and just runs on a beefed up computer. it cant do nearly as much calculations per second as blue, so it therefore tries to pick the most strategic branches of moves, and brute force those. if blue was stronger, then fritz is more intelligent.
well, you might need one or two wireless jacks, for a modem or something. but still.
he said in a previous post that the house was his (soon to be) father in law's. theres a good chance he gets the house cheaper than he would if he rented from someone else, possibly even for free since he said the house was going to go on the market soon. if i had an extra house that i was going to sell soon, and had family members in need of a place to stay, i wouldnt hesitate to offer it to them until i sold it. unless they were slobs or something.
sorry.
just because theres no question mark, doesnt mean that the person isnt asking for out input. flaimbait indeed, jeez...
im pretty sure anyone that would submit an "ask slashdot" question to this site would be implying searching would involve google. this person is obviously asking for more information on the topic, possibly some real-world experience from some people using this site.
i hate how someone always assumes that if any information can be found on google retaining to the questions subject, then they should be told "ask google" and bitched at. sure, sometimes there are some questions that are pretty basic and shouldnt be on here, but if every question that turned up a google hit were banned from this page, the only questions would be those so specific that no one here could help out the person.
alternately, if your house is carpeted, it is very easy to put cable under carpet, and is unnoticable if put in the right spots (i.e. following the edges of walls). just dont place the cable straight across rooms, otherwise you can feel the cable when you walk on it.
if the carpet is not an option, you might want to check out the raceways someone suggested. personally, i dont think these look all that good, and they would be too expensive for me, but its an option.
also, check into painting your cables, and running them along non-noticable places. if you match the color right, you can eaisly place cable along the little thing of wood that sticks out that seperates the room from the trim below the ceiling. that is, if you have that to begin with; some people do, some dont. if you run cables along walls, though, make sure to match colors just right, attach them tightly, follow corners and unnoticable places, and make sure there is no slack. otherwise, it looks kinda shoddy.
i wouldnt suggest using the data-over-power or data-over-phone routes, personally. ive heard only mixed reviews about these. try them if youd like, though.
your last option is wireless, which is nice in the fact that you can take it with you when you move. too slow of data rates for me, but its damned convinent. a hassle to set it up, watching out for interference and everything, though.
the option id favor the most would be convincing the father in law to let you run cables through the walls. use dual faceplates, make them look nice, and cover all the costs yourself. i dont see how this would decrease the value of the home, and might even raise is slightly. if i think of anything else, though, ill post it.
as to all the "this topic is boring and i dont want to help out" people, why do you even take the time to post and bitch about it? just dont read the discussion. i dont bitch that some TV station is playing a boring show, i just change the channel. same concept.
that same teacher showed us a kinda cool experiment herself. drain about 1/4 of the coke out of a 2-liter coke bottle, and drill a very small hole in its cap (the smaller, the better). next, take about a roll of mentos (the original kind, i think, test it out yourself), and place small holes through the center of each. now take some fishing wire and thread them through all the mentos in a line, and tie the ends with something heavy like steel nuts. make sure the mentos are tied together tight, and give a little extra fishing wire on one side. thread this extra fishing wire into the bottom of that coke cap with the hole in it, and screw the cap on the coke bottle, holding the fishing wire to make sure the mentos do not touch the coke inside. drop the wire to let the mentos drop into the coke, and move out of the way. some odd reaction takes place that causes the cap to shoot off and hit the ceiling, and pop spews close to 10 feet in the air. at least, thats what happened when my chem teacher did it. the janitor was pretty pissed that he had to clean the ceiling after that one.
alternately, you could just offer someone a coke while theyre eating several mentos :)
as many times as ive bent the pins on monitor cables, IDE inputs on CD-ROM drives, even processor pins, a good pair of needlenose plyers always helped me straighten em out and not have to replace whatever it is i fucked up to begin with. in a pinch, use tweasers, but they dont have the same force needed to straighen out a monitor cable pin accidentally bent into an S shape...
i think the main point of such a thing would be that, when a device got plugged into it, it would send the exact voltage and amps the device needed so the device has no need for some clunky AC adapter... it could decently lower the price of a few of your electronics, but not so much that you might save money versus the price of the UPB... anyways, this would probably never catch on because the average computer user is already confused enough when setting up a new computer (how someone can need extra help setting up wires that are coler coded, and for the most part only fit in one spot, is beyond me)... that same user will get pissed when you tell them that they need a seperate device to supply the electricity to their electronics, and complain that they cant just plug them into a standard power strip...
personally, i think this bill is a great idea. i like making a copy of a CD the moment i buy it, so i can keep the original in its jewel case and put the copy in my CD binder and take it along with me in my car or to my friends houses. when the copy gets too scratched, i can make a new copy from the original, unscratched version. also, i rip the songs into ogg from the CD, and enjoy what is pretty much my own personal radio station when at my computer, thanks to winamp. if the CBDTPA passes, id probably have to buy multiple copies of the same CD, and i would never get to enjoy the songs on my computer.