Linux
is binary compatible at the same level as windows is. You're
comparing apples to oranges. You mentioned GIMP as one of the
windows applications. How big was the installer you
downloaded? Did you need to download two installers? I bet
you did, and you got them from right here. That's the GIMP and the GTK libraries it requires. Here is an example
of an RPM for GIMP on Linux. Notice that it has a lot less
because Linux already have GTK installed. Those are the
dependencies that break.
Open source software shares a lot of common libraries that users don't
want multiple copies of lying around. Dependencies like this
exist in windows too. For instance, look at programs written in
Visual Basic that require the VBRun DLL libraries to be installed.
Swapping out kernels doesn't usually effect the programs sitting above
the kernel. This is called "binary compatibility" and has existed
in Windows and Linux for some time.
I've been to the vorbis site and listened to the ogg samples
(Scroll down to the bottom and listen to the 45k/sec samples) of low
bit rate compression. It sounds really good at really low bit
rates. Scroll up a little and listen to the mp3s at 64 and 128,
and then listen to the OGG at 64. That's the quality of mp3 at
1/2 the space.
Couldn't these companies take better advantage of the ability to play
OGG files and include the compressor to actually fit more music in less
space? They could advertise a player that holds "more music" in a
less expensive package. Instead of advertising the storage space,
advertise the number of hours of music, and compare to competitors that
cost 2x as much.
I firmly believe that some of the software on those CDs is exceptional. For a person who actually believes that piracy is bad, GIMP is a godsend, regardless of how un-intuative the interface is initially. Also, most of the programs that come with these types of CDs use a standard windows GUI like Firefox/mozilla, 7zip and Filezilla.
People complain about this all the time on Slashdot, but I don't think it's as bad as people think. I think that if the features are there and there is no-more usable alternative for the same cost, the interface isn't that big of a selling point.
Look at winamp. It's always had a non-standard interface and before microsoft started bundling the same features into windows, was the de-facto standard media player.
Another example was the old Napster. Remember how it used buttons instead of tabs for the tabed-like interface? That took me, a slashdot reading geek a few extra minutes to figure out, yet it still managed to be the biggest thing in the news for several months.
Try resizing the text in this one. It's the most perfect example of why it will sometimes never work - even with tables.
The main one, this, and this work fine.
But, why don't this, this, this, this, this, or this work? They look like they should, and I'm positive they could if tables were used instead.
Almost every design on this site works with IE5+ and Mozilla. To see such beautiful, fast, standards-compliant, and workable designs not break for 95% of web browsers on the web today is quite amazing.
But not totally usable. I'm using Mozilla 1.6, and as soon as I try to increase the font size on most of the themes in zengarden, I get overlapping text. It's useless when running at high resolution.
A company produces propane barbecue grills at a plant in Nevada. The product's major components include the gas valve, burner and aluminum housing, each of which is made in the U.S. The grill's knobs and tubing are imported from Mexico. An unqualified Made in USA claim is not likely to be deceptive because the knobs and tubing make up a negligible portion of the product's total manufacturing costs and are insignificant parts of the final product.
This is true, legally. But, on a slow news day, some "expose" will uncover the truth about the knobs and tubing, and how the grill manufacturer is exploiting a loophole for increased sales.
Just read the second page on the site. It's an "about the company" article that says,
"There have been times when demand was better than supply, and service has fallen behind".
First, marketing 101, you never talk about your faults unless you are
trying to refute some sort of negative assertion or claim.
Second, the phrasing of the sentance indicates that they still have a
customer service problem. They should have used "had" not "have"
or "has".
How about this one? "If
you want a simple, no-frills printer; if you don't want to buy features
you'll never use; if you want... we're afraid there's only one logical
choice." I'm pretty sure that they could have said that
better. I mean, you don't talk about what the product CAN'T do,
you talk about what it CAN do and how much more value you get for the
things you DO want to do.
Even though people are buying Mercedes made in Alabama and tech support from India, it would be interesting to see a return of promotional campaign designed to promote goods made in the US. Perhaps there can be a similar campaign designed to promote companies that don't use overseas labor?
I think that a company trying this would shoot itself in the foot. Every element would need to be mined from the US, all of the "Intellectual Property" would need to be US-based, and I mean every single little piece. Or else, there would be a 20-20 episode on the vast "Made In The USA" conspiracy. These days, small parts like transistors are so hard to find in dependably large quantities from ANY country that it's nearly impossible to ensure a steady flow of huge quantities of product from only US parts.
Easycalc is a graphing scientific calculator. This is not a replacement for a real TI or HP calculator. Where's my linear algebra (Matrix) math for instance?
Re:More memory, faster processor.. USB?
on
TI-84 Plus Released
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Given the extremely high price compared to the hardware you get (monocrome non-touch screen), you can safely say that this is a calculator. With a calculator, you pay for the software. I wish somebody would come out with an easy to use palm pilot application that has all of these advanced features so that we can stop paying so much for cheap hardware.
I
think that you could have managed yourself better. I work for a
company that is growing rapidly. So, we get new VPs all the time
who do the same thing. I operate under the philosophy that as the
head of (or the entire) IT department, I need to manage my department
too - not just the tasks given to me. If people are asking about
the status of projects constantly, set up a project management web site
such as this one (it's the
one I use). If they don't want to look at the pretty Gantt chart
on the web, print it out every morning so that you can just hand it to
them.
Sure, this kind of stuff takes time, but IT is a service to the other
departments (we don't make money for the company, we make efficiencies
for the departments), so you must act like everybody is the
customer. If the customer demands frequent status reports, then
that's what the customer gets. You will slow down because of
this, but you are actually making yourself look more professional, and
the customer will be happier.
If you start getting backed up, simply say, "if you want that done in
the requested amount of time, I'll need to hire an employee to help me
out." Trust me, I grew a 1-person IT department to a nearly 10
person IT department in two years. We'll be adding another soon.
That's true, but we're talking about SDRAM's price, not the availability of buyers. Remember, he said that the SDRAM was too expensive to stock, and then said that he occasionally special ordered it. If even a few buyers are available, then keeping one or two units around is a good idea because of the rising price. You are taking this to an extreme, but remember that we're talking about SDRAM, not NuBus cards. There is still enough of a demand for SDRAM.
Exactly, but the grandparent poster said that the reason for not stocking SDRAM was due to the high price. So that must mean he's surfing the end uptrend of the price curve. If he, at all, needs to special order any SDRAM, then he would have made more money purchasing the RAM earlier.
If I had purchased a full length 8 bit ISA video card in 1994 (I believe that VLB and PCI were the competing standards then), it would have been expensive, but not as much as today, following the same pricing curve you point out, and I completely agree with. If I would have held on to it until now, it would be almost worth its weight in gold to somebody who needs that exact model for some system that can't be replaced and uses a custom DOS application with built in drivers for only that card. It would at least be worth the cost I paid for it + the warehousing cost, as long as I can find a buyer who really needs it.
But doesn't it only really take two, in a heated comptition, producing a product (that in all other ways is the same thing - Do not compare Netscape/IE to this) to keep the margins razor thin?
They can? Doesn't there need to be some sort of monopoly or collusion for price-fixing to even have a chance? Is there some guy pulling strings we don't know about here, or are you just blaming a conspiracy theory?
Honestly, there have been some valid reasons for the memory problems including the buying cycle effecting demand, and the changeover to DDR2 effecting supply. These are real world variables that can be tracked and documented with evidence. For an incredibly complex unit like a RAM module and the amount of heavy metals used, I am supprised that the price is actually as low as it is. It indicates to me that there is adequate competition and prices, while instable (due to the fact that it's not a finished product), are about as low as they can get.
If it's getting more expensive, that means that memory purchased today will be worth more to buyers tomorrow and worth the same to you (plus warehousing of course). You can charge tomorrow's prices for the ram and make a profit. If the price is rising faster than the cost to store it, then you are making money. So, your reason for not stocking it shouldn't be the rising price but rather the decreased demand for the product that makes it not cost effective to stock.
I didn't see that test on the page you linked us to. I tend to disagree with this assumption without any facts simply based on the premise that manufacturers will find the optimal speed for their drive, and then make it go a little faster. The faster/cheaper they can get it, the more they can sell. In my experience, quality, above a certain life (maybe 5 years) of a drive isn't something that consumers care about as much as life and record speed simply because consumers know that the additional cost would be better spent on a newer faster cheaper drive in 5 or so years.
Now, media life, on the other hand, is worth more to a consumer because the data on that media may be invaluable.
And slashdot is any better? I just talked to my company's head of HR, and she says that State laws supercede Federal laws in this matter, so most people have nothing to worry about.
You
make it sound like the poor google emplyees are getting screwed by the
rich VC guys. Those VC guys were taking a big risk with a little
company giving away something with revenue from advertisement
only. Google employees get pretty good benifits, and the average salary at google is over $100 according to a wired article from this year.
1. The artists who created the soundtrack for the Matrix was paid to create the soundtrack for the Matrix. Any other sales are gravy on top of that. Music IS sold twice. It was sold in the box office right along with everything else.
2. I actually watch the movie more than listen to the sound track. You can't price something based on how much the consumer is going to use it. I use my PDA more than my cell phone, but the phone costed more, even with the rebate. If I had an old car in perfect condition sitting in my garage, unused, I may still cost more than a pinto that gets used daily.
By my rationale, most PC hardware is under $50 for this very reason. Look at pricewatch.com. There is COMPETITION. I can buy a mouse for $5, which is far more complicated to duplicate than a CD. Remember, the initial CD or mouse may cost millions to create, but once the manufacturing plant has been paid for, the cost of duplication (paying workers, materials, etc) is all that is required. When you sell millions of units (and there are more Linkin Park albums being sold than any one particular make/model of mouse), you can spread that initial cost out over all of the units, which is why a 1200+ AMD chip is selling for $30.
Slashdot Mirror
Linux is binary compatible at the same level as windows is. You're comparing apples to oranges. You mentioned GIMP as one of the windows applications. How big was the installer you downloaded? Did you need to download two installers? I bet you did, and you got them from right here. That's the GIMP and the GTK libraries it requires. Here is an example of an RPM for GIMP on Linux. Notice that it has a lot less because Linux already have GTK installed. Those are the dependencies that break.
Open source software shares a lot of common libraries that users don't want multiple copies of lying around. Dependencies like this exist in windows too. For instance, look at programs written in Visual Basic that require the VBRun DLL libraries to be installed.
Swapping out kernels doesn't usually effect the programs sitting above the kernel. This is called "binary compatibility" and has existed in Windows and Linux for some time.
How is this interesting? I'm sitting next to somebody who took the test and says you get 3 hours. This was obviously a joke. FUNNY NOT INTERESTING!
I've been to the vorbis site and listened to the ogg samples (Scroll down to the bottom and listen to the 45k/sec samples) of low bit rate compression. It sounds really good at really low bit rates. Scroll up a little and listen to the mp3s at 64 and 128, and then listen to the OGG at 64. That's the quality of mp3 at 1/2 the space.
Couldn't these companies take better advantage of the ability to play OGG files and include the compressor to actually fit more music in less space? They could advertise a player that holds "more music" in a less expensive package. Instead of advertising the storage space, advertise the number of hours of music, and compare to competitors that cost 2x as much.
I firmly believe that some of the software on those CDs is exceptional. For a person who actually believes that piracy is bad, GIMP is a godsend, regardless of how un-intuative the interface is initially. Also, most of the programs that come with these types of CDs use a standard windows GUI like Firefox/mozilla, 7zip and Filezilla.
People complain about this all the time on Slashdot, but I don't think it's as bad as people think. I think that if the features are there and there is no-more usable alternative for the same cost, the interface isn't that big of a selling point.
Look at winamp. It's always had a non-standard interface and before microsoft started bundling the same features into windows, was the de-facto standard media player.
Another example was the old Napster. Remember how it used buttons instead of tabs for the tabed-like interface? That took me, a slashdot reading geek a few extra minutes to figure out, yet it still managed to be the biggest thing in the news for several months.
Try resizing the text in this one. It's the most perfect example of why it will sometimes never work - even with tables.
The main one, this, and this work fine.
But, why don't this, this, this, this, this, or this work? They look like they should, and I'm positive they could if tables were used instead.
Almost every design on this site works with IE5+ and Mozilla. To see such beautiful, fast, standards-compliant, and workable designs not break for 95% of web browsers on the web today is quite amazing.
But not totally usable. I'm using Mozilla 1.6, and as soon as I try to increase the font size on most of the themes in zengarden, I get overlapping text. It's useless when running at high resolution.
A company produces propane barbecue grills at a plant in Nevada. The product's major components include the gas valve, burner and aluminum housing, each of which is made in the U.S. The grill's knobs and tubing are imported from Mexico. An unqualified Made in USA claim is not likely to be deceptive because the knobs and tubing make up a negligible portion of the product's total manufacturing costs and are insignificant parts of the final product.
This is true, legally. But, on a slow news day, some "expose" will uncover the truth about the knobs and tubing, and how the grill manufacturer is exploiting a loophole for increased sales.
Just read the second page on the site. It's an "about the company" article that says, "There have been times when demand was better than supply, and service has fallen behind".
First, marketing 101, you never talk about your faults unless you are trying to refute some sort of negative assertion or claim. Second, the phrasing of the sentance indicates that they still have a customer service problem. They should have used "had" not "have" or "has".
How about this one? "If you want a simple, no-frills printer; if you don't want to buy features you'll never use; if you want... we're afraid there's only one logical choice." I'm pretty sure that they could have said that better. I mean, you don't talk about what the product CAN'T do, you talk about what it CAN do and how much more value you get for the things you DO want to do.
Easycalc is a graphing scientific calculator. This is not a replacement for a real TI or HP calculator. Where's my linear algebra (Matrix) math for instance?
Given the extremely high price compared to the hardware you get (monocrome non-touch screen), you can safely say that this is a calculator. With a calculator, you pay for the software. I wish somebody would come out with an easy to use palm pilot application that has all of these advanced features so that we can stop paying so much for cheap hardware.
Translation: If he had a computer, his stuff would be even cooler.
I think that you could have managed yourself better. I work for a company that is growing rapidly. So, we get new VPs all the time who do the same thing. I operate under the philosophy that as the head of (or the entire) IT department, I need to manage my department too - not just the tasks given to me. If people are asking about the status of projects constantly, set up a project management web site such as this one (it's the one I use). If they don't want to look at the pretty Gantt chart on the web, print it out every morning so that you can just hand it to them.
Sure, this kind of stuff takes time, but IT is a service to the other departments (we don't make money for the company, we make efficiencies for the departments), so you must act like everybody is the customer. If the customer demands frequent status reports, then that's what the customer gets. You will slow down because of this, but you are actually making yourself look more professional, and the customer will be happier.
If you start getting backed up, simply say, "if you want that done in the requested amount of time, I'll need to hire an employee to help me out." Trust me, I grew a 1-person IT department to a nearly 10 person IT department in two years. We'll be adding another soon.
That's true, but we're talking about SDRAM's price, not the availability of buyers. Remember, he said that the SDRAM was too expensive to stock, and then said that he occasionally special ordered it. If even a few buyers are available, then keeping one or two units around is a good idea because of the rising price. You are taking this to an extreme, but remember that we're talking about SDRAM, not NuBus cards. There is still enough of a demand for SDRAM.
Exactly, but the grandparent poster said that the reason for not stocking SDRAM was due to the high price. So that must mean he's surfing the end uptrend of the price curve. If he, at all, needs to special order any SDRAM, then he would have made more money purchasing the RAM earlier.
If I had purchased a full length 8 bit ISA video card in 1994 (I believe that VLB and PCI were the competing standards then), it would have been expensive, but not as much as today, following the same pricing curve you point out, and I completely agree with. If I would have held on to it until now, it would be almost worth its weight in gold to somebody who needs that exact model for some system that can't be replaced and uses a custom DOS application with built in drivers for only that card. It would at least be worth the cost I paid for it + the warehousing cost, as long as I can find a buyer who really needs it.
But doesn't it only really take two, in a heated comptition, producing a product (that in all other ways is the same thing - Do not compare Netscape/IE to this) to keep the margins razor thin?
They can? Doesn't there need to be some sort of monopoly or collusion for price-fixing to even have a chance? Is there some guy pulling strings we don't know about here, or are you just blaming a conspiracy theory?
Honestly, there have been some valid reasons for the memory problems including the buying cycle effecting demand, and the changeover to DDR2 effecting supply. These are real world variables that can be tracked and documented with evidence. For an incredibly complex unit like a RAM module and the amount of heavy metals used, I am supprised that the price is actually as low as it is. It indicates to me that there is adequate competition and prices, while instable (due to the fact that it's not a finished product), are about as low as they can get.
If it's getting more expensive, that means that memory purchased today will be worth more to buyers tomorrow and worth the same to you (plus warehousing of course). You can charge tomorrow's prices for the ram and make a profit. If the price is rising faster than the cost to store it, then you are making money. So, your reason for not stocking it shouldn't be the rising price but rather the decreased demand for the product that makes it not cost effective to stock.
I didn't see that test on the page you linked us to. I tend to disagree with this assumption without any facts simply based on the premise that manufacturers will find the optimal speed for their drive, and then make it go a little faster. The faster/cheaper they can get it, the more they can sell. In my experience, quality, above a certain life (maybe 5 years) of a drive isn't something that consumers care about as much as life and record speed simply because consumers know that the additional cost would be better spent on a newer faster cheaper drive in 5 or so years.
Now, media life, on the other hand, is worth more to a consumer because the data on that media may be invaluable.
And slashdot is any better? I just talked to my company's head of HR, and she says that State laws supercede Federal laws in this matter, so most people have nothing to worry about.
You make it sound like the poor google emplyees are getting screwed by the rich VC guys. Those VC guys were taking a big risk with a little company giving away something with revenue from advertisement only. Google employees get pretty good benifits, and the average salary at google is over $100 according to a wired article from this year.
1. The artists who created the soundtrack for the Matrix was paid to create the soundtrack for the Matrix. Any other sales are gravy on top of that. Music IS sold twice. It was sold in the box office right along with everything else.
2. I actually watch the movie more than listen to the sound track. You can't price something based on how much the consumer is going to use it. I use my PDA more than my cell phone, but the phone costed more, even with the rebate. If I had an old car in perfect condition sitting in my garage, unused, I may still cost more than a pinto that gets used daily.
By my rationale, most PC hardware is under $50 for this very reason. Look at pricewatch.com. There is COMPETITION. I can buy a mouse for $5, which is far more complicated to duplicate than a CD. Remember, the initial CD or mouse may cost millions to create, but once the manufacturing plant has been paid for, the cost of duplication (paying workers, materials, etc) is all that is required. When you sell millions of units (and there are more Linkin Park albums being sold than any one particular make/model of mouse), you can spread that initial cost out over all of the units, which is why a 1200+ AMD chip is selling for $30.
Oops. more. not less.
Then why does The Matrix Revolutions the movie (Widescreen) cost only $4 less than Matrix Revolutions the soundtrack? What do the musicians need that the actors, writers, producers, etc. don't need? And, remember that the sound track is INCLUDED in the DVD.
So, after paying royalties and payola etc, that leaves about $4 for the cost of the blockbuster movie series that helped to redefine US action movies?
Maybe it's because the expected value of the CD is $15+, and without competition, the monopoly that owns redistribution rights can set the price.