Not sure if you have been tuning into the Howard Stern broadcasts since he got taken off Clear Channel, but he has been venting frustration over the fact that he can't do the show that he wants to do without being bleeped off the air.
In any case, I'm sure that the money was of interest to him, but from his point of view, he's also taking a huge leap of faith in his listeners that they will all follow him to Sirius Satellite Radio and actually pay his salary too...
From my point of view, if you look at people who have made enough money that they can retire very comfortably, as I believe Howard Stern has, you will notice that their ambitions in life is no longer about making millions and millions of dollars... On the radio show this morning, Howard was mentioning about how he had an epiphany at 5 years old where he just wanted to do radio, and when he was first starting out, he was dreaming of getting paid $250/week to do what he loves... I'm sure there's a degree of BS to this, but I also believe that he really does enjoy what he does, and now that he has proven to the world that he's the King of All Media, it's no longer about proving himself and making the money to show for it, as it is for him to just do what he likes.
I really wasn't a big fan of his show until the controversy started with Clear Channel and started listening to him to understand more about the crazy people out there that just want to bring him down, yet ignore all other people doing the same thing as him or worse...
Anyway... just my 2 cents...
It is said that about once every 70 years, we have a big depression in the stock market based on the failure to deliver dreams that were created from an exciting technology of the times. In the mid-1800s, it was the locomotive engine, in the 1920s, it was the automobile, and in the 1990s, it was the Internet.
So from the 20s, we were promised helicopters in every garage, jet packs, flying cars, etc.
So during the dot-com era, we were promised several different things too, but nowadays, it looks like they all got integrated into other services (ie webvan, paymybills.com, etc.) I wonder if 20, 30, 40 years from now, whether we can look back to this period of time, and see "crazy ideas" that were proposed, but never delivered?
You are looking at it from a very US-centric point of view. Prices vary from country to country. Let's take my Taiwan example:
I was paid about $11,000/yr. If you look at it from the US point of view, that's going beyond poverty. In the US, at $11k/yr., I'm barely paying the rent. In Taiwan, granted, the rent took up half my take home, everything else was cheap. For a studio apartment in a pretty good neighborhood, and pretty good part of town, I was paying about $400/month to live in this fully furnished apartment, that didn't come crumbling down during the 1999 earthquake. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, my combined daily expense for eating out was almost $5. Basically, I had enough money to pay the bills, eat well, get around town, and pay the rent, and still have a little left over. Eventually I got a raise and some bonus, so I had a little extra to "splurge".
now... in China, if you are making $1200ish, your cost of living is probably adjusted as well. Maybe you are eating at pennies a day, and paying rent closer to $100/month.
there's also the issue of exchange rate that gets in the way. What you can buy with $1200 in the US, might not get you very far, but for a country such as China, it might bring you a pretty comfortable living.
In any case, what I'm trying to say is that you cannot judge simply by looking at it from the US perspective. It simply does not match up dollar for dollar, RMB for RMB.
Umm... I beg your pardon? Maybe in the world of software, that statement could be true, but Taiwan has been very pivotal for personal computing today.
Taiwan has the infrastructure to mass-produce semiconductors, which is what it is truly famous for, among other things. Dell wouldn't be around if it weren't for this fact, and you'd still be shelling out thousands of dollars for quality computer parts that are Made in the USA or Made in Japan... well, at least until China shapes up and gets into the game... but of course, with the exception of a few companies, most of the state-of-the-art factories doing mass production over there are from foreign companies, with Taiwanese companies in the forefront.
if they're using a computer, which has been sold to them from the back of a truck, they probably need an operating system
Seriously speaking, it's all boils down to economics. While working in Taiwan, I was taking home a whopping US$11,000 / yr., and people generally working in the same salary range as me all had computers in their home. Why? The hardware is cheaper since most of its made locally anyway, and the software is all pirated.
Think about the DVD or console gaming market. They price fix by using region encoding. I mean... for Region 2, for example, how are countries such as Japan and S. Africa, lumped into the same region as Europe? Or how is Mexico excluded from the US/Canada Region 1? It's all about the pricing and cost of living. So a person living in the US, could not go into Mexico to buy a cheaper DVD, and play it back on his own DVD player in America (of course, this isn't exactly true, but let's take the average consumer who doesn't hack his box).
M$ is essentially in the same boat, but instead of region encoding, it uses language to regionally encode its software. For the most part, the average US computer buyer probably doesn't want a machine in Chinese, while the average Taiwanese computer buyer probably doesn't want a machine in English. M$ can essentially fix the price in Taiwan to a lower price point, and get more people to buy the software at the lower price, rather than selling it at a higher price point, but getting a handful of sales instead.
While lowering the cost may lower M$ price margin, I figure that the volume being bigger would make its profit much higher.
On the other hand, this is Taiwan we're talking about... It's a very price sensitive area, so the pirates will always be around. The trick is for M$ to lower their prices to a point that the difference between buying a legit copy over a pirate copy is trivial. The problem is that with the prices of hardware and media coming down as they are, the pirates will always be able to produce their wares for pennies, and it's all a matter of how much inventory they can keep in stock, without cutting into their profit margin, however minimal it may be after M$ puts a price cut.
In the end, people should probably just migrate over to Linux, and not worry about licensing and payments as much, but I figure that's not gonna happen at anytime soon.
Not exactly...
The only legalized form of gambling in Japan is the horse races.
Pachinko uses a loophole in the laws by allowing you to win various kinds of prizes, and using your credits from the pachinko ball bearings that you win, you can "purchase" all kinds of goods from daily sundries and candy, all the way up to Gucci bags and other high priced items, and typically, is you go back and figure out the costs of each credit, these items are heavily discounted.
On the loophole side, you can opt to win other prizes, usually packages of flint or small gold pendants, which can be taken to another "store", usually around the corner from the pachinko hall, and "sell" them back for cash.
On a sidenote... I always thought pachinko was an interesting gambling game... it doesn't feel like gambling because you are feeding a machine with money to dispense balls to play the game with, so I never looked to it as playing for money... even though you are... weird...
[I don't understand...How can it be wrong and not illegal?!?! I mean, that's like saying that saying it's wrong to do things that are illegal but not wrong!!]
It's actually pretty simple... Something that is "wrong" would be something based upon opinion, and is up to debate of what is "wrong" and what is "right".
Something that is "illegal" is absolute, due to the fact that a law is commonly agreed upon by the general public.
I can say that the way that Real designs its setup program so that users inadvertently opt-in to spam mailing lists is "wrong", but since there are no laws set in place at this time that prevents them from actually doing this, it is not "illegal".
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Not sure if you have been tuning into the Howard Stern broadcasts since he got taken off Clear Channel, but he has been venting frustration over the fact that he can't do the show that he wants to do without being bleeped off the air. In any case, I'm sure that the money was of interest to him, but from his point of view, he's also taking a huge leap of faith in his listeners that they will all follow him to Sirius Satellite Radio and actually pay his salary too... From my point of view, if you look at people who have made enough money that they can retire very comfortably, as I believe Howard Stern has, you will notice that their ambitions in life is no longer about making millions and millions of dollars... On the radio show this morning, Howard was mentioning about how he had an epiphany at 5 years old where he just wanted to do radio, and when he was first starting out, he was dreaming of getting paid $250/week to do what he loves... I'm sure there's a degree of BS to this, but I also believe that he really does enjoy what he does, and now that he has proven to the world that he's the King of All Media, it's no longer about proving himself and making the money to show for it, as it is for him to just do what he likes. I really wasn't a big fan of his show until the controversy started with Clear Channel and started listening to him to understand more about the crazy people out there that just want to bring him down, yet ignore all other people doing the same thing as him or worse... Anyway... just my 2 cents...
So that being said, isn't this in a sense, shareware, or cripple-ware, but marketed differently?
So from the 20s, we were promised helicopters in every garage, jet packs, flying cars, etc.
So during the dot-com era, we were promised several different things too, but nowadays, it looks like they all got integrated into other services (ie webvan, paymybills.com, etc.) I wonder if 20, 30, 40 years from now, whether we can look back to this period of time, and see "crazy ideas" that were proposed, but never delivered?
It all comes down to the cost of living.
You are looking at it from a very US-centric point of view. Prices vary from country to country. Let's take my Taiwan example:
I was paid about $11,000/yr. If you look at it from the US point of view, that's going beyond poverty. In the US, at $11k/yr., I'm barely paying the rent. In Taiwan, granted, the rent took up half my take home, everything else was cheap. For a studio apartment in a pretty good neighborhood, and pretty good part of town, I was paying about $400/month to live in this fully furnished apartment, that didn't come crumbling down during the 1999 earthquake. For breakfast, lunch, and dinner, my combined daily expense for eating out was almost $5. Basically, I had enough money to pay the bills, eat well, get around town, and pay the rent, and still have a little left over. Eventually I got a raise and some bonus, so I had a little extra to "splurge".
now... in China, if you are making $1200ish, your cost of living is probably adjusted as well. Maybe you are eating at pennies a day, and paying rent closer to $100/month.
there's also the issue of exchange rate that gets in the way. What you can buy with $1200 in the US, might not get you very far, but for a country such as China, it might bring you a pretty comfortable living.
In any case, what I'm trying to say is that you cannot judge simply by looking at it from the US perspective. It simply does not match up dollar for dollar, RMB for RMB.
Umm... I beg your pardon? Maybe in the world of software, that statement could be true, but Taiwan has been very pivotal for personal computing today.
Taiwan has the infrastructure to mass-produce semiconductors, which is what it is truly famous for, among other things. Dell wouldn't be around if it weren't for this fact, and you'd still be shelling out thousands of dollars for quality computer parts that are Made in the USA or Made in Japan... well, at least until China shapes up and gets into the game... but of course, with the exception of a few companies, most of the state-of-the-art factories doing mass production over there are from foreign companies, with Taiwanese companies in the forefront.
if they're using a computer, which has been sold to them from the back of a truck, they probably need an operating system Seriously speaking, it's all boils down to economics. While working in Taiwan, I was taking home a whopping US$11,000 / yr., and people generally working in the same salary range as me all had computers in their home. Why? The hardware is cheaper since most of its made locally anyway, and the software is all pirated. Think about the DVD or console gaming market. They price fix by using region encoding. I mean... for Region 2, for example, how are countries such as Japan and S. Africa, lumped into the same region as Europe? Or how is Mexico excluded from the US/Canada Region 1? It's all about the pricing and cost of living. So a person living in the US, could not go into Mexico to buy a cheaper DVD, and play it back on his own DVD player in America (of course, this isn't exactly true, but let's take the average consumer who doesn't hack his box). M$ is essentially in the same boat, but instead of region encoding, it uses language to regionally encode its software. For the most part, the average US computer buyer probably doesn't want a machine in Chinese, while the average Taiwanese computer buyer probably doesn't want a machine in English. M$ can essentially fix the price in Taiwan to a lower price point, and get more people to buy the software at the lower price, rather than selling it at a higher price point, but getting a handful of sales instead. While lowering the cost may lower M$ price margin, I figure that the volume being bigger would make its profit much higher. On the other hand, this is Taiwan we're talking about... It's a very price sensitive area, so the pirates will always be around. The trick is for M$ to lower their prices to a point that the difference between buying a legit copy over a pirate copy is trivial. The problem is that with the prices of hardware and media coming down as they are, the pirates will always be able to produce their wares for pennies, and it's all a matter of how much inventory they can keep in stock, without cutting into their profit margin, however minimal it may be after M$ puts a price cut. In the end, people should probably just migrate over to Linux, and not worry about licensing and payments as much, but I figure that's not gonna happen at anytime soon.
Not exactly... The only legalized form of gambling in Japan is the horse races. Pachinko uses a loophole in the laws by allowing you to win various kinds of prizes, and using your credits from the pachinko ball bearings that you win, you can "purchase" all kinds of goods from daily sundries and candy, all the way up to Gucci bags and other high priced items, and typically, is you go back and figure out the costs of each credit, these items are heavily discounted. On the loophole side, you can opt to win other prizes, usually packages of flint or small gold pendants, which can be taken to another "store", usually around the corner from the pachinko hall, and "sell" them back for cash. On a sidenote... I always thought pachinko was an interesting gambling game... it doesn't feel like gambling because you are feeding a machine with money to dispense balls to play the game with, so I never looked to it as playing for money... even though you are... weird...
[I don't understand...How can it be wrong and not illegal?!?! I mean, that's like saying that saying it's wrong to do things that are illegal but not wrong!!] It's actually pretty simple... Something that is "wrong" would be something based upon opinion, and is up to debate of what is "wrong" and what is "right". Something that is "illegal" is absolute, due to the fact that a law is commonly agreed upon by the general public. I can say that the way that Real designs its setup program so that users inadvertently opt-in to spam mailing lists is "wrong", but since there are no laws set in place at this time that prevents them from actually doing this, it is not "illegal".