That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.
Thus raising the bar for most incomprehensible and absurd "car = software" analogy. I'm glad the absurdity of it wasn't missed.:)
But must they be returned? Probably not. In must places, unsolicited gifts cannot have strings attached. If someone sends you something in the mail, it is yours, even regardless of what is included in it. This is to prevent people from sending out "valuable" product unsolicited and then demanding payment. This means that if someone in the shipping room makes an error and send out actual valuable product to the wrong person, typically that wrong person is under no obligation to return it. Check out the letter that Joel [on Software] Spolsky got. Here are the key quotes:
"I'm working on getting some hardware out to key community folks, and I'd like to offer you a review PC."
So right away we know its purpose is as a review PC and that it's being offered, conditional upon acceptance by the blogger.
"Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it."
Additionally, this lays out a gentleman's agreement on what can be done with the laptop: send it back, give it away, or keep it. Of course, I'm assuming that all bloggers got a similar letter. So this wasn't an unsolicited gift. They get a letter saying "Hey, I'd like to send this to you... do you agree?" and if they say "Yes, send it" then they should adhere to the gentleman's agreement they made. Does it have any legal teeth? Maybe... or maybe not. But who cares? Selling or auctioning it off, regardless of where the money goes, is not part of what they accepted the laptop for and behaving in such an apalling fashion doesn't seem honorable in the least.
If Microsoft wasn't so bent on keeping everything proprietary, there really would only be the cost of the media. That's like saying if it weren't for car thieves necessitating keys and alarm systems, then the price of cars would only be the cost of the materials that go into it.
the price is that in 5 years, none of their important documents will work Because files just magically stop working, right? I have.doc files from the early '90s which I can still open and use. That's well over 10 years. And, going forward, you'll be able to open your Office documents any way you want because of Office Open XML -- I'm sure OpenOffice.org and the others will implement support for it too. On the other hand, maybe you'll share some of that Kool-aid you're drinking. It seems quite funky.
The point of my post isn't that copying good ideas is bad, but rather this: it's complete hypocrisy that the open source Office-like suites were designed to copy every single detail of how Microsoft Office operates and then some yahoo comes along and points the finger back at Microsoft, blaming them for a lack of innovation.
The ones in the article are all released in 2006 whereas the Most Amazing Galactic Images include prior years -- though I'd have to agree that many of those are truly spectacular to look at. What I found interesting about the badastronomy.com picks is that they all provide some fairly cool scientific insight behind them as to why they are top 10 picks. The image of the two galaxies colliding isn't all that special looking, but the explanation of how this provided convincing proof of the existence of dark matter makes up for the lack of visual wow-factor.
There are plenty of great bargains in small town America, if you're willing to do some work, and especially if you're willing to convert a building from one role to another. I imagine you'd probably also run into some zoning issues... areas designated as commercial where you'd want them converted into residential, etc. At any rate, interesting information. Small town life isn't my thing but perhaps as I reach a ripe old age my priorities will differ.
What general area do you live in? Around here, city lots run at minimum $300K each. I can't imagine getting two plus any kind of structure for only $25K.
Why? Actually, why this story has been posted is quite ingenious. All of the +5 responses supplied become NewYorkCountyLawyer's cross examination of the RIAA experts. It's like having access to thousands of researchers with a passion for the topic. Quite a brilliant idea, really.
Next up: Hans Reiser's lawyer wonders what questions you'd ask a homicide 'expert'.
The vast majority of MS Office users would care about ODF, but they never heard about it and don't even know what it is. Thus, they don't care... that's my point. The users aren't interested in choice because they've already chosen and Microsoft Office does the job for the price they pay. Businesses don't care about some ideological pie in the sky idea; they want to know what works and pay a fair price for it.
Good lord, how is this innovation in anything except crapiness? Office 2007 is the opposite of ODF, which is the wave of the future in documents. Fighting against the community for profit is hardly innovative -- MSFT has been doing it for years. Give it a rest. This community of which you speak has been ripping off Microsoft Office for inspiration for years. Check out OpenOffice.org's innovative word processor interface -- everything is ripped off, from the font dropdowns, the indent/unindent icons, to the bold/italic/underline options, the clipboard icons, even the 3.5" floppy disk drive icon representing the save function. And who saves to floppy drives anymore? As far as interfaces go, I'd say it's pretty hard to rip something off better than this community-created word processor has. I'd check out the other apps in its Office-clone suite but I don't think I'd find much different.
Also, a news flash for you: Microsoft probably doesn't really care about ODF because the vast majority of its customers really don't give a damn what the other 1% of people who don't use Microsoft Office are scheming about. The only reason there's a whole push to this ODF format is because people are jealous of Microsoft Office's success and they want to push Microsoft to adopt this format so that they can gain a foothold into Microsoft's market. Why do you care whether or not other software vendors adopt ODF? If it's the wave of the future in documents as you claim, then I guess Microsoft will get left out and will become irrelevant and you'll be raking in the dough sitting at the open source helpdesk answering questions all day. Won't that better further your ideological agenda than having Microsoft become the dominant player and supporter of ODF?
And as far as "fighting against the community... for years" goes, where did you pull that statement from? I'll assume you're referring to the open source community since the business community has been very well served by Microsoft. If you subtract the drama from your statement, I think it would be more accurate to say that Microsoft has been ignoring the open source community for years. It's interesting how people react to a lack of attention. All this just seems to me that a few open source fanboys are throwing a tantrum because they didn't get invited to play in Microsoft's sanbox.
And, of course, there is still another factor: solar cells produce electricity that can be used immediately, algae need some sort of processing to generate useful energy. On the flip side, also consider that solar cells produce electricity that must be used immediately, while the algae -> oil process results in stored energy that can be used later.
someone give this guy some sarcasm goggles! i guess i did a pretty good job of hiding my dislike of sony reps. next time i'll tag it[/sarcasm]. Indeed. You provided no indication whatsoever that you disliked Sony reps. Instead you had the first part of one sentence which could be construed as sarcastic, but then provide a helpful suggestion followed by a commentary on how you dislike its current operation. If you really had meant to be sarcastic, might I suggest something more along the lines of this:
I don't doubt that they might be speaking the truth, but they could've just put in a five minute reset timer or something. Plus, adding in the artificially generated smell of burning electronics is just tacky.
I got the sarcasm. Maybe you need your PhD. I'll be on your committee if you like.:-)
The key word was "might". I believe this is a key example of sarchasm: the gulf between a sarcastic comment and the person who didn't get it. FWIW, I don't see much obvious irony in the original poster's statement myself.
If you are procrastinating - you don't have enough to do. Add more to your to-do list (or have kids). Once your docket is overwhelmingly full - you'll have no time for procrastination. There's an expression about this: "If you want something done, give it to a busy person."
Considering that it's only a few more pounds and the cost of transporting it back to a truck and from there to a deer station is probably very small(assuming that you've got several people in your party), it's almost all profit. Selling lattés is almost all profit as well, but with the bonus that you don't have to kill anything.
In many cases (methinks this one included) French law states that pushing someone to commit an offence is a bigger offence than the original one. A hounter could argue that he was provoqued and the fine would be probabely dropped. The game wardens aren't going up to hunters and saying "Hey, I'll give you $50 if you shoot that deer over there." That would be entrapment. Since we all love analogies, it's like putting a realistic looking person on a park bench at night. If someone comes up to that "person" and repeatedly stabs them over and over just because they saw it and had the urge, that's not entrapment... that's the murderous tendencies of a criminal coming to light and that person should find their ass in jail sooner rather than later.
Actually Deer hides are relatively valuable, and the butcher will usually sell them. My buddy gets $5-$10 per hide ontop of his butchering charge. Am I misunderstanding you, or did you just make the point that five to ten bucks per hide is considered relatively valuable? That's the cost of a couple lattés.
Nobody ever asked for Vista. Nobody wants it. I'm tired of MS trying to ram it down our throats. Well if nobody wants it then it's not going to sell very well and your alleged problem solve itself. Then everybody who didn't ask for Vista can move along and have Linux rammed down their throats which nobody asked for either.
How about someone do a web site reselling old XP licenses? Why would you do that? Nobody asked for XP either. How about we all go back to having Desqview on DOS 3.3? Ah, those were the days.
A customer walks into a Best Buy store, delights in the demo, buys the package, and waits for its arrival in a big box about four-foot square. So the box is flat? Or is each of its six faces four square feet (two feet by two feet) in area? Or did they get both wrong and it's actually four feet cubed?
... it's bound to pit the new group against other Best Buy factions like Geek Squad. Note that the submission was sent in by "Retail", likely some Best Buy marketing drone who tried submitting this multiple times but got rejected because, after all, who actually cares that they're selling some prepackaged junk with an insanely high profit margin? Finally, this drone added some fake sensationalism "ooh... an inner struggle within Best Buy" and managed to get it accepted. Yawn.
The certs created just have "Type Name here" and "Type date here" on my pdf viewer:(
Is this how everyones is or is it just my plugin? Once you enter your name, don't click on the misleading "Get Certificate" graphic, but rather click on your hyperlinked name which is below that. It's the same deal, only you don't have to type in the information manually.
I think the grandparent post was talking about the first position in the regular results as being suspicious, not the highlighted-in-blue sponsored links.
EB offers extended warranties as well. They explain it's no questions asked... whether it's an accident or you drop it, you're fully covered and they'll simply hand you a new one when you bring it in. I've been sorely tempted to buy a game system, get the warranty, and then slam the system to the ground right then and ask for a replacement.
99 or 100 cents on the dollar is still "pennies on the dollar", it's just a lot of them. Similar to saying "Buy now for a fraction of the price!". And since 3/2 is a fraction...
Slashdot Mirror
Thus raising the bar for most incomprehensible and absurd "car = software" analogy. I'm glad the absurdity of it wasn't missed.
- "I'm working on getting some hardware out to key community folks, and I'd like to offer you a review PC."
So right away we know its purpose is as a review PC and that it's being offered, conditional upon acceptance by the blogger.- "Also, you are welcome to send the machine back to us after you are done playing with it, or you can give it away on your site, or you can keep it."
Additionally, this lays out a gentleman's agreement on what can be done with the laptop: send it back, give it away, or keep it. Of course, I'm assuming that all bloggers got a similar letter. So this wasn't an unsolicited gift. They get a letter saying "Hey, I'd like to send this to you... do you agree?" and if they say "Yes, send it" then they should adhere to the gentleman's agreement they made. Does it have any legal teeth? Maybe... or maybe not. But who cares? Selling or auctioning it off, regardless of where the money goes, is not part of what they accepted the laptop for and behaving in such an apalling fashion doesn't seem honorable in the least.The point of my post isn't that copying good ideas is bad, but rather this: it's complete hypocrisy that the open source Office-like suites were designed to copy every single detail of how Microsoft Office operates and then some yahoo comes along and points the finger back at Microsoft, blaming them for a lack of innovation.
The ones in the article are all released in 2006 whereas the Most Amazing Galactic Images include prior years -- though I'd have to agree that many of those are truly spectacular to look at. What I found interesting about the badastronomy.com picks is that they all provide some fairly cool scientific insight behind them as to why they are top 10 picks. The image of the two galaxies colliding isn't all that special looking, but the explanation of how this provided convincing proof of the existence of dark matter makes up for the lack of visual wow-factor.
What general area do you live in? Around here, city lots run at minimum $300K each. I can't imagine getting two plus any kind of structure for only $25K.
Next up: Hans Reiser's lawyer wonders what questions you'd ask a homicide 'expert'.
Also, a news flash for you: Microsoft probably doesn't really care about ODF because the vast majority of its customers really don't give a damn what the other 1% of people who don't use Microsoft Office are scheming about. The only reason there's a whole push to this ODF format is because people are jealous of Microsoft Office's success and they want to push Microsoft to adopt this format so that they can gain a foothold into Microsoft's market. Why do you care whether or not other software vendors adopt ODF? If it's the wave of the future in documents as you claim, then I guess Microsoft will get left out and will become irrelevant and you'll be raking in the dough sitting at the open source helpdesk answering questions all day. Won't that better further your ideological agenda than having Microsoft become the dominant player and supporter of ODF?
And as far as "fighting against the community... for years" goes, where did you pull that statement from? I'll assume you're referring to the open source community since the business community has been very well served by Microsoft. If you subtract the drama from your statement, I think it would be more accurate to say that Microsoft has been ignoring the open source community for years. It's interesting how people react to a lack of attention. All this just seems to me that a few open source fanboys are throwing a tantrum because they didn't get invited to play in Microsoft's sanbox.
I don't doubt that they might be speaking the truth, but they could've just put in a five minute reset timer or something. Plus, adding in the artificially generated smell of burning electronics is just tacky.
The key word was "might". I believe this is a key example of sarchasm: the gulf between a sarcastic comment and the person who didn't get it. FWIW, I don't see much obvious irony in the original poster's statement myself.
A hounter could argue that he was provoqued and the fine would be probabely dropped. The game wardens aren't going up to hunters and saying "Hey, I'll give you $50 if you shoot that deer over there." That would be entrapment. Since we all love analogies, it's like putting a realistic looking person on a park bench at night. If someone comes up to that "person" and repeatedly stabs them over and over just because they saw it and had the urge, that's not entrapment... that's the murderous tendencies of a criminal coming to light and that person should find their ass in jail sooner rather than later.
... it's bound to pit the new group against other Best Buy factions like Geek Squad. Note that the submission was sent in by "Retail", likely some Best Buy marketing drone who tried submitting this multiple times but got rejected because, after all, who actually cares that they're selling some prepackaged junk with an insanely high profit margin? Finally, this drone added some fake sensationalism "ooh... an inner struggle within Best Buy" and managed to get it accepted. Yawn.Is this how everyones is or is it just my plugin? Once you enter your name, don't click on the misleading "Get Certificate" graphic, but rather click on your hyperlinked name which is below that. It's the same deal, only you don't have to type in the information manually.
I think the grandparent post was talking about the first position in the regular results as being suspicious, not the highlighted-in-blue sponsored links.
EB offers extended warranties as well. They explain it's no questions asked... whether it's an accident or you drop it, you're fully covered and they'll simply hand you a new one when you bring it in. I've been sorely tempted to buy a game system, get the warranty, and then slam the system to the ground right then and ask for a replacement.