No I pay for quality by building my own for MUCH less!!! My current system would probably cost about 10 grand from Apple and would probably be only 2/3 as powerful!
I'm always amazed that year after year Apple finds suckers for their utterly overpriced and underpowered products with less software AND less hardware options. (People always complain about the lack of software for the Mac, but there is even less hardware to buy!)
Also, I refuse to be locked into a system that uses both proprietary hardware AND software! Why sell your soul to Apple?!
I'm forced to go local restaurant as part of my job. It's owned by a local RC bottler, so you guessed it, it only sells RC products. It's awful. Unbelievably awful. It's hard to describe, you just have to taste it for yourself. If you like it, I mean no offense. Taste is obviously subjective!
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I totally disagree.
Downloading an entire CD worth of music takes time. While it's quite easy finding the hits, it's a little harder to get the less known songs.
You also have to find quality versions of each song. I'm generally forced to download about three versions of each song in order to find one really good copy. You have to mess with them to make sure they're the same volume and don't have too much space at the end. And if you're lucky enough to get the complete CD in one MP3 file, you have to spend time converting it and slicing it up.
Plus you have to create and print a label for them. Once again, that takes time.
I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather spend ten dollars (US) to get a CD. A local Harmony House went out of business in my town about 6 months ago. They were selling CDs for less than 10 bucks on average. I bought about 300 dollars worth!!! In the 7 years before that day, I probably bought a total of 9 CDs.
I could get water from my sink for free (as we have a well). But I still only drink bottle water because it's of better quality. I could drink RC or Fago soda because it's much cheaper. But I pay more for Coke because it taste better.
Cost is NOT the only criteria. My time is VERY valuable and I'd rather pay than waste it. Furthermore, quality is important to me too, and is worth paying for at the right price.
You're right. I remember way back in the 70s when good record stores sold singles. And not just the singles to the latest hits, but they stocked tons and tons of older hits. And if they did not carry the hit you wanted, you could order it.
Back then you could essentially get any song you wanted without buying the entire LP. It was great and its demise is certainly a contributing factor to the music industry's problem. People are simply tired of paying 18 bucks for a CD to hear one or two songs!
I don't get the article. The author claims that his Palm doesn't "just work" with his Mac. I'm confused. Apple has been telling us OVER and OVER again that Macs "just work." We don't have to tweak. We don't have to search for drivers. It JUST WORKS!!!
Robert Thompson must be an idiot, unless maybe, just maybe, Apple has been lying to us for the last decade.
Do you realize that some analogies are false and some are valid? Do you lack the ability to distinguish between them so you just avoid all of them?
If you have a good analogy use it. If not, don't. If you see someone using a false analogy, point it out. How hard is that?!
Cars faced similar problems but offered advantages
on
Buy a Segway... Please
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Your analogy is utterly flawed. The difference between then and now is that the automobile was MUCH better while the Segway is, at best, a little better, but overall, actually much worse.
Because the automobile offered so many advantages over walking and the horse and buggy, people were willing to pay the price of building and rebuilding roads to suit the new vehicle. But, who is willing to rebuild our cities to use a Segway? Because of weather our cities would have to be domed. Are you willing to pay for that?
If not, are businesses willing to provide showers and changing rooms for employees who drive in on Segways? No way. Currently their employees get to work via cars, busses and trains. Why should businesses be compelled to spend MORE money so employees could get there via Segways?! There is no advantage to change.
Similarly, there is no advantage to change our streets, because we are currently getting where we need to be without changing them.
And right now I can go shopping and actually have room in my car to bring home enough groceries for a family of 4. There is no advantage for me to suddenly change my shopping practices and go every day, getting only a few things at a time. Wasting MORE time at the supermarket is certainly not an advantage in my book!
I could go on and on, but it's a simple fact that the automobile offered huge advantages that the horse and buggy did not. That is why we changed our society to suit the automobile. We will never do that for the Segway because doing so would mostly offer disadvantages, not advantages.
"The true purpose of the stock market is distribution of risk."
Yeah right. What text book did you get that out of?! The true purpose is to allow the rich to gamble under the guise of investing.
You even support my own point. You stated, "Growth would only happen if you are in an emerging market, or if something changes radically in the economy (Shift in demand). Long term growth for a specific industry or company is fairly impossible."
That's another way of saying that over time some corporations stop growing, which means they stop becoming attractive stocks, when means that they are viewed by Wall Street as losers. Name a single corporation that had decades of profitability, yet no growth, that was viewed positively by Wall Street!
There are none. Once a company stops expanding and the stocks prices stop rising, it's necessarily true that it's a bad buy, regardless of profitability.
You're right. I too am perplexed at any long term advantage to publicly traded corporations.
Imagine a small mom & pop hardware store. Each year it makes enough money to keep up repairs, pay all employees, send the owners' children through college, and provide a nice nest egg for the owner's retirement.
If this hardware store were publicly traded, it would lose big time because it's not GROWING and has no POTENTIAL for growth.
That's what the stock market is completely and utterly about. Not about sound and financially stable corporations. It's about corporations who constantly have to find new angles to increase their market share to keep their stock rising. Merely being profitable is NOT enough.
This also forces corporations which have reached their maximum market share to enter unprofitable markets. It doesn't matter if they are unprofitable and that workers will be laid off in droves, it only matters that the corporation is attempting to expand and cut costs in the eyes of the stock holders. That's always the bottom line: Will the stock market like it.
In our mom & pop example, if they suddenly laid off half their staff no one would ever consider it a success. Only in the world of the stock market could it be viewed that way.
But, don't expect anything to be done about it. The US economy is way to intertwined with the stock market for it to ever be eliminated.
According to most use agreements, gaming is technically banned because it's technically running a server.
Broadband has become a scam where we pay high prices but are not allowed to use it for anything but email and general surfing.
Sure we might be able to get away with gaming or VPN now, but a few years from now they'll start enforcing those use agreements.
While the telecoms are forced to carry all signals, the FCC specifically allows cable companies to limit what they carry. Thus, if they don't want to carry slashdot.org, no one could force them (in the land of the free, that is).
Slashdot Mirror
No I pay for quality by building my own for MUCH less!!! My current system would probably cost about 10 grand from Apple and would probably be only 2/3 as powerful!
I'm always amazed that year after year Apple finds suckers for their utterly overpriced and underpowered products with less software AND less hardware options. (People always complain about the lack of software for the Mac, but there is even less hardware to buy!)
Also, I refuse to be locked into a system that uses both proprietary hardware AND software! Why sell your soul to Apple?!
I'm forced to go local restaurant as part of my job. It's owned by a local RC bottler, so you guessed it, it only sells RC products. It's awful. Unbelievably awful. It's hard to describe, you just have to taste it for yourself. If you like it, I mean no offense. Taste is obviously subjective!
I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but I totally disagree.
Downloading an entire CD worth of music takes time. While it's quite easy finding the hits, it's a little harder to get the less known songs.
You also have to find quality versions of each song. I'm generally forced to download about three versions of each song in order to find one really good copy. You have to mess with them to make sure they're the same volume and don't have too much space at the end. And if you're lucky enough to get the complete CD in one MP3 file, you have to spend time converting it and slicing it up.
Plus you have to create and print a label for them. Once again, that takes time.
I'd MUCH MUCH MUCH rather spend ten dollars (US) to get a CD. A local Harmony House went out of business in my town about 6 months ago. They were selling CDs for less than 10 bucks on average. I bought about 300 dollars worth!!! In the 7 years before that day, I probably bought a total of 9 CDs.
I could get water from my sink for free (as we have a well). But I still only drink bottle water because it's of better quality. I could drink RC or Fago soda because it's much cheaper. But I pay more for Coke because it taste better.
Cost is NOT the only criteria. My time is VERY valuable and I'd rather pay than waste it. Furthermore, quality is important to me too, and is worth paying for at the right price.
You're right. I remember way back in the 70s when good record stores sold singles. And not just the singles to the latest hits, but they stocked tons and tons of older hits. And if they did not carry the hit you wanted, you could order it.
Back then you could essentially get any song you wanted without buying the entire LP. It was great and its demise is certainly a contributing factor to the music industry's problem. People are simply tired of paying 18 bucks for a CD to hear one or two songs!
I don't get the article. The author claims that his Palm doesn't "just work" with his Mac. I'm confused. Apple has been telling us OVER and OVER again that Macs "just work." We don't have to tweak. We don't have to search for drivers. It JUST WORKS!!!
Robert Thompson must be an idiot, unless maybe, just maybe, Apple has been lying to us for the last decade.
"Why I won't argue by analogy on /."
Do you realize that some analogies are false and some are valid? Do you lack the ability to distinguish between them so you just avoid all of them?
If you have a good analogy use it. If not, don't. If you see someone using a false analogy, point it out. How hard is that?!
Your analogy is utterly flawed. The difference between then and now is that the automobile was MUCH better while the Segway is, at best, a little better, but overall, actually much worse.
Because the automobile offered so many advantages over walking and the horse and buggy, people were willing to pay the price of building and rebuilding roads to suit the new vehicle. But, who is willing to rebuild our cities to use a Segway? Because of weather our cities would have to be domed. Are you willing to pay for that?
If not, are businesses willing to provide showers and changing rooms for employees who drive in on Segways? No way. Currently their employees get to work via cars, busses and trains. Why should businesses be compelled to spend MORE money so employees could get there via Segways?! There is no advantage to change.
Similarly, there is no advantage to change our streets, because we are currently getting where we need to be without changing them.
And right now I can go shopping and actually have room in my car to bring home enough groceries for a family of 4. There is no advantage for me to suddenly change my shopping practices and go every day, getting only a few things at a time. Wasting MORE time at the supermarket is certainly not an advantage in my book!
I could go on and on, but it's a simple fact that the automobile offered huge advantages that the horse and buggy did not. That is why we changed our society to suit the automobile. We will never do that for the Segway because doing so would mostly offer disadvantages, not advantages.
"The true purpose of the stock market is distribution of risk."
Yeah right. What text book did you get that out of?! The true purpose is to allow the rich to gamble under the guise of investing.
You even support my own point. You stated, "Growth would only happen if you are in an emerging market, or if something changes radically in the economy (Shift in demand). Long term growth for a specific industry or company is fairly impossible."
That's another way of saying that over time some corporations stop growing, which means they stop becoming attractive stocks, when means that they are viewed by Wall Street as losers. Name a single corporation that had decades of profitability, yet no growth, that was viewed positively by Wall Street!
There are none. Once a company stops expanding and the stocks prices stop rising, it's necessarily true that it's a bad buy, regardless of profitability.
You're right. I too am perplexed at any long term advantage to publicly traded corporations.
Imagine a small mom & pop hardware store. Each year it makes enough money to keep up repairs, pay all employees, send the owners' children through college, and provide a nice nest egg for the owner's retirement.
If this hardware store were publicly traded, it would lose big time because it's not GROWING and has no POTENTIAL for growth.
That's what the stock market is completely and utterly about. Not about sound and financially stable corporations. It's about corporations who constantly have to find new angles to increase their market share to keep their stock rising. Merely being profitable is NOT enough.
This also forces corporations which have reached their maximum market share to enter unprofitable markets. It doesn't matter if they are unprofitable and that workers will be laid off in droves, it only matters that the corporation is attempting to expand and cut costs in the eyes of the stock holders. That's always the bottom line: Will the stock market like it.
In our mom & pop example, if they suddenly laid off half their staff no one would ever consider it a success. Only in the world of the stock market could it be viewed that way.
But, don't expect anything to be done about it. The US economy is way to intertwined with the stock market for it to ever be eliminated.
According to most use agreements, gaming is technically banned because it's technically running a server.
Broadband has become a scam where we pay high prices but are not allowed to use it for anything but email and general surfing.
Sure we might be able to get away with gaming or VPN now, but a few years from now they'll start enforcing those use agreements.
While the telecoms are forced to carry all signals, the FCC specifically allows cable companies to limit what they carry. Thus, if they don't want to carry slashdot.org, no one could force them (in the land of the free, that is).