The issue of online music prices raises philosophical debates for music executives. Some executives, for example, believe they should be charging a premium for the online versions of older tracks because consumers may be willing to pay more for harder-to-find material.
It's this kind of attitude that causes businesses to lose market share. If they raise their price a couple bucks but lose a quarter of their market, they break even, but leave a bad taste in the customer's mouth. Then, rather than having them look around for more stuff to buy, they just avoid buying things.
I really think the music industry is shooting itself in the foot by charging so much money and taking legal action against file swappers. The majority of my friends still bought CD's after Napster came into use, but now they've started boycotting the RIAA because they are leading an assault against our personal freedom. Personally, I buy used, and don't hesitate to get anything off the Internet that I wouldn't ask a friend to let me borrow and make a copy of. I don't think it's right to get new music for free if you like the band, but I don't think it's right to feed the RIAA at this point, hence the used CDs.
And once I get some free time, I'll look into the indie bands. There are a few I like now, but I haven't been able to afford tickets or CDs for quite some time now.
If your contributions are small enough then they can be 'fair used' away by the original author and they retain copyright. However as your contributions grow then yes you do retain ownership of them.
That is correct, I believe, and very succinctly written. Too bad you're an AC and I have no mod points. The only thing most people see is the other answer on the thread, the wrong answer. Hopefully this will draw attention to the right answer.
I personally prefer BSD-style licenses. But I am not anti-GPL and would be happy to contribute to GPL projects, such as Linux. And I get sick of hearing all these myths about the GPL.
Well, Apple programming hasn't always sucked. There's been some great products, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior. And the Apple GUI toolbox was way ahead of its time.
And as for the magazine ref, the way I see it is that the guy thought he had something inspiringly funny when he wrote that. That's the kind of things that gets written in top magazines. But this was just dumb.
Absolutely.
on
Real Problems
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It has long been said on/. that Real is its own worst enemy. And it is actually quite simple. Real's uprise has been when they had a good and decent product, and their downfall has been when they got greedy with advertising, and just began adding various features to their products (such as unrelated, but integrated features including a non-streaming media player, and download tools).
Their product was good up to and including RealPlayer G2. But now it sucks. And their product sucking has nothing to do with Microsoft. It has to do with being managed by people who do not understand what the users want.
I can imagine the board room at Intel where the chairman is yelling, "The 3rd quarter numbers suggest we aren't going to make Moore's law this year! I want people to double their efforts -- cancel lunch until further notice!"
Actually, I would guess that there are a few Intel insiders that care about keeping up with Moore's law. They don't want people to start chanting "Moore's Law is dead", which is what would happen as soon as Intel fell more than six months behind.
Actually, I could picture rabid vigilantes wanting working for a free e-mail service. I could also picture people working for Big Brother turning into rabid vigilantes.
I had no problem getting it ten minutes ago, and that would be ten minutes after you posted. I got it on the second try, but there's been other times I had to try two mirrors.
In fact, I'm not sure that California's big, but liberal government won't always work out for the benefit of the state, in the long run. Sure, they tax the hell out of corporations, but if Arizona (where I live) ever has a better economy than CA, I'll be damn surprised. It seems that education, and labor laws that are good for the workers, are a better investment than letting the companies keep ther money.
My first boss was nice, pretty much like yours I guess. He cared about making money, and wanted his employees to be just as excited about it as he was. They had electronic time clocks that printed out the hours, and he always said, to not do any work, more than getting your coat from the back, when you're off the clock. Training was paid, as it should be. This was at Chick-Fil-A. So you get Sundays off, too.
I quit just because I was a restless 16 year old, and wanted to find a better job. They had a new manager by this time, but he was also fair. After a while, I needed to find a new job, and I didn't feel like asking for my old job back, mainly because I was shy about it I guess. Then I went to Taco Bell. They had me read all kinds of stuff for free before clocking in, and then had me wash their greasy grimy dishes in the back on my first day. I hated it, so I quit, saying, I don't want to be there for even five minutes if I'm not getting paid for those five minutes. So I went backed to Chick-Fil-A. The manager wasn't there, but I filled out an application. He called me that Friday and said, "I'm always glad to get a good guy back", and asked me if I wanted to work tomorrow. I gladly accepted.
The first boss (who I was glad hired me) got to open up a store, and that is why he left. Imagine that, a business that actually REWARDS honesty.
What a rotten dishonest person you are. Getting a "few extra min" at the expense of the needy. No wonder we have to pay so much taxes and bring the nation into debt to keep these companies afloat. Plus, don't you realize, the expense just gets passed onto the customer.
Sorry, I worked at Wal-Mart for a summer once, and that is really what they try to engrain into you during all the training sessions. Dickheads.
Amazing how you could use something innocous like this to once again remind us how true computing talent goes unrewarded and the people who get the promotions are the "generalists", the people "who know where to look", rather than the people who actually understand the company's products and services, and their computer systems.
Well, as long as you aren't running around "helping" people by reformatting their hard drives, you really aren't that ignorant. Being ignorant is more than just not knowing, it's being closed-minded, and making false assumptions about things.
And the guys that annoy me are the cocky people who spend hours on their computers listening to shitty music, and think they give the best advice about fashion, music, compters, and a whole slew of other things they don't really know about. I had to room with a couple of these guys. That's why I really don't like to hang around them.
I'm a big fan of perl too. And it is very elegant in many ways. Having to use brackets for blocks actually prevents many programmer errors. So does having real division rather than floor division by default.
But I still like QuickBasic for the first programming course. And I believe its integer (no suffix) and double%, in BASIC. But Perl would be a close second. It is also simple for the first programming course, and when you learn it you also learn about UNIX. And it has quite a feature list.
Sounds like both. They were computer enthusiasts that never really got down to learning how they actually work. I know a ton of ignorant lusers at my college. They're the kind of people that spend a few hours in front of their computer screwing around with peer-to-peer programs, and using all the little Windoze utilities. Their friends think, oh he's smart, I'll have him fix my computer. And they do their usual prescription - wipe their hard drive without backing up.
And then there are some Mac lusers like this. Completely ignorant about a lot of what goes on (but at least they're not spreading viruses or formatting disks for no reason). But they tend to be more arrogant than PC lusers.
You could have just said "I use windows most of the time, but I am happy to use other operating systems". Your experiences seem to be very subjective. 95% of Windows or Linux users found something that works better for them than HomeSite, or they don't need that sort of product. And your issues getting things to work is dependent on your linux distribution and your hardware.
But if you got the job, and are still happy about it, that's excellent. I am about to graduate from Computer Science, and I must say, I am a little nervous. I am an excellent programmer and have a very broad understanding of computer science topics, and am proficient at many different operating systems and programming languages. But I still have the feeling that finding a job will be difficult.
In order to for you to know what I was talking about, you would have to know what the Gateway Profile was. The Gateway Profile was an all-in-one computer Gateway designed to try to capitalize on the success of the iMac. It wasn't a very successful product. The only place I ever saw one was at a store.
A couple years ago, at this same time, Compaq had a miniture desktop computer out called the iPaq, before the handheld of the same name came out. It is a managed desktop PC, meant for businesses. It was one of the first computers to tout the option of not having legacy serial and paralell ports to save money.
The iPaq desktop is just plain ugly, as well as being slow and a little expensive. The gateway profile was also too slow and even more expensive.
Here is an auction for an iPaq desktop PC: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =4120179567&category=3746
And one for the gateway profile (an early model):
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2796580200&category=51109
Basically, all this goes to show is how far behind PC designers are than Apple's designers. When they try to get creative, they come out with the tackiest of systems and provide no real advantage over the more conventional designs. There are some exceptions to this, such as Alienware. But most of the PCs I see on the shelf, I'd prefer a biege box to. They are just different appearances, whereas apple's actually look better (Well, some of them).
Should be spelled "consistent". I guess the thread subject works for this.;)
But as I said in another post, I was talking about REALLY young programmers. I was in 2nd grade when I learned GW-BASIC, and there couldn't have been a better language for me at that time. Come to think of it, though, I had the caps lock key on the whole time anyway, so case sensitivity wouldn't have really mattered.
At that age, learning that everything has a type is a good way to start. Having the type be a symbol at the end of the variable made things really clear to me. So did having simple for loops and statement delimeters. Having
for (int i=0; i
}
or
for i in range(10):
is not near as easy as understanding:
FOR I = 1 TO 10 ...
NEXT
Another place with simplicity that's lacking in Java/Python/C++?
OPEN "FILE.TXT" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
PRINT #1, "Hello World"
BASIC is a language that a short book can be written about it, and the reader will have an introduction to programming that is niether boring nor difficult. The concepts are engrained because they are part of the syntax. Having keywords like NEXT and OUTPUT are great for beginning programmers. But use VB.NET and all the benefit is gone.
OK, fair enough. I was thinking younger, though, like 2nd or 3rd grade, when I learned programming. Basically algorithms for drawing shapes and stuff. I guess we are talking about two different kinds of beginning programming.
I think Microsoft QuickBASIC is a great environment for early introduction to programming.
And Python isn't a very good language for teaching scope concepts used in C/C++/C#/Java either. But some other things give it an advantage over others for beginners, such as not having to declare variables.
As for those people that ask you to check their code, it would be nice if Java gave better error messages (I assume that's what you're using, because that sounds like a Java mistake to me). The GNAT implementation of Ada says "possible misspelling of ****", which I think would be extremely helpful to begining programmers. Then, if they could read, they wouldn't be asking you.
Finding out on April Fool's day that you've lost your job is not fun. But, when you think about it, there aren't any times that are any better. At least when the jobs are actually gone will be start of the summer, which is in many ways a good time to move.
The closing isn't surprising at all. To sell at a store like this, you need to have a more attractive product. Gateway had the Profile, which was not a good product. It saved space, but it performed poorly, and was not designed to be easily maintained. It was similar to the iPaq in these respects, and neither succeeded. They failed to attract certain market segments that made the iMac popular, namely education.
Besides that, all they had were a bunch of run-of-the mill computers. Their company really did not have much vision. And when they made an interesting move (acquiring Amiga or saying that DRM is bad), they didn't follow through with it.
The future of Gateway looks pretty bleak. I think in this move they are probably looking to be acquired. They have never really got it. Trying to show vision, and then turning their back on that vision. Poor service, trying to undersell, not finding a customer base.
Slashdot Mirror
It's this kind of attitude that causes businesses to lose market share. If they raise their price a couple bucks but lose a quarter of their market, they break even, but leave a bad taste in the customer's mouth. Then, rather than having them look around for more stuff to buy, they just avoid buying things.
I really think the music industry is shooting itself in the foot by charging so much money and taking legal action against file swappers. The majority of my friends still bought CD's after Napster came into use, but now they've started boycotting the RIAA because they are leading an assault against our personal freedom. Personally, I buy used, and don't hesitate to get anything off the Internet that I wouldn't ask a friend to let me borrow and make a copy of. I don't think it's right to get new music for free if you like the band, but I don't think it's right to feed the RIAA at this point, hence the used CDs.
And once I get some free time, I'll look into the indie bands. There are a few I like now, but I haven't been able to afford tickets or CDs for quite some time now.
That is correct, I believe, and very succinctly written. Too bad you're an AC and I have no mod points. The only thing most people see is the other answer on the thread, the wrong answer. Hopefully this will draw attention to the right answer.
I personally prefer BSD-style licenses. But I am not anti-GPL and would be happy to contribute to GPL projects, such as Linux. And I get sick of hearing all these myths about the GPL.
Wait for it...
DOGSHIT.
Well, Apple programming hasn't always sucked. There's been some great products, such as Metrowerks CodeWarrior. And the Apple GUI toolbox was way ahead of its time.
But this would have been useful for a very small number of Linux geeks five years ago.
And as for the magazine ref, the way I see it is that the guy thought he had something inspiringly funny when he wrote that. That's the kind of things that gets written in top magazines. But this was just dumb.
Their product was good up to and including RealPlayer G2. But now it sucks. And their product sucking has nothing to do with Microsoft. It has to do with being managed by people who do not understand what the users want.
Actually, I would guess that there are a few Intel insiders that care about keeping up with Moore's law. They don't want people to start chanting "Moore's Law is dead", which is what would happen as soon as Intel fell more than six months behind.
Actually, I could picture rabid vigilantes wanting working for a free e-mail service. I could also picture people working for Big Brother turning into rabid vigilantes.
The grandparent probably thinks he's going to get published in the Smithsonian. What an ass.
I had no problem getting it ten minutes ago, and that would be ten minutes after you posted. I got it on the second try, but there's been other times I had to try two mirrors.
In fact, I'm not sure that California's big, but liberal government won't always work out for the benefit of the state, in the long run. Sure, they tax the hell out of corporations, but if Arizona (where I live) ever has a better economy than CA, I'll be damn surprised. It seems that education, and labor laws that are good for the workers, are a better investment than letting the companies keep ther money.
I quit just because I was a restless 16 year old, and wanted to find a better job. They had a new manager by this time, but he was also fair. After a while, I needed to find a new job, and I didn't feel like asking for my old job back, mainly because I was shy about it I guess. Then I went to Taco Bell. They had me read all kinds of stuff for free before clocking in, and then had me wash their greasy grimy dishes in the back on my first day. I hated it, so I quit, saying, I don't want to be there for even five minutes if I'm not getting paid for those five minutes. So I went backed to Chick-Fil-A. The manager wasn't there, but I filled out an application. He called me that Friday and said, "I'm always glad to get a good guy back", and asked me if I wanted to work tomorrow. I gladly accepted.
The first boss (who I was glad hired me) got to open up a store, and that is why he left. Imagine that, a business that actually REWARDS honesty.
Sorry, I worked at Wal-Mart for a summer once, and that is really what they try to engrain into you during all the training sessions. Dickheads.
Amazing how you could use something innocous like this to once again remind us how true computing talent goes unrewarded and the people who get the promotions are the "generalists", the people "who know where to look", rather than the people who actually understand the company's products and services, and their computer systems.
Props. MAD PROPS.
Only supported on Windows and Macs.
And the guys that annoy me are the cocky people who spend hours on their computers listening to shitty music, and think they give the best advice about fashion, music, compters, and a whole slew of other things they don't really know about. I had to room with a couple of these guys. That's why I really don't like to hang around them.
But I still like QuickBasic for the first programming course. And I believe its integer (no suffix) and double%, in BASIC. But Perl would be a close second. It is also simple for the first programming course, and when you learn it you also learn about UNIX. And it has quite a feature list.
And then there are some Mac lusers like this. Completely ignorant about a lot of what goes on (but at least they're not spreading viruses or formatting disks for no reason). But they tend to be more arrogant than PC lusers.
But if you got the job, and are still happy about it, that's excellent. I am about to graduate from Computer Science, and I must say, I am a little nervous. I am an excellent programmer and have a very broad understanding of computer science topics, and am proficient at many different operating systems and programming languages. But I still have the feeling that finding a job will be difficult.
A couple years ago, at this same time, Compaq had a miniture desktop computer out called the iPaq, before the handheld of the same name came out. It is a managed desktop PC, meant for businesses. It was one of the first computers to tout the option of not having legacy serial and paralell ports to save money.
The iPaq desktop is just plain ugly, as well as being slow and a little expensive. The gateway profile was also too slow and even more expensive.
Here is an auction for an iPaq desktop PC:m =4120179567&category=3746
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
And one for the gateway profile (an early model):m =2796580200&category=51109
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ite
Basically, all this goes to show is how far behind PC designers are than Apple's designers. When they try to get creative, they come out with the tackiest of systems and provide no real advantage over the more conventional designs. There are some exceptions to this, such as Alienware. But most of the PCs I see on the shelf, I'd prefer a biege box to. They are just different appearances, whereas apple's actually look better (Well, some of them).
Should be spelled "consistent". I guess the thread subject works for this. ;)
But as I said in another post, I was talking about REALLY young programmers. I was in 2nd grade when I learned GW-BASIC, and there couldn't have been a better language for me at that time. Come to think of it, though, I had the caps lock key on the whole time anyway, so case sensitivity wouldn't have really mattered.
At that age, learning that everything has a type is a good way to start. Having the type be a symbol at the end of the variable made things really clear to me. So did having simple for loops and statement delimeters. Having
for (int i=0; i }
or
for i in range(10):
is not near as easy as understanding:
FOR I = 1 TO 10
...
NEXT
Another place with simplicity that's lacking in Java/Python/C++?
OPEN "FILE.TXT" FOR OUTPUT AS #1
PRINT #1, "Hello World"
BASIC is a language that a short book can be written about it, and the reader will have an introduction to programming that is niether boring nor difficult. The concepts are engrained because they are part of the syntax. Having keywords like NEXT and OUTPUT are great for beginning programmers. But use VB.NET and all the benefit is gone.
I think Microsoft QuickBASIC is a great environment for early introduction to programming.
And Python isn't a very good language for teaching scope concepts used in C/C++/C#/Java either. But some other things give it an advantage over others for beginners, such as not having to declare variables.
As for those people that ask you to check their code, it would be nice if Java gave better error messages (I assume that's what you're using, because that sounds like a Java mistake to me). The GNAT implementation of Ada says "possible misspelling of ****", which I think would be extremely helpful to begining programmers. Then, if they could read, they wouldn't be asking you.
You could try teaching them LOGO or lisp, but lisp is boring and LOGO is no better than BASIC.
The closing isn't surprising at all. To sell at a store like this, you need to have a more attractive product. Gateway had the Profile, which was not a good product. It saved space, but it performed poorly, and was not designed to be easily maintained. It was similar to the iPaq in these respects, and neither succeeded. They failed to attract certain market segments that made the iMac popular, namely education.
Besides that, all they had were a bunch of run-of-the mill computers. Their company really did not have much vision. And when they made an interesting move (acquiring Amiga or saying that DRM is bad), they didn't follow through with it.
The future of Gateway looks pretty bleak. I think in this move they are probably looking to be acquired. They have never really got it. Trying to show vision, and then turning their back on that vision. Poor service, trying to undersell, not finding a customer base.