The core software hasn't changed for years. They keep charging these guys essentially for bugfixes, not significant functionality
I understand your point, but I would propose the following interpretation: the initial price charged for the POS software did not in fact cover the development costs. They were an introductory fee. The full development costs are/will be recuperated over multiple years. These support fees did not come as a surprise, did they? The customer was advised of this schedule, was he not?
We want to use what we paid for in the way we want
You missed the point: you _did not_ pay for what you got. You paid the lowest price just below the threshold of what the developer can charge before he gets ripped off.
We have to get away from the mentality that "software-is-like-a-toaster". When you buy a toaster, you pay a fair price for that toaster because no one can stick it in some magical Star-Trek replicator and create infinite toasters at no cost.
With software, no matter how much time and money it takes to create it, you can never charge more than the equivalent of the nuisance value of duplicating it. This constitutes a built-in cap on the amount of quality that goes into the product.
Anyway, in a world of subscription-based compensation, you are free to boycott such products. You can limit your business to those products that satisfy your criteria. After all, many of us are happy shopping at Macdonalds and WalMart. The market will decide which models survive.
(BTW you're not a shrink-wrap developer, are you?)
Software is one of the few products that can be reproduced at little cost.
If a developer invests lots of money to develop quality (ie. expensive) software, and charges a reasonably high fee, most users will make illegal copies. If the developer cannot receive compensation, the developer will go out of business.
A subscription model simply spreads out the price over time. By requiring registration, it also reduces the number of unauthorized users.
If you're not prepared to pay a fair price for quality software, then you should buy the one-time $29 product, put up with the bugs and shut up.
Want impeccable quality for $29? What, you go to Macdonalds and demand filet mignon for $1.99? You walk into the Porsche dealership and demand the Carrera for $11,900?
Piracy is the single greatest obstacle to improving the quality of software. In life, you don't get what you don't pay for.
Software is very different from designing a building.
Every building is paid for.
Not every copy of a program is paid for.
If a developer created high-quality software, and attempted to charge a higher price that reflected the quality, the developer would never receive sufficient compensation because the program would soon be pirated.
That is the heart of the software quality problem.
That's not quite the point: a good music store has expert staff who can advise, recommend, let you hear stuff you've never heard of, and tell you why Maria Callas' O mio babbino caro is better than Leontyne Price's.
This is a very perceptive observation: Apple has significantly improved their customers' satisfaction level, as well as minimizing their own (Apple) problems, by settling on a reduced, controlled set of hardware on which to run their OS.
Anyone who has been to the Windows HEC (Hardware) conference will appreciate the lengths to which Microsoft has to go to insure adherence to a common set of standards by all independant vendors and system builders. MS can't tell them what to do, they just publish specs and hope that hardware builders will sing from the same hymn book.
The bottom line is that the increased price of Apple hardware is worth it because it translates into better reliability.
I worked for Xerox, and I couldn't get technical info. I would find out about new products in the trade press.
Later I was a customer, my company bought a 9700 laser printer in 1980 ($500,000 - that's half a million), and those bastards wouldn't give us the technical info we needed to make maximum use of our technology. We were denied font file formats, low-level metacodes for typesetting, etc.
We then reverse-engineered the font format, developed & sold a program called COSMOS to create & edit font files, and Xerox couldn't do anything about it. Our first customer was their Business Information Systems in Rochester, NY!
Sure Xerox is still a big copier company. But Xerox paid the price: today they are an insignificant part of laser printing, and a non-entity in computing.
Just a minor detail: newsprint is acidic, and laminating it will hermetically seal all the chemicals in an airtight container, thus accelerating its turning into brown goo.
You might want to photocopy the original onto acid-free paper, and let the paper breathe.
I used to work for Xerox. They were dominated by nothing but copier-oriented mentality. No products were allowed if they didn't fit in the copier mold. They never realized what they were sitting on (PARC), which is ironic since they made a fortune from an idea everyone else dismissed (see The Billions Nobody Wanted).
In 1979 they invented a laser printer that could do 120 pages a minute, two-sided. Who do you think of today when you hear 'laser printer'? HP, Canon, Lexmark. Sure as heck not Xerox.
There's a great little paperback they give all Xerox new hires: The Billions Nobody Wanted.
It's about the inventor Chester Carlson's difficulties in getting his invention, xerography, to the market.
I think Kodak was also given a crack at xerography. Only an obscure company called Haloid (later Xerox) was interested. Later they also went stale.
Let me tell you about my experience with alternative OS' from the 70's and 80's:
MVS, DOS (the original) for the IBM 360-370 series
OS/3 for the Univac 90/30
OS/4 for the Univac 9400
OS/7 for the Univac 9700
VMOS, VS/9 for the RCA Spectra, Univac 90/60
Exec 8 for the Univac 1108
CADE for the Univac 1900
MPE for the HP 3000
IBM AS/400
NCOS for the Univac 9200
CPE for the SDS/Xerox Sigma
Xerox 9700 running a modified DEC RSTS
Hmmm... Could it be that some companies wither from supporting too many OS? Naahhh... just a coincidence.
Parents want to be able to control what the kids install on the family PC. I don't want my kids installing every piece of junk they download from the Internet.
I want to restrict the installation of new software to the Admin account (me).
I agree that it is unacceptable that software not execute without Admin privilege.
a dot-matrix printer is more expensive than a laser one
This is true. There is also a second issue: when consumer demand evaporates, there is no longer a reason for building a cheap, flimsy version of the device. However, there is still a niche for industrial-strength dot matrix printers: muffler shops, etc.
OKIdata has an extensive line of 9- and 24-pin printers built like tanks, in the $500 range.
'car' and 'cdr' are supposed to be references to machine registers in some prehistoric implementations of LISP.
("Lots of Infuriating Single Parentheses").
Right on... I made (what I thought were) two interesting and topical submissions, only to see them rejected for unspecified reasons. If they were too short, just tell me. I'm not going to spend hours composing a submission with little probability of being published.
And yes, I read the "omelet" baloney.
I have no intention of making any further attempts to submit stories.
If you lease and allow the leasing company to withdraw pre-authorized payments from your bank account, beware of this trap: some companies have a clause (in 4 pt type of course) that allows them to continue withdrawing payments beyond the end of the lease period, under the guise of "rent".
They will not advise you that the lease has ended, and will subtract from your bank account forever. Not refundable.
Plus, the bank will not terminate the pre-authorized payments unless you put a stop payment ($20 a pop).
Slashdot Mirror
I understand your point, but I would propose the following interpretation: the initial price charged for the POS software did not in fact cover the development costs. They were an introductory fee. The full development costs are/will be recuperated over multiple years. These support fees did not come as a surprise, did they? The customer was advised of this schedule, was he not?
We want to use what we paid for in the way we want
You missed the point: you _did not_ pay for what you got. You paid the lowest price just below the threshold of what the developer can charge before he gets ripped off.
We have to get away from the mentality that "software-is-like-a-toaster". When you buy a toaster, you pay a fair price for that toaster because no one can stick it in some magical Star-Trek replicator and create infinite toasters at no cost.
With software, no matter how much time and money it takes to create it, you can never charge more than the equivalent of the nuisance value of duplicating it. This constitutes a built-in cap on the amount of quality that goes into the product.
Anyway, in a world of subscription-based compensation, you are free to boycott such products. You can limit your business to those products that satisfy your criteria. After all, many of us are happy shopping at Macdonalds and WalMart. The market will decide which models survive.
(BTW you're not a shrink-wrap developer, are you?)
Here's the argument:
Piracy is the single greatest obstacle to improving the quality of software. In life, you don't get what you don't pay for.
You can't even get the Slashdot Inner Circle to acknowledge this simple problem.
Kind of makes browsing a sisyphean task.
(Bug happens in IE as well as Firefox)
Every building is paid for.
Not every copy of a program is paid for.
If a developer created high-quality software, and attempted to charge a higher price that reflected the quality, the developer would never receive sufficient compensation because the program would soon be pirated.
That is the heart of the software quality problem.
Have you ever heard of reinsurance?
That's not quite the point: a good music store has expert staff who can advise, recommend, let you hear stuff you've never heard of, and tell you why Maria Callas' O mio babbino caro is better than Leontyne Price's.
Anyone who has been to the Windows HEC (Hardware) conference will appreciate the lengths to which Microsoft has to go to insure adherence to a common set of standards by all independant vendors and system builders. MS can't tell them what to do, they just publish specs and hope that hardware builders will sing from the same hymn book.
The bottom line is that the increased price of Apple hardware is worth it because it translates into better reliability.
(BTM I'm a Windows user).
Later I was a customer, my company bought a 9700 laser printer in 1980 ($500,000 - that's half a million), and those bastards wouldn't give us the technical info we needed to make maximum use of our technology. We were denied font file formats, low-level metacodes for typesetting, etc.
We then reverse-engineered the font format, developed & sold a program called COSMOS to create & edit font files, and Xerox couldn't do anything about it. Our first customer was their Business Information Systems in Rochester, NY!
Sure Xerox is still a big copier company. But Xerox paid the price: today they are an insignificant part of laser printing, and a non-entity in computing.
Just a minor detail: newsprint is acidic, and laminating it will hermetically seal all the chemicals in an airtight container, thus accelerating its turning into brown goo.
You might want to photocopy the original onto acid-free paper, and let the paper breathe.
In 1979 they invented a laser printer that could do 120 pages a minute, two-sided. Who do you think of today when you hear 'laser printer'? HP, Canon, Lexmark. Sure as heck not Xerox.
It's about the inventor Chester Carlson's difficulties in getting his invention, xerography, to the market.
I think Kodak was also given a crack at xerography. Only an obscure company called Haloid (later Xerox) was interested. Later they also went stale.
MVS, DOS (the original) for the IBM 360-370 series
OS/3 for the Univac 90/30
OS/4 for the Univac 9400
OS/7 for the Univac 9700
VMOS, VS/9 for the RCA Spectra, Univac 90/60
Exec 8 for the Univac 1108
CADE for the Univac 1900
MPE for the HP 3000
IBM AS/400
NCOS for the Univac 9200
CPE for the SDS/Xerox Sigma
Xerox 9700 running a modified DEC RSTS
Hmmm... Could it be that some companies wither from supporting too many OS? Naahhh... just a coincidence.
Parents want to be able to control what the kids install on the family PC. I don't want my kids installing every piece of junk they download from the Internet.
I want to restrict the installation of new software to the Admin account (me).
I agree that it is unacceptable that software not execute without Admin privilege.
This is true. There is also a second issue: when consumer demand evaporates, there is no longer a reason for building a cheap, flimsy version of the device. However, there is still a niche for industrial-strength dot matrix printers: muffler shops, etc.
OKIdata has an extensive line of 9- and 24-pin printers built like tanks, in the $500 range.
Other esoteric applications will insure an ongoing demand for durable equipment.
Also, in a post-Armageddon society, you can re-ink a ribbon more easily than you can refill a toner cartridge.
'car' and 'cdr' are supposed to be references to machine registers in some prehistoric implementations of LISP.
("Lots of Infuriating Single Parentheses").
Funny funny... I'm a french canadian living in Nova Scotia, never spent more than three days in the UK :o)
I used to read her column regularly when if was free on Dr. Dobbs, but then they started charging for it.
I have just ordered her book from Barnes & Noble. I heartily recommend it based on her columns.
I'm thinking 'gefuffle'.
And yes, I read the "omelet" baloney.
I have no intention of making any further attempts to submit stories.
Apparently you can't put parens around a URL: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
Apparently you have never heard of the book "IBM and the Holocaust" (http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/)
[1] KFC cooking oil is recycled into engine lubrication?
or
[2] KFC obtains its oil from automotive sources? "SAE" being Society of Aviary Engineers
Hmmm... I sense a 60 Minutes exposé...
Plus, the chicken is fresh.
I've been eating it (from time to time) for forty years, and my cholesterol is very normal.
They will not advise you that the lease has ended, and will subtract from your bank account forever. Not refundable.
Plus, the bank will not terminate the pre-authorized payments unless you put a stop payment ($20 a pop).
I'm going to sell them support on top of that?
Would they pay for my travel time too?.