On the other hand, if I use the softeware to make money or my life easier I will pay for it.
Example 1:
My work was interested in runing some basic 3d software to make certain things easier. I hop onto a H.L. server and download the 4 biggies, try them all out. We find the one that is appropriate to our needs. That company now has a sale (Did this one 2 weeks ago). 2 out of the four I downloaded did have "trial" editions, but guess what, the trial editions did not tell us what we most wanted to know, ie, how the renders were.
Example 2:
I personally pirate shareware all the time. I hate "functionally limited demo's" (see above, there is always something missing). Usually, I install, use it for a while, then discover it is useless to me and delete. If I find I am using their software regularly, I will pay them for it.(For those keeping track, I will also donate to OSS if that is the solution, you get what you pay for.)
Example 3:
My career of choice is 2d graphics, the print world. I find video effects mildly interesting...as a hobby. There is no I could pay the $1000+ that most high end video editing software requires. Especially considering that none of this software is the do-it-all sort. So I have lot's of pirated video software. However, I feel no guilt on this. I am making no money off of their product. And they have not "lost" a sale, as I would not have bought it in the first place. On the other hand, if someday I do a freelance job these companies that have unwittingly supplied me with a learning tool will be the first to receive my money.
What are these under-30 people doing for sustenance then?
I am gonna take a stab at answering this as I have friends who are doing it.
(For the record I'm 31 and been employed with the same folks for 8 years)
Many people/friends I know now are not so much opting out, as they are lowering what they feel they need. Many work cash only jobs (bars and night clubs). They have stopped caring about the 2 cars, owning a home etc. Part of this is the feeling that there is no way in hell that they would even be able to acheive it (welcome to San Francisco, here's your 3 room mates and a bus pass). On the other hand, they are not un-happy about it. They have money in their pockets, plenty of free time and few responsibilities. Hell, I'm jealous, I work 8-10 hours a day, and occasionally pull a double by going and working at a nightclub as well. They have accepted what I have not, which is that stuff doesn't matter as much. And for some, this is even not the case, you can make $150 a night working security, you can make $3-500 on a friday or saturday as a bar tender. If your tastes are simple, you can live pretty well on $600-1000 dollars a week. And remember, the key word here is cash.
Now granted, this is only one segment that I am personally aquainted with. I also know the perpetual students, and a couple of the stay-at-home-late-twenty-somethings. I would be willng to go out on a limb and say that these people "opting out" are not really leaving behind work, or taking care of them selves (except those that are staying with mom and dad). They have just decided to go a different route.
Starbucks now sells so many things that coffee is almost an afterthought. Think that won't affect the quality of the product?
Me standing in line behind 3 people:
P1: I'd like a [insert complicated espresso drink here]
S.C.: That will be right up.
P2: I would like [insert complicated frozen thingy here]
S.C.: That will be right up, would you like a muffin?
P3: I would like a [insert even more insanely complicated decaffienated steamed something or other here]
P3: Oh, and a lo-fat scone
S.C.: Sure thing [bright smile]
Me: I'd like a large coffee.
S.C.: That will take 5 minutes, we have to brew some up
All that for some weak ass coffee. I'm off to Peet's
You could take the potato cannon method a step further (and dangerouser) Use propane instead of compressed air, create a decent launch tube for a cd with a small rubber seal, add an igniter at the end of the barrel...and weeee flaming cds. One solenoid valve, some 300psi tubing, a 12 volt battery, a few wires and a momentary switch.
I wonder if wrapping a few turns of gauze over the cd would get you both the surface area and seal you need for a compressed air release? It is amazing what 200 psi will get you in velocity.p.
Using propane and kerosene soaked tennis balls, you can get a spectacular show...warning...big flat non flammable area highly reccomended.
Re:CDRoms shatter and 'explode' - be careful
on
Homemade CD Shooter?
·
· Score: 1
The show MythBusters did a segment on this. They had to work pretty hard to get an un-damaged CD to shatter. If I recall correctly, they had to modify a router to spin a CD up to about 40,000 rpm before a standard CD would go ka-blooey
Once a week I go through Tivo's listings under the catagories I am interested in, find the shows I would would like to see, and select them to record. i never pay attention to when they are on, except in the rare cases of conflicts. Then I watch them when I want. Heck, if it wasn't for the annoying little blip in the lower right hand corner, I doubt I would even know what channel they are on.
I have not watched "live" TV in about two years now. It's been a hell of a relief not having to sit through commercials.
But, from what I've seen in my travels around printing, it's dying a slow death thanks to online content. Packaging is the place to be in printing/graphic arts now adays
For what it's worth, I work in a pre-press/color shop, and we are doing anything but dying. The biggest difference we have seen over the past few years has been the dcline of shipping film, and an increase in shipping of pdf and TIFF/IT files to pubs.
We upgrade our macs every 6-8 months, in a scatter shot method. Those of us who work in the color/retouching side never have enough speed etc. File sizes have been balooning ridiculously recently, average has gone from about 75 mb 3-4 years ago to 350mb now, as people want to repurpose their imagery across many mediums, from the web to magazine, billboard and duratrans (the backlit "posters" you see mainly in airports).
The print industry is in no way dying, it is just slowly shifting gears.
why does apple feel the need to take successful software ideas and incorporate them into their OS?
I am a long time mac user, and make a decent living thanks to apple, however, this stuff always manages to piss me off.
The developers of Konfabulator have created an elegent piece of software that is easily expandable by anyone with a modicum of scritpting knowledge. So what does apple do, steal the idea and incorporate it.Their Dashboard implementation is a nice take on it, but is such an obvious rip off, that it must be frustrating to the creators of it.
Wouldn't it be more fair to their developers to license it at then expand on it by tying it inot the OS?
Every time I'm in best buy, I have no less than 6 people ask me if I need help with something.
I am amazed at this...I have been to Best Buy 3 times, all three times, I have come very close to leaping out from behind giant tv's and tackling someone to get a little help. I finally decided the craptasticly awful service wasn't worth anything, and went else where. It is not even convenient if you do not have questions, then you grab what you want...and wait in line.
The funny thing, on this news today, roxio/napster's stock rose $1 (or 23%) according to the guy on the radio on the way home...I am currently to lazy to look up napsters stock price
It was more of a comment on the fact that, from the programming side, it is probably much easier to come up with a solution for one location, than something that will work in a multitude of locations.
If he had a single starting point, then he could conceivably come up with a single route that did take into account the various contours of his lawn,and come up with a decent end result.
On a side note, growing up we had a lawn that was relatively flat in one direction, and sloped down to the sidewalk in the other. My brother and I would push the lawnmower up the hill, make the turn, and then let it roll it's self down to the sidewalk. Made some pretty straight lines...without taking into account the fact that it was an "irregular surface in terms of height and traction".
We just liked the idea of shoving the whirling blade of death down a hill.
Anyways, to sum up, for his situation (which for all we know is a 10'x10' plot in central London) there may be a nice simple solution that only would work for him.
If this is something that is for you only, and not for sale, then I would think it would be easy.
If you know what objects are fixed,such as pathways, bird feeders, what-not, you could build the controller from one of those old dump trucks from the 80's that let you pre-program a course by feet and angle of turn, etc. All you need to add is a bar attached to a kill switch for when the neighbors cat/kid/dog runs over to check it out.
So, somewhere in 2007, this will be released with the often delayed Longhorn. At the least, this will hopefully bring them up to the current level of web standards.
Unfortunately, I would believe there is a better chance that they will instead incorporate a bunch of elements above and beyond standards compliance, that ties a user into IE and Longhorn combo, trying yet again to lock out other web browsers.
Microsoft has seemingly lowered it's self another step.
They used to be a company that copied exisiting technology and made it "good enough", if slightly annoying. Now, they are turning into a reactionary company, trying to play catch up to existing software with some future release.
I was talking to a friend of mine who got past some DRM he had on a CD by going to the preferences in iTunes, and turning on "use error correction" under the "importing" section.
also works pretty well for those cd's that have been floating around your car for a while.
I have 13,300 songs in my library and none of the issues you have mentioned, this is on a 2x2ghz G5, I shared the library and then scrolled through it on my laptop (400 mhz ti) and saw a slight slowdown in scrolling, about the equivalent of every three to four pages of scrolling, it would hiccup and then catch up the re-draw. I am guessing this is due to netowrk speed more than anything else. I used to have wierd scrolling and stalling issues on my laptop (less than 3,000 songs), which went away some where in the iTunes upgrade cycle, although in there I also doubled the RAM, so I am not sure which it was.
Artists do not make money playing concerts; promoters make money, bands break even.
ummm, no, unless you are a major promotion company Bill Graham Presents, Clear Channel, etc. As a promoter you are luck to make a living wage.
As an example:
My girlfriend used to promote bands here in SF, one show she did sold approximately 1200 tickets, at $25 a ticket, she had $30,000 coming in. sounds good.
oops
band cost: 12,000
rider costs: 2,500
venue rental: 4,000
promotion: 2,000
equipment rental for night of show: 5,000
staff costs: 1,500
for a rough total of: 27,000
she worked her ass of for one month, and worked somewhat hard for another month. So let's call it $3,000 for working her ass off for one and a half months. $12.50 an hour. whoopee.
The band, showed up, had a hotel room waiting, had all but their specialty lighting waiting, had half their instruments waiting. did a 45 minute sound check, played for an hour and 15 minutes, and made 12,000, minus 10% for management, and let's say another 20% for incidentals, they made 8,400 for one nights work. 3 people in the band, 2800 each, they played a city a night for something like 3 months, with a conservative 2 days off a week, each band member made about $150,000 in three months.
this is a relatively niche oriented band, with a consistent following, but they are making decent money at it.
promoters don't really start to make money until they own venues, and can negotiate multiple shows, etc.
I could go on and on, but as in anything music business related, the bigger you are the more you make. not much to do with talent, most the folks I know that are in the live music business are in it because they really like a certain style of music, or possibly they just love music, but you sure aren't in it for the money.
not sure if this is sarcasm, but i'll bite:
OSX Panther Server, 10 seat $499, unlimited seat $999
or
A dual 2ghz G5 xServe will run you about $3,999 which includes the unlimited seat license.
Paraphrased from the article:
30% of Internet users use a pop-up blocker.
With SP2, that number is going to skyrocket.
Pop-Under ads have the highest click through.
I am going to engage in some guess work, and assume that of that 30%, over 50% are only blocking pop-ups passively.
Probably, they do not give a damn about the type of user who is actively working on blocking ads over all. They are going after the large number of folks like my dad, who installed google toolbar, so he could still use his familiar IE with out all the annoying pop-ups.
Final guess:
If there is a group of people that will hate your product, and actively try and get around viewing your product. Why would they care if they piss you off? You are already mad.
Re:I once got an actual stanza...
on
Spam as Poetry
·
· Score: 1
I have been getting these alot lately, they seem to always get by all spam filters in their way. I don't understand either, some of the gibberish is getting quite long.
My only thought is that it is some sort of thingy that works with outlook. I have no idea what that would be, but it shows up as giberish in OSX mail, PowerMail and thunderbird. I have managed to never launch outlook, or entourage for that matter, and have no plans too. My PC is an internet virgin, and will remain so.
Actually, I will be including in the instruction video a how to on conversing in loud areas, a free teaser:
You place your speaking apparatus (mouth) aprox 1-2 inches from the intended recepient's listening apparatus (ear). Increase the volume of your speaking level until the recepient stops saying "WHAT?"
My friends and I though, have this other method we have been using, I am actually thinking of patenting it:
We walk across the room and (this is the neat part) hold a conversation using (get this...) only our voices.
Revolutionary for the times I admit, but just watch, give it a few years, everyone will be doing it, if only so as to not have to try and pick the message directed to them from the sea of waving arms and blinking lights at the concert.
As a part time DJ, I can say with some authority, that this is a good way to get your phone thrown across the room.
It's bad enough being surrounded by bouncing people and seizure inducing light shows with out some jackass waving their blinking cell phone at me to play some song I have no intention of playing anyway.
There are also non-profit corporations--which, intentionally or not, I am sure that scaled composites currently is.
Maybe I should have replaced the word money for the word profit. Even a "non-profit"corporation is looking to earn money so as to use it towards whatever it is they are not making money on.
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, if I use the softeware to make money or my life easier I will pay for it.
Example 1:
My work was interested in runing some basic 3d software to make certain things easier. I hop onto a H.L. server and download the 4 biggies, try them all out. We find the one that is appropriate to our needs. That company now has a sale (Did this one 2 weeks ago). 2 out of the four I downloaded did have "trial" editions, but guess what, the trial editions did not tell us what we most wanted to know, ie, how the renders were.
Example 2:
I personally pirate shareware all the time. I hate "functionally limited demo's" (see above, there is always something missing). Usually, I install, use it for a while, then discover it is useless to me and delete. If I find I am using their software regularly, I will pay them for it.(For those keeping track, I will also donate to OSS if that is the solution, you get what you pay for.)
Example 3:
My career of choice is 2d graphics, the print world. I find video effects mildly interesting...as a hobby. There is no I could pay the $1000+ that most high end video editing software requires. Especially considering that none of this software is the do-it-all sort. So I have lot's of pirated video software. However, I feel no guilt on this. I am making no money off of their product. And they have not "lost" a sale, as I would not have bought it in the first place. On the other hand, if someday I do a freelance job these companies that have unwittingly supplied me with a learning tool will be the first to receive my money.
I am gonna take a stab at answering this as I have friends who are doing it.
(For the record I'm 31 and been employed with the same folks for 8 years)
Many people/friends I know now are not so much opting out, as they are lowering what they feel they need. Many work cash only jobs (bars and night clubs). They have stopped caring about the 2 cars, owning a home etc. Part of this is the feeling that there is no way in hell that they would even be able to acheive it (welcome to San Francisco, here's your 3 room mates and a bus pass). On the other hand, they are not un-happy about it. They have money in their pockets, plenty of free time and few responsibilities. Hell, I'm jealous, I work 8-10 hours a day, and occasionally pull a double by going and working at a nightclub as well. They have accepted what I have not, which is that stuff doesn't matter as much. And for some, this is even not the case, you can make $150 a night working security, you can make $3-500 on a friday or saturday as a bar tender. If your tastes are simple, you can live pretty well on $600-1000 dollars a week. And remember, the key word here is cash.
Now granted, this is only one segment that I am personally aquainted with. I also know the perpetual students, and a couple of the stay-at-home-late-twenty-somethings. I would be willng to go out on a limb and say that these people "opting out" are not really leaving behind work, or taking care of them selves (except those that are staying with mom and dad). They have just decided to go a different route.
Not by me, Peet's (many less locations than Starbucks) makes coffee that many can not drink, but for us true connes^H^H^H^H adicts, nuthin' beats it.
Also, in my somewhat limited experience, the employees at Peet's are a hell of a lot nicer than their other corporate counterparts.
Me standing in line behind 3 people:
P1: I'd like a [insert complicated espresso drink here]
S.C.: That will be right up.
P2: I would like [insert complicated frozen thingy here]
S.C.: That will be right up, would you like a muffin?
P3: I would like a [insert even more insanely complicated decaffienated steamed something or other here]
P3: Oh, and a lo-fat scone
S.C.: Sure thing [bright smile]
Me: I'd like a large coffee.
S.C.: That will take 5 minutes, we have to brew some up
All that for some weak ass coffee. I'm off to Peet's
I wonder if wrapping a few turns of gauze over the cd would get you both the surface area and seal you need for a compressed air release? It is amazing what 200 psi will get you in velocity.p. Using propane and kerosene soaked tennis balls, you can get a spectacular show...warning...big flat non flammable area highly reccomended.
The show MythBusters did a segment on this. They had to work pretty hard to get an un-damaged CD to shatter. If I recall correctly, they had to modify a router to spin a CD up to about 40,000 rpm before a standard CD would go ka-blooey
Once a week I go through Tivo's listings under the catagories I am interested in, find the shows I would would like to see, and select them to record. i never pay attention to when they are on, except in the rare cases of conflicts. Then I watch them when I want. Heck, if it wasn't for the annoying little blip in the lower right hand corner, I doubt I would even know what channel they are on.
I have not watched "live" TV in about two years now. It's been a hell of a relief not having to sit through commercials.
For what it's worth, I work in a pre-press/color shop, and we are doing anything but dying. The biggest difference we have seen over the past few years has been the dcline of shipping film, and an increase in shipping of pdf and TIFF/IT files to pubs.
We upgrade our macs every 6-8 months, in a scatter shot method. Those of us who work in the color/retouching side never have enough speed etc. File sizes have been balooning ridiculously recently, average has gone from about 75 mb 3-4 years ago to 350mb now, as people want to repurpose their imagery across many mediums, from the web to magazine, billboard and duratrans (the backlit "posters" you see mainly in airports).
The print industry is in no way dying, it is just slowly shifting gears.
I am a long time mac user, and make a decent living thanks to apple, however, this stuff always manages to piss me off.
The developers of Konfabulator have created an elegent piece of software that is easily expandable by anyone with a modicum of scritpting knowledge. So what does apple do, steal the idea and incorporate it.Their Dashboard implementation is a nice take on it, but is such an obvious rip off, that it must be frustrating to the creators of it.
Wouldn't it be more fair to their developers to license it at then expand on it by tying it inot the OS?
Oh, and you also get WMA files. blech.
Somethings aren't worth the price.
I am amazed at this...I have been to Best Buy 3 times, all three times, I have come very close to leaping out from behind giant tv's and tackling someone to get a little help. I finally decided the craptasticly awful service wasn't worth anything, and went else where. It is not even convenient if you do not have questions, then you grab what you want...and wait in line.
The funny thing, on this news today, roxio/napster's stock rose $1 (or 23%) according to the guy on the radio on the way home...I am currently to lazy to look up napsters stock price
If he had a single starting point, then he could conceivably come up with a single route that did take into account the various contours of his lawn,and come up with a decent end result.
On a side note, growing up we had a lawn that was relatively flat in one direction, and sloped down to the sidewalk in the other. My brother and I would push the lawnmower up the hill, make the turn, and then let it roll it's self down to the sidewalk. Made some pretty straight lines...without taking into account the fact that it was an "irregular surface in terms of height and traction". We just liked the idea of shoving the whirling blade of death down a hill.
Anyways, to sum up, for his situation (which for all we know is a 10'x10' plot in central London) there may be a nice simple solution that only would work for him.
If you know what objects are fixed,such as pathways, bird feeders, what-not, you could build the controller from one of those old dump trucks from the 80's that let you pre-program a course by feet and angle of turn, etc. All you need to add is a bar attached to a kill switch for when the neighbors cat/kid/dog runs over to check it out.
Unfortunately, I would believe there is a better chance that they will instead incorporate a bunch of elements above and beyond standards compliance, that ties a user into IE and Longhorn combo, trying yet again to lock out other web browsers.
Microsoft has seemingly lowered it's self another step.
They used to be a company that copied exisiting technology and made it "good enough", if slightly annoying. Now, they are turning into a reactionary company, trying to play catch up to existing software with some future release.
also works pretty well for those cd's that have been floating around your car for a while.
I have 13,300 songs in my library and none of the issues you have mentioned, this is on a 2x2ghz G5, I shared the library and then scrolled through it on my laptop (400 mhz ti) and saw a slight slowdown in scrolling, about the equivalent of every three to four pages of scrolling, it would hiccup and then catch up the re-draw. I am guessing this is due to netowrk speed more than anything else. I used to have wierd scrolling and stalling issues on my laptop (less than 3,000 songs), which went away some where in the iTunes upgrade cycle, although in there I also doubled the RAM, so I am not sure which it was.
ummm, no, unless you are a major promotion company Bill Graham Presents, Clear Channel, etc. As a promoter you are luck to make a living wage.
As an example:
My girlfriend used to promote bands here in SF, one show she did sold approximately 1200 tickets, at $25 a ticket, she had $30,000 coming in. sounds good.
oops
band cost: 12,000
rider costs: 2,500 venue rental: 4,000
promotion: 2,000
equipment rental for night of show: 5,000
staff costs: 1,500
for a rough total of: 27,000
she worked her ass of for one month, and worked somewhat hard for another month. So let's call it $3,000 for working her ass off for one and a half months. $12.50 an hour. whoopee.
The band, showed up, had a hotel room waiting, had all but their specialty lighting waiting, had half their instruments waiting. did a 45 minute sound check, played for an hour and 15 minutes, and made 12,000, minus 10% for management, and let's say another 20% for incidentals, they made 8,400 for one nights work. 3 people in the band, 2800 each, they played a city a night for something like 3 months, with a conservative 2 days off a week, each band member made about $150,000 in three months.
this is a relatively niche oriented band, with a consistent following, but they are making decent money at it.
promoters don't really start to make money until they own venues, and can negotiate multiple shows, etc.
I could go on and on, but as in anything music business related, the bigger you are the more you make. not much to do with talent, most the folks I know that are in the live music business are in it because they really like a certain style of music, or possibly they just love music, but you sure aren't in it for the money.
not sure if this is sarcasm, but i'll bite:
OSX Panther Server, 10 seat $499, unlimited seat $999
or
A dual 2ghz G5 xServe will run you about $3,999 which includes the unlimited seat license.
cheers
30% of Internet users use a pop-up blocker.
With SP2, that number is going to skyrocket.
Pop-Under ads have the highest click through.
I am going to engage in some guess work, and assume that of that 30%, over 50% are only blocking pop-ups passively. Probably, they do not give a damn about the type of user who is actively working on blocking ads over all. They are going after the large number of folks like my dad, who installed google toolbar, so he could still use his familiar IE with out all the annoying pop-ups.
Final guess:
If there is a group of people that will hate your product, and actively try and get around viewing your product. Why would they care if they piss you off? You are already mad.
My only thought is that it is some sort of thingy that works with outlook. I have no idea what that would be, but it shows up as giberish in OSX mail, PowerMail and thunderbird. I have managed to never launch outlook, or entourage for that matter, and have no plans too. My PC is an internet virgin, and will remain so.
You place your speaking apparatus (mouth) aprox 1-2 inches from the intended recepient's listening apparatus (ear). Increase the volume of your speaking level until the recepient stops saying "WHAT?"
My friends and I though, have this other method we have been using, I am actually thinking of patenting it:
We walk across the room and (this is the neat part) hold a conversation using (get this...) only our voices.
Revolutionary for the times I admit, but just watch, give it a few years, everyone will be doing it, if only so as to not have to try and pick the message directed to them from the sea of waving arms and blinking lights at the concert.
It's bad enough being surrounded by bouncing people and seizure inducing light shows with out some jackass waving their blinking cell phone at me to play some song I have no intention of playing anyway.
There are also non-profit corporations--which, intentionally or not, I am sure that scaled composites currently is.
Maybe I should have replaced the word money for the word profit. Even a "non-profit"corporation is looking to earn money so as to use it towards whatever it is they are not making money on.