I know that technically, the bank owns the car until it's paid off... but I'd never buy a car from a lot that did this. It's too much like asking permissions to use your own car.
What about when it's paid off? What about if you're stuck in the wilderness and can't get the code even though the payment is auto-withdrawn... too many ways to screw the consumer.
where I work, we buy the screens. They don't go obsolete nearly as fast and cost a lot to ship.
The PCs are a different story, we lease those and we lease the servers. Comparing a purchase to a lease isn't really fair. Leasing a PC costs a little more but you have other benefits like upgrade costs and tax benefits to more than offset the costs.
Companies have legions of accountants to find out what is more profit friendly... leasing works for some and not for others based on a lot of variables.
Yeah I agree that they're right to go after unpaid taxes... But I guess I'm wondering if the higher taxes on cigarettes don't push some people to find ways around the price. It doesn't make it right, but part of the solution is to ahve a fair tax.
I'm all for paying taxes required by law... but buying something online is perfectly legal.
Here a truth for you. Everytime the tax or regulation "burden" gets to high, it invites people to use the black/grey market. Unfair regulation happened in the prohibition and I can see it happening with cigarettes. The government starts to see certain vices as a golden goose.
The effect is: the more you tax the more the price becomes unbearable and the more likely a product will be trafficked. Obviously, there is a threshhold where people will refuse to pay and instead try to find a way around the high price.
The music industry saw something similar with the advent of digital music. Once people had a decent means of getting around the price-fixing and ridiculous prices, they flocked in droves to embrace the new method. I'm not saying that some piracy won't happen (that's a given), but if CDs had been at what consumers had viewed as a fair price, I think the piracy wouldn't have been quite so bad.
The government wants us to think that taxing a "vice" more than other products is ok. Why? Is it wrong to smoke? It seems arbitrary. What's next salt?... sugar? If these things are truly wrong then make it illegal, don't use them to fill your coffers. --BUT Ahhhhhh... that would remove their income. Wouldn't want that.
The solution is to simply not screw the citizens with high taxes. The government is due some taxes, but once they pass a certain rate, the people are going to be more willing to cheat.
Find a balance where everyone shares in the benefits of consumer use. The government should take it's due share (tax) and stop overtaxing/over-regulating every aspect of people's lives.
Ahhhh gotta love people who are just looking to get pissed off.:) How about you assume the worst instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt... ohh, heh, my bad, thats what you just did.
There are plenty of perfectly good names that won't bring ridicule on your child. Pick one or make one up.
I grew up with a weird name and had kids spit in my face and pick on me and beat me up for it... You're not the one who has to live with the crap you dish out.
U.S. hypocritical, I agree. Show me one nation who's not. The argument made by some here that since the U.S. is hypocritical, we should just shut up and roll over, is insane.
The WTO shouldn't be able to force another country to change it's law against the will of it's citizens. That would remove the rule of the people. The only way to be "perfectly" fair is if all nations have exactly the same laws. Which would mean all nations would meet on the lowest level. Frankly, I'd rather not be able to gamble than to live in a country like China where they regularly kill and imprison anyone with any hint of religion... I'd rather live in the U.S. than in most of the lousy dictator run countries in the world.
How about if we get some perspective here and stop trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not all restriction is bad.
OSX is very nice... which just proves that MS does indeed have competition. My point was that windows isn't crap and that it's monopoly status is IMO mostly based on it's ease of use and quality, especially when compared to thge earlier desktop OSes
Governments overstep their power and instead of simply enforcing laws, agendas come into play.
Microsoft gets a slap on the wrist, but no true enforcement is enacted. (this would be fair)
Microsoft gets bent over and shafted because of public opinion/government power plays.
Microsoft's bad reputation has swollen past the reasonable line. Mod me down if you want, but Windows is still the easiest and most polished OS around... But the fanatic MS-haters can't admit that it is the main reason for windows' success... can it? Of course not, because there is a group of MS-haters that are pushing their agenda... and the ignorant power-hungry polititians are just going with the squeaky wheel instead of being truly fair. I'm as interested as Microsoft being taken down a notch as anyone else, but we're past the stage of being simply fair and simply enforcing laws. We're now into the greedy, lawsuit-happy bastards stage where every government tries to rob the rich corporation for as much dough as possible without really putting restrictions on the monopolistic practices.
Why don't they just write a law that says "if you are bad, we'll take everything you own and you'll be our biatch for the rest of your life"?
I have verizion as my phone... they're the best in the market I live in and I have no need to change. maybe someday someone will come along and offer a better network... until then, this is a pointless action (for me).
Disclaimer: The RIAA will bomb your house if you respond "Yes" to any of the following questions. Please answer truthfully.
SURVEY CO.: "Sir, have you illegally downloaded music in the past 60 days?"
Mr. X: "Uh.. no way, thats illegal!"
SURVEY CO.: "Have you failed to delete the previously downloaded music files?"
Mr. X: "I've actually never illegally downloaded music."
SURVEY CO.: "Don't lie to us! We KNOW who you are and where you live. Our loss in CD sales prove that statistically, you MUST have downloaded at least 50 free CDs."
Mr. X: " OK!, Ok. I did delete those old music files."
SURVEY CO.: "Good job Mr. X. We'll be watching you.
There is NO incentive to tell the truth in a survey like that.
There is no way they could know that.... but the RIAA probably loves them saying it... "Look ma, we're winning!" Some probably have deleted everything our of fear... but those are the users who simply don't know the difference between a bark and a bite from the paper tiger. I haven't deleted a single music file, and I doubt most have...
Clients do not like to hear "No" *From me* because it takes the power out of their hands and puts it in the hands of a nobody like me. It's all about who is boss and it's a ridiculous game.
My solution: never say no. What I do is say, "it'll take "X" number of man hours and will cost you "X". If they want to pay for it, then we're better off and making money, if they balk at the time or price involved, they're essentially telling themselves "No" and I'm not the bad guy.
I think this is the standard way of dealing with it. Frankly the more programming work I do the more I realize that anything can be done, so "No that can't be done" is a lie.
The only true "No" is if you have to tell the client that you can't realistically build "X" in 4 weeks. Either way though, the ball is back in the client's court.
Of course there is one more important factor in this equation. Stupid idiot managers who say "yes" to ANYTHING.
"Can you build the jupiter lander's software by tomorrow?" "YES! of course we can!". Stupid managers do this because they are stupid and have no idea that it's a shot in the head. They think that developers say "No" just for fun or something. They never realize that developers are intelligent and have experience in creating realistic deadlines.
whew... end of rant.
So in order for you to dissuade a client from giving you more work, you need a client who is tight with time or money and a manager who understands the development process and is willing to back up the opinions of his expert staff.
Paypal is not anonymous, so how does it compare to this?. Ahhh, it doesn't.
It's not about reliable payment methods, it's about anonymous reliable payment methods.
Did you run out of good stuff?
on
Ask Larry Niven
·
· Score: 1
I own many of your books and I greatly enjoyed at least 90% of them, but the most recent books seem thrown together. I'm just wondering if you got bored or had other things going on?
You gotta admit, this is a pretty smart trick. MS has a lot of intellogent people in there making things quicker and better. This sort of trick is one that would be cool to see in all browsers, provided that IIS will accept the same trickery from a non-MS browser....
I think it's cool that the company making Duke Nukem forever is willing to spend the money to redesign and rebuild and switch game engines. Duke Nukem has been a success in the past, and I think it's nice to know that this game won't be canned the way other games are when they become even slightly unwieldy.
Most game companies would have dropped it years ago and we would never have a game at all. Some of the most promising games have been dropped because the bean counters couldn't justify it.
There is nothing to cool (and rebellious) as "it's done when it's done" heh.
I can't believe there are so many people saying that it's not a big deal. It's not the loss of anything, it's the principle of the thing. We all know that if if you give em an inch... they'll take a mile. If you happily agree to give them stats for FREE, they will push it and pretty soon they'll be selling your stats to someone somewhere, making money off of you not only from the CD you bought, but from your stats.
I think the least they could do is GIVE you the CD and they make their money off of the stats.
The big deal is that you're just a number to them, you're just an income source and by participating, you're encouraging the process. This process is not in your favor, why help it?
Personally, I don't play many cd's on the computer. I buy a cd, make a cd backup, make mp3s and transfer to MD, from there the CD goes on the shelf. If I find spyware on my computer I rip out all traces, put in blocks for future, and write a nasty-gram to the owners.
A lot of people are too willing to give up their privacy for some little or never used benefit (like "chatting" about a cd). Is that worth it?
Slashdot Mirror
I know that technically, the bank owns the car until it's paid off... but I'd never buy a car from a lot that did this. It's too much like asking permissions to use your own car.
What about when it's paid off?
What about if you're stuck in the wilderness and can't get the code even though the payment is auto-withdrawn... too many ways to screw the consumer.
where I work, we buy the screens. They don't go obsolete nearly as fast and cost a lot to ship.
The PCs are a different story, we lease those and we lease the servers. Comparing a purchase to a lease isn't really fair. Leasing a PC costs a little more but you have other benefits like upgrade costs and tax benefits to more than offset the costs.
Companies have legions of accountants to find out what is more profit friendly... leasing works for some and not for others based on a lot of variables.
Yeah I agree that they're right to go after unpaid taxes... But I guess I'm wondering if the higher taxes on cigarettes don't push some people to find ways around the price. It doesn't make it right, but part of the solution is to ahve a fair tax.
I'm all for paying taxes required by law... but buying something online is perfectly legal.
Here a truth for you. Everytime the tax or regulation "burden" gets to high, it invites people to use the black/grey market. Unfair regulation happened in the prohibition and I can see it happening with cigarettes. The government starts to see certain vices as a golden goose.
The effect is: the more you tax the more the price becomes unbearable and the more likely a product will be trafficked. Obviously, there is a threshhold where people will refuse to pay and instead try to find a way around the high price.
The music industry saw something similar with the advent of digital music. Once people had a decent means of getting around the price-fixing and ridiculous prices, they flocked in droves to embrace the new method. I'm not saying that some piracy won't happen (that's a given), but if CDs had been at what consumers had viewed as a fair price, I think the piracy wouldn't have been quite so bad.
The government wants us to think that taxing a "vice" more than other products is ok. Why? Is it wrong to smoke? It seems arbitrary. What's next salt?... sugar? If these things are truly wrong then make it illegal, don't use them to fill your coffers.
--BUT Ahhhhhh... that would remove their income. Wouldn't want that.
The solution is to simply not screw the citizens with high taxes. The government is due some taxes, but once they pass a certain rate, the people are going to be more willing to cheat.
Find a balance where everyone shares in the benefits of consumer use. The government should take it's due share (tax) and stop overtaxing/over-regulating every aspect of people's lives.
s' a good list, but I think the idea of complex machinery without complex repair tools might be an oxymoron.
Ahhhh gotta love people who are just looking to get pissed off. :)
How about you assume the worst instead of giving people the benefit of the doubt... ohh, heh, my bad, thats what you just did.
amen.
I always want to see whats new, but that line made me really wonder... until I realized that it's a lie.
I knew a lady long ago.. her real given name was
Bunny Robbit
There are plenty of perfectly good names that won't bring ridicule on your child. Pick one or make one up.
I grew up with a weird name and had kids spit in my face and pick on me and beat me up for it... You're not the one who has to live with the crap you dish out.
So someone has a specific email address for their /. account. This is weird because... why?
U.S. hypocritical, I agree. Show me one nation who's not. The argument made by some here that since the U.S. is hypocritical, we should just shut up and roll over, is insane.
The WTO shouldn't be able to force another country to change it's law against the will of it's citizens. That would remove the rule of the people. The only way to be "perfectly" fair is if all nations have exactly the same laws. Which would mean all nations would meet on the lowest level. Frankly, I'd rather not be able to gamble than to live in a country like China where they regularly kill and imprison anyone with any hint of religion... I'd rather live in the U.S. than in most of the lousy dictator run countries in the world.
How about if we get some perspective here and stop trying to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Not all restriction is bad.
only in europe is "near monopoly" a bad thing...
gimme a break. Not very far from "we don't like you" so you have to pay us 1 biiiilion dollars. er... euros.
monopolistic practices are bad, but this has turned into a money grab.
OSX is very nice... which just proves that MS does indeed have competition. My point was that windows isn't crap and that it's monopoly status is IMO mostly based on it's ease of use and quality, especially when compared to thge earlier desktop OSes
Microsoft does something clearly wrong.
Governments overstep their power and instead of simply enforcing laws, agendas come into play.
Microsoft gets a slap on the wrist, but no true enforcement is enacted. (this would be fair)
Microsoft gets bent over and shafted because of public opinion/government power plays.
Microsoft's bad reputation has swollen past the reasonable line. Mod me down if you want, but Windows is still the easiest and most polished OS around... But the fanatic MS-haters can't admit that it is the main reason for windows' success... can it? Of course not, because there is a group of MS-haters that are pushing their agenda... and the ignorant power-hungry polititians are just going with the squeaky wheel instead of being truly fair. I'm as interested as Microsoft being taken down a notch as anyone else, but we're past the stage of being simply fair and simply enforcing laws. We're now into the greedy, lawsuit-happy bastards stage where every government tries to rob the rich corporation for as much dough as possible without really putting restrictions on the monopolistic practices.
Why don't they just write a law that says "if you are bad, we'll take everything you own and you'll be our biatch for the rest of your life"?
I have verizion as my phone... they're the best in the market I live in and I have no need to change.
maybe someday someone will come along and offer a better network... until then, this is a pointless action (for me).
Disclaimer: The RIAA will bomb your house if you respond "Yes" to any of the following questions. Please answer truthfully.
SURVEY CO.: "Sir, have you illegally downloaded music in the past 60 days?"
Mr. X: "Uh.. no way, thats illegal!"
SURVEY CO.: "Have you failed to delete the previously downloaded music files?"
Mr. X: "I've actually never illegally downloaded music."
SURVEY CO.: "Don't lie to us! We KNOW who you are and where you live. Our loss in CD sales prove that statistically, you MUST have downloaded at least 50 free CDs."
Mr. X: " OK!, Ok. I did delete those old music files."
SURVEY CO.: "Good job Mr. X. We'll be watching you.
There is NO incentive to tell the truth in a survey like that.
There is no way they could know that.... but the RIAA probably loves them saying it... "Look ma, we're winning!"
Some probably have deleted everything our of fear... but those are the users who simply don't know the difference between a bark and a bite from the paper tiger.
I haven't deleted a single music file, and I doubt most have...
This is just another PR story for the RIAA.
Firebird (Browser)
Thunderbird (Email)
AVG Anti-virus
7-Zip (unzipper)
OpenOffice.org (office suite)
Gimp (paint package)
Editpad lite (code tool)
Rad Video tools
Winamp (media player)
Wings3D (3d modeler)
All free, all for windows.
life is good.
Google for "Gnuwin2" to find a lot more free windows software.
Clients do not like to hear "No" *From me* because it takes the power out of their hands and puts it in the hands of a nobody like me. It's all about who is boss and it's a ridiculous game.
My solution: never say no.
What I do is say, "it'll take "X" number of man hours and will cost you "X". If they want to pay for it, then we're better off and making money, if they balk at the time or price involved, they're essentially telling themselves "No" and I'm not the bad guy.
I think this is the standard way of dealing with it. Frankly the more programming work I do the more I realize that anything can be done, so "No that can't be done" is a lie.
The only true "No" is if you have to tell the client that you can't realistically build "X" in 4 weeks. Either way though, the ball is back in the client's court.
Of course there is one more important factor in this equation. Stupid idiot managers who say "yes" to ANYTHING.
"Can you build the jupiter lander's software by tomorrow?" "YES! of course we can!".
Stupid managers do this because they are stupid and have no idea that it's a shot in the head. They think that developers say "No" just for fun or something. They never realize that developers are intelligent and have experience in creating realistic deadlines.
whew... end of rant.
So in order for you to dissuade a client from giving you more work, you need a client who is tight with time or money and a manager who understands the development process and is willing to back up the opinions of his expert staff.
Paypal is not anonymous, so how does it compare to this?. Ahhh, it doesn't.
It's not about reliable payment methods, it's about anonymous reliable payment methods.
I own many of your books and I greatly enjoyed at least 90% of them, but the most recent books seem thrown together. I'm just wondering if you got bored or had other things going on?
You gotta admit, this is a pretty smart trick. MS has a lot of intellogent people in there making things quicker and better.
This sort of trick is one that would be cool to see in all browsers, provided that IIS will accept the same trickery from a non-MS browser....
I think it's cool that the company making Duke Nukem forever is willing to spend the money to redesign and rebuild and switch game engines. Duke Nukem has been a success in the past, and I think it's nice to know that this game won't be canned the way other games are when they become even slightly unwieldy.
Most game companies would have dropped it years ago and we would never have a game at all. Some of the most promising games have been dropped because the bean counters couldn't justify it.
There is nothing to cool (and rebellious) as "it's done when it's done" heh.
I can't believe there are so many people saying that it's not a big deal. It's not the loss of anything, it's the principle of the thing. We all know that if if you give em an inch... they'll take a mile. If you happily agree to give them stats for FREE, they will push it and pretty soon they'll be selling your stats to someone somewhere, making money off of you not only from the CD you bought, but from your stats.
I think the least they could do is GIVE you the CD and they make their money off of the stats.
The big deal is that you're just a number to them, you're just an income source and by participating, you're encouraging the process. This process is not in your favor, why help it?
Personally, I don't play many cd's on the computer. I buy a cd, make a cd backup, make mp3s and transfer to MD, from there the CD goes on the shelf. If I find spyware on my computer I rip out all traces, put in blocks for future, and write a nasty-gram to the owners.
A lot of people are too willing to give up their privacy for some little or never used benefit (like "chatting" about a cd). Is that worth it?
hope it's long and happy.