I bought Nokia phone without sound, ringtones, color screen, or camera or anything at al, for $250 few years ago. Now I can't sell it for $10.
with:
They believed iPhone costed $600 hard dollars, and that would be so for a long time. They're now disillusioned since the imaginary value they purchased has just gotten 33% less.
I wonder why you don't consider the possibility that Apple's dropping the price, as quick as it was, might have actually been for some reason. It's like you're imagining that Apple is nefariously giving huge mark-ups, but then when they cut their prices, it's because they had some attack of conscience for charging too much.
Of course, the price cuts (like all price cuts) are designed to move more product. Fine. But there very well might have been some cause beyond that. Maybe Apple got a better price on the flash storage. Perhaps they renegotiated something with AT&T. It's even possible that the price was meant to account for a failure rate in the factory, and the failure rate was found to be lower than expected.
Whatever the particular cause, as you indicated, this stuff happens all the time with high-tech devices. You buy something, and a year later, or sometimes even a couple months later, you can buy something better at a lower price. If you don't want to take that sort of loss, don't buy the expensive new gadgets. Buy the established technology from a couple years ago that people can't sell for $10.
And this is coming from someone who got an 8GB iPhone the first weekend. If I could have paid an extra $100 to get it a month earlier than that, knowing the whole situation and exactly what that money would be buying me, I might have. And I damn well know that in two years, they'll have a new model that smaller, holds more songs, and has more features, and it'll cost the same or less. But I have the money and don't want to wait for two years.
Unless I wanted to take them to court over $80, I had no recourse.
Well that's my whole point. A whole industry that makes it's money based on "unless you want to take them to court over $80, you have no recourse." Warranties are the same thing sometimes. You know, where they push you to buy a warranty for $20 when you buy a $100 piece of electronics at CompUSA? A lot of times, they'll simply refuse to pay it because they know most people won't want to take them to court over $100. Hell, I'll admit that I value my time at far over $100 a day, so I realized that spending much time on this isn't worth it.
The reason they do rebates is precisely because of people like you. You don't take the time to do it, so they make more money on you.
When you say I "don't take the time to do it" you mean that I "don't take the time to sue them in small claims court"? See, because what I said was that I did send in a bunch of rebates. I didn't take the time to devise a whole plan to thwart the scam artists, including certified mail, hours on the phone, and small claims court...
But then that's my whole point-- if it weren't a scam, you wouldn't have to go through all that just to get your money.
I've gotten into the habit of completely ignoring mail-in rebates because I've never once received one. Over the years, I've sent in maybe as many as 10 rebates, and never gotten any kind of a response.
Of course, in the fine print of every rebate is something along the lines of, "We have no legal obligation to actually send you a rebate, even if you send this in. If we believe any piece of information is wrong for any reason, we reserve the right to trash your rebate application."
It's a scam. If they really intended to give you the discount, they'd have an "instant rebate", meaning a price-cut in the store. The whole point of a mail-in rebate is to trick people into thinking things are cheaper than they are. They advertise "$199 w/ mail-in rebate (normally $299)". So you start thinking the product is $199 even though you'll give the store $299 when you buy it. Then, either you forget to send the mail in rebate, or they find some excuse not to honor it. You've just bought the item for $299.
My interpretation is: They're releasing a new version of Eudora, based on Thunderbird. Many of the changes that make Eudora different from Thunderbird will be made through an extension called "Penelope". So "Eudora" will be a modified version of Thunderbird with Penelope already installed, but you can install Penelope with the normal version of Thunderbird and it should kind of work.
I think that's what they're saying, but I'm not positive.
Especially since the "ipod classic" comes in 80/160GB flavors at the same price point( with a small not so good for video screen).
Yeah, that's why it's at the same price point... more space, smaller screen, less-advanced hardware. They can make the iPod Touch small, fast, and durable by using Flash memory, which means less storage space.
All I'm saying is, it's a trade-off. They could have put the 160GB disk in there, but it would be bigger, slower, easier to break, and more expensive. And there might also have been greater engineering problems (heat dissipation?).
Your attitude is part of the problem. It makes the ani-Microsoft crowd look like impractical crazy people, at best. Get off your high-horse.
I don't understand why this site is full of people who are so stupid as to miss the point: Microsoft has a monopoly and has been engaging in anticompetitive practices. Depending on what kind of business you run, you might very well have no choice, or have very little choice, but to give Microsoft some money for some products at some point. That's how Microsoft has engineered the market, and that's the entire problem.
So yeah, I'm sorry I didn't drive my company out of business out of spite for Microsoft, but some of us have responsibility. Not all of our parents let us live in their basement for free.
My company lives or dies by its customer service. Microsoft's treating their customers with contempt is what makes them a bad company, and that's a mistake I won't repeat. Claiming I'm unable to read Word documents makes my company appear incompetent.
I'm sorry, but either you have never run a company and dealt with the responsibility of providing good service, or you're an idiot. I don't think you have to accommodate the client "no matter what", but it's unwise to fail to honor reasonable requests or to fail to anticipate the client's needs.
So no matter what people say or Linux becomes, you'll stick your fingers in your ears and say 'nah nah nah, I can't hear you'.
And no matter what anyone else days, you'll stick your fingers in your ears and say 'nah nah nah, I can't hear you'? I'm not sitting around waiting for people to "say" what Linux becomes, I'm constantly testing it myself. And I'm sorry, but the idea that Linux alternatives can fill every purpose to every Windows-only application is complete bullshit. Say whatever you like, but your saying it won't change the reality.
I'm not new to Unix/Linux, but that's not what I'm talking about. For most of us, there is no point in trying to modify the kernel. The functionality of the kernel is so basic that, in the rare cases it doesn't support the features I need, it's probably because those features aren't really stable yet. Even then, most likely there's a better programmer than me or anyone I have working for me who will have already made their own custom kernel with those features. I'm not putting a customized kernel into a production unit if the kernel was customized by someone new to making modifications to that kernel.
Personally, if I have a need for custom kernels, I'll either hire someone who has experience with such things, or I'll invest the money in getting someone up to speed. But that it's hard for newbies to hack isn't a big downside, since I'm not putting a newbie-hacked kernel into production anyway.
Basically, yes, I've had this need. I've been in the position more than once where I have to deal with clients and partner companies which required we worked in Word format. I've had times where formatting mattered, and we had to make changes, track changes, and pass the same document back-and-forth between companies. Attempting to use OpenOffice for this purpose was insufficient. Attempting to use Word 97 was insufficient. We needed Word 2000 or better or else the formatting was wrong.
Why would you have the need to open Word documents? Just tell your clients to stop sending 'm in that format. They will do that. Really!
Ummm.... yeah, you don't run a business, do you? Do you even have a job that deals with real clients? You have no control over your clients, you can't be rude, and you have to make things easy for them. If all they will run is Word, or all they can run is Word, then you can't just refuse their documents because it's in the wrong format. You'll lose clients that way.
Ok, now let's say that, in order to run your business, you need to read/write Word documents and have them formatted correctly. Try that without buying a copy of Word. Let's say you absolutely need to run some Windows-only application for some dumb reason. What do you do?
You run Windows. Say whatever you like, but sometimes the Linux alternatives aren't enough, WINE doesn't work well enough, and you just have to use a Microsoft product (even if only in a virtual machine). Bingo, you're a Microsoft customer.
Yes, but THEY are a monopoly with anti-competitive practices. Believe me, I've been trying not to use MS products, and I've been successful in some cases. In my company, people use OpenOffice, and internal documents are in ODF. I use OSX/Linux whenever I can.
And I don't continue to pay Microsoft because their new products suck. I haven't bought a new copy of Office or Windows in years now. But I continue to run Windows in places where it's necessary for my business because... well... it's necessary. Therefore I'm still an MS customer. But the company is doing a really crappy job, and as someone who has used Windows for years, it's terrifically disappointing.
To be honest, I really don't, just *don't* understand why people can't agree on satisfactory format. I refuse to use MS Word because it changes so much from version to version, you don't know how it's going to render in a different version, and it's closed anyway. Personally I use ODF and don't have many problems, but I believe you that there are inconsistencies. PDF does successfully give you consistent layouts, but it's only good as a final product. You can't really send someone a PDF and expect them to edit it further (or at least, you shouldn't). Then there's Apple's Pages, which seems to do well, but then there's only one program that reads or writes Pages files.
Seriously, I wish someone could force Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Sun to work together on a single set of office-suite formats, which each suite would support fully. Ok, Microsoft will never do it, and you can't really blame Sun since ODF is the most open, but at least Sun and Apple should work together. If Apple has valid reasons for not using ODF, then let them make suggestions and help revise the format. Make it as consistent as PDF, let users embed fonts if necessary, but still make it editable. I just can't believe that it's an irreconcilable issue.
As a disgruntled Microsoft customer, I'd like to ask "WTF?!"
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something. The people running your company seem to be total dicks.
Solaris codebase is anything but understandable. I have read some of the code and the best way to describe it is "brainnumbing exercise". As such it will always have a limited appeal to any new developer who is facing a choice of where to put his efforts.
Well as someone who's looking to implement Unix servers and not to write things, I'm not sure I care how hard it is for a newbie to jump into kernel hacking. I want a robust, stable, secure kernel. Then you have the rest of the operating system and toolset, and a lot of that stuff is interchangeable. If it's open source, then someone should be able to port it to Solaris, right?
The problem that I've had with both the BSDs and Solaris is installation and management. Maybe it's just because what you learned first will always seem easiest, but the current GNU tools and aptitude make things pretty easy on me. If I could have Debian with a Solaris kernel, ZFS support and all, I'd probably take it.
That's not the question, though. The question is, is Microsoft still engaging in anti-competitive practices? Are they continuing to leverage their monopoly with Windows and their monopoly with Office to reinforce each other? Are they leveraging those monopolies to force users to adopt other Microsoft products? Do they have APIs in Windows/Office/Exchange that they aren't really making public in order to stifle competition? Are they continuing to use their own proprietary standards, protocols, and file-formats when open alternatives are available, purely in order to reinforce their vendor lock-in?
There are more questions of that sort to ask, but the question is, as a monopoly, is Microsoft engaging in anti-trust violations? And though it might not legally be the issue, perhaps most important issue in my mind is, is Microsoft harming the software industry and hampering innovation for the purpose of maintaining a dominant market position?
Basically, is Microsoft causing more harm than good? If so, we should try to change the situation somehow, and antitrust laws seem like a good place to start.
Yes, the reason that Britney Spears sucks is that she just doesn't have enough $200,000 SUVs. A few more Hummers and her music would really improve I think.
I don't know... I bet she's given plenty of hummers, and it hasn't helped her music yet.
Universal are in a losing situation by having their content in only one marketplace.
So they're going to improve their situation by pulling their content out of that marketplace?
The only way that Universal can lose is if they fail to market the new service they have selling the content.
... and let's look at their marketing strategy... to pull their content from the only online media store that's been particularly successful, and prevent their content from playing on the dominant mobile media platform (iPod).
Two wrongs don't make a right. Nothing has been done about a lot of bad situations, but why does that mean that nothing should be done about a particular bad situation?
I still think there's an interesting issue here-- even assuming the submitter has the right to copy/display the work as "fair use", does that mean that YouTube had the same right to be hosting it? What I mean is, even if he only threw it up on Youtube so he could host it on his own site, and his site was exercising fair use, Youtube is still generating profit by allowing people to view the video, and as you mentioned, it isn't necessarily accompanied by commentary.
Notice Viacom didn't sue the submitter for copyright infringement, but still got Youtube to take the video down. I'm not sure I'm making my point clear, but maybe the submitter does have the legal right to post the video, but Youtube doesn't have the right to make money by being the submitter's host for the movie. Is there a legal distinction there?
IANAL, but it seems to me that the submitter might have more luck hosting the video on his own site.
I've heard it said of "artists", "authors", and "composers" in a couple different permutations. Personally, I've always thought the best and most apt version is "Good writers borrow, great writers steal." I don't really know what came first. However, I'm pretty sure that the quote, "good artists copy, great artists steal" is generally attributed to Picasso.
Slashdot Mirror
I bought Nokia phone without sound, ringtones, color screen, or camera or anything at al, for $250 few years ago. Now I can't sell it for $10.
with:
They believed iPhone costed $600 hard dollars, and that would be so for a long time. They're now disillusioned since the imaginary value they purchased has just gotten 33% less.
I wonder why you don't consider the possibility that Apple's dropping the price, as quick as it was, might have actually been for some reason. It's like you're imagining that Apple is nefariously giving huge mark-ups, but then when they cut their prices, it's because they had some attack of conscience for charging too much.
Of course, the price cuts (like all price cuts) are designed to move more product. Fine. But there very well might have been some cause beyond that. Maybe Apple got a better price on the flash storage. Perhaps they renegotiated something with AT&T. It's even possible that the price was meant to account for a failure rate in the factory, and the failure rate was found to be lower than expected.
Whatever the particular cause, as you indicated, this stuff happens all the time with high-tech devices. You buy something, and a year later, or sometimes even a couple months later, you can buy something better at a lower price. If you don't want to take that sort of loss, don't buy the expensive new gadgets. Buy the established technology from a couple years ago that people can't sell for $10.
And this is coming from someone who got an 8GB iPhone the first weekend. If I could have paid an extra $100 to get it a month earlier than that, knowing the whole situation and exactly what that money would be buying me, I might have. And I damn well know that in two years, they'll have a new model that smaller, holds more songs, and has more features, and it'll cost the same or less. But I have the money and don't want to wait for two years.
Unless I wanted to take them to court over $80, I had no recourse.
Well that's my whole point. A whole industry that makes it's money based on "unless you want to take them to court over $80, you have no recourse." Warranties are the same thing sometimes. You know, where they push you to buy a warranty for $20 when you buy a $100 piece of electronics at CompUSA? A lot of times, they'll simply refuse to pay it because they know most people won't want to take them to court over $100. Hell, I'll admit that I value my time at far over $100 a day, so I realized that spending much time on this isn't worth it.
The reason they do rebates is precisely because of people like you. You don't take the time to do it, so they make more money on you.
When you say I "don't take the time to do it" you mean that I "don't take the time to sue them in small claims court"? See, because what I said was that I did send in a bunch of rebates. I didn't take the time to devise a whole plan to thwart the scam artists, including certified mail, hours on the phone, and small claims court...
But then that's my whole point-- if it weren't a scam, you wouldn't have to go through all that just to get your money.
I've gotten into the habit of completely ignoring mail-in rebates because I've never once received one. Over the years, I've sent in maybe as many as 10 rebates, and never gotten any kind of a response.
Of course, in the fine print of every rebate is something along the lines of, "We have no legal obligation to actually send you a rebate, even if you send this in. If we believe any piece of information is wrong for any reason, we reserve the right to trash your rebate application."
It's a scam. If they really intended to give you the discount, they'd have an "instant rebate", meaning a price-cut in the store. The whole point of a mail-in rebate is to trick people into thinking things are cheaper than they are. They advertise "$199 w/ mail-in rebate (normally $299)". So you start thinking the product is $199 even though you'll give the store $299 when you buy it. Then, either you forget to send the mail in rebate, or they find some excuse not to honor it. You've just bought the item for $299.
They're releasing a new version of Eudora, based on Thunderbird. Many of the changes that make Eudora different from Thunderbird will be made through an extension called "Penelope". So "Eudora" will be a modified version of Thunderbird with Penelope already installed, but you can install Penelope with the normal version of Thunderbird and it should kind of work.
I think that's what they're saying, but I'm not positive.
Especially since the "ipod classic" comes in 80/160GB flavors at the same price point( with a small not so good for video screen).
Yeah, that's why it's at the same price point... more space, smaller screen, less-advanced hardware. They can make the iPod Touch small, fast, and durable by using Flash memory, which means less storage space.
All I'm saying is, it's a trade-off. They could have put the 160GB disk in there, but it would be bigger, slower, easier to break, and more expensive. And there might also have been greater engineering problems (heat dissipation?).
Your attitude is part of the problem. It makes the ani-Microsoft crowd look like impractical crazy people, at best. Get off your high-horse.
I don't understand why this site is full of people who are so stupid as to miss the point: Microsoft has a monopoly and has been engaging in anticompetitive practices. Depending on what kind of business you run, you might very well have no choice, or have very little choice, but to give Microsoft some money for some products at some point. That's how Microsoft has engineered the market, and that's the entire problem.
So yeah, I'm sorry I didn't drive my company out of business out of spite for Microsoft, but some of us have responsibility. Not all of our parents let us live in their basement for free.
My company lives or dies by its customer service. Microsoft's treating their customers with contempt is what makes them a bad company, and that's a mistake I won't repeat. Claiming I'm unable to read Word documents makes my company appear incompetent.
I'm sorry, but either you have never run a company and dealt with the responsibility of providing good service, or you're an idiot. I don't think you have to accommodate the client "no matter what", but it's unwise to fail to honor reasonable requests or to fail to anticipate the client's needs.
So no matter what people say or Linux becomes, you'll stick your fingers in your ears and say 'nah nah nah, I can't hear you'.
And no matter what anyone else days, you'll stick your fingers in your ears and say 'nah nah nah, I can't hear you'? I'm not sitting around waiting for people to "say" what Linux becomes, I'm constantly testing it myself. And I'm sorry, but the idea that Linux alternatives can fill every purpose to every Windows-only application is complete bullshit. Say whatever you like, but your saying it won't change the reality.
I'm not new to Unix/Linux, but that's not what I'm talking about. For most of us, there is no point in trying to modify the kernel. The functionality of the kernel is so basic that, in the rare cases it doesn't support the features I need, it's probably because those features aren't really stable yet. Even then, most likely there's a better programmer than me or anyone I have working for me who will have already made their own custom kernel with those features. I'm not putting a customized kernel into a production unit if the kernel was customized by someone new to making modifications to that kernel.
Personally, if I have a need for custom kernels, I'll either hire someone who has experience with such things, or I'll invest the money in getting someone up to speed. But that it's hard for newbies to hack isn't a big downside, since I'm not putting a newbie-hacked kernel into production anyway.
Basically, yes, I've had this need. I've been in the position more than once where I have to deal with clients and partner companies which required we worked in Word format. I've had times where formatting mattered, and we had to make changes, track changes, and pass the same document back-and-forth between companies. Attempting to use OpenOffice for this purpose was insufficient. Attempting to use Word 97 was insufficient. We needed Word 2000 or better or else the formatting was wrong.
Why would you have the need to open Word documents? Just tell your clients to stop sending 'm in that format. They will do that. Really!
Ummm.... yeah, you don't run a business, do you? Do you even have a job that deals with real clients? You have no control over your clients, you can't be rude, and you have to make things easy for them. If all they will run is Word, or all they can run is Word, then you can't just refuse their documents because it's in the wrong format. You'll lose clients that way.
Ok, now let's say that, in order to run your business, you need to read/write Word documents and have them formatted correctly. Try that without buying a copy of Word. Let's say you absolutely need to run some Windows-only application for some dumb reason. What do you do?
You run Windows. Say whatever you like, but sometimes the Linux alternatives aren't enough, WINE doesn't work well enough, and you just have to use a Microsoft product (even if only in a virtual machine). Bingo, you're a Microsoft customer.
Yes, but THEY are a monopoly with anti-competitive practices. Believe me, I've been trying not to use MS products, and I've been successful in some cases. In my company, people use OpenOffice, and internal documents are in ODF. I use OSX/Linux whenever I can.
And I don't continue to pay Microsoft because their new products suck. I haven't bought a new copy of Office or Windows in years now. But I continue to run Windows in places where it's necessary for my business because... well... it's necessary. Therefore I'm still an MS customer. But the company is doing a really crappy job, and as someone who has used Windows for years, it's terrifically disappointing.
To be honest, I really don't, just *don't* understand why people can't agree on satisfactory format. I refuse to use MS Word because it changes so much from version to version, you don't know how it's going to render in a different version, and it's closed anyway. Personally I use ODF and don't have many problems, but I believe you that there are inconsistencies. PDF does successfully give you consistent layouts, but it's only good as a final product. You can't really send someone a PDF and expect them to edit it further (or at least, you shouldn't). Then there's Apple's Pages, which seems to do well, but then there's only one program that reads or writes Pages files.
Seriously, I wish someone could force Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Sun to work together on a single set of office-suite formats, which each suite would support fully. Ok, Microsoft will never do it, and you can't really blame Sun since ODF is the most open, but at least Sun and Apple should work together. If Apple has valid reasons for not using ODF, then let them make suggestions and help revise the format. Make it as consistent as PDF, let users embed fonts if necessary, but still make it editable. I just can't believe that it's an irreconcilable issue.
[/rant]
As a disgruntled Microsoft customer, I'd like to ask "WTF?!"
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something. The people running your company seem to be total dicks.
Solaris codebase is anything but understandable. I have read some of the code and the best way to describe it is "brainnumbing exercise". As such it will always have a limited appeal to any new developer who is facing a choice of where to put his efforts.
Well as someone who's looking to implement Unix servers and not to write things, I'm not sure I care how hard it is for a newbie to jump into kernel hacking. I want a robust, stable, secure kernel. Then you have the rest of the operating system and toolset, and a lot of that stuff is interchangeable. If it's open source, then someone should be able to port it to Solaris, right?
The problem that I've had with both the BSDs and Solaris is installation and management. Maybe it's just because what you learned first will always seem easiest, but the current GNU tools and aptitude make things pretty easy on me. If I could have Debian with a Solaris kernel, ZFS support and all, I'd probably take it.
That's not the question, though. The question is, is Microsoft still engaging in anti-competitive practices? Are they continuing to leverage their monopoly with Windows and their monopoly with Office to reinforce each other? Are they leveraging those monopolies to force users to adopt other Microsoft products? Do they have APIs in Windows/Office/Exchange that they aren't really making public in order to stifle competition? Are they continuing to use their own proprietary standards, protocols, and file-formats when open alternatives are available, purely in order to reinforce their vendor lock-in?
There are more questions of that sort to ask, but the question is, as a monopoly, is Microsoft engaging in anti-trust violations? And though it might not legally be the issue, perhaps most important issue in my mind is, is Microsoft harming the software industry and hampering innovation for the purpose of maintaining a dominant market position?
Basically, is Microsoft causing more harm than good? If so, we should try to change the situation somehow, and antitrust laws seem like a good place to start.
Yes, the reason that Britney Spears sucks is that she just doesn't have enough $200,000 SUVs. A few more Hummers and her music would really improve I think.
I don't know... I bet she's given plenty of hummers, and it hasn't helped her music yet.
Universal are in a losing situation by having their content in only one marketplace.
So they're going to improve their situation by pulling their content out of that marketplace?
The only way that Universal can lose is if they fail to market the new service they have selling the content.
... and let's look at their marketing strategy... to pull their content from the only online media store that's been particularly successful, and prevent their content from playing on the dominant mobile media platform (iPod).
Doesn't sounds like a good start to me...
But it will get people questioning... "What do you mean chose?"
I'm asking that right now. What do you mean by "chose"? Do you mean "choose"?
Two wrongs don't make a right. Nothing has been done about a lot of bad situations, but why does that mean that nothing should be done about a particular bad situation?
I still think there's an interesting issue here-- even assuming the submitter has the right to copy/display the work as "fair use", does that mean that YouTube had the same right to be hosting it? What I mean is, even if he only threw it up on Youtube so he could host it on his own site, and his site was exercising fair use, Youtube is still generating profit by allowing people to view the video, and as you mentioned, it isn't necessarily accompanied by commentary.
Notice Viacom didn't sue the submitter for copyright infringement, but still got Youtube to take the video down. I'm not sure I'm making my point clear, but maybe the submitter does have the legal right to post the video, but Youtube doesn't have the right to make money by being the submitter's host for the movie. Is there a legal distinction there?
IANAL, but it seems to me that the submitter might have more luck hosting the video on his own site.
I've heard it said of "artists", "authors", and "composers" in a couple different permutations. Personally, I've always thought the best and most apt version is "Good writers borrow, great writers steal." I don't really know what came first. However, I'm pretty sure that the quote, "good artists copy, great artists steal" is generally attributed to Picasso.
Noah Wylie, while playing Steve Jobs said that "good artists copy, great artists steal"
That quote is stolen from Picasso, I believe.