Why the hell would I buy a textbook for something between 50-100€ and then only read it for a few months, when any well-stocked college library would carry it?
you can. in fact, some students do just that. the number that do this is around the number of copies of the book in the library. in US libraries anyway, you can't re-new your checkout forever. before the semester is over someone else will be able to get in and take your book. or maybe you will just rack up fines and screw someone else that is trying to do just what you were doing. if you were lucky enough to check one out to begin with.
it could be pretty stressful if the week before finals you found out you no longer had a textbook.
That may be 'the best way to control skyrocketing costs
seems like a big leap of faith that these same textbook publishers that are sucking students (and there parents) dry are going to let the e-version of a textbook go for cheaper.
Sure, you can try to enable "legacy interfaces" with other operating systems but their GUIs simply aren't built to be modular.
on windows 7, you can enabled the windows 2000 / nt / 98 theme and it looks and acts *exactly* like windows 2000. i don't think users care *how* it happens under the covers. they don't care if if it's modular. that's something a dev might care about.
If they were just going to write their own applications, after all, then the OS wouldn't need to be compatible with anything at all.
again, yes, it would. if they want to use MSFT dev tools, then yes the OS does need to be compatible with the applications and libraries produced by those tools.
They may say it can run Windows software, but either it won't run MOST of it, or they're just going to be defeating one of the primary purposes of writing their own secure OS
i don't think the purpose of running some windows software is to be able to run arbitrary windows software. they probably want to take advantage of a large windows developer base.
Linux has a "keep user from doing dumb shit" button. It's called non-root access. And it works.
how does it keep them from typing in the admin password when the little dialog asks for it?
and i guess you haven't used windows in oh the last 5 years or more. it has had the same "protection". my wife's win 7 account runs w/ non-admin rights. anytime she tries to install software, she is asked to enter the admin password, which she doesn't have. she's also never had a virus / malware installed.
So, the new Indian OS can make itself 10 times more secure than Windows with the simple expedient of not allowing users to install random shit off the internet.
Your post actually demonstrates that there IS something fundamentally wrong with Windows.
pick your OS. if you are willing to install random shit off the internet, it can be compromised. period. no OS is going to stop that. mac, linux, whatever. they are all subject to this sort of attack.
The trouble with Windows [compatible] OSes is not that it should be capable of running software written for Windows. It is that Windows itself has design weaknesses for various reasons not the least of which are related to its DOS based origins and support for old, misbehaving "legacy" software.
MSFT windows needs (wants) to be backward compatible. a new windows-like OS doesn't have that requirements.
and how long until verizon locks you out of the android market and substitutes the v-cast market instead? soon. the only reason the carrier relinquished a little control to google, allowing their phones to make google money through search, is because they had nothing to compete with the iphone.
now that they have android, watch the noose tighten. carriers just can't stop trying to squeeze a dime out of every aspect of the mobile web. they'll never allow themselves to be relegated to being a pipe.
of course, they don't get that they really don't have android. google sold it to them like "look, it's open source, how much control can we really exert over you?". ha ha. thousands of google employees that are infinitely familiar with the source code means more than they think.
ever listen to music while say browsing the web? yes, dual cores help with things like that.
that's kind of like choosing an equally priced SDTV over an HDTV because well you don't have HDTV service, right now.
folks are acting like a P4 system from 5 years ago is going to forever and ever be fast enough to handle any new software that the average user will ever want to run. you might not *need* dual cores now, but it won't hurt and will almost certainly help in the future.
in your stories, the users waited until they had to upgrade. that is really the most cost-effective thing to do. the only downside is that they didn't plan for the upgrade so it probably resulted in some down time. okay, so if you have an old computer, expect it can die at any time and have a plan in place.
those folks wouldn't have been any better off if they upgraded sooner. pay now or later. paying later allows you to get the best hardware for your $$$, and to maximize the use of the hardware you do have.... which again saves money.
If he actually wanted to get all those XP boxes onto Windows 7, which he should as Windows 7 is MUCH safer for average folks which cuts down on Windows bad rep
rep doesn't really mean much if you have no profit. MSFT makes money off software, unlike apple. that's their bread and butter.
that'd be like saying apple should give a 50% discount on iphone 4's because of the bad rep they are getting from all the iphone 3g users who's phones are now slow and unstable on ios4. think that's going to happen?
Which means that it's cheaper to replace the failed component instead of the whole computer.
that's true when it's very obvious what's wrong with a system and when the owner is adept enough to solve the problem themselves. it's very rare when both of those are true at the same time.
with an older PC or laptop that might be worth $300 at the very most, it doesn't make sense to spend $100+ to have someone perform the repairs in addition to parts. you might as well spend a little more to get a new system that's going to be superior in most every way.
yes of course it's second tier to MS office. that's like expecting to beat google in search or apple at portable music players. MS office is MSFT's flagship bread and butter product.
Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.
devs care about where the money is. apple wins if they can keep their app market more lucrative, regardless of what devs say they plan to do in the future.
your browser's SOP (same origin policy) prevents you from doing this. scripts aren't allowed to make net connections to sites outside the domain of the current page. this is to reduce XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks.
i understand there are standards in the making to allow such things, securely.
man that is just about the dumbest thing i've heard all day.
if you allow people to swim for free, then why would anyone pay? everyone will swim for free. do you agree that the pool owner requires some compensation? he has electric bills, insurance, property taxes. he has to recoup the cost of building in the first place. he has to pay his employees. the pool will go out of business and be emptied and then they'll be no pool for anyone.
moreover, it's his damn pool he can do what he wants. how'd you like it if a bunch of people decided they were going to start squatting in your house. as long as they didn't eat your food or make a mess, it'd cost you nothing right?
you can make the same argument about say music. it costs the record company nothing if people can get the music for free right? eventually, the record company will go under and dissolve, and the musicians won't get paid. why would anyone pay for music when they can just download it for free?
that might be fine with you, but if that's your goal, why don't you simply stop consuming the music in the first place? nothing will change for you. you will either have less music now or less music later. the point is that there are a lot of people that *do* want to pay for the music.
i fully support you if you think record companies offer unfair deals to artists, charge too much, add too much DRM, etc. the way to protest that is to not purchase music that is developed under those terms. if you think you are protesting by illegally downloading the music, then you are just making up a neat excuse get your music for free.
The moral of the story is, just because you work hard, even if what you do has value to someone that does not automatically entitle you to payment.
you are right, simply building something of value doesn't entitle you to payment. what entitles you to payment is people consuming what you produced. if you provide a good / service, and state ahead of time that you require compensation for using the service / consuming the good, then yes, you are certainly entitled to be paid for it. it's how every economy in the world works.
i don't even get what you are saying. do you mean that since you dug the hole without a prior agreement of payment, you aren't entitled to payment when someone uses it? kind of like when i develop a new product, where no one has agreed to purchase it? am i entitled to payment when someone does?
here's another argument that matches what you said,
i rent a B+M storefront. i put up a coffee shop. i work very hard. nobody pays me.
later people come in and consume by coffee. yet still nobody pays me (this is called theft).
how is this different than the hole? in both cases, i built something speculating that people will pay to use it.
... has long since learned to do various task right-handed. it's a right handed world. i seriously doubt there is any leftie that is completely inept with their right hand.
But Google went whole hog the other way, letting carriers run amok after a promising start where it seemed like they would maintain a firm hand.
people act like google has some magical power to make the carriers bend over for them. nothing could be further from the truth. carriers never would have bought into android if it didn't have the potential for customization, 3rd party app stores, lock down, etc. google has everything to gain from getting android adopted. carriers wouldn't have just handed that over without the ability to try and monetize things how they see fit... no matter how poorly executed we know that will be on their part.
there are locked down, restricted android devices. there are also open, unrestricted devices. if you don't like locked down android devices, don't buy one. choose to purchase another model from a different carrier.
The same is true of Android, however there is no "clean system" that can be installed, resulting in an irreversible "crapware" experience.
i have a nexus one and it's clean. there are other "clean" android devices without bloatware. don't like the bloatware added by a particular vendor / carrier? don't buy their phone.
and, in general you can't just re-install a new PC. manufacturers don't give you an install disk that lets you do that. you can only re-image to the same bloated OS that it came with.
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Why the hell would I buy a textbook for something between 50-100€ and then only read it for a few months, when any well-stocked college library would carry it?
you can. in fact, some students do just that. the number that do this is around the number of copies of the book in the library. in US libraries anyway, you can't re-new your checkout forever. before the semester is over someone else will be able to get in and take your book. or maybe you will just rack up fines and screw someone else that is trying to do just what you were doing. if you were lucky enough to check one out to begin with.
it could be pretty stressful if the week before finals you found out you no longer had a textbook.
That may be 'the best way to control skyrocketing costs
seems like a big leap of faith that these same textbook publishers that are sucking students (and there parents) dry are going to let the e-version of a textbook go for cheaper.
Sure, you can try to enable "legacy interfaces" with other operating systems but their GUIs simply aren't built to be modular.
on windows 7, you can enabled the windows 2000 / nt / 98 theme and it looks and acts *exactly* like windows 2000. i don't think users care *how* it happens under the covers. they don't care if if it's modular. that's something a dev might care about.
If they were just going to write their own applications, after all, then the OS wouldn't need to be compatible with anything at all.
again, yes, it would. if they want to use MSFT dev tools, then yes the OS does need to be compatible with the applications and libraries produced by those tools.
They may say it can run Windows software, but either it won't run MOST of it, or they're just going to be defeating one of the primary purposes of writing their own secure OS
i don't think the purpose of running some windows software is to be able to run arbitrary windows software. they probably want to take advantage of a large windows developer base.
Linux has a "keep user from doing dumb shit" button. It's called non-root access. And it works.
how does it keep them from typing in the admin password when the little dialog asks for it?
and i guess you haven't used windows in oh the last 5 years or more. it has had the same "protection". my wife's win 7 account runs w/ non-admin rights. anytime she tries to install software, she is asked to enter the admin password, which she doesn't have. she's also never had a virus / malware installed.
So, the new Indian OS can make itself 10 times more secure than Windows with the simple expedient of not allowing users to install random shit off the internet.
Your post actually demonstrates that there IS something fundamentally wrong with Windows.
pick your OS. if you are willing to install random shit off the internet, it can be compromised. period. no OS is going to stop that. mac, linux, whatever. they are all subject to this sort of attack.
The trouble with Windows [compatible] OSes is not that it should be capable of running software written for Windows. It is that Windows itself has design weaknesses for various reasons not the least of which are related to its DOS based origins and support for old, misbehaving "legacy" software.
MSFT windows needs (wants) to be backward compatible. a new windows-like OS doesn't have that requirements.
That's be a neat trick, since they don't control the software on my phone. I rooted it and removed their ability to push software updates to my phone.
thanks for pointing out a situation that applies to 0.001% of the verizon android users. that really helps to get at the meat of the issue.
and how long until verizon locks you out of the android market and substitutes the v-cast market instead? soon. the only reason the carrier relinquished a little control to google, allowing their phones to make google money through search, is because they had nothing to compete with the iphone.
now that they have android, watch the noose tighten. carriers just can't stop trying to squeeze a dime out of every aspect of the mobile web. they'll never allow themselves to be relegated to being a pipe.
of course, they don't get that they really don't have android. google sold it to them like "look, it's open source, how much control can we really exert over you?". ha ha. thousands of google employees that are infinitely familiar with the source code means more than they think.
ever listen to music while say browsing the web? yes, dual cores help with things like that.
that's kind of like choosing an equally priced SDTV over an HDTV because well you don't have HDTV service, right now.
folks are acting like a P4 system from 5 years ago is going to forever and ever be fast enough to handle any new software that the average user will ever want to run. you might not *need* dual cores now, but it won't hurt and will almost certainly help in the future.
in your stories, the users waited until they had to upgrade. that is really the most cost-effective thing to do. the only downside is that they didn't plan for the upgrade so it probably resulted in some down time. okay, so if you have an old computer, expect it can die at any time and have a plan in place.
those folks wouldn't have been any better off if they upgraded sooner. pay now or later. paying later allows you to get the best hardware for your $$$, and to maximize the use of the hardware you do have .... which again saves money.
maybe, that's just what it costs to make a profit from development of an operating system? just looking on amazon, OSX 10.5+10.6 upgrade is $110.
If he actually wanted to get all those XP boxes onto Windows 7, which he should as Windows 7 is MUCH safer for average folks which cuts down on Windows bad rep
rep doesn't really mean much if you have no profit. MSFT makes money off software, unlike apple. that's their bread and butter.
that'd be like saying apple should give a 50% discount on iphone 4's because of the bad rep they are getting from all the iphone 3g users who's phones are now slow and unstable on ios4. think that's going to happen?
Which means that it's cheaper to replace the failed component instead of the whole computer.
that's true when it's very obvious what's wrong with a system and when the owner is adept enough to solve the problem themselves. it's very rare when both of those are true at the same time.
with an older PC or laptop that might be worth $300 at the very most, it doesn't make sense to spend $100+ to have someone perform the repairs in addition to parts. you might as well spend a little more to get a new system that's going to be superior in most every way.
yes of course it's second tier to MS office. that's like expecting to beat google in search or apple at portable music players. MS office is MSFT's flagship bread and butter product.
Those dick moves like randomly rejecting applications and stealing functionality out of apps for the base system isn't really endearing them with the people they need to keep the appstore vibrant.
devs care about where the money is. apple wins if they can keep their app market more lucrative, regardless of what devs say they plan to do in the future.
adding to what red flayer said, there are also DVD and blue ray players, and TVs with pandora built into them.
your browser's SOP (same origin policy) prevents you from doing this. scripts aren't allowed to make net connections to sites outside the domain of the current page. this is to reduce XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks.
i understand there are standards in the making to allow such things, securely.
man that is just about the dumbest thing i've heard all day.
if you allow people to swim for free, then why would anyone pay? everyone will swim for free. do you agree that the pool owner requires some compensation? he has electric bills, insurance, property taxes. he has to recoup the cost of building in the first place. he has to pay his employees. the pool will go out of business and be emptied and then they'll be no pool for anyone.
moreover, it's his damn pool he can do what he wants. how'd you like it if a bunch of people decided they were going to start squatting in your house. as long as they didn't eat your food or make a mess, it'd cost you nothing right?
you can make the same argument about say music. it costs the record company nothing if people can get the music for free right? eventually, the record company will go under and dissolve, and the musicians won't get paid. why would anyone pay for music when they can just download it for free?
that might be fine with you, but if that's your goal, why don't you simply stop consuming the music in the first place? nothing will change for you. you will either have less music now or less music later. the point is that there are a lot of people that *do* want to pay for the music.
i fully support you if you think record companies offer unfair deals to artists, charge too much, add too much DRM, etc. the way to protest that is to not purchase music that is developed under those terms. if you think you are protesting by illegally downloading the music, then you are just making up a neat excuse get your music for free.
The moral of the story is, just because you work hard, even if what you do has value to someone that does not automatically entitle you to payment.
you are right, simply building something of value doesn't entitle you to payment. what entitles you to payment is people consuming what you produced. if you provide a good / service, and state ahead of time that you require compensation for using the service / consuming the good, then yes, you are certainly entitled to be paid for it. it's how every economy in the world works.
i don't even get what you are saying. do you mean that since you dug the hole without a prior agreement of payment, you aren't entitled to payment when someone uses it? kind of like when i develop a new product, where no one has agreed to purchase it? am i entitled to payment when someone does?
here's another argument that matches what you said,
i rent a B+M storefront.
i put up a coffee shop.
i work very hard.
nobody pays me.
later people come in and consume by coffee.
yet still nobody pays me (this is called theft).
how is this different than the hole? in both cases, i built something speculating that people will pay to use it.
so, you've evaluated the many late model android devices from all the carriers and found that all of them are bloated and do not meet your needs?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Android_devices
... has long since learned to do various task right-handed. it's a right handed world. i seriously doubt there is any leftie that is completely inept with their right hand.
But Google went whole hog the other way, letting carriers run amok after a promising start where it seemed like they would maintain a firm hand.
people act like google has some magical power to make the carriers bend over for them. nothing could be further from the truth. carriers never would have bought into android if it didn't have the potential for customization, 3rd party app stores, lock down, etc. google has everything to gain from getting android adopted. carriers wouldn't have just handed that over without the ability to try and monetize things how they see fit ... no matter how poorly executed we know that will be on their part.
there are locked down, restricted android devices. there are also open, unrestricted devices. if you don't like locked down android devices, don't buy one. choose to purchase another model from a different carrier.
The same is true of Android, however there is no "clean system" that can be installed, resulting in an irreversible "crapware" experience.
i have a nexus one and it's clean. there are other "clean" android devices without bloatware. don't like the bloatware added by a particular vendor / carrier? don't buy their phone.
and, in general you can't just re-install a new PC. manufacturers don't give you an install disk that lets you do that. you can only re-image to the same bloated OS that it came with.