Most people simply don't care because, most people don't really listen to music any more. Music isn't something that people listen to on a nice stereo in their house. Music to most people today is whatever the latest computer generated pop garbage that people have on the background while they're doing other stuff, and they listen to it on crappy "earbuds" or cell phones. Most people simply don't care about the quality of their music, or the quality of their music.
I only shop locally, and it's getting pretty hard to find CD's at all any more. Luckily, I live in a college town. I have to imagine that most of Average Joe living in Suburbia has exactly -zero- options for buying actual music today, except for online, and almost no music is sold lossless online. Demand for actual music has dropped to such a point that access to it isn't even a possibility for most people. People don't want to buy it. Nobody sells it.
Personally, I think it's another sign of the coming Idiocracy.
I would be willing to bet that I could do what the subject of the video did and install every iteration of Windows in the the time it takes me to do a single install of Ubuntu and get it working properly. Last time I tried, I blew a whole weekend, and all I got was a computer that has 640x480 video, no sound, no networking, and I couldn't even figure out how to install and use apps on it. Blech.
I don't know. I'm not in the business. But I do know that *any* business that wants to retain the best employees will do their best to treat them well. That's Business 101.
I don't remember the last new computer I bought. I've got about 25 or so right now (business + personal), but none of them are new. I don't even know how old they are. I don't see the point in buying a new computer. Buying new computers makes even less sense than buying new cars. They drop in value faster than cars, and they don't wear out as quickly (if at all). I'm glad that other people buy new, though, because the supply of refurbished machines of all kinds is huge! I average $200 for a really good desktop machine, $350 for a really good laptop, and $400 for a nice blade server with RAID 2 or 5 and all redundant stuff.
Dear god. I had no idea that consumerism has gone so far as people noting the "model year" of their computers and talk about upgrading because of exterior design changes. It's a bizarre new fetish that I honestly hadn't heard of before.
A. I don't want to spend extra money on an e-book reader, and cross my fingers that whatever e-reader I buy today will be usable next year.
B. I don't need yet another gadget that requires bug fixes, internet access, batteries to be replaced, and headaches. No gadget made today is as simple as a book.
C. E-books is an entire category of products that's fixing a problem that doesn't exist.
I guess that possibly, if you live in NYC or San Francisco, and you have thousands of books, that space may be an issue, but other than that particular circumstance, I can't see what the problem with books is that needs to be solved by yet another expensive, complicated, polluting gadget.
How about just keeping actual books in libraries instead? No tech support, no licensing needed.
I'm really surprised that libraries, of all places, are jumping on an untested fad so quickly.
CFL's come in all different colors, you know. They have for many years. You can buy them at any big box store. The business that I work in is lit by about 200 CFL's, and most people don't know that they're CFL's because they're warm colored CFL's.
You have to look at the other side of it as well. Amex is very generous with credit, especially when compared to traditional banks, and they offer incredible service for the purchaser. We give much higher priority to buying from vendors that accept Amex as opposed to those who don't.
"Did you know Discover has 3x higher processing fees than the Big 2, and is generally a massive PITA for businesses to deal with"
It's not a massive PITA at all. In fact, neither is Amex. Call them and set up an account. Give account number to your merchant services provider. Finished.
Visa and Mastercard debit is a royal PITA, because they batch out payments randomly, making reconciliation nearly impossible.
Easy answer. They screw their "suppliers". Most of the stuff you see for sale on Amazon isn't being sold by Amazon, but by independent businesses selling via Amazon. Well, Amazon charges 15% of each purchase, including shipping charges (which are going up in real life). There are lots and lots of really short sighted small business owners who are selling a lot of stuff for a loss on Amazon, and Amazon is laughing all of the way to the bank. That's where they get most of their money. They get 15% from every sale for simply allowing businesses to plug into their infrastructure. That's a lot of money for very very minimal cost and zero risk.
It may be a "pain" for small online companies, but consider those companies already have massive advantages over brick and mortar businesses, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
This is great news for local business. The massive advantage that online retailers get for being able to get by not charging sales tax needs to end. Most consumers are too short-sighted, and too greedy to consider that when they buy online, they're short-changing their own community. Let's hope there's a blanket solution from the federal government in the works to permanently solve this very real issue.
I had a smart phone for 12 hours before I returned it to the store and got the el-cheap-o.
Smart phone was too big for my pockets.
Too hard to dial. No buttons. I don't have time to look at the phone, and carefully dial with 2 hands.
Too fucking complicated.
Too expensive.
Too easily damaged.
Can't hold it between my ear and shoulder
My current phone is whatever Sprint's free phone is. It's a great phone. It makes calls. It texts if I'm feeling fancy. It's fast and easy to use.
I think the whole smart phone thing is really silly. If I want to play games and email and all that, I've got a cheap-o laptop.
I've never understood why people buy new computers or new cars. Both of them lose their value ridiculously fast, and unlike a car, computers don't even wear out (generally speaking). I'm happy that people do buy new computers, though. If they didn't, then I wouldn't be able to get $200 refurbs!
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Most people simply don't care because, most people don't really listen to music any more. Music isn't something that people listen to on a nice stereo in their house. Music to most people today is whatever the latest computer generated pop garbage that people have on the background while they're doing other stuff, and they listen to it on crappy "earbuds" or cell phones. Most people simply don't care about the quality of their music, or the quality of their music.
I only shop locally, and it's getting pretty hard to find CD's at all any more. Luckily, I live in a college town. I have to imagine that most of Average Joe living in Suburbia has exactly -zero- options for buying actual music today, except for online, and almost no music is sold lossless online. Demand for actual music has dropped to such a point that access to it isn't even a possibility for most people. People don't want to buy it. Nobody sells it.
Personally, I think it's another sign of the coming Idiocracy.
I would be willing to bet that I could do what the subject of the video did and install every iteration of Windows in the the time it takes me to do a single install of Ubuntu and get it working properly. Last time I tried, I blew a whole weekend, and all I got was a computer that has 640x480 video, no sound, no networking, and I couldn't even figure out how to install and use apps on it. Blech.
That sounds exhausting. I just install Windows XP on everything and forget about it.
Uh huh. Wget. Yeah, that's really practical for the 1% of the population that uses *nix and is comfortable with esoteric command line applications.
I don't know. I'm not in the business. But I do know that *any* business that wants to retain the best employees will do their best to treat them well. That's Business 101.
A company that is interested in keeping good employees will.
I don't remember the last new computer I bought. I've got about 25 or so right now (business + personal), but none of them are new. I don't even know how old they are. I don't see the point in buying a new computer. Buying new computers makes even less sense than buying new cars. They drop in value faster than cars, and they don't wear out as quickly (if at all). I'm glad that other people buy new, though, because the supply of refurbished machines of all kinds is huge! I average $200 for a really good desktop machine, $350 for a really good laptop, and $400 for a nice blade server with RAID 2 or 5 and all redundant stuff.
You read 30 books at a time?
Dear god. I had no idea that consumerism has gone so far as people noting the "model year" of their computers and talk about upgrading because of exterior design changes. It's a bizarre new fetish that I honestly hadn't heard of before.
A. I don't want to spend extra money on an e-book reader, and cross my fingers that whatever e-reader I buy today will be usable next year.
B. I don't need yet another gadget that requires bug fixes, internet access, batteries to be replaced, and headaches. No gadget made today is as simple as a book.
C. E-books is an entire category of products that's fixing a problem that doesn't exist.
I guess that possibly, if you live in NYC or San Francisco, and you have thousands of books, that space may be an issue, but other than that particular circumstance, I can't see what the problem with books is that needs to be solved by yet another expensive, complicated, polluting gadget.
How about just keeping actual books in libraries instead? No tech support, no licensing needed. I'm really surprised that libraries, of all places, are jumping on an untested fad so quickly.
At least in the US, we don't pay all of the costs for electricity. So, there's little incentive to replace 60 W incandescents with 14 W CFL's.
You could just buy 3000K CFL's. They're available everywhere, and indistinguishable from incandescents.
CFL's come in all different colors, you know. They have for many years. You can buy them at any big box store. The business that I work in is lit by about 200 CFL's, and most people don't know that they're CFL's because they're warm colored CFL's.
You have to look at the other side of it as well. Amex is very generous with credit, especially when compared to traditional banks, and they offer incredible service for the purchaser. We give much higher priority to buying from vendors that accept Amex as opposed to those who don't.
"Did you know Discover has 3x higher processing fees than the Big 2, and is generally a massive PITA for businesses to deal with" It's not a massive PITA at all. In fact, neither is Amex. Call them and set up an account. Give account number to your merchant services provider. Finished. Visa and Mastercard debit is a royal PITA, because they batch out payments randomly, making reconciliation nearly impossible.
Makes me wonder how amazon can afford it?
Easy answer. They screw their "suppliers". Most of the stuff you see for sale on Amazon isn't being sold by Amazon, but by independent businesses selling via Amazon. Well, Amazon charges 15% of each purchase, including shipping charges (which are going up in real life). There are lots and lots of really short sighted small business owners who are selling a lot of stuff for a loss on Amazon, and Amazon is laughing all of the way to the bank. That's where they get most of their money. They get 15% from every sale for simply allowing businesses to plug into their infrastructure. That's a lot of money for very very minimal cost and zero risk.
It may be a "pain" for small online companies, but consider those companies already have massive advantages over brick and mortar businesses, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
This is great news for local business. The massive advantage that online retailers get for being able to get by not charging sales tax needs to end. Most consumers are too short-sighted, and too greedy to consider that when they buy online, they're short-changing their own community. Let's hope there's a blanket solution from the federal government in the works to permanently solve this very real issue.
I had a smart phone for 12 hours before I returned it to the store and got the el-cheap-o.
Smart phone was too big for my pockets.
Too hard to dial. No buttons. I don't have time to look at the phone, and carefully dial with 2 hands.
Too fucking complicated.
Too expensive.
Too easily damaged.
Can't hold it between my ear and shoulder
My current phone is whatever Sprint's free phone is. It's a great phone. It makes calls. It texts if I'm feeling fancy. It's fast and easy to use.
I think the whole smart phone thing is really silly. If I want to play games and email and all that, I've got a cheap-o laptop.
I've never understood why people buy new computers or new cars. Both of them lose their value ridiculously fast, and unlike a car, computers don't even wear out (generally speaking). I'm happy that people do buy new computers, though. If they didn't, then I wouldn't be able to get $200 refurbs!
Yeah.... I'll pay an extra $1000 for each machine just to avoid having to uninstall a few programs.... riiiight...
How do I rate down a story with this new Slashdot? NFL, Inc. using iPads? Who fucking cares?
"That's the problem with anarchy groups like wikileaks, they're as likely to turn against you as anything else."
Transparency is a two way street. Most would argue that transparency is a good thing.
The US government doesn't need a reason to imprison and kill people. We abandoned the rule of law on 9/12/2001.