There's *much* truth in what you're saying here. At first, I agreed with the earlier comments... Tech sites are dying because of all the pop-up ads, or because they just regurgitate A.P. wire news and press releases, rather than going out to actually GET a new story.
BUT, as I think about it, I end up looking to forums for all my in-depth knowledge on specific items too. If I think back to 10 or 15 years ago, this really wasn't much of an option. If you were a computer fan, you got as "selective" as buying a magazine catering to whatever brand of computer you owned, and hoped they'd discuss issues relevant to you as you combed through each month's issue.
These days, I think only relative beginners/novices do that. My boss at work still gets PC Magazine each month, and reads it to learn new things. But he's not very skilled in doing Internet searches, nor does he have the patience to dig too deeply into his tech. problems most of the time. (Why should he? He can ask someone like ME for help in that area, since I'm on his payroll already.) He just wants some kind of general "summary" of interesting stuff about computers to look at, at his leisure.
If you're more of a "techie", you need real specific, focused answers and you need them ASAP. The "tech magazines" are falling flat on their faces providing that level of assistance. They've tried to create their own forums to address that, but those fail too, on the whole - because their users are the same crowd buying their magazines. They don't have the collective knowledge to give great assistance to each other.
It's no different with music gear. I found 2 forums dedicated to one of my music synthesizers, and the best techs. from the manufacturer regularly hang out there (seemingly to learn about problems they need to fix, as often as to actually provide help or solutions to issues people post questions about!). Professional musicians hang out there too. (The synth player from "Dream Theater" is one of their regulars.) It's simply VASTLY more informative than some articles could ever be in "Keyboard Magazine" or whatnot.
It is running Windows XP Pro, SP2, with pretty much all of the update and security patches applied. That means yes, it does have the latest.NET framework installed, as well as the previous v1.1 framework, since that's what MS downloads to you via Windows Updates.
I've got a Moto Razr v3c phone with US Cellular. One pleasant thing I happened to notice (despite them not making any effort to advertise it to me) is they've released a free "My Contacts Backup" utility (developed by Asurion). You create a user account on a web page off their main site first, and configure the software to use the same account, and it automatically uploads your contact list and changes to them at pre-defined times. (Mine is set to do so nightly.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't (yet) seem to synchronize calendar/scheduler data or anything else in the phone - but the contact names and numbers are probably the most critical parts for me anyway.
Since my work runs Microsoft's WSUS server, all the "critical" security patches have been configured to automatically get applied overnight on our XP workstations. (Yeah, I know... this *may* cause me some headaches if a patch breaks things, which it has in the past. But I also figure that in most cases, a patch for the patch is released pretty quickly when MS figures out they screwed one up... so the issues have been temporary ones so far.)
Anyway, we have a specialized program in use on a few PCs here called Pronest 8. (It's a package that calculates the most efficient layout of odd shaped parts for torch cutting from a flat piece of steel. It also has some parts inventory capabilities.) It uses a shared network license on a Windows server, and the "crypkey" service to check the license info.
I know I had this working fine on one of our workstations a few weeks ago, but now, they went to use it today and just receive an "error -24, driver busy" message from the crypkey service - and can't launch the app!
Does anyone know if the.NET update patch was reported to break this particular type of thing? Crypkey licensing is used by quite a few software packages.... not just Pronest.
I have to disagree with you here. The news media often sees "good cops" as newsworthy. That's why we see so much TV news that's really not news at all.... the "feel good" stories about the cat rescued from the dumpster by a local cop, or things along those lines.
The nightly news is, ultimately, about getting good ratings, and NOT about making sure they only cover the news that's really "most important to society". Car accidents and house fires, while serious, don't really affect 99.99% of the people watching the summaries on the TV news about them each night.
By the same token, it's more difficult and risky to provide news coverage that challenges established authority. You have to have all your facts really solid, consult with your lawyers on retainer to double-check your script, etc. etc. TV stations never got in trouble or lost paid advertisers for praising the fire dept. or a cop for a rescue effort - but they can't say the same about an expose showing the local police to largely be corrupt and abusive to the public.
Considering the fact that I'm far from a real "criminal" - it's absolutely frightening how often I've been harassed, verbally abused, or simply ordered to stop doing things well within my rights, by local law enforcement officers over the years! I can honestly say that I've lived in rough neighborhoods, worked in them, and drove through them daily - yet I wasn't that afraid of criminals. What scares me far worse is getting pulled over by a cop. I'm not even comfortable seeing one around me, despite having done nothing wrong!
I dunno.... You gotta pay to play, at some point. Sure, the PS2 was a great seller - but it got off to a roll when it had little real competition. I mean, it was the 2nd. generation of an already hugely popular console that ran all the old titles - AND quickly offered the largest library of new game titles too. Once it achieved "critical mass" - the more casual gamers got some really good bargain pricing on their setups. Not only because prices dropped on the CONSOLE, but because so many games were being released, the older stuff was rapidly being pushed into the bargain bins, and re-labeled as "game classics" at discounted prices.
Ultimately, most gamers spend far more on the games than whatever the console itself cost.
If you ask me, that's exactly what will end up making or breaking the PS3. They could put the console on sale tomorrow for $150, and after the initial wave of computer/tech geeks bought it "for the world's cheapest blu-ray player" and "as something else to hack up, loading Linux on it" - it STILL wouldn't automatically beat out the Wii and XBox 360. But a surge of really GOOD game titles, with many coming down in price to the $19.95 per disc price-point or so, would work wonders.
Yeah... and I had to order a very overpriced (and underpowered) replacement power supply for a dead one in an HP Pavilion, on several occasions... and a proprietary Gateway power supply in one of their slim form-factor PCs, and one in an eMachines tower once..... Oh and don't forget the Dells that had what LOOKED like a standard ATX power supply, except with power leads swapped so the motherboard got fried when you used a regular ATX power supply in place of the original. Had one of those too.....
It's funny how "vendor lock-in" is used as though it's a unique reason to avoid Apple products, yet I see examples of it rampant with ALL the major PC vendors.
Truthfully, Apple's replacement battery program for the iPhone doesn't strike me as all that unreasonable. The battery in my Moto Razr v3c wore out after about 8 or 9 months of use, and a good replacement for it cost me over $50 at a local cellphone store. So for an iPhone, I might get a few months more use out of their battery than the really slim and relatively low-capacity Razr batteries, and will have to pay about $29 more than I paid for the Razr's replacement? Big whoop.... Yeah, I know. I have to *send it in* for repair. But Apple should give you a postage-paid mailer for this if it's like everything else they do. So the mail-back part should be pretty easy and painless... and a 1-2 day turn-around? I think we can probably live without a cellphone for 24-48 hours, can't we? If not, then pay the $29 for the loaner iPhone. The total isn't much more than you pay in a month just for the service, right?
I'm not disagreeing that the *law* won't back this guy up in his situation. I'm just pointing out that he still has a valid (IMHO) complaint!
In most states in the U.S., employment is strictly "at will". Either party can terminate the employment at any time. That doesn't mean it's always ethical to fire somebody.
Your examples like the movie theater are irrelevant. Nobody has a *need* to attend a movie at a theater. They do so voluntarily, because it's entertainment. If you don't think you can cope with the majority's decision that the movie is best enjoyed in silence, then no big deal. You can stay at home, watching your movies on DVD or VHS and talking or even screaming through them, if you so desire.
We do, however, have a need for gainful employment, because you can't legally obtain the basics necessary for survival without some kind of income.
If your state has a concealed carry law and you have the proper permit, then you probably *can* carry your gun into a bank. The right to keep and bear arms, in any case, ensures that the guards working at said bank are legally allowed to carry their guns.
My main point here is, we'd all be much better off if everybody considered the *ethics* behind the decisions they make, instead of only "what I can get away with under the current laws". With a little ethics applied to situations, we'd not have the huge mess with the RIAA that we've got today, for example.
Don't you people hate those questions asking you for your #1 favorite band? I can never really pin it down to just one, without being completely unfair to others that maybe play in a different genre of music.
Even if you limit it to "only rock music"... what do you say? Led Zeppelin is probably a safe answer, but is that fair to Rush, or The Beatles, or the Rolling Stones, or The Who, or maybe The Doors or The Eagles??
Games are the same way. If I had to name even the "best simulation" of all time, I'd have a really rough time. In a sense, maybe Microsoft Flight Simulator should get the award, since it was out back in the days of the first Mac, AND was considered the "benchmark" for years to test the "PC compatibility" of PC clones. And yet, it still comes out every year with new versions, to this day.
On the other hand, Sim City deserves props too. It may have been the first game that really crossed the "gender gap" and got females playing computer games.
If you're talking basic 2D arcade classics, I'd think Pac-Man might be a good bet. Again, it had really wide appeal and spawned loads of knock-offs and revisions. It probably sold more Atari 2600 systems than any other title, except maybe Pitfall. But you could obviously make a strong case for anything from Space Invaders to Donkey Kong to Asteroids, right? Who do you give the "award" to and how many do you shun?
I don't see why you're so "up in arms" over his (IMHO quite valid) point about "freedom of speech"??
Sure, they're not blocking him from speaking out in a strict sense, but he explains pretty clearly why they're making it highly impractical to continue.
At the end of the day, are we content to define "free speech" as simply "You won't get thrown in prison or killed over saying this!", or do we want to strive for truly being able to speak out without harassment, loss of employment, or other repercussions?
I think his bringing up the fact that he briefly ftp'd a few files from a USB key while at work was important to his story, too. I didn't find it "annoying" in the least. He's simply acknowledging that he can't 100% prove that the editor from Forbes "ratted him out" to his employer, but the *only* other alternative he can fathom is a pretty far-fetched scenario. (If he neglected to explain this - it would be all to easy for nay-sayers to make a false assumption that he was constantly working on his blog during business hours, and that was likely the *real* reason he got called in the office about the whole thing. I agree with him on this one. A grand total of 2 incidents of simple ftp of files off a USB key to a remote site is not even a "blip" on the radar of systems administrators of a medium to large-sized corporation. )
There's a difference between "intellectual property" and the money contained in one's pension fund. When I spoke of "intangibles", I was referring to I.P. vs. money in various types of accounts (which, while not "tangible" in the sense of having the cold, hard cash in your hands - is understood to be equivalent).
Amd sure, the standards that apply in criminal law are higher than for a civil case, but the risks are higher too. (You're not going to go around with a felony charge on your permanent record, affecting future employment, over a civil lawsuit you lost.)
The starving college student may indeed have a Mac Powerbook, iPod, etc. - but *many* times, those items were obtained from a student loan, which they're going to have to repay over a long period of time when they get out into the work world after college is over. None of that indicates they're loaded with disposable income. (Apple has regularly run offers for students where the iPod is thrown in free, or heavily discounted, with the purchase of a new computer. So getting one often means getting both, just for the record.)
And lastly, the idea that any one kid is "sharing music with 10 million or so people" is as flawed as the claims of losses based on the full retail price of each and every copy of a software program they can show someone distributed. There's only enough bandwidth to share so much at a time, for starters.... and only a very small percentage of the total users on a p2p network who ever request a song you happen to be sharing on your specific computer. So the ONLY thing that should matter is how many times each song was actually downloaded from the PC. If you logged THAT, you'd find much of the shared music was probably NEVER downloaded even a single time, and many other tracks were subject to partial transfers that were aborted in the middle. Only a relative handful were ever successfully transmitted.
I *know* I really wanted a feature like this MANY times when traveling. If I'm out of town on a business trip, I very likely have limited access to the Internet for starters. The connection on my phone may very well be all I've got easy access to at all.
When you finish work and your co-worker says "Hey, let's find some dinner!" - what do you do? Probably start driving around and stop at the first thing you run into that's acceptable, right? Or possibly, ask the front desk person at your hotel for recommendations and directions, which are just as often useless as accurate.
But imagine instead, you just pull out your phone and do a search for all restaurants of a given type within 5 miles of your hotel's address? Now you've got current, accurate info and even a phone number to dial if you want to make reservations or something.
Obviously, I can't speak for everyone here -- but my own belief is that government went wrong when they first started treating these infringement cases as *criminal* vs. *civil* matters.
There's NO reason an association the size of the RIAA really needs the government's assistance to get "justice" against infringements on the musical works they hold rights to. The people sharing these songs via p2p, web pages, ftp, or any other electronic method are doing so without any financial compensation whatsoever.
Every time they pursue one of these cases in criminal courts of law, they cost the American taxpayer large amounts of money, using the time of prosecutors, appointed judges, etc. They *could*, of course, opt to "do the right thing" and go after these individuals in strictly civil cases. But that would put the effort squarely on them to build their cases - rather than relying on "boilerplate" complaints and standardized tables of penalties/punishments for criminal copyright infringement that federal courts already devised.
Criminal prosecution should really be reserved for tangible crimes against persons and property.... not relatively "fluffy and intangible" losses due to intellectual property "violations"!
My belief is, if businesses and individuals had to resort to civil remedies for these violations, we'd see much more reasonable and logical outcomes. (EG. A starving college student sharing copies of his/her purchased collection of CDs wouldn't be pressured to "pay back" tens of THOUSANDS of dollars for doing so. Instead, you might see the punishment actually fit the "crime". They might be charged a few hundred bucks, making them rethink how wise it was to offer copyrighted musical works to any and all takers, free of charge. People wouldn't be rushing to condemn the RIAA like they do now, if THIS was the norm.)
Yeah, yeah.... I did the same thing, and had a Kyocera 7135 before it, even. Both times, I was convinced the phone was finally "good enough" at running useful apps that I'd do a lot more with it than than make/take calls. Both times, I was wrong.
But you have to admit, the iPhone looks FAR more capable than any of these other "smartphones". With my Treo 650, for example, my web browsing experience was a total joke. Most sites I tried to pull up simply crashed the browser with some kind of exception error. Other times, they worked, but had the links scattered all over the screen, making it almost impossible to figure out which part of the site they even corresponded with.
I remember, for example, going car shopping and taking my Treo with me, with the idea that I could quickly look up some used-car blue-book prices on Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book's web site. Nope... just futile!
It also appears it has a functional/useful built-in camera. Of course it's not going to stack up well against a good quality digital stand-alone camera, but sample photos circulating on the net sure look far better than the dark, dingy or blurry results I got out of my Moto Razr or Treo cameras!
The Google map integration of the iPhone looks like a very useful feature too. You can get directions to a restaurant or hotel, for example, and then dial the number to the place with a tap on the screen. I never had anything that worked nearly as well on my Treo. (I remember having a couple 411 directory type applets for it to find phone numbers of places, but half the time, they'd just come back with some kind of "service unavailable" message when I tried to use them.)
Sorry you had to go through all of THAT to learn just how little we can trust people given positions of authority in society.... but it's just one of MANY examples I've read about and experienced.
To be honest, I don't know if I can even think of a time I dealt with the police and felt there was a "just" outcome.
The last encounter I had with them was when borrowing my friend's car, to drive down the block to pick up a pizza we ordered. I got to the end of my street, and took a short-cut through a gas station at the corner to an adjacent strip mall parking lot where the pizza place resided. Next thing I know, a cop is behind me with flashing lights. I honestly had no idea why he pulled me over, except I guessed he was going to complain that I cut through the gas station's lot.
Instead, he starts writing out a ticket, and tells me I ran right through a stop sign and was speeding. I was definitely not speeding, and I *know* I stopped at the stop sign in question! (Since it was the first time I ever drove my friend's car, and there are lots of kids playing in the street where I lived - I was actually driving extra carefully.)
The thing is, I was driving through a little municipality named Bel Ridge in Missouri.... One that's well known for its corrupt police force. (Do a web search on Bel Ridge and police and you should find all sorts of interesting material, including a news investigation where the reporter was banned from entering their traffic court, despite the law saying it's open to the public -- and a fiasco a few years back where one of their officers was remote controlling a traffic signal, changing it to red as cars went under it and then writing the drivers tickets for running it!)
Oh man, I *so* agree with you there! I've owned a Lasjerjet 6P... Ended up reselling it to a dentist who wanted a cheap used laser printer to print out dental x-rays on occasion, and bought myself another one off eBay (this time a 6MP version), for the grand total of about $35 shipped.
Toner cartridges for the 6P/6MP are often available for as little as $35 or so each, and they last me as long as a year each.
Print quality and speed are pretty good, the printer is physically fairly small, and it even has an I.R. port for wireless printing. (Pretty cool for people owning PalmPilots, because they have a little program for them to allow printing via their I.R. port.)
My 6P and 6MP both took standard 30-pin SIMMs as upgrade memory too, so no costly proprietary RAM upgrade board needed to get one up to the 68MB or so of maximum printer memory.
The 6MP has Postscript capabilities built in, by way of a card that fits in one of the 30-pin SIMM sockets, but otherwise, it's identical to a 6P. Either one of these printers worked great for me in Mac OS X, with just about any version of Windows, and with several Linux distros. I use mine with a JetDirect box to make it network capable.
I never, for a minute, said my plan didn't have "potential holes" in it. There *are* encryption schemes nobody has been able to break yet (look at the currently used Dish Network and DirecTV satellite cards, for example) - but even those will be "broken" someday. If nothing else, a disgruntled employee could eventually leak out the secrets - since the decryption info has to be kept somewhere.
It *always* comes down to using encryption or password protection as a deterrence. Just like the lock on your front door, it can easily be picked in seconds by a skilled professional. But it does keep many amateurs out, who would otherwise walk in and take something of value if they knew no lock was in place at all.
I'm at a loss to see why zap2it considers this data so "secret", though? They're pedaling publicly available information that's published *all the time*. They simply add some value by sending it out efficiently, in a standardized format your computer can easily download and work with. The "incentive" for them to at least try to sell it inexpensively to you and me? Simply the fact that either they take their $2 a month or whatever from whoever will pay, or they don't - and someone ELSE takes that same money. They've already got the infrastructure in place, so it's an easier $2/month for them to collect than for anyone else starting from scratch. But it will happen.
That's because the designers of the newer shovels don't consider "longevity" nearly as high a priority as you do. Most likely, they were only interested in making whatever type of shovel improved their profit margins the most. They quickly discovered that the shovel promising more comfort during its use sold well next to traditional shovels with no rubber grip or plastic handle.
In essence, the majority "outvoted" you with their pocketbooks, thinking they'd rather have a shovel that isn't as likely to tear up one's hands during use, even if the plastic handle might break off after a few years of use.
If everyone thought the same as you do, the plastic handles and rubber grips would disappear, as everybody ignored them.
(I'd also add here that you illustrate the point that people often don't make the smartest purchasing decisions. Sometimes our options are on the store shelves because they successfully fool the majority into buying them - rather than because they're the "best" products.)
It seems to me this is a problem with a number of very workable solutions. For starters, how about people receiving only a compressed download of their guide data with a password protected archive file? The correct password to decompress the archive could change daily (or hourly even, whatever), based on information exchanged between the paid subscriber's Myth box and the server. To discourage "reverse engineering" of exactly how these passwords were determined, you might have to release the guide module without providing open source for that little component.... but I think that's something most Myth users could live with, given the circumstances. (They already happily use nVidia drivers that don't include source, right?)
Sure, someone could brute force hack the archive file to get it decompressed, but how worthwhile could all that effort really be for a service people are ok spending maybe $1.99 a month for? And considering the password would change often (maybe with each new guide update?), it would have to be brute force hacked over and over and over.....
Unfortunately, I tend to agree. Ultimately, this will force people to make encryption a default (which could be a *good* thing in the case of email, IMHO), but will also put a big damper on people's ability to use the net in creative ways. (Imagine a scenario where you have to establish a point to point VPN tunnel each and every time you transfer some data to a friend, or to a site. Because otherwise, you risk the ISP's router killing your transmission (or throttling it back to unbearably slow speeds) because it deems the content "inappropriate" for use on their network.)
VPN technology is fine in some cases, but isn't going to be practical to apply to p2p sharing and many other more interesting ways of using the Internet.
Even SSL web traffic has some serious limitations, when you reach the point of a large provider having to manage the secure connections for many thousands of simultaneous users. (EG. Right now, you can use a service like EasyNews via the web securely, by going to secure.members.easynews.com instead of members.easynews.com. But notice it's not the default behavior to run securely? Why not? Probably because if everyone did it, their equipment would get overloaded trying to manage that many secure connections.)
At the very least, encrypted traffic adds additional overhead, so you don't achieve the transfer speeds you'd otherwise be able to achieve. It's a way to circumvent over-zealous ISPs trying to filter your content - but it's not something you'd really *want* to feel is needed.
IMHO, this is ridiculous! Safari gets released for Windows, and the Mozilla team immediately has an outcry against it?
The more competition, the better, I say! May the best man win, and all that. I didn't realize Firefox was being strictly worked on as a project with a goal of defeating IE, and no other players were ever supposed to "interfere" with that mission!?
This isn't even a scenario that's real comparable to iTunes - despite that getting thrown around as a comparison. With iTunes, Apple was releasing it as a vehicle to sell music on their store. In that regard, the whole thing was a commercial venture - and it simply made sense to allow the vast number of Windows users a "front end" to be able to purchase Apple's music, instead of keeping it just for the 5-7% of the marketplace that uses Macs.
With Safari, on the other hand, it may become useful or required as a development tool aiding in building apps for the iPhone... but that won't directly add to Apple's bottom line. They aren't likely to make anything SELLING Safari for Windows either - so it's more or less going to remain a freebie you can opt to use or not use, as you see fit.
Similar to the guy who claims that "Quicken Loans" is not #1 for valid reasons, I have to seriously question the idea that Anheuser Busch in St. Louis, MO is in the top 10!?
I've never actually worked for them myself, BUT I've interviewed for jobs there a couple of times, AND have several good friends and former co-workers who have been employed there at one time or another.
The most consistent thing I hear about them is that your job has no real "stability". People working in their "creative services" division designing web sites and advertising were constantly laid off in "cutbacks", whenever things got a little bit slow, or some big ad campaign didn't work out real well for them. Most of their I.T. administrators were only hired as contractors, not real employees -- so they didn't enjoy many of the benefits A.B. is known for. (Not sure if they *still* do it today, but traditionally, they gave all their union workers free cases of beer every month as a fringe benefit. Contractors, by contrast, didn't get in on any of that.)
There are a lot of headaches working for A.B. too (which of course, they'd prefer to call "challenges"). Not the least of which is the fact that they have a large brewery over in China, and Microsoft Exchange administrators therefore have to deal with the Chinese character sets and compatibility problems that can bring to the table when they're communicating with the servers in the U.S.
My biggest "gripe" with them, though? When I had interviews with them years ago, I was always grilled in "group interviews" - which seemed to be designed to stress out a candidate as much as possible. Inevitably, you had one H.R. type person harping on things like your formal education and the "cookie cutter interview questions" out of a textbook, while you were trying to answer detailed technical questions one of their I.T. people was hitting you with, and while a 3rd. or even 4th. middle management person was taking notes on all of it, and throwing in some less technical "business type" questioning. After that barrage, you got a whirlwind "tour" of the offices, where apparently, they tested you to see how much of a "team player" it seemed like you were. At the end, I got the impression that the most important thing I was judged on was probably my ability to "fit in" with the people I just shook hands with... Would I like playing golf with them on weekends? Did they think my selection of business casual clothing looked "cool" enough? Etc.
Just for the record though, I did also work with a former Sharp employee, and he could never stop talking about his experiences with them. I got the distinct impression that Sharp must be a great place to learn useful job skills and further one's career.
You're *always* using someone else's money to buy large items, unless you're really financially well off. So what? Even our own government does things this way, all the time.
It's nice to make "pie in the sky" statements like "Don't buy a car unless you can pay for it in full, up-front!" - but that would leave most of us driving unreliable, ugly pieces of junk, even as we try to use them to get to a decent paying job each day.
I didn't buy a car I couldn't afford to make the monthly payments on... so I have no worries. But I also accept the fact that typically, a vehicle purchase is the second-largest purchase a person makes, next to their home. So assuming I should be able to buy it outright vs. taking out a loan seems far-fetched.
Furthermore, I don't quite see the "value" in paying out considerable amounts of money (even gas, oil changes and tires add up to a considerable investment in operating your vehicle over time) on a car or truck you're not really happy to be driving around? If you can find a "nearly new" vehicle somebody will sell you at a good price, and it's really a vehicle you wanted in the first place - great! But that doesn't always happen....
The problem comes in when people buy more than they can afford to make the payments on comfortably, under a false assumption that it will "all work out ok" just because someone is willing to give them a loan for that amount....
I used to think the same thing, but guess what? I'm driving a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse right now. The argument that they "immediately lose a bunch of resale value, the minute you drive them off the lot" is technically correct. But realistically, it doesn't mean as much as people pretend it does. In reality, MOST people buying a new car plan on keeping it for a while. The initial loss in value only affects someone who makes a poor purchasing decision and tries to trade the almost new car back in after only a few months through maybe the first year or two of ownership.
Meanwhile, loans on new vehicles tend to have much better interest rates than loans on used vehicles, so you're not giving as much of your money away to some bank as you pay off your car....
My new car also included such "bonuses" as free roadside assistance during the warranty period. Used car owners generally don't receive benefits like this, and have to pay for a "motor club" membership like AAA to get the same thing.
The warranty itself can be a factor, too. You may or may not get one with your used car purchase, depending on its mileage and all. But it could easily "make or break" the overall "value" of your purchase if something major like a transmission fails 2 or 3 years into the vehicle ownership.
Ultimately, for me, the assurance that my new car doesn't have some worn out part just waiting to fail and greatly inconvenience me when I need my car the most is the *best* reason for buying new. I only own one vehicle, and I count on it daily. If I'm supposed to go to a customer site and can't make it because my car breaks down, that costs me income from both ends at once on a used car that's not in warranty. (Loss of income on a job I can't do, AND loss of income paying for a car repair.) Generally, the dealership will even give me a free rental car while repairing mine under warranty - which they'd never do on used car repairs.
Hmm... well, one person's "must have feature" is just "so what?" to another, I guess!
In Firefox, if you try to drag a tab out to your desktop, it creates a new shortcut to that URL. So you can effectively open the tab in a new window, but it takes more steps. (You have to double-click the shortcut it created and then close the original tab.)
I guess I've just found that if I need a web site or page in a separate window, I'll usually just open it in one to begin with. If I opt to open a new page in a tab, it's usually because that's a perfectly good place for it.
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There's *much* truth in what you're saying here. At first, I agreed with the earlier comments ... Tech sites are dying because of all the pop-up ads, or because they just regurgitate A.P. wire news and press releases, rather than going out to actually GET a new story.
BUT, as I think about it, I end up looking to forums for all my in-depth knowledge on specific items too. If I think back to 10 or 15 years ago, this really wasn't much of an option. If you were a computer fan, you got as "selective" as buying a magazine catering to whatever brand of computer you owned, and hoped they'd discuss issues relevant to you as you combed through each month's issue.
These days, I think only relative beginners/novices do that. My boss at work still gets PC Magazine each month, and reads it to learn new things. But he's not very skilled in doing Internet searches, nor does he have the patience to dig too deeply into his tech. problems most of the time. (Why should he? He can ask someone like ME for help in that area, since I'm on his payroll already.) He just wants some kind of general "summary" of interesting stuff about computers to look at, at his leisure.
If you're more of a "techie", you need real specific, focused answers and you need them ASAP. The "tech magazines" are falling flat on their faces providing that level of assistance. They've tried to create their own forums to address that, but those fail too, on the whole - because their users are the same crowd buying their magazines. They don't have the collective knowledge to give great assistance to each other.
It's no different with music gear. I found 2 forums dedicated to one of my music synthesizers, and the best techs. from the manufacturer regularly hang out there (seemingly to learn about problems they need to fix, as often as to actually provide help or solutions to issues people post questions about!). Professional musicians hang out there too. (The synth player from "Dream Theater" is one of their regulars.) It's simply VASTLY more informative than some articles could ever be in "Keyboard Magazine" or whatnot.
It is running Windows XP Pro, SP2, with pretty much all of the update and security patches applied. That means yes, it does have the latest .NET framework installed, as well as the previous v1.1 framework, since that's what MS downloads to you via Windows Updates.
I've got a Moto Razr v3c phone with US Cellular. One pleasant thing I happened to notice (despite them not making any effort to advertise it to me) is they've released a free "My Contacts Backup" utility (developed by Asurion). You create a user account on a web page off their main site first, and configure the software to use the same account, and it automatically uploads your contact list and changes to them at pre-defined times. (Mine is set to do so nightly.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't (yet) seem to synchronize calendar/scheduler data or anything else in the phone - but the contact names and numbers are probably the most critical parts for me anyway.
Since my work runs Microsoft's WSUS server, all the "critical" security patches have been configured to automatically get applied overnight on our XP workstations. (Yeah, I know... this *may* cause me some headaches if a patch breaks things, which it has in the past. But I also figure that in most cases, a patch for the patch is released pretty quickly when MS figures out they screwed one up ... so the issues have been temporary ones so far.)
.NET update patch was reported to break this particular type of thing? Crypkey licensing is used by quite a few software packages.... not just Pronest.
Anyway, we have a specialized program in use on a few PCs here called Pronest 8. (It's a package that calculates the most efficient layout of odd shaped parts for torch cutting from a flat piece of steel. It also has some parts inventory capabilities.) It uses a shared network license on a Windows server, and the "crypkey" service to check the license info.
I know I had this working fine on one of our workstations a few weeks ago, but now, they went to use it today and just receive an "error -24, driver busy" message from the crypkey service - and can't launch the app!
Does anyone know if the
I have to disagree with you here. The news media often sees "good cops" as newsworthy. That's why we see so much TV news that's really not news at all.... the "feel good" stories about the cat rescued from the dumpster by a local cop, or things along those lines.
The nightly news is, ultimately, about getting good ratings, and NOT about making sure they only cover the news that's really "most important to society". Car accidents and house fires, while serious, don't really affect 99.99% of the people watching the summaries on the TV news about them each night.
By the same token, it's more difficult and risky to provide news coverage that challenges established authority. You have to have all your facts really solid, consult with your lawyers on retainer to double-check your script, etc. etc. TV stations never got in trouble or lost paid advertisers for praising the fire dept. or a cop for a rescue effort - but they can't say the same about an expose showing the local police to largely be corrupt and abusive to the public.
Considering the fact that I'm far from a real "criminal" - it's absolutely frightening how often I've been harassed, verbally abused, or simply ordered to stop doing things well within my rights, by local law enforcement officers over the years! I can honestly say that I've lived in rough neighborhoods, worked in them, and drove through them daily - yet I wasn't that afraid of criminals. What scares me far worse is getting pulled over by a cop. I'm not even comfortable seeing one around me, despite having done nothing wrong!
I dunno.... You gotta pay to play, at some point. Sure, the PS2 was a great seller - but it got off to a roll when it had little real competition. I mean, it was the 2nd. generation of an already hugely popular console that ran all the old titles - AND quickly offered the largest library of new game titles too. Once it achieved "critical mass" - the more casual gamers got some really good bargain pricing on their setups. Not only because prices dropped on the CONSOLE, but because so many games were being released, the older stuff was rapidly being pushed into the bargain bins, and re-labeled as "game classics" at discounted prices.
Ultimately, most gamers spend far more on the games than whatever the console itself cost.
If you ask me, that's exactly what will end up making or breaking the PS3. They could put the console on sale tomorrow for $150, and after the initial wave of computer/tech geeks bought it "for the world's cheapest blu-ray player" and "as something else to hack up, loading Linux on it" - it STILL wouldn't automatically beat out the Wii and XBox 360. But a surge of really GOOD game titles, with many coming down in price to the $19.95 per disc price-point or so, would work wonders.
Yeah... and I had to order a very overpriced (and underpowered) replacement power supply for a dead one in an HP Pavilion, on several occasions... and a proprietary Gateway power supply in one of their slim form-factor PCs, and one in an eMachines tower once..... Oh and don't forget the Dells that had what LOOKED like a standard ATX power supply, except with power leads swapped so the motherboard got fried when you used a regular ATX power supply in place of the original. Had one of those too.....
It's funny how "vendor lock-in" is used as though it's a unique reason to avoid Apple products, yet I see examples of it rampant with ALL the major PC vendors.
Truthfully, Apple's replacement battery program for the iPhone doesn't strike me as all that unreasonable. The battery in my Moto Razr v3c wore out after about 8 or 9 months of use, and a good replacement for it cost me over $50 at a local cellphone store. So for an iPhone, I might get a few months more use out of their battery than the really slim and relatively low-capacity Razr batteries, and will have to pay about $29 more than I paid for the Razr's replacement? Big whoop.... Yeah, I know. I have to *send it in* for repair. But Apple should give you a postage-paid mailer for this if it's like everything else they do. So the mail-back part should be pretty easy and painless... and a 1-2 day turn-around? I think we can probably live without a cellphone for 24-48 hours, can't we? If not, then pay the $29 for the loaner iPhone. The total isn't much more than you pay in a month just for the service, right?
I'm not disagreeing that the *law* won't back this guy up in his situation. I'm just pointing out that he still has a valid (IMHO) complaint!
In most states in the U.S., employment is strictly "at will". Either party can terminate the employment at any time. That doesn't mean it's always ethical to fire somebody.
Your examples like the movie theater are irrelevant. Nobody has a *need* to attend a movie at a theater. They do so voluntarily, because it's entertainment. If you don't think you can cope with the majority's decision that the movie is best enjoyed in silence, then no big deal. You can stay at home, watching your movies on DVD or VHS and talking or even screaming through them, if you so desire.
We do, however, have a need for gainful employment, because you can't legally obtain the basics necessary for survival without some kind of income.
If your state has a concealed carry law and you have the proper permit, then you probably *can* carry your gun into a bank. The right to keep and bear arms, in any case, ensures that the guards working at said bank are legally allowed to carry their guns.
My main point here is, we'd all be much better off if everybody considered the *ethics* behind the decisions they make, instead of only "what I can get away with under the current laws". With a little ethics applied to situations, we'd not have the huge mess with the RIAA that we've got today, for example.
Don't you people hate those questions asking you for your #1 favorite band? I can never really pin it down to just one, without being completely unfair to others that maybe play in a different genre of music.
... what do you say? Led Zeppelin is probably a safe answer, but is that fair to Rush, or The Beatles, or the Rolling Stones, or The Who, or maybe The Doors or The Eagles??
Even if you limit it to "only rock music"
Games are the same way. If I had to name even the "best simulation" of all time, I'd have a really rough time. In a sense, maybe Microsoft Flight Simulator should get the award, since it was out back in the days of the first Mac, AND was considered the "benchmark" for years to test the "PC compatibility" of PC clones. And yet, it still comes out every year with new versions, to this day.
On the other hand, Sim City deserves props too. It may have been the first game that really crossed the "gender gap" and got females playing computer games.
If you're talking basic 2D arcade classics, I'd think Pac-Man might be a good bet. Again, it had really wide appeal and spawned loads of knock-offs and revisions. It probably sold more Atari 2600 systems than any other title, except maybe Pitfall. But you could obviously make a strong case for anything from Space Invaders to Donkey Kong to Asteroids, right? Who do you give the "award" to and how many do you shun?
I don't see why you're so "up in arms" over his (IMHO quite valid) point about "freedom of speech"??
Sure, they're not blocking him from speaking out in a strict sense, but he explains pretty clearly why they're making it highly impractical to continue.
At the end of the day, are we content to define "free speech" as simply "You won't get thrown in prison or killed over saying this!", or do we want to strive for truly being able to speak out without harassment, loss of employment, or other repercussions?
I think his bringing up the fact that he briefly ftp'd a few files from a USB key while at work was important to his story, too. I didn't find it "annoying" in the least. He's simply acknowledging that he can't 100% prove that the editor from Forbes "ratted him out" to his employer, but the *only* other alternative he can fathom is a pretty far-fetched scenario. (If he neglected to explain this - it would be all to easy for nay-sayers to make a false assumption that he was constantly working on his blog during business hours, and that was likely the *real* reason he got called in the office about the whole thing. I agree with him on this one. A grand total of 2 incidents of simple ftp of files off a USB key to a remote site is not even a "blip" on the radar of systems administrators of a medium to large-sized corporation. )
There's a difference between "intellectual property" and the money contained in one's pension fund. When I spoke of "intangibles", I was referring to I.P. vs. money in various types of accounts (which, while not "tangible" in the sense of having the cold, hard cash in your hands - is understood to be equivalent).
.... and only a very small percentage of the total users on a p2p network who ever request a song you happen to be sharing on your specific computer. So the ONLY thing that should matter is how many times each song was actually downloaded from the PC. If you logged THAT, you'd find much of the shared music was probably NEVER downloaded even a single time, and many other tracks were subject to partial transfers that were aborted in the middle. Only a relative handful were ever successfully transmitted.
Amd sure, the standards that apply in criminal law are higher than for a civil case, but the risks are higher too. (You're not going to go around with a felony charge on your permanent record, affecting future employment, over a civil lawsuit you lost.)
The starving college student may indeed have a Mac Powerbook, iPod, etc. - but *many* times, those items were obtained from a student loan, which they're going to have to repay over a long period of time when they get out into the work world after college is over. None of that indicates they're loaded with disposable income. (Apple has regularly run offers for students where the iPod is thrown in free, or heavily discounted, with the purchase of a new computer. So getting one often means getting both, just for the record.)
And lastly, the idea that any one kid is "sharing music with 10 million or so people" is as flawed as the claims of losses based on the full retail price of each and every copy of a software program they can show someone distributed. There's only enough bandwidth to share so much at a time, for starters
I *know* I really wanted a feature like this MANY times when traveling. If I'm out of town on a business trip, I very likely have limited access to the Internet for starters. The connection on my phone may very well be all I've got easy access to at all.
When you finish work and your co-worker says "Hey, let's find some dinner!" - what do you do? Probably start driving around and stop at the first thing you run into that's acceptable, right? Or possibly, ask the front desk person at your hotel for recommendations and directions, which are just as often useless as accurate.
But imagine instead, you just pull out your phone and do a search for all restaurants of a given type within 5 miles of your hotel's address? Now you've got current, accurate info and even a phone number to dial if you want to make reservations or something.
Obviously, I can't speak for everyone here -- but my own belief is that government went wrong when they first started treating these infringement cases as *criminal* vs. *civil* matters.
.... not relatively "fluffy and intangible" losses due to intellectual property "violations"!
There's NO reason an association the size of the RIAA really needs the government's assistance to get "justice" against infringements on the musical works they hold rights to. The people sharing these songs via p2p, web pages, ftp, or any other electronic method are doing so without any financial compensation whatsoever.
Every time they pursue one of these cases in criminal courts of law, they cost the American taxpayer large amounts of money, using the time of prosecutors, appointed judges, etc. They *could*, of course, opt to "do the right thing" and go after these individuals in strictly civil cases. But that would put the effort squarely on them to build their cases - rather than relying on "boilerplate" complaints and standardized tables of penalties/punishments for criminal copyright infringement that federal courts already devised.
Criminal prosecution should really be reserved for tangible crimes against persons and property
My belief is, if businesses and individuals had to resort to civil remedies for these violations, we'd see much more reasonable and logical outcomes. (EG. A starving college student sharing copies of his/her purchased collection of CDs wouldn't be pressured to "pay back" tens of THOUSANDS of dollars for doing so. Instead, you might see the punishment actually fit the "crime". They might be charged a few hundred bucks, making them rethink how wise it was to offer copyrighted musical works to any and all takers, free of charge. People wouldn't be rushing to condemn the RIAA like they do now, if THIS was the norm.)
Yeah, yeah.... I did the same thing, and had a Kyocera 7135 before it, even. Both times, I was convinced the phone was finally "good enough" at running useful apps that I'd do a lot more with it than than make/take calls. Both times, I was wrong.
But you have to admit, the iPhone looks FAR more capable than any of these other "smartphones". With my Treo 650, for example, my web browsing experience was a total joke. Most sites I tried to pull up simply crashed the browser with some kind of exception error. Other times, they worked, but had the links scattered all over the screen, making it almost impossible to figure out which part of the site they even corresponded with.
I remember, for example, going car shopping and taking my Treo with me, with the idea that I could quickly look up some used-car blue-book prices on Edmunds or Kelly Blue Book's web site. Nope... just futile!
It also appears it has a functional/useful built-in camera. Of course it's not going to stack up well against a good quality digital stand-alone camera, but sample photos circulating on the net sure look far better than the dark, dingy or blurry results I got out of my Moto Razr or Treo cameras!
The Google map integration of the iPhone looks like a very useful feature too. You can get directions to a restaurant or hotel, for example, and then dial the number to the place with a tap on the screen. I never had anything that worked nearly as well on my Treo. (I remember having a couple 411 directory type applets for it to find phone numbers of places, but half the time, they'd just come back with some kind of "service unavailable" message when I tried to use them.)
Sorry you had to go through all of THAT to learn just how little we can trust people given positions of authority in society.... but it's just one of MANY examples I've read about and experienced.
.... One that's well known for its corrupt police force. (Do a web search on Bel Ridge and police and you should find all sorts of interesting material, including a news investigation where the reporter was banned from entering their traffic court, despite the law saying it's open to the public -- and a fiasco a few years back where one of their officers was remote controlling a traffic signal, changing it to red as cars went under it and then writing the drivers tickets for running it!)
/
To be honest, I don't know if I can even think of a time I dealt with the police and felt there was a "just" outcome.
The last encounter I had with them was when borrowing my friend's car, to drive down the block to pick up a pizza we ordered. I got to the end of my street, and took a short-cut through a gas station at the corner to an adjacent strip mall parking lot where the pizza place resided. Next thing I know, a cop is behind me with flashing lights. I honestly had no idea why he pulled me over, except I guessed he was going to complain that I cut through the gas station's lot.
Instead, he starts writing out a ticket, and tells me I ran right through a stop sign and was speeding. I was definitely not speeding, and I *know* I stopped at the stop sign in question! (Since it was the first time I ever drove my friend's car, and there are lots of kids playing in the street where I lived - I was actually driving extra carefully.)
The thing is, I was driving through a little municipality named Bel Ridge in Missouri
Here's one link I found for you:
http://thecaperock.com/articles/2000/05/bel-ridge
Oh man, I *so* agree with you there! I've owned a Lasjerjet 6P ... Ended up reselling it to a dentist who wanted a cheap used laser printer to print out dental x-rays on occasion, and bought myself another one off eBay (this time a 6MP version), for the grand total of about $35 shipped.
Toner cartridges for the 6P/6MP are often available for as little as $35 or so each, and they last me as long as a year each.
Print quality and speed are pretty good, the printer is physically fairly small, and it even has an I.R. port for wireless printing. (Pretty cool for people owning PalmPilots, because they have a little program for them to allow printing via their I.R. port.)
My 6P and 6MP both took standard 30-pin SIMMs as upgrade memory too, so no costly proprietary RAM upgrade board needed to get one up to the 68MB or so of maximum printer memory.
The 6MP has Postscript capabilities built in, by way of a card that fits in one of the 30-pin SIMM sockets, but otherwise, it's identical to a 6P. Either one of these printers worked great for me in Mac OS X, with just about any version of Windows, and with several Linux distros. I use mine with a JetDirect box to make it network capable.
I never, for a minute, said my plan didn't have "potential holes" in it. There *are* encryption schemes nobody has been able to break yet (look at the currently used Dish Network and DirecTV satellite cards, for example) - but even those will be "broken" someday. If nothing else, a disgruntled employee could eventually leak out the secrets - since the decryption info has to be kept somewhere.
It *always* comes down to using encryption or password protection as a deterrence. Just like the lock on your front door, it can easily be picked in seconds by a skilled professional. But it does keep many amateurs out, who would otherwise walk in and take something of value if they knew no lock was in place at all.
I'm at a loss to see why zap2it considers this data so "secret", though? They're pedaling publicly available information that's published *all the time*. They simply add some value by sending it out efficiently, in a standardized format your computer can easily download and work with. The "incentive" for them to at least try to sell it inexpensively to you and me? Simply the fact that either they take their $2 a month or whatever from whoever will pay, or they don't - and someone ELSE takes that same money. They've already got the infrastructure in place, so it's an easier $2/month for them to collect than for anyone else starting from scratch. But it will happen.
That's because the designers of the newer shovels don't consider "longevity" nearly as high a priority as you do. Most likely, they were only interested in making whatever type of shovel improved their profit margins the most. They quickly discovered that the shovel promising more comfort during its use sold well next to traditional shovels with no rubber grip or plastic handle.
In essence, the majority "outvoted" you with their pocketbooks, thinking they'd rather have a shovel that isn't as likely to tear up one's hands during use, even if the plastic handle might break off after a few years of use.
If everyone thought the same as you do, the plastic handles and rubber grips would disappear, as everybody ignored them.
(I'd also add here that you illustrate the point that people often don't make the smartest purchasing decisions. Sometimes our options are on the store shelves because they successfully fool the majority into buying them - rather than because they're the "best" products.)
It seems to me this is a problem with a number of very workable solutions. For starters, how about people receiving only a compressed download of their guide data with a password protected archive file? The correct password to decompress the archive could change daily (or hourly even, whatever), based on information exchanged between the paid subscriber's Myth box and the server. To discourage "reverse engineering" of exactly how these passwords were determined, you might have to release the guide module without providing open source for that little component .... but I think that's something most Myth users could live with, given the circumstances. (They already happily use nVidia drivers that don't include source, right?)
Sure, someone could brute force hack the archive file to get it decompressed, but how worthwhile could all that effort really be for a service people are ok spending maybe $1.99 a month for? And considering the password would change often (maybe with each new guide update?), it would have to be brute force hacked over and over and over.....
Unfortunately, I tend to agree. Ultimately, this will force people to make encryption a default (which could be a *good* thing in the case of email, IMHO), but will also put a big damper on people's ability to use the net in creative ways. (Imagine a scenario where you have to establish a point to point VPN tunnel each and every time you transfer some data to a friend, or to a site. Because otherwise, you risk the ISP's router killing your transmission (or throttling it back to unbearably slow speeds) because it deems the content "inappropriate" for use on their network.)
VPN technology is fine in some cases, but isn't going to be practical to apply to p2p sharing and many other more interesting ways of using the Internet.
Even SSL web traffic has some serious limitations, when you reach the point of a large provider having to manage the secure connections for many thousands of simultaneous users. (EG. Right now, you can use a service like EasyNews via the web securely, by going to secure.members.easynews.com instead of members.easynews.com. But notice it's not the default behavior to run securely? Why not? Probably because if everyone did it, their equipment would get overloaded trying to manage that many secure connections.)
At the very least, encrypted traffic adds additional overhead, so you don't achieve the transfer speeds you'd otherwise be able to achieve. It's a way to circumvent over-zealous ISPs trying to filter your content - but it's not something you'd really *want* to feel is needed.
IMHO, this is ridiculous! Safari gets released for Windows, and the Mozilla team immediately has an outcry against it?
... but that won't directly add to Apple's bottom line. They aren't likely to make anything SELLING Safari for Windows either - so it's more or less going to remain a freebie you can opt to use or not use, as you see fit.
The more competition, the better, I say! May the best man win, and all that. I didn't realize Firefox was being strictly worked on as a project with a goal of defeating IE, and no other players were ever supposed to "interfere" with that mission!?
This isn't even a scenario that's real comparable to iTunes - despite that getting thrown around as a comparison. With iTunes, Apple was releasing it as a vehicle to sell music on their store. In that regard, the whole thing was a commercial venture - and it simply made sense to allow the vast number of Windows users a "front end" to be able to purchase Apple's music, instead of keeping it just for the 5-7% of the marketplace that uses Macs.
With Safari, on the other hand, it may become useful or required as a development tool aiding in building apps for the iPhone
Similar to the guy who claims that "Quicken Loans" is not #1 for valid reasons, I have to seriously question the idea that Anheuser Busch in St. Louis, MO is in the top 10!?
... Would I like playing golf with them on weekends? Did they think my selection of business casual clothing looked "cool" enough? Etc.
I've never actually worked for them myself, BUT I've interviewed for jobs there a couple of times, AND have several good friends and former co-workers who have been employed there at one time or another.
The most consistent thing I hear about them is that your job has no real "stability". People working in their "creative services" division designing web sites and advertising were constantly laid off in "cutbacks", whenever things got a little bit slow, or some big ad campaign didn't work out real well for them. Most of their I.T. administrators were only hired as contractors, not real employees -- so they didn't enjoy many of the benefits A.B. is known for. (Not sure if they *still* do it today, but traditionally, they gave all their union workers free cases of beer every month as a fringe benefit. Contractors, by contrast, didn't get in on any of that.)
There are a lot of headaches working for A.B. too (which of course, they'd prefer to call "challenges"). Not the least of which is the fact that they have a large brewery over in China, and Microsoft Exchange administrators therefore have to deal with the Chinese character sets and compatibility problems that can bring to the table when they're communicating with the servers in the U.S.
My biggest "gripe" with them, though? When I had interviews with them years ago, I was always grilled in "group interviews" - which seemed to be designed to stress out a candidate as much as possible. Inevitably, you had one H.R. type person harping on things like your formal education and the "cookie cutter interview questions" out of a textbook, while you were trying to answer detailed technical questions one of their I.T. people was hitting you with, and while a 3rd. or even 4th. middle management person was taking notes on all of it, and throwing in some less technical "business type" questioning. After that barrage, you got a whirlwind "tour" of the offices, where apparently, they tested you to see how much of a "team player" it seemed like you were. At the end, I got the impression that the most important thing I was judged on was probably my ability to "fit in" with the people I just shook hands with
Just for the record though, I did also work with a former Sharp employee, and he could never stop talking about his experiences with them. I got the distinct impression that Sharp must be a great place to learn useful job skills and further one's career.
You're *always* using someone else's money to buy large items, unless you're really financially well off. So what? Even our own government does things this way, all the time.
... so I have no worries. But I also accept the fact that typically, a vehicle purchase is the second-largest purchase a person makes, next to their home. So assuming I should be able to buy it outright vs. taking out a loan seems far-fetched.
It's nice to make "pie in the sky" statements like "Don't buy a car unless you can pay for it in full, up-front!" - but that would leave most of us driving unreliable, ugly pieces of junk, even as we try to use them to get to a decent paying job each day.
I didn't buy a car I couldn't afford to make the monthly payments on
Furthermore, I don't quite see the "value" in paying out considerable amounts of money (even gas, oil changes and tires add up to a considerable investment in operating your vehicle over time) on a car or truck you're not really happy to be driving around? If you can find a "nearly new" vehicle somebody will sell you at a good price, and it's really a vehicle you wanted in the first place - great! But that doesn't always happen....
The problem comes in when people buy more than they can afford to make the payments on comfortably, under a false assumption that it will "all work out ok" just because someone is willing to give them a loan for that amount....
I used to think the same thing, but guess what? I'm driving a brand new Mitsubishi Eclipse right now. The argument that they "immediately lose a bunch of resale value, the minute you drive them off the lot" is technically correct. But realistically, it doesn't mean as much as people pretend it does. In reality, MOST people buying a new car plan on keeping it for a while. The initial loss in value only affects someone who makes a poor purchasing decision and tries to trade the almost new car back in after only a few months through maybe the first year or two of ownership.
Meanwhile, loans on new vehicles tend to have much better interest rates than loans on used vehicles, so you're not giving as much of your money away to some bank as you pay off your car....
My new car also included such "bonuses" as free roadside assistance during the warranty period. Used car owners generally don't receive benefits like this, and have to pay for a "motor club" membership like AAA to get the same thing.
The warranty itself can be a factor, too. You may or may not get one with your used car purchase, depending on its mileage and all. But it could easily "make or break" the overall "value" of your purchase if something major like a transmission fails 2 or 3 years into the vehicle ownership.
Ultimately, for me, the assurance that my new car doesn't have some worn out part just waiting to fail and greatly inconvenience me when I need my car the most is the *best* reason for buying new. I only own one vehicle, and I count on it daily. If I'm supposed to go to a customer site and can't make it because my car breaks down, that costs me income from both ends at once on a used car that's not in warranty. (Loss of income on a job I can't do, AND loss of income paying for a car repair.) Generally, the dealership will even give me a free rental car while repairing mine under warranty - which they'd never do on used car repairs.
Hmm... well, one person's "must have feature" is just "so what?" to another, I guess!
In Firefox, if you try to drag a tab out to your desktop, it creates a new shortcut to that URL. So you can effectively open the tab in a new window, but it takes more steps. (You have to double-click the shortcut it created and then close the original tab.)
I guess I've just found that if I need a web site or page in a separate window, I'll usually just open it in one to begin with. If I opt to open a new page in a tab, it's usually because that's a perfectly good place for it.