A prime example would be a guitar teacher--if you're good enough, you can charge $100+ per lesson.
Where? I mean maybe piano and guitar teachers are different, but I take high level lessons from a woman with multiple degrees in music, multiple Master's degrees in music, including piano performance and piano pedagogy from that little known music backwater, Juilliard, who performs with the Seattle Opera and Seattle Symphony amongst many others, and she charges $52/hour.
Obviously? Cause if you'd lost 10+ years of your life's work, so to speak, you might think we might cut you a little slack for a few days to adjust, regardless of fault/blame/ways you could have prevented it...
MS has approximately 160,000. When I was there a year ago, I did a tour of one of their test datacenters... (even regular staff don't get to tour production), and they remarked that they'd recently turned on their 150,000th.
Then you might want to be aware that unless you're a L3 downstream customer, they're in the process of ACLing you off of their formerly public DNS servers. Just FYI.
That is being bundled with fixes and enhancements to their own software like "iCal: Improves overall reliability with CalDav." The MS update is all labeled "Vulnerability to . .."
Drunk the kool-aid much? Hint, "improves overall reliability" != Enhancement. = BUG fix. What made the software unreliable? It contains fixes and fixes, not "fixes and enhancements". A new feature is an enhancement. No longer crashes / acts in an unspecified manner is not an enhancement.
Let's not get too carried away. It's 10.5.7, not 10.6.
Microsoft is currently working on a $40B stock buy back, having recently completed ANOTHER $40B stock buy back. That's the amusing thing about the people who say that Apple is getting bigger than MS, based purely on cash in hand. Yes, MSFT "only" has $25B cash. That's after buying back $80B of stock.
less than 5% of shares gives you no special rights.
Apropos of anything else, there are plenty of institutional investors and other controlling interests who would be quite willing to disagree. At about 5% of ownership you could easily claim seats on most boards, and though you may not have the absolute numbers, you've now pushed the threshold for objections to your proposals significantly higher.
And the bank wouldn't retroactively waive the fees? Realize that a law firm like this would likely have multiple million US dollars in their accounts, and probably tens of millions held in trust at any one time. The bank will be happy to accommodate them, not a bunch of clowns fraudulently doing this (yeah, fraud, where a party plans a deception in order to cause loss to another).
I think it's hilarious that anyone thinks that the moment this starts happening, the law firm won't speak to the payment processor/bank, etc, and get a hold placed on all such incoming transactions unless pre-authorized by the law firm.
But hey... more power to them if they think they can get away with it. They're just likely to be sadly mistaken.
Of course it's easily remedied by blocking all cash transfers under a certain amount. I guess you're not obliged to accept money, but still it'd cause some extra work
As the sibling comment says, if you're claiming a debt, and seeking relief (in the form of payment, or otherwise), then you are legally obliged to accept attempts at payment thereof, at least in cash. (I believe you are obligated to accept financial instruments, such as checks, though I know that some collection agencies will try to convince you that they won't accept a check, only a cashier's check, etc).
(Quite offtopic, but tangential... ) Yes and no. They'll let you pay the bill, if you know exactly how much it is. They won't tell you how much it is, citing privacy (and reasonably so).
Typically, though, don't court-ordered payments get made to the court, then to the payee? So, y'know, you can't say "Yes, Your Honor, here is a check I'm making out to them for $x", judge says thank you, everyone walks away, and three days later your check bounces. I'm fairly sure this is the case, though it may be different a) in Sweden, b) in civil cases, c) depending on the type of award, d) any combination of the above, e) a combination of the above, and other unmentioned factors, etc, et al.
That's what you get when you have one group of lawyers and advocates (RIAA) talking to another group of mostly lawyers and advocates (Congress). Gasp, lawyers attempting to use language to their own advantage. If Congress had wanted, or required, something more concrete, one would have hoped that an elected body, consisting predominantly of lawyers, would have insisted on a more precise and tangible statement. I don't expect much from the RIAA, but I'd expect (perhaps naively) more from such committees.
And how open is this Android thing really going to be? Google has already demonstrated that it is willing to pull certain apps that T-mobile doesn't like.
I love how "other mobile platforms" has become a synonym for "what the iPhone has/has not". My Nokia N95 has recorded video since the day it came out, 2 years ago. It allows 1 click publishing to Youtube. Hell, FOUR YEARS AGO, the N90 had a 270 degree swivel screen, and a separately 270 degree swivel lens capable of recording video. For that matter, the screen res was 352x416, the highest at the time, and still higher than most cells...
Just because something has a feature the Jesusphone doesn't, doesn't mean it is mindblowing and revolutionary...
But where, Ray, did they promise they would stop such things in perpetuity? As far as I've read, they made a statement to Congress that they had "discontinued lawsuits in August 2008". Nowhere did they make a promise not to resume lawsuits, nor were they asked to. I'm no fan of the RIAA, but you're a lawyer. They're lawyers. Heck, most of the members of Congress they made that statement to are lawyers. If anyone should be on top of the issue of precision in use of language, it should be lawyers. That being said, demanding a promise to cease legal action against people committing torts against you (focusing for a moment on the principle, moreso than the RIAA's application thereof) would appear to me to be a dangerous precedent.
I'm all for spanking the RIAA, but nowhere was it implied they would "never launch a lawsuit again". I think it's just as much FUD from this side to imply "OMG they lied to Congress". Nowhere did they claim they would not resume such activities after reviewing things (with as much of a grain of salt for such a review as you'd like), and nor were, and nor should they have been bound to.
The UI is nicer, yes. But the idea isn't new, and indeed I've yet to meet a voicemail system that DOESN'T let you spin forward or backwards at will in a voicemail with key presses.
I don't do that... but I have an innate memory for numbers. More so than words. I have approximately 8 cards, and for each, off the top of my head, I can recall the 16 digit card number, CVV2, and expiry. But shopping lists? Not so much.
I have a Nokia N95. One nice thing? Blacklist applications. I use one that allows me to input pattern based blocks, as well as individual numbers, or you can do "not in my contact list", etc, etc, depending on how you want to work it. It even lets you choose the 'mode' of disconnect, be it "Silence", "Reject Call" "Pick up and hang up" (which is great for those militantly persistent auto-callers.
In order to get that $1774 price, you deliberately picked the most expensive options - 2.4GHz aluminum unibody Macbook with all the most expensive upgrades* purchased directly from the vendor. You also ignored features present on the Macbook and absent on the XPS - like the aluminum unibody enclosure or the larger internal battery - because they do not support your conclusion.
Oh shit. I'm sorry. I didn't realize the original claim was actually "Show me an Apple that is vastly overpriced for a computer with identical specs, but don't pick the expensive options, regardless of whether they might actually be useful or not".
My bad.
True. The XPS actually doesn't have an aluminium unibody enclosure. You're right about the battery. Hey, look, the battery upgrade option to an equivalent to the MB? $40 more. Maybe it's your supposition that the unibody enclosure is worth $490. But it ain't mine.
The base model is $999, and as always (be it Apple or Dell) it's cheapest to get your upgrades on Newegg.
What person on the street says "Oh, I'm going to buy this shell of a laptop, and dump the HDD, the RAM, possibly the GPU and replace them with components from Newegg"? Maybe other Slashdot posters, sure, but the average target market of Dell, and Apple? I think not.
The most appropriate comparison - the one that would be made by a reasonable person and not an asshat such as yourself... Both machines have a 1280x800 display, although to the Dell's credit, it has a 15.3" display (as opposed to the Macbook's 13.3"), twice the RAM, and a 500GB HDD (vs. the Macbook's 160GB).
You then go on to make the altogether amazing claim, though you describe it as "reasonable" that comparing a 15" laptop to a 13" is appropriate. Sorry, I'm still laughing there.
Also, experience tells me that Apple's build quality is extremely high compared to Dell's. Hardware failures are noticeably less common on Apple hardware, among other advantages.
Experience also tells me that the Macbook line, both pre- and post-Intel, have had all manner of large recall issues, on everything from discoloration of casing, to "logic board failure" (i.e. a completely FUBAR motherboard), and so on and so forth, and several things in between. So experience doesn't really count for a lot.
The great irony is this:
Experience also tells me that talking to you is a waste of time (you can't reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into), but maybe someone else will care. And you can call me an Apple fanboy if you like, but you'll still be an idiot.
You say this, having decided for yourself what I am and what I represent. The fact that I'm posting this from a current model Mac Pro, fairly well specced out, will go over your head, because it won't gel with your worldview that I can both use an Apple product and recognize that there are other options which might meet people's needs more cheaply.
You do realize that said parts are "parts that are likely to be damaged or need replacing in the event of theft", i.e. engine immobilizers, electronic locking systems, ignitions, panels of the body where vehicle identity tags are affixed, and so on. It's not just random "left rear disc brake of F575". They'll happily sell you that if you feel the urge to pay for it, regardless of whether or not you're the registered owner of a Maranello.
Slashdot Mirror
Where? I mean maybe piano and guitar teachers are different, but I take high level lessons from a woman with multiple degrees in music, multiple Master's degrees in music, including piano performance and piano pedagogy from that little known music backwater, Juilliard, who performs with the Seattle Opera and Seattle Symphony amongst many others, and she charges $52/hour.
Obviously? Cause if you'd lost 10+ years of your life's work, so to speak, you might think we might cut you a little slack for a few days to adjust, regardless of fault/blame/ways you could have prevented it...
MS has approximately 160,000. When I was there a year ago, I did a tour of one of their test datacenters... (even regular staff don't get to tour production), and they remarked that they'd recently turned on their 150,000th.
Then you might want to be aware that unless you're a L3 downstream customer, they're in the process of ACLing you off of their formerly public DNS servers. Just FYI.
Drunk the kool-aid much? Hint, "improves overall reliability" != Enhancement. = BUG fix. What made the software unreliable? It contains fixes and fixes, not "fixes and enhancements". A new feature is an enhancement. No longer crashes / acts in an unspecified manner is not an enhancement.
Let's not get too carried away. It's 10.5.7, not 10.6.
$ wget http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL827/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.7.dmg
--20:22:16-- http://support.apple.com/downloads/DL827/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.7.dmg
--20:22:16-- http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/Mac_OS_X/downloads/061-6421.20090512.CdwEX/MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.7.dmg
Resolving supportdownload.apple.com... 70.183.191.138, 70.183.191.144
Connecting to supportdownload.apple.com|70.183.191.138|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 764665343 (729M) [application/octet-stream]
Saving to: `MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.7.dmg'
764,665,343 1.36M/s in 8m 43s
20:31:00 (1.39 MB/s) - `MacOSXUpdCombo10.5.7.dmg' saved [764665343/764665343]
(Output edited because Slash filtering is lame.)
tl;dr: combo update = 729MB
Microsoft is currently working on a $40B stock buy back, having recently completed ANOTHER $40B stock buy back. That's the amusing thing about the people who say that Apple is getting bigger than MS, based purely on cash in hand. Yes, MSFT "only" has $25B cash. That's after buying back $80B of stock.
Ye gods. And replace it with SAP? Talk about "six of one, half a dozen of the other".
Apropos of anything else, there are plenty of institutional investors and other controlling interests who would be quite willing to disagree. At about 5% of ownership you could easily claim seats on most boards, and though you may not have the absolute numbers, you've now pushed the threshold for objections to your proposals significantly higher.
And the bank wouldn't retroactively waive the fees? Realize that a law firm like this would likely have multiple million US dollars in their accounts, and probably tens of millions held in trust at any one time. The bank will be happy to accommodate them, not a bunch of clowns fraudulently doing this (yeah, fraud, where a party plans a deception in order to cause loss to another).
But hey... more power to them if they think they can get away with it. They're just likely to be sadly mistaken.
As the sibling comment says, if you're claiming a debt, and seeking relief (in the form of payment, or otherwise), then you are legally obliged to accept attempts at payment thereof, at least in cash. (I believe you are obligated to accept financial instruments, such as checks, though I know that some collection agencies will try to convince you that they won't accept a check, only a cashier's check, etc).
Typically, though, don't court-ordered payments get made to the court, then to the payee? So, y'know, you can't say "Yes, Your Honor, here is a check I'm making out to them for $x", judge says thank you, everyone walks away, and three days later your check bounces. I'm fairly sure this is the case, though it may be different a) in Sweden, b) in civil cases, c) depending on the type of award, d) any combination of the above, e) a combination of the above, and other unmentioned factors, etc, et al.
That's what you get when you have one group of lawyers and advocates (RIAA) talking to another group of mostly lawyers and advocates (Congress). Gasp, lawyers attempting to use language to their own advantage. If Congress had wanted, or required, something more concrete, one would have hoped that an elected body, consisting predominantly of lawyers, would have insisted on a more precise and tangible statement. I don't expect much from the RIAA, but I'd expect (perhaps naively) more from such committees.
Odd. I mean it's not like Apple would do exactly the same thing over apps AT&T don't like...
Just because something has a feature the Jesusphone doesn't, doesn't mean it is mindblowing and revolutionary...
But where, Ray, did they promise they would stop such things in perpetuity? As far as I've read, they made a statement to Congress that they had "discontinued lawsuits in August 2008". Nowhere did they make a promise not to resume lawsuits, nor were they asked to. I'm no fan of the RIAA, but you're a lawyer. They're lawyers. Heck, most of the members of Congress they made that statement to are lawyers. If anyone should be on top of the issue of precision in use of language, it should be lawyers. That being said, demanding a promise to cease legal action against people committing torts against you (focusing for a moment on the principle, moreso than the RIAA's application thereof) would appear to me to be a dangerous precedent.
This is a non-story.
The UI is nicer, yes. But the idea isn't new, and indeed I've yet to meet a voicemail system that DOESN'T let you spin forward or backwards at will in a voicemail with key presses.
I don't do that... but I have an innate memory for numbers. More so than words. I have approximately 8 cards, and for each, off the top of my head, I can recall the 16 digit card number, CVV2, and expiry. But shopping lists? Not so much.
My previous WinMo phone had similar, too.
Who is that, a French porn star? The phrase you are looking for is je ne sais quoi.
A MacBook aluminum, 2.4GHz, 4GB RAM is $1,099? LMAO.
Oh shit. I'm sorry. I didn't realize the original claim was actually "Show me an Apple that is vastly overpriced for a computer with identical specs, but don't pick the expensive options, regardless of whether they might actually be useful or not".
My bad.
True. The XPS actually doesn't have an aluminium unibody enclosure. You're right about the battery. Hey, look, the battery upgrade option to an equivalent to the MB? $40 more. Maybe it's your supposition that the unibody enclosure is worth $490. But it ain't mine.
What person on the street says "Oh, I'm going to buy this shell of a laptop, and dump the HDD, the RAM, possibly the GPU and replace them with components from Newegg"? Maybe other Slashdot posters, sure, but the average target market of Dell, and Apple? I think not.
You then go on to make the altogether amazing claim, though you describe it as "reasonable" that comparing a 15" laptop to a 13" is appropriate. Sorry, I'm still laughing there.
Experience also tells me that the Macbook line, both pre- and post-Intel, have had all manner of large recall issues, on everything from discoloration of casing, to "logic board failure" (i.e. a completely FUBAR motherboard), and so on and so forth, and several things in between. So experience doesn't really count for a lot.
The great irony is this:
You say this, having decided for yourself what I am and what I represent. The fact that I'm posting this from a current model Mac Pro, fairly well specced out, will go over your head, because it won't gel with your worldview that I can both use an Apple product and recognize that there are other options which might meet people's needs more cheaply.
You do realize that said parts are "parts that are likely to be damaged or need replacing in the event of theft", i.e. engine immobilizers, electronic locking systems, ignitions, panels of the body where vehicle identity tags are affixed, and so on. It's not just random "left rear disc brake of F575". They'll happily sell you that if you feel the urge to pay for it, regardless of whether or not you're the registered owner of a Maranello.