Yeah, I thought about that, and I think the answer is that as long as your app is compatible with the BSD licensed one, and you keep using it for your development, you're fine. But as soon as you use the newer one (bugfix or API change) then you're under the GPL. But it's still a grey area, so maybe as long as your code CAN use the BSD one, then you're okay... We probably won't 'know' until someone actually tries to sue over it, and by then it'll be too late.
Actually, part of the problem with these is that you DON'T need to take it out of your wallet. They can easily be read while it's still in your pocket, even.
And yeah, that five seconds is the world to some people, apparently, nevermind that you could combine that five seconds with the 5 minutes you stand there and watch them scan the items in the first place.
The first time I saw an RFID credit card thingy, I nearly screamed out loud. Outrage mixed with panic, all at once. So amazingly stupid. I obviously won't be asking my bank for one. Those tinfoil wallets are looking better every day.
I 'fell' for this. I read the first (and sometimes second) books of several of the series on there, and purchased a few books so far. As expected, the purchased book was as good as the free ones, so no complaints there.
My problem is this: I have little incentive to buy anything else from there, as I don't know how good the writer is. They give you a free chapter of each book to help, but the first chapter is rarely a large part of why I like or dislike a book.
So I haven't bought any books from them in quite a while. I may start taking pot-shots and buying books that may or may not be good, but I almost always think of something else I can throw money at and have 'fun' for sure. I think it would help their site tremendously to update is to the 2000's. Like, reviews and ratings and such. Plus and easy navigation system. I'm almost tempted to offer to write it all for them, just so I can navigate their site easier. Their free book section was linked so poorly I wrote a greasemonkey script to 'fix' it. (userscripts has it.) It's currently uncommented and unrated, so I'm guessing nobody but me has ever actually used it, though. (It's been viewed 57 times, 15 of which are probably me.)
As for the sibling post saying they have 'no literary value' and are 'pulp'... Who judges 'literary value' then? If the book is enjoyable, it has value. Period. I find books like 'Wuthering Heights' to have little 'literary value' to me, but there's obviously quite a bit of historical value there. The explanation I've come across on the net is that 'literary value' is the length of time it survives. So you can't possibly say any current work has no literary value unless you take a trip to the future and ask around.
It's not libraries that you distribute he's talking about, it's libraries that you USE in your code, but someone else maintains.
Example: You make application A. To work, it needs libraries Z, Y, and X. All of these are GPL v2, but library Y is 'or any later version.' Person P makes a contribution to library Y under GPLv3. Y is now GPLv3. If you wish to use the latest version of library Y, you must now license your application A under the GPLv3.
If the libraries were under the LGPL, you wouldn't have to use GPLv3 as your license, but your application still has to follow ALL of the LGPLv3 stipulations for use, because of that library, if you want to use the latest version.
I disagree that it's 'remote parenting'. They get the same message from me turning it off remotely as if I came in and said 'You know you can't watch TV after dark' and turn it off manually. Kids aren't stupid.
The toilet paper is an example. I don't keep a single roll, I keep several under the sink. I don't -have- a wife to get it for me. Simply an example.
As for the 'alarm clock knowing where you are' being weird... Well, there's a quote about technology being indistinguishable from magic. We're talking progress here, and that'll be accepted before long. It's far too easy to tell people apart by size/temp/etc for houses not to eventually track people for lighting and other purposes.
All 'automated' systems have issues that need to be designed around. Smart systems allow you to turn potentially annoying features off, like the pause on game consoles when switching away.
The remote also wouldn't just have a single 'source' button. Ideally, the remote will be complex enough to need buttons to change the display, and buttons to do things. The lcd display would simply be touch-sensitive and deal with that. You hit the source key, then the source menu pops up and you select the device. It populates the menu automatically from the devices attached, instead of requiring you to program them in. Each device would also have it's own menu system that shows up on the lcd, automatically.
Yeah, the stove thing could become annoying. As I said, good design allows annoying features to be optional. I would always leave it on, personally. Your changes are good, but I would suggest only have the alarm sound if the alarm was set, went off and cancelled, and the unit was still left on afterwards. Or perhaps just have the thing turn it off when the alarm sounds. Options.
All of this was just examples of ways networked appliances could improve our lives, not actual product designs. I'd love to see most of them made, though. My aim is to show there ARE real examples of this, and not just someone pipedream.
Cylons, I think you mean. And yeah, there's 2 or 3 that are pretty awesome. Nothing like having sextuplets for... well, sex.
But I do agree that this guy is either extremely forward thinking, or a madman. His own virus could prevent any further viruses he writes... That's... Stupid.:D
I was immediately outraged at the illegal install of software, but then I remembered the virus itself was illegal anyhow, so it didn't much matter. It's like murdering everyone in a church on Sunday, and then spraypainting graffiti on the walls. Somehow, it's just not that much worse.
I have some ideas that would make this worth while...
Someone mentioned dial-a-temperature showers. Definitely good, but not really 'networked'... and can definitely be done without it.
TV/DVR/Game Console/etc that work -together-. Why does my TV only have 4 inputs, and why doesn't it -know- what's on each one? With a usb-type system, components could be chained together and the TV could simply display a list of all the components that are connected. It could even turn the unit on, if it's off when you switch to it. A game console could automatically pause, if you switch displays to another unit. The PC could automatically password-lock if you switch away. Too many ideas here.
TV is also connected to the house network for monitoring purposes. The burglar alarm says someone is approaching the front door. It shows them on the display. It's mom, so you use the remote to unlock the front door. (Not wireless, so it can't be exploited.)
Home Monitor also notices that you finished cooking, but left the stove on. Or that the stove has been on for 5 minutes, but you haven't set a timer yet, so it warns you in case you forgot about it. (This would save me constantly.) Timer is on the network so that it can warn you that the lasagna's done and get you to stop playing the Game Console long enough to get it out. Or the laundry is done, or... Too many ideas here.
Alarm clocks on a per-person, per-day schedule. It can even track you in case you end up sleeping on the couch that night, and be sure to wake only the right person up.
The remote control is actually part of the network, instead of being attached to a certain device. You can select what device you want to access and the remote's LCD is reconfigured for that.
Kids got the stereo too loud? Turn it down for them. Remotely.
Kids watching TV after bed time? Turn it off for them. Remotely. Or send them a video message telling them how upset you are.
Stuck in the bathroom with no toilet paper? Tell your significant other remotely, voice only. No more shouting.
I'm not done, these are just off the top of my head. They seem like minor annoyances, until you've had the tech to do that. And then they are huge assets to life. But notice that nowhere did I say all of these apps should be on the internet. No, with the ability of hackers to get into ANYTHING, I completely recommend that the internet is not even hooked into this system at all. That should be a completely seperate network. Closed circuit, as it were.
I see you got modded troll for that, and I feel bad about it. But that's because you're wrong, not because you're trolling. I think you honestly believe what you said.
Production cost certainly helps the seller decide what the 'value' is to them. It means absolutely nothing to the buyer. That's why you've "seen products that sold for prices that, given the production time, equated to no more than $1.00 per hour as a wage, far below the 'minimum wage' set by law." Intrinsic value doesn't truly exist. It's just a way of describing the value of the parts, if sold in their basic, unrefined state. Intrinsic value of a circuit board has a lot more to do with the market value of copper than anything else. It certainly has nothing to do with all the time an effort put into designing and producing it.
So while it may have cost a company a certain amount of money to produce something, that is not its value.
For example: I make a wooden spoon from a block of wood. I've got $100 in tools and $1 in wood. I don't plan to make any more and the tools were ruined in the process. It takes me 15 hours to make the spoon. Is this wooden spoon's value $101? Nobody in their right mind would decide that, since a simple wooden spoon can be obtained for $1 on the market.
Now say I use someone else's tools, the wood is free, and it takes me about a minute to make the spoon. Is the value of this spoon $0? The market says they are worth $1.
This is pretty basic economics, by the way. I'm not just spouting this from nowhere. Economics was one of the most eye-opening classes I took in college. I actually enjoyed it, despite the -hard- teacher (or maybe because of him) because I learned so much. I actually took the second one for the knowledge, even though I didn't need it at all.
Some of those 'calm' people are actually so totally freaked out that they went right past panic and on into 'I dunno wtf to do.' It's been drilled into our heads that calling 911 is the thing to do in an emergency, and that's what gets done.
Don't get me wrong, some of them really are that level-headed in an emergency. But I think you'll find an amazing number will break down afterwards when they'd managed to get back towards normal.
"by it's true value (how to calculate that is beyond me)"
You know why you can't figure out how to calculate that? Because it's impossible. Nothing has inherent value. All value is decided by the buyer and seller.
Even in 'collusion' and 'monopoly', the value is set by the buyer and seller. You don't HAVE to buy gas for your car. You could find a closer job and just walk. Or take a bus. Or... Whatever.
Walmart is undercutting other pharmacies and selling at a loss to attract business to themselves. They aren't doing it just to be jerks. They're doing it to sell more of something else. It's called a 'loss leader'. I think it's a perfectly crappy idea, but it's quite common.
Don't get confused on value, though. Just because a person finds the drug 'worth' more to them than Walmart is selling it for doesn't mean anything. They are getting that money back another way. The value is still being set by the buyer and seller.
You say 'they all copy it', but that's not really true in Japan, except for sequels. It's true in the US, though, so much that they've made parodies (Scary Movie, etc) that the basic plot is a parody of almost every US Horror movie ever made. If you parodied The Ring, you wouldn't have even come close to parodying The Grudge, though... They're just too different.
For those who are wondering, Ju-On is the Japanese name for The Curse, The Grudge, The Curse 2 and The Grudge 2, and I believe that is the correct order they were made in. Yeah, 4 movies that are almost identical, except they are all named Ju-On with Curse/Grudge/etc as the subtitle. They are just sequels, and as such, are basically the same plot, with different details. The Curse and The Grudge will weird you out, but the other 2 are just more of the same.
Um, not advertising it, but charging it, yes. They use that loophole to sucker people, yes, but I think it also affects how much they have to pay PayPal for the auction, so yeah, they care.
You know, that's funny... Because just this morning I -was- looking for that link. I thought maybe I had imagined it before. There was a logitech remote on there for $125 or so, and $70 shipping... $70 is obviously pushing the cost of the item over into the shipping. So I was going to report them. I gave up soon and just bought nothing.
Newzbin calls them 'editors' and they are actually human beings in diguise. They get perks like free accounts and fame and such. (Some of which is of questionable worth.)
Or maybe because their newer products and tech support are crap.
My father, who rarely uses his computer, managed to 'kill' 2 logitech mx1000 mice. When I called tech support, they made me go through the usual stupid BS about new drivers and blah blah, even after explaining that we had 2 of them, 1 on my computer and 1 on his, and I had proven that it was his mouse, not his receiver, that was broken and that mine still worked with his receiver. So I finally get them to say they'll ship another one out.
2 weeks later it still hasn't arrived, so we call again. No record of my call. We do the same thing again. No record of my call a few days later. Finally it gets shipped. He's using my mouse in the meantime and I've upgraded to a newer G7 one. Mine dies, too!
My father just doesn't use the computer that much. That's crazy.
As if that isn't enough, I bought a G15 keyboard with the G7. The G7, after about a month, refused to be recognized by windows each time I rebooted until I unplugged the usb stick and plugged it back in. The G15 would randomly start hitting the left arrow key and you had to unplug it and plug it back in to make it stop.
I stayed updated on the drivers. Some helped a bit, but the problems always returned. I eventually bought a new keyboard and tossed the G15 in the corner. Installing windows from scratch was needed to fix the mouse issue.
Prior to the mx1000, I LOVED Logitech. I just can't believe this kind of crap goes on with their most expensive products. I now avoid them like the plague.
No, it's not cool to hate a company. Sometimes, though, it's the right thing to do. When they start making quality products again, I'll considering buying them again.
I honestly wanted to like it, too. But I have different reasons.
I experienced almost no lag every time I've been there. The only time I do is when I go to a place that is extremely heavy on objects and people both. And that has nothing to do with the cable modem. (And it's not true lag, for those that would try to pick that apart.)
My complaint is not that you have to be skilled to create something nice, but that you have to work with the clunky system to do it.
The scripting language is a serious pain in the ass and very very poorly documented. The primitives system is great for crappy looking items, but anything of real complexity is near impossible. (Some people have managed to fake it with clever textures... Kudos to them.)
The avatars look like ass. If you want them not to have funny shadows and skin that looks like they are smeared with 'cake' makeup, you have to create or buy a texture. A decent one should have been included by default. This texture also takes up the 'tattoo' texture, so you have to make your own texture if you want a certain tatt.
I'm way over my weight limit now, but I wasn't as a kid. I'm sure part of this was the mandatory exercise in school. (Part of it was my parents controlling what I ate.)
They used to MAKE us play these 'dangerous' sports and keep us away from the truly dangerous ones, like 'burnball'. (This is a wonderful game where you throw a rubber ball against a wall... and if for some reason you miss, you have to run and touch the wall while someone retrieves it and tries to hit you with it, with the obvious painful results.) Despite the risk of breaking my head open in baseball, breaking a leg or rib in football, and just general pain in most sports, I still played burnball, against the school rules.
I've never broken a bone in my life.
In fact, the only broken bones were either in high school (football with other schools, the idiot who body-slammed his friend into concrete) and away from the school.
There is definitely such a thing as 'over protective'.
But then, I can't really blame them. If you get sued because 'Johnny' gets hurt, it's time to lock down and make sure you can't get sued like that again. Hopefully, that will send the right signal to the rest of the school and they'll tar and feather the idiots and run them out of town. I find it unlikely, though. More likely she'll be suing again in 5 years because they made her child fat. If they try to prevent that, they'll sue because they don't have 'good tasting food' or some nonsense.
No, it's like negotiating with terrorists... Nobody wins.
Thank you for noting that Uru Live may not start for a couple months... Somehow, that had slipped by me. I have been considering paying the reduced fee as I would have paid the $15/mo for Uru Live, if they were going to keep up regular content.
I'm still very shakey on how much 'new' content will be released and on what schedule, but with all the other titles to mess with also, it's a pretty good deal. Especially with the new (also questionable) Sam & Max episodes... Gotta try it and see.
"When a US company can hire someone (with equivalent skills, knowledge, experience) across the globe at half my rate, and they can only do this because this person's cost of living isn't even half that of mine, that scares me."
Can they really, though? Reliably? I mean, it's -possible- to hire someone like that here in the US. It just isn't likely. I think the same is true there. For a while, the US managed to underpay overseas people for their work. They have now 'advertised' themselves by allowing themselves to be underpaid and are working on raising those rates. Maybe they aren't even doing it with that goal in mind, but as each one of them proves themselves worthy, they go find a better paying job... Just like here.
Their rates won't reach as high as ours do because there are other factors to deal with, including a language barrier and a public perception that 'outsourcing is wrong'.
Is it just me, or does this thing always find nothing that actually looks like the picture? I drew a blue sky, green grass background, and then a brown tree trunk with dark green leaves... Just all blobs, basically. Not a single one of the pictures had a tree in it. They didn't look ANYTHING like the 'picture' I drew.
I can't argue with you there, and it's definitely a per-situation thing.
Honestly, it wouldn't hurt me much at all to remove the 'cable' portion of my tv... I mainly just play games and use my PC on it. (LCDs make such a great monitor.)
But as I said, it's part of growing up. Another example: When I was too young to remember, my parents took me and my sister to a water park. My mother got impetigo. To 'protect' us from the obviously disease-ridden waters of these places, my parents never took us to one again. Ever. Now it didn't bother me much because I'm a bit phobic when it comes to deep water, but there was a hole there with 'what's it like' until I had a job and some friends took me.
They decided it was necessary to eliminate something that's relatively harmless from my life because I 'might' get hurt... And deprived me of childhood memories I think I should have had. In their defense, we DID do a lot of other stuff. I'm sick of Disney World, for one thing.
I just don't agree with extremes like that at all.
Don't you mean 'lower cost of living countries'? It seems it's pretty clear... You get what you pay for. If you try to hire someone for a fraction of what it's worth (in your country), you get someone that doesn't know what they are doing and needs to be helped constantly. The same as if you'd hired someone locally for that price.
There are exceptions, I understand that.
But my company outsources some of it's programming work to India, and it's been nothing but headaches on anything larger than a simple script. It's gotten to the point that, like you saw, they ask me for help on their problems instead of trying to figure them out on their own.
I have to wonder, though... Did they REALLY have a 'hardware crash', or did they realize they had spent more on the project than they had earned, and saw no way to fix it? It's not that they are stupid, it's just that they try to do jobs they aren't qualified for because the pay is so good. The same thing happens here in the US, but the market is fairly stable, and they don't last long. IT is booming overseas, and there's many more jobs than qualified people to fill them.
Correct. In fact, they have said that the Uru Live 'alternate entry method' will cost as much as a Gametap subscription. Why would you pay that? Because Gametap is only US and CA, and if you want to play from another country, you're stuck for it.
Personally, if Uru Live couldn't make it with Ubi and Cyan at $15/month, I don't see how it can survive at $10/mo (or $5/mo if you take the special) under any company at all. Unless they plan to have an initial launch and then never update it... Would suck if that's true.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I thought about that, and I think the answer is that as long as your app is compatible with the BSD licensed one, and you keep using it for your development, you're fine. But as soon as you use the newer one (bugfix or API change) then you're under the GPL. But it's still a grey area, so maybe as long as your code CAN use the BSD one, then you're okay... We probably won't 'know' until someone actually tries to sue over it, and by then it'll be too late.
Actually, part of the problem with these is that you DON'T need to take it out of your wallet. They can easily be read while it's still in your pocket, even.
And yeah, that five seconds is the world to some people, apparently, nevermind that you could combine that five seconds with the 5 minutes you stand there and watch them scan the items in the first place.
The first time I saw an RFID credit card thingy, I nearly screamed out loud. Outrage mixed with panic, all at once. So amazingly stupid. I obviously won't be asking my bank for one. Those tinfoil wallets are looking better every day.
I 'fell' for this. I read the first (and sometimes second) books of several of the series on there, and purchased a few books so far. As expected, the purchased book was as good as the free ones, so no complaints there.
... Who judges 'literary value' then? If the book is enjoyable, it has value. Period. I find books like 'Wuthering Heights' to have little 'literary value' to me, but there's obviously quite a bit of historical value there. The explanation I've come across on the net is that 'literary value' is the length of time it survives. So you can't possibly say any current work has no literary value unless you take a trip to the future and ask around.
My problem is this: I have little incentive to buy anything else from there, as I don't know how good the writer is. They give you a free chapter of each book to help, but the first chapter is rarely a large part of why I like or dislike a book.
So I haven't bought any books from them in quite a while. I may start taking pot-shots and buying books that may or may not be good, but I almost always think of something else I can throw money at and have 'fun' for sure. I think it would help their site tremendously to update is to the 2000's. Like, reviews and ratings and such. Plus and easy navigation system. I'm almost tempted to offer to write it all for them, just so I can navigate their site easier. Their free book section was linked so poorly I wrote a greasemonkey script to 'fix' it. (userscripts has it.) It's currently uncommented and unrated, so I'm guessing nobody but me has ever actually used it, though. (It's been viewed 57 times, 15 of which are probably me.)
As for the sibling post saying they have 'no literary value' and are 'pulp'
It's not libraries that you distribute he's talking about, it's libraries that you USE in your code, but someone else maintains.
Example: You make application A. To work, it needs libraries Z, Y, and X. All of these are GPL v2, but library Y is 'or any later version.' Person P makes a contribution to library Y under GPLv3. Y is now GPLv3. If you wish to use the latest version of library Y, you must now license your application A under the GPLv3.
If the libraries were under the LGPL, you wouldn't have to use GPLv3 as your license, but your application still has to follow ALL of the LGPLv3 stipulations for use, because of that library, if you want to use the latest version.
No, that would not be a closed circuit, and would still be able to be hacked. I'm talk seperate network hardware-wise.
I disagree that it's 'remote parenting'. They get the same message from me turning it off remotely as if I came in and said 'You know you can't watch TV after dark' and turn it off manually. Kids aren't stupid.
The toilet paper is an example. I don't keep a single roll, I keep several under the sink. I don't -have- a wife to get it for me. Simply an example.
As for the 'alarm clock knowing where you are' being weird... Well, there's a quote about technology being indistinguishable from magic. We're talking progress here, and that'll be accepted before long. It's far too easy to tell people apart by size/temp/etc for houses not to eventually track people for lighting and other purposes.
All 'automated' systems have issues that need to be designed around. Smart systems allow you to turn potentially annoying features off, like the pause on game consoles when switching away.
The remote also wouldn't just have a single 'source' button. Ideally, the remote will be complex enough to need buttons to change the display, and buttons to do things. The lcd display would simply be touch-sensitive and deal with that. You hit the source key, then the source menu pops up and you select the device. It populates the menu automatically from the devices attached, instead of requiring you to program them in. Each device would also have it's own menu system that shows up on the lcd, automatically.
Yeah, the stove thing could become annoying. As I said, good design allows annoying features to be optional. I would always leave it on, personally. Your changes are good, but I would suggest only have the alarm sound if the alarm was set, went off and cancelled, and the unit was still left on afterwards. Or perhaps just have the thing turn it off when the alarm sounds. Options.
All of this was just examples of ways networked appliances could improve our lives, not actual product designs. I'd love to see most of them made, though. My aim is to show there ARE real examples of this, and not just someone pipedream.
Cylons, I think you mean. And yeah, there's 2 or 3 that are pretty awesome. Nothing like having sextuplets for... well, sex.
:D
But I do agree that this guy is either extremely forward thinking, or a madman. His own virus could prevent any further viruses he writes... That's... Stupid.
I was immediately outraged at the illegal install of software, but then I remembered the virus itself was illegal anyhow, so it didn't much matter. It's like murdering everyone in a church on Sunday, and then spraypainting graffiti on the walls. Somehow, it's just not that much worse.
I have some ideas that would make this worth while...
Someone mentioned dial-a-temperature showers. Definitely good, but not really 'networked'... and can definitely be done without it.
TV/DVR/Game Console/etc that work -together-. Why does my TV only have 4 inputs, and why doesn't it -know- what's on each one? With a usb-type system, components could be chained together and the TV could simply display a list of all the components that are connected. It could even turn the unit on, if it's off when you switch to it. A game console could automatically pause, if you switch displays to another unit. The PC could automatically password-lock if you switch away. Too many ideas here.
TV is also connected to the house network for monitoring purposes. The burglar alarm says someone is approaching the front door. It shows them on the display. It's mom, so you use the remote to unlock the front door. (Not wireless, so it can't be exploited.)
Home Monitor also notices that you finished cooking, but left the stove on. Or that the stove has been on for 5 minutes, but you haven't set a timer yet, so it warns you in case you forgot about it. (This would save me constantly.) Timer is on the network so that it can warn you that the lasagna's done and get you to stop playing the Game Console long enough to get it out. Or the laundry is done, or... Too many ideas here.
Alarm clocks on a per-person, per-day schedule. It can even track you in case you end up sleeping on the couch that night, and be sure to wake only the right person up.
The remote control is actually part of the network, instead of being attached to a certain device. You can select what device you want to access and the remote's LCD is reconfigured for that.
Kids got the stereo too loud? Turn it down for them. Remotely.
Kids watching TV after bed time? Turn it off for them. Remotely. Or send them a video message telling them how upset you are.
Stuck in the bathroom with no toilet paper? Tell your significant other remotely, voice only. No more shouting.
I'm not done, these are just off the top of my head. They seem like minor annoyances, until you've had the tech to do that. And then they are huge assets to life. But notice that nowhere did I say all of these apps should be on the internet. No, with the ability of hackers to get into ANYTHING, I completely recommend that the internet is not even hooked into this system at all. That should be a completely seperate network. Closed circuit, as it were.
I see you got modded troll for that, and I feel bad about it. But that's because you're wrong, not because you're trolling. I think you honestly believe what you said.
Production cost certainly helps the seller decide what the 'value' is to them. It means absolutely nothing to the buyer. That's why you've "seen products that sold for prices that, given the production time, equated to no more than $1.00 per hour as a wage, far below the 'minimum wage' set by law." Intrinsic value doesn't truly exist. It's just a way of describing the value of the parts, if sold in their basic, unrefined state. Intrinsic value of a circuit board has a lot more to do with the market value of copper than anything else. It certainly has nothing to do with all the time an effort put into designing and producing it.
So while it may have cost a company a certain amount of money to produce something, that is not its value.
For example: I make a wooden spoon from a block of wood. I've got $100 in tools and $1 in wood. I don't plan to make any more and the tools were ruined in the process. It takes me 15 hours to make the spoon. Is this wooden spoon's value $101? Nobody in their right mind would decide that, since a simple wooden spoon can be obtained for $1 on the market.
Now say I use someone else's tools, the wood is free, and it takes me about a minute to make the spoon. Is the value of this spoon $0? The market says they are worth $1.
This is pretty basic economics, by the way. I'm not just spouting this from nowhere. Economics was one of the most eye-opening classes I took in college. I actually enjoyed it, despite the -hard- teacher (or maybe because of him) because I learned so much. I actually took the second one for the knowledge, even though I didn't need it at all.
Some of those 'calm' people are actually so totally freaked out that they went right past panic and on into 'I dunno wtf to do.' It's been drilled into our heads that calling 911 is the thing to do in an emergency, and that's what gets done.
Don't get me wrong, some of them really are that level-headed in an emergency. But I think you'll find an amazing number will break down afterwards when they'd managed to get back towards normal.
"by it's true value (how to calculate that is beyond me)"
You know why you can't figure out how to calculate that? Because it's impossible. Nothing has inherent value. All value is decided by the buyer and seller.
Even in 'collusion' and 'monopoly', the value is set by the buyer and seller. You don't HAVE to buy gas for your car. You could find a closer job and just walk. Or take a bus. Or... Whatever.
Walmart is undercutting other pharmacies and selling at a loss to attract business to themselves. They aren't doing it just to be jerks. They're doing it to sell more of something else. It's called a 'loss leader'. I think it's a perfectly crappy idea, but it's quite common.
Don't get confused on value, though. Just because a person finds the drug 'worth' more to them than Walmart is selling it for doesn't mean anything. They are getting that money back another way. The value is still being set by the buyer and seller.
You say 'they all copy it', but that's not really true in Japan, except for sequels. It's true in the US, though, so much that they've made parodies (Scary Movie, etc) that the basic plot is a parody of almost every US Horror movie ever made. If you parodied The Ring, you wouldn't have even come close to parodying The Grudge, though... They're just too different.
For those who are wondering, Ju-On is the Japanese name for The Curse, The Grudge, The Curse 2 and The Grudge 2, and I believe that is the correct order they were made in. Yeah, 4 movies that are almost identical, except they are all named Ju-On with Curse/Grudge/etc as the subtitle. They are just sequels, and as such, are basically the same plot, with different details. The Curse and The Grudge will weird you out, but the other 2 are just more of the same.
Um, not advertising it, but charging it, yes. They use that loophole to sucker people, yes, but I think it also affects how much they have to pay PayPal for the auction, so yeah, they care.
You know, that's funny... Because just this morning I -was- looking for that link. I thought maybe I had imagined it before. There was a logitech remote on there for $125 or so, and $70 shipping... $70 is obviously pushing the cost of the item over into the shipping. So I was going to report them. I gave up soon and just bought nothing.
Newzbin calls them 'editors' and they are actually human beings in diguise. They get perks like free accounts and fame and such. (Some of which is of questionable worth.)
What's amazing is that Visa ever allowed it in the first place.
Or maybe because their newer products and tech support are crap.
My father, who rarely uses his computer, managed to 'kill' 2 logitech mx1000 mice. When I called tech support, they made me go through the usual stupid BS about new drivers and blah blah, even after explaining that we had 2 of them, 1 on my computer and 1 on his, and I had proven that it was his mouse, not his receiver, that was broken and that mine still worked with his receiver. So I finally get them to say they'll ship another one out.
2 weeks later it still hasn't arrived, so we call again. No record of my call. We do the same thing again. No record of my call a few days later. Finally it gets shipped. He's using my mouse in the meantime and I've upgraded to a newer G7 one. Mine dies, too!
My father just doesn't use the computer that much. That's crazy.
As if that isn't enough, I bought a G15 keyboard with the G7. The G7, after about a month, refused to be recognized by windows each time I rebooted until I unplugged the usb stick and plugged it back in. The G15 would randomly start hitting the left arrow key and you had to unplug it and plug it back in to make it stop.
I stayed updated on the drivers. Some helped a bit, but the problems always returned. I eventually bought a new keyboard and tossed the G15 in the corner. Installing windows from scratch was needed to fix the mouse issue.
Prior to the mx1000, I LOVED Logitech. I just can't believe this kind of crap goes on with their most expensive products. I now avoid them like the plague.
No, it's not cool to hate a company. Sometimes, though, it's the right thing to do. When they start making quality products again, I'll considering buying them again.
I honestly wanted to like it, too. But I have different reasons.
I experienced almost no lag every time I've been there. The only time I do is when I go to a place that is extremely heavy on objects and people both. And that has nothing to do with the cable modem. (And it's not true lag, for those that would try to pick that apart.)
My complaint is not that you have to be skilled to create something nice, but that you have to work with the clunky system to do it.
The scripting language is a serious pain in the ass and very very poorly documented. The primitives system is great for crappy looking items, but anything of real complexity is near impossible. (Some people have managed to fake it with clever textures... Kudos to them.)
The avatars look like ass. If you want them not to have funny shadows and skin that looks like they are smeared with 'cake' makeup, you have to create or buy a texture. A decent one should have been included by default. This texture also takes up the 'tattoo' texture, so you have to make your own texture if you want a certain tatt.
I'm way over my weight limit now, but I wasn't as a kid. I'm sure part of this was the mandatory exercise in school. (Part of it was my parents controlling what I ate.)
They used to MAKE us play these 'dangerous' sports and keep us away from the truly dangerous ones, like 'burnball'. (This is a wonderful game where you throw a rubber ball against a wall... and if for some reason you miss, you have to run and touch the wall while someone retrieves it and tries to hit you with it, with the obvious painful results.) Despite the risk of breaking my head open in baseball, breaking a leg or rib in football, and just general pain in most sports, I still played burnball, against the school rules.
I've never broken a bone in my life.
In fact, the only broken bones were either in high school (football with other schools, the idiot who body-slammed his friend into concrete) and away from the school.
There is definitely such a thing as 'over protective'.
But then, I can't really blame them. If you get sued because 'Johnny' gets hurt, it's time to lock down and make sure you can't get sued like that again. Hopefully, that will send the right signal to the rest of the school and they'll tar and feather the idiots and run them out of town. I find it unlikely, though. More likely she'll be suing again in 5 years because they made her child fat. If they try to prevent that, they'll sue because they don't have 'good tasting food' or some nonsense.
No, it's like negotiating with terrorists... Nobody wins.
Thank you for noting that Uru Live may not start for a couple months... Somehow, that had slipped by me. I have been considering paying the reduced fee as I would have paid the $15/mo for Uru Live, if they were going to keep up regular content.
I'm still very shakey on how much 'new' content will be released and on what schedule, but with all the other titles to mess with also, it's a pretty good deal. Especially with the new (also questionable) Sam & Max episodes... Gotta try it and see.
"When a US company can hire someone (with equivalent skills, knowledge, experience) across the globe at half my rate, and they can only do this because this person's cost of living isn't even half that of mine, that scares me."
Can they really, though? Reliably? I mean, it's -possible- to hire someone like that here in the US. It just isn't likely. I think the same is true there. For a while, the US managed to underpay overseas people for their work. They have now 'advertised' themselves by allowing themselves to be underpaid and are working on raising those rates. Maybe they aren't even doing it with that goal in mind, but as each one of them proves themselves worthy, they go find a better paying job... Just like here.
Their rates won't reach as high as ours do because there are other factors to deal with, including a language barrier and a public perception that 'outsourcing is wrong'.
Is it just me, or does this thing always find nothing that actually looks like the picture? I drew a blue sky, green grass background, and then a brown tree trunk with dark green leaves... Just all blobs, basically. Not a single one of the pictures had a tree in it. They didn't look ANYTHING like the 'picture' I drew.
I can't argue with you there, and it's definitely a per-situation thing.
Honestly, it wouldn't hurt me much at all to remove the 'cable' portion of my tv... I mainly just play games and use my PC on it. (LCDs make such a great monitor.)
But as I said, it's part of growing up. Another example: When I was too young to remember, my parents took me and my sister to a water park. My mother got impetigo. To 'protect' us from the obviously disease-ridden waters of these places, my parents never took us to one again. Ever. Now it didn't bother me much because I'm a bit phobic when it comes to deep water, but there was a hole there with 'what's it like' until I had a job and some friends took me.
They decided it was necessary to eliminate something that's relatively harmless from my life because I 'might' get hurt... And deprived me of childhood memories I think I should have had. In their defense, we DID do a lot of other stuff. I'm sick of Disney World, for one thing.
I just don't agree with extremes like that at all.
Don't you mean 'lower cost of living countries'? It seems it's pretty clear... You get what you pay for. If you try to hire someone for a fraction of what it's worth (in your country), you get someone that doesn't know what they are doing and needs to be helped constantly. The same as if you'd hired someone locally for that price.
There are exceptions, I understand that.
But my company outsources some of it's programming work to India, and it's been nothing but headaches on anything larger than a simple script. It's gotten to the point that, like you saw, they ask me for help on their problems instead of trying to figure them out on their own.
I have to wonder, though... Did they REALLY have a 'hardware crash', or did they realize they had spent more on the project than they had earned, and saw no way to fix it? It's not that they are stupid, it's just that they try to do jobs they aren't qualified for because the pay is so good. The same thing happens here in the US, but the market is fairly stable, and they don't last long. IT is booming overseas, and there's many more jobs than qualified people to fill them.
I see this getting worse before it gets better.
Correct. In fact, they have said that the Uru Live 'alternate entry method' will cost as much as a Gametap subscription. Why would you pay that? Because Gametap is only US and CA, and if you want to play from another country, you're stuck for it.
Personally, if Uru Live couldn't make it with Ubi and Cyan at $15/month, I don't see how it can survive at $10/mo (or $5/mo if you take the special) under any company at all. Unless they plan to have an initial launch and then never update it... Would suck if that's true.