Actually, if sites that contained loads of crap were costlier for the user, there would be stronger incentive from the sites to deliver better content per MB. I think that would be exceptionally good, and don't see the problem with ad ridden sites losing out.
If this is a way for TW to jack up prices for some while keeping them the same for everyone else, it is terrible. But the real problem isn't their price model, but rather the lack of competition. And if there is a lack of competition, that's probably a problem for consumers even with TW's current price models.
This would seem to me to be a blessing in disguise. If they implement this, there will be more room for competitors, and choice will more than likely increase for everyone.
I should probably have chosen a nick of ExcelFanBoyOne, as it seems like every other post I make here is about how great Excel is, but GP is actually right. Excel 2007 macros have a huge bunch of compatibility issues.
The ones I have run into in particular are regarding charts. Stuff like changing background colours or patterns etc. Also, the macro recorder in 2K7 doesn't record a lot of things that were recorded earlier. Again, charts are a major problem. Start recording a macro, then drop the background color for a chart and stop the recording. The macro will be empty, which wasn't the case in 2K3 and earlier. Extremely annoying as it really forces you to dig deep into the object model. Ugh!
It could be jail time, but then we are talking "reckless driving", not just speeding. In practice I thought that never happened, but a (distant) friend of mine once told me it did happen to him. He was going 140 (kph, not mph) on a road marked 70, racing another car and passing him on the right hand side. The other car happened to be a civilian police car...
In practice, it's always fines. I think they go to the general government black hole. It doesn't even fund the police, as far as I know. There are obviously loads of Swedes in this thread, so someone may correct me. It most certainly doesn't go to anything local, be that the local police or the local government.
As others have noted, Sweden exports far, far more music than is generally known. Sweden also has a large (compared to its size) computer gaming industry. So on a per capita basis, Sweden would have more to lose than most countries.
OTOH, you could argue that for music, most of the money will shift to live concerts, and for gaming, most of the money will shift to on-line gaming. This would mean that a not unlikely future would create huge problems for the movie industry (where Sweden has little to lose) but less problems for the areas where Sweden is comparatively strong.
That would be overthinking the issue from the point of view of the MP's. They just argue that civil liberties are more important than copyright infringements, and that's that. Quite reasonable, IMHO.
Why Sweden is in the front of the filesharing debate is because we have the highest internet and computer use in the world. Every home in Sweden have at the worst a ADSL-link connected.
This isn't literally true, of course, but it is closer to the truth than most people seem to think.
I have moral problems with it. I still do it, just like loads of people are speeding despite knowing that it's illegal and knowing perfectly well why it's illegal.
I think I can safely add this to every comment in this thread: the fact that most people do activity x is not really a good argument for legalizing said activity. The reason is that there may be externalities, i.e. third parties suffering from said activity. In most cities in the Middle Ages, garbage was "handled" by thoring it out the window. Everyone did that. At some point it was made illegal, and for a good reason. I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that someone argued that it should continue to be legal "because everyone does it".
So, is file sharing such an activity? Maybe, maybe not, but the point is that the argument "everyone does it" is a bogus argument in either case.
In most democratic countries, there are speeding laws. In most of those countries, loads of people are speeding at least some of the time. From this it doesn't follow that the law on speeding should change. Maybe the law should indeed change, but the reason for that is not that loads of people break that particular law. Almost everyone agrees on this. Somehow, that argument is completely lost when it applies to copyright.
"one of the main things that went wrong with the nuclear program" - what is that supposed to mean?
You do know that Chernobyl, as awful as it was, killed fewer people than coal power kills every year, don't you?
You make it sound like terrible accidents happen all the time, whereas accidents that caused people to die has never happened in the west. I wish we could say the same about coal. Or oil...
There seems to be a bunch of programs called DataPilot, so I'm no sure exactly which one you are referring to, but yes, there are pivot tables in all serious reporting applications, such as offered by BusinessObjects, Cognos, Hyperion etc. However, good as those tools are, they are no substitute for Excel. (The same obviously is true in reverse - you can't really replace a proper BusinessObjects implementation with Excel.)
The point isn't that pivot tables are unique to Excel. The point is that it's lacking in the closest competitors.
Pivot tables. Seriously - you will never get a power user to switch from Excel without a good implementation of pivot tables. And again, power users dictate what tools to use (at least in this case). The last few times this has come up, more than one comment has read "what are those? I have never used them!". The obvious answer to that is "small wonder you can't understand why people stick with Excel".
Also, other power users of Excel may give a different answer to this question, which is why the contenders have such a difficult time getting a foothold. You really have to do very close to 100% of what Excel does at least as well in order to convince the power users to switch. And the perceived loss of giving up known features is larger than the perceived gain from new features, so in practice it's impossible to skip pivot tables and do something else exceedingly well. I have no idea what the alternatives do exceedingly well, my point is simply that that doesn't matter much.
And they'll say, OK, we'll try Crossover Office and see how it goes.
No, "they" won't say that. They have an environment that works.
Unless they are so insane that they have managed to become beholden to to Office 2007 data formats already.
Not an issue (yet).
Any large company is going to have special needs users who cannot make the switch, but these will often be the ones who have created the situation in the first place and the company may be better off without them.
Spoken like a true BOFH. In real life, I see both stupid solutions implemented by clueless desk jockeys because they don't know better, and weird but moderately ingenious solutions to problems directly created by a draconian IT department who has no incentive what so ever to increase user productivity. My experience is that the latter is actually more common than the former. And yet I have never, ever, seen an IT department acknowledge that end users implemented stuff that looks weird because the IT department made it impossible to do it in a reasonable way. Strange that, huh?
For many years I've appreciated a handful of things Microsoft does:
The important thing you missed is Excel. Excel is, by far and away, the most important reason so few comapnies move away from Microsoft. Yes, there are alternatives out there. Yes, for 90% of all Excel users, the alternatives are good enough. However, for the last 10% of users, the alternatives are simply not good enough. (Pivot tables, VBA, specific add-ins, mainly.)
And guess what? It's the 10% of users who use this stuff who have the final say.
In other words, you don't sue or shoot the mailman for accidentally picking up one or two lines from your picture postcard while scanning for your address.
That is correct. Indeed, since this is the US, the mailman probably shoots you first.
It was quite obviously meant as a joke reference to the "Ours" comment. I am sorry that swished right above your head. Better luck next time!
That said, the "still a tool" comment was moderately funny. The first few dozen times we heard it. Sometimes making up your own insults are more effective.
Poor Mr Brown has been in power for what, little over a week now. So far it has been nothing but bad news and terrorists.
And here comes this, a gift from heaven pointing out his opponent as a right fool. Coincidence? I think not. A PR firm worth the hefty fees and future House of Lords appointments they will get? That's more like it!
In Sweden at least (and in most of Europe, I would guess) there are pre paid plans where you literally pay nothing except for when you actually use the phone to make calls and send texts. Receiving calls and text messages are free.
That means that paying $300 for a phone that is unlocked won't force you to pay $50 monthly as well. Besides, a cheap phone is more like $50, and the monthly charges are typically far less than $50 for the cheap plans anyway.
It seems to me like cell phones are incredibly much cheaper in Sweden than in the US. (This doesn't apply to business use - for some reason companies are typically charged US like amounts.)
Doesn't the fact that the article you quote gives the price of component with five (5!) significant figures tell you all you need to know about it? Also, since when is development costs 0?
That said, I fail to see how AT&T stands to lose from morons turning their expensive toy into an iPod. They still have to pay their monthly fees. If I were AT&T, I'd encourage that behaviour. Talk about free money!
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Oh, I thought praising the OLPC was last year's blogohype. Or possibly 2006's.
If this is a way for TW to jack up prices for some while keeping them the same for everyone else, it is terrible. But the real problem isn't their price model, but rather the lack of competition. And if there is a lack of competition, that's probably a problem for consumers even with TW's current price models.
This would seem to me to be a blessing in disguise. If they implement this, there will be more room for competitors, and choice will more than likely increase for everyone.
I'm not sure spending 2400 hours on any one activity can be referred to as "casual"...
The ones I have run into in particular are regarding charts. Stuff like changing background colours or patterns etc. Also, the macro recorder in 2K7 doesn't record a lot of things that were recorded earlier. Again, charts are a major problem. Start recording a macro, then drop the background color for a chart and stop the recording. The macro will be empty, which wasn't the case in 2K3 and earlier. Extremely annoying as it really forces you to dig deep into the object model. Ugh!
In practice, it's always fines. I think they go to the general government black hole. It doesn't even fund the police, as far as I know. There are obviously loads of Swedes in this thread, so someone may correct me. It most certainly doesn't go to anything local, be that the local police or the local government.
No, not in Sweden. (This is usually an incredibly irrelevant point, but given that TFA was actually about Sweden, it's less so.)
OTOH, you could argue that for music, most of the money will shift to live concerts, and for gaming, most of the money will shift to on-line gaming. This would mean that a not unlikely future would create huge problems for the movie industry (where Sweden has little to lose) but less problems for the areas where Sweden is comparatively strong.
That would be overthinking the issue from the point of view of the MP's. They just argue that civil liberties are more important than copyright infringements, and that's that. Quite reasonable, IMHO.
This isn't literally true, of course, but it is closer to the truth than most people seem to think.
I think I can safely add this to every comment in this thread: the fact that most people do activity x is not really a good argument for legalizing said activity. The reason is that there may be externalities, i.e. third parties suffering from said activity. In most cities in the Middle Ages, garbage was "handled" by thoring it out the window. Everyone did that. At some point it was made illegal, and for a good reason. I'm willing to bet a large amount of money that someone argued that it should continue to be legal "because everyone does it".
So, is file sharing such an activity? Maybe, maybe not, but the point is that the argument "everyone does it" is a bogus argument in either case.
In most democratic countries, there are speeding laws. In most of those countries, loads of people are speeding at least some of the time. From this it doesn't follow that the law on speeding should change. Maybe the law should indeed change, but the reason for that is not that loads of people break that particular law. Almost everyone agrees on this. Somehow, that argument is completely lost when it applies to copyright.
1 in 30 support nuclear power? You should get smarter friends. Also, don't forget to adjust your tin foil hat. It seems to not work so well for you.
You do know that Chernobyl, as awful as it was, killed fewer people than coal power kills every year, don't you?
You make it sound like terrible accidents happen all the time, whereas accidents that caused people to die has never happened in the west. I wish we could say the same about coal. Or oil...
The point isn't that pivot tables are unique to Excel. The point is that it's lacking in the closest competitors.
Pivot tables. Seriously - you will never get a power user to switch from Excel without a good implementation of pivot tables. And again, power users dictate what tools to use (at least in this case). The last few times this has come up, more than one comment has read "what are those? I have never used them!". The obvious answer to that is "small wonder you can't understand why people stick with Excel".
Also, other power users of Excel may give a different answer to this question, which is why the contenders have such a difficult time getting a foothold. You really have to do very close to 100% of what Excel does at least as well in order to convince the power users to switch. And the perceived loss of giving up known features is larger than the perceived gain from new features, so in practice it's impossible to skip pivot tables and do something else exceedingly well. I have no idea what the alternatives do exceedingly well, my point is simply that that doesn't matter much.
No, "they" won't say that. They have an environment that works.
Not an issue (yet).
Spoken like a true BOFH. In real life, I see both stupid solutions implemented by clueless desk jockeys because they don't know better, and weird but moderately ingenious solutions to problems directly created by a draconian IT department who has no incentive what so ever to increase user productivity. My experience is that the latter is actually more common than the former. And yet I have never, ever, seen an IT department acknowledge that end users implemented stuff that looks weird because the IT department made it impossible to do it in a reasonable way. Strange that, huh?
The important thing you missed is Excel. Excel is, by far and away, the most important reason so few comapnies move away from Microsoft. Yes, there are alternatives out there. Yes, for 90% of all Excel users, the alternatives are good enough. However, for the last 10% of users, the alternatives are simply not good enough. (Pivot tables, VBA, specific add-ins, mainly.)
And guess what? It's the 10% of users who use this stuff who have the final say.
That is correct. Indeed, since this is the US, the mailman probably shoots you first.
That said, the "still a tool" comment was moderately funny. The first few dozen times we heard it. Sometimes making up your own insults are more effective.
Yours.
I think it's unfair to refer to Apple fanboys as "silly young prats". No, wait a minute, on second thought I think it's quite fitting.
And here comes this, a gift from heaven pointing out his opponent as a right fool. Coincidence? I think not. A PR firm worth the hefty fees and future House of Lords appointments they will get? That's more like it!
I don't think you are contradicting each other.
That means that paying $300 for a phone that is unlocked won't force you to pay $50 monthly as well. Besides, a cheap phone is more like $50, and the monthly charges are typically far less than $50 for the cheap plans anyway.
It seems to me like cell phones are incredibly much cheaper in Sweden than in the US. (This doesn't apply to business use - for some reason companies are typically charged US like amounts.)
That said, I fail to see how AT&T stands to lose from morons turning their expensive toy into an iPod. They still have to pay their monthly fees. If I were AT&T, I'd encourage that behaviour. Talk about free money!
I find your claim rediculous.