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On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 16:55:12 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>>> - Advertising.
>>
>> Adblock Pro is what I use to avoid that. :-)
>>
>> But I agree that it's annoying - the latest trend that I really dislike
>> is on many news sites, they now break a story down into multiple
>> "pages" - and on each page, the space for the story is a small
>> percentage of the total space.
>
> Yeah, that too.
>
>>> - Stuff which is "free", yet you still have to "register" to actually
>>> get it.
>>
>> "Free" always comes with a cost when dealing with a commercial entity.
>> You get something, the provider gets something. Them giving you
>> something and getting nothing in return doesn't give them reason to
>> give stuff away for free. Commercial businesses are in business for
>> one reason: to turn a profit. So everything they do is in pursuit of
>> that goal.
>
> Some companies give stuff away for free, and it really *is* free.
> Usually because you using it gives the company some other kind of
> advantage. E.g., Acrobat Reader is utterly free. Anybody can easily
> obtain it, install it, copy it around, put it on 20 PCs, no
> restrictions, no limitations. Because that way, Adobe can go "Hey, buy
> Acrobat Professional! Because EVERYBODY HAS ACROBAT READER..."
Except that Acrobat Reader isn't free either; it's used as a way to make
PDF more widely acceptable as a document format, which means they sell
more of their creation tools. It's paid for by offsetting its costs with
an increase (maybe very slight incremental per product sold) for Adobe's
other products.
So in the end, they give the reader away for purely selfish reasons; it's
not altruism.
>> Of course, you could always use a jetable mail address or a mailinator
>> address.
>
> I still object to having to jump through hoops to get something that's
> supposed to be "free".
"Free" is a marketing term when it comes to commercial ventures. Like
"buy 2, get one free" isn't really one for free, it's three for the price
of two, and the business has decided that the margins on two are large
enough to cover the cost of the third and still make a profit.
Or collecting stamps/points/whatever to get a "free" airline flight,
subway sandwich, or whatever - you're paying for that "free" one each
time you use their service or purchase their product. If you don't
participate, you're paying a premium *not* to participate.
Jim
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On 15/04/2010 4:35 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
>> won a car!" (...do I *look* stupid?)
>
> Turn off your webcam. You might get fewer of these.
ROTFL
--
Best Regards,
Stephen
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On 04/15/10 08:40, Jim Henderson wrote:
> But I agree that it's annoying - the latest trend that I really dislike
> is on many news sites, they now break a story down into multiple "pages"
> - and on each page, the space for the story is a small percentage of the
> total space. Reason I use adblock: So I don't have to be distracted by
> 50 flashing ads per page.
Multiple ways to fix that:
Choose the Print option - it's almost always on one page. But you may
not like the printed version's formatting (especially if you have a wide
screen monitor). To fix that, apply the Readability bookmarklet.
http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/
In fact, Readability works quite well on articles that are on one page.
I often use it merely to get rid of all the meta stuff (ads, navigation
bars, etc). Occasionally it will get things wrong, though.
Another option is a Firefox extension called Autopager. It tries to see
if there's any kind of link for the next page. If it finds one, then
when you scroll down to the end of the current page, it will simply load
the next page below it. So you don't have to click any links. It doesn't
always work, but like Adblock, it is customizable.
Often handy for Google searches. Just keep scrolling down rather than
going to the next page each time. Give it a try.
Also, just as an FYI, there's a cool Greasemonkey script (or was it an
addon? I forget) that creates a *really* nicely formatted version of the
page if you click "Print" on an article. Nice font, multiple columns,
never have to scroll, etc. Name slips my mind but I can dig it up for you.
I think there's also a script/extension that will automatically take
you to the Print version of a news article. However, I recall that it
merely had a whitelist to do this.
--
Psychoceramics: The study of crackpots.
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>> Some companies give stuff away for free, and it really *is* free.
>> Usually because you using it gives the company some other kind of
>> advantage. E.g., Acrobat Reader is utterly free. Anybody can easily
>> obtain it, install it, copy it around, put it on 20 PCs, no
>> restrictions, no limitations. Because that way, Adobe can go "Hey, buy
>> Acrobat Professional! Because EVERYBODY HAS ACROBAT READER..."
>
> Except that Acrobat Reader isn't free either; it's used as a way to make
> PDF more widely acceptable as a document format, which means they sell
> more of their creation tools. It's paid for by offsetting its costs with
> an increase (maybe very slight incremental per product sold) for Adobe's
> other products.
>
> So in the end, they give the reader away for purely selfish reasons; it's
> not altruism.
...in other words, "some software really is free, if making it free
benefits the company somehow". Which was my original statement.
Nobody would pay money for an editor for a proprietry document format if
the viewer for that format wasn't so utterly ubiquitous. Hence, making
Acrobat Reader free benefits Adobe. And that's why it's free.
You would *think* making MathReader free would benefit Wolfram, but
apparently not...
> "Free" is a marketing term when it comes to commercial ventures. Like
> "buy 2, get one free" isn't really one for free, it's three for the price
> of two, and the business has decided that the margins on two are large
> enough to cover the cost of the third and still make a profit.
I always thought 2 for 1 meant "buy one, pay for two, buy two, pay for
two"...
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On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 09:01:03 +0100, Invisible wrote:
>> So in the end, they give the reader away for purely selfish reasons;
>> it's not altruism.
>
> ...in other words, "some software really is free, if making it free
> benefits the company somehow". Which was my original statement.
If there's no immediate cost to the end user, that's "free" to you, but
it's not free. There's a value proposition that has to be offset.
Because developers need to eat as well. ;-)
> Nobody would pay money for an editor for a proprietry document format if
> the viewer for that format wasn't so utterly ubiquitous. Hence, making
> Acrobat Reader free benefits Adobe. And that's why it's free.
>
> You would *think* making MathReader free would benefit Wolfram, but
> apparently not...
It depends on the business analysis. Wolfram might well have concluded
that not enough people need the reader to make it worthwhile, or that the
number of people paying for the creation software wouldn't offset the
development costs.
>> "Free" is a marketing term when it comes to commercial ventures. Like
>> "buy 2, get one free" isn't really one for free, it's three for the
>> price of two, and the business has decided that the margins on two are
>> large enough to cover the cost of the third and still make a profit.
>
> I always thought 2 for 1 meant "buy one, pay for two, buy two, pay for
> two"...
Not really, "2 for 1" means "we normally charge x, but we've decided to
get you to like the product by either taking a loss or by cutting our
margin down by 50% or more so you can try the product out".
ie, "2 for the (normal) price of 1".
Jim
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On Thu, 15 Apr 2010 20:39:24 -0700, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> Multiple ways to fix that:
Oh, sure, I use repagination, myself (another FF plugin).
Jim
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Invisible wrote:
> There are several things that frustrate me about the Internet.
>
> - Downloads with no size information. Seriously, is this thing 12KB or
> 1.2GB? It kind of matters!
Oh, come now. If it really mattered, Mr. Gates or Mr. Jobs would have
*told* you!
> - Links that won't open in a new tab. So you've got a screenful of
> search results, but you *cannot* open each result in a seperate tab.
> Sometimes a new tab opens, but the original tab navigates to the new
> location as well. Sometimes you get a new blank tab. Sometimes you get
> no tab at all. Either way, I've got a huge number of links to
> investigate, and I have to do it by manually using the back button to
> get back to the search results. WTF?
I think this can be generalized to "any code that changes the normal
behavior if your browser."
> - Network installers. You know, you download the "installation package",
> but it's just a 5KB executable that downloads the *real* installation
> files. And redownloads them every single time you want to install the
> application. Thank you, genius, the entire reason I manually downloaded
> rather than clicking "install now" is that I don't have much bandwidth
> and I've got 20 PCs to install this thing on!
Or I have to install it on that machine over there, which for perfectly
valid reasons has no network connectivity at all.
Regards,
John
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John VanSickle wrote:
>> - Network installers.
>
> Or I have to install it on that machine over there, which for perfectly
> valid reasons has no network connectivity at all.
Yes, that too. (Although in my case, the "valid reason" is usually "I
can't get Linux to believe me that a NIC exists"...)
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> There's a value proposition that has to be offset.
I have no idea what this accounting jargon means.
>> You would *think* making MathReader free would benefit Wolfram, but
>> apparently not...
>
> It depends on the business analysis. Wolfram might well have concluded
> that not enough people need the reader to make it worthwhile, or that the
> number of people paying for the creation software wouldn't offset the
> development costs.
I should point out that MathReader is simply Mathematica with a few
features turned off. The "development costs" should be minimal. (They
probably spend more on testing it to make sure the requisit features
really are switched off...) But sure, it's a cost analysis.
(Actually MathReader *is* free - it's just that you have to jump through
hoops to get at it. But it doesn't cost any actual money, no.)
>> I always thought 2 for 1 meant "buy one, pay for two, buy two, pay for
>> two"...
>
> Not really, "2 for 1" means "we normally charge x, but we've decided to
> get you to like the product by either taking a loss or by cutting our
> margin down by 50% or more so you can try the product out".
>
> ie, "2 for the (normal) price of 1".
I see...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 12:58:43 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>
>> There's a value proposition that has to be offset.
>
> I have no idea what this accounting jargon means.
Which is amazing, because I'm not an accountant.
Stuff costs money. In order to afford stuff, you have to have money.
Same principle for a business - if they want to build something, they
have to figure out how to pay for it. When they figure out how to pay
for it, they have to look at what it costs and see if they can offset the
cost with revenue.
>>> You would *think* making MathReader free would benefit Wolfram, but
>>> apparently not...
>>
>> It depends on the business analysis. Wolfram might well have concluded
>> that not enough people need the reader to make it worthwhile, or that
>> the number of people paying for the creation software wouldn't offset
>> the development costs.
>
> I should point out that MathReader is simply Mathematica with a few
> features turned off. The "development costs" should be minimal. (They
> probably spend more on testing it to make sure the requisit features
> really are switched off...) But sure, it's a cost analysis.
Part of that cost analysis, then, is what amount of revenue is likely to
be lost when (not if) someone figures out how to unlock the full product
features and posts it on the Internet. If it truly is Mathematica with a
few features turned off.
> (Actually MathReader *is* free - it's just that you have to jump through
> hoops to get at it. But it doesn't cost any actual money, no.)
The hoops probably (I haven't looked) involve you giving them something
of value - like your contact information so they can market to you.
See? You pay something, just because it isn't money, doesn't mean what
you offer them in exchange has no value.
Jim
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