It’s been in vogue in the last few years to view slashdot as “news for the filthy masses, stuff we read about a week ago”. I’ve found though that reading slashdot is like shopping on eBay, or using Google. If you know what you’re doing, it’s quite profitable. If you don’t, it’s close to worthless.
An example is this story about someone from Sun saying hardware will be free someday. I always read with comments set at mod 2, and there isn’t really any junk in the top coupld screens. I even posted, and I don’t think I’ve posted a comment to slashdot in years. Maybe that’s why I have excellent karma.
Anyway, Mr. Schwartz mentioned that he thinks someday hardware will be free, and people will pay for software by subscription. My comment was that people are already sort of doing that. Lots of people bought MS Office 95, and then they bought 98, and 2000, and XP, and so on. People have been trained to re-pay for software all along, free hardware would just be viewed as a bonus.
On the other hand, someone else made an excellent comment that “cp SunE450 SunE450.2” doesn’t work on his machine. 🙂
This one’s excellent too: “What Schwartz (“Use the schwartz!”) and Gates really mean is, “your software fee will include the hardware fee, and you won’t really have a choice about that. Plus, we will add restrictions to the hardware, such as DRM. Thank you, come again!””
Lots of various radio software is on a lease basis, sometimes with no other option. (Automation, music scheduling, etc.) I practically got my last desktop model (the I posted about) free for agreeing to use MSN’s online service for a certain # of years. (Mistake FYI!)
I want the free hardware. Can i get a laptop? something nice? (currently using NEC VERSA 6230 Pentium inside made for Win95)
Sergei
Sure, just call 1-800-232-4671 and ask for Jon Schwartz.