Not to mention Kelvin is SI base unit. Kinda the norm when you are talking about scientific news to a bunch of nerds. Remember the whole "News for nerds, stuff that matters" motto? Or did the spirit of that die when CmdrTaco left?

I don't get the limited sick days thing. I guess it's a way of guaranteeing no one takes advantage of it (and quite objective, i.e. no you have taken x days already). My previous job didn't have a limited amount. They also provided flu shots (to those that wanted them.. they couldn't force them obviously). We had 0 problems with people taking advantage of it. Of course it was a tech company with a group of pretty good workers. If someone was repeatedly "sick" then they'd be asked to provide a doctor's note and it would escalate from there is they suspected someone was taking advantage of the very lenient policy. They did metrics on sick leave and it was on average well under 5 days/person avg (but averaged throughout the company.. someone might legitimately need 10 days). I think I maybe took 3 days off in a year max. Of course I could telecommute as well. So if I didn't feel well I could sleep in and then just work a little later into the evening.

I think that when you set a limit people feel obligated to take advantage of them (especially if your vacation time is as poor as your allowed sick time). "Oh it's almost end of the year and I haven't taken any sick time, better take a few days off." If the policy is instead, "If you are sick, take time off." then there is no magical number of "owed" days someone feel obligated to use. The issue is also companies that don't provide proper vacation time. People need mental leave from work. The Canadian company I was working at recently got an American (US) CEO. When hiring someone he complained to me that what they wanted for vacation time was a little excessive. They asked for 3 weeks/year. That's what everyone prior to his arrival at the company started at (secretaries, shipper.. everyone). I'm pretty sure that's the minimum any tech company in the area offers. 2 weeks is basically the legal minimum (4% of wage) and you'd be silly to insist on that for even a college grad as they can just go elsewhere with better benefits. Competitive companies offer more and other industries get even more (my wife currently has >4 weeks/year with only 5 years in the job.. that's not including statutory holidays or anything tricky like that to artificially increase the number). I also banked all overtime to take off later (albeit only recovering it at straight time, where most industries get 1.5 time for overtime work). If you don't overwork your employees they are more productive and also get sick less often. I really don't get this crack the whip mentality. It doesn't improve productivity.

There is still a big feature phone market out there. One option would be cutting back everything but feature phones and be profitable in that market. From what I remember Nokia made some rock solid feature phones.

Doesn't even have to be a technical trade show. I attended G2E last year and we found a printing technology we hadn't found online (inexpensive hidden window reveal). I was able to talk to an engineer about interfaces to the printer and how formatting is handled (as well as the other company that makes the paper). I also got to chat with the Unity3D guys (this was prior to a linux release and they confirmed they did have it running on Linux for a particular customer) and talk to some guys about modifying an automated ball caller for our uses. This was at a conference/expo that is mainly slot machines and guys walking around in suits staring at the scantily clad promo girls (I think one company actually hired Penthouse models).

I honestly didn't think I'd get anything useful from going (a hangover at best), but that was because of what it looks like on the surface. The business guys also made some connections we wouldn't have made had we not attended.

The total liability cap kind of makes the total liability a moot point, but one thing to clarify is that court costs are decided by the court and don't cover full legal fees. Full filing fees, disbursements etc are, but the rate for a lawyer's time and what is considered a billable increment is controlled and to my knowledge pretty much never covers the cost of a real lawyer going to court.

Back on topic.. My hope is that this way of dealing with infringement pushes big media into actually providing easier and more convenient access to digital media. I was just discussing with a friend how absurd blu-ray is to our generation. We don't want/need media for something we are going to watch once. We just want a quick DL with good quality (which really doesn't need the space available on a BR disc). For TV I'm happy with 720P and for movies a decently encoded 1080P video. I can get that on bittorrent. If I was able to get it from the source as fast or faster with as good or better quality.. I'd pay as would many others. If these laws make suing filesharing into nonexistence infeasible maybe monetizing on digital distribution becomes appetizing. Maybe some of those companies holding out will finally license for Netflix Canada or start their own distribution in Canada.

The lack of access raises another question: what are actual damages of a "legal" digital copy is not available in Canada? I downloaded some movie and it's not available as a pay-for download in Canada. Still infringement, obviously, but what are the actual damages? If it's available on iTunes for $5.99, that's easy, it's $5.99. If it isn't available will the courts decide what a comparable value is or will they deem it as having no value. With the other media verdicts in Canada I can't see it being deemed to be worth the max allowable. That's what will be claimed, but that's not the precedent that's going to be set. I'm hoping some brave level headed judge decides not having it available digitally means no value. That will basically force the media giants into figuring out digital distribution in Canada (though the pessimist in me thinks they would make them available at higher cost than media purchases so they can drag their dinosaur feet a little longer).

With the December 7th release date maybe they should continue the bad taste on the drop date and call it the WWii.

This.

Have a paid for version and a "community" version that only has public forums associated with it. Make it blatantly clear that paid for includes support (for X time period), but a community supported free version is available. If they want phone support they have to upgrade to the paid version. "Sorry, our community edition doesn't include phone support."

This can be done with the exact same codebase for both, but it also gives you the opportunity to fork (in marketing speak: differentiate the product). E.g. New features go to the paid version first and get released in to the community later. Or, do it the other way and make your free users beta test. I recommend having at least a different splash screen and the registration info available from within the program on the paid version.

Bottom line is you can't allow your free customers to have any expectation of live support. When they go to download your product they are explicitly deciding between paid and free and know what they are losing by going free.

My experience is the best deal on TVs is just after a big game (Super Bowl, Grey Cup, Stanley Cup etc).

With the flexible return policies of the big box stores there are often open box returns that are then priced below the sales price they were purchased for pre-game.

Is it though? If we look at something like the Robertson screw head, the patent allowed them a monopoly on that product which allowed them to recoup initial r&d, machine costs etc over their patent life. Fair enough. Don't want a big screw company that does Torx or Phillips to retool then blow you out of the water with lower pricing because they already have their machinery paid for.

But in modern systems when advancement is so quick do we need these long patent lives? It's basically artificially slowing the race to the bottom. It prevents competition more than the situation of destroying another company. I mean we are talking complex systems that aren't a direct copy, than in themselves take much R&D to create what is being called a rip-off. It's not a rip-off it's riffing on a theme. Of course the patents are for the end technology to prevent that from being copied wholesale, it's on small, but necessary pieces of the equation. Sometimes these are legitimate hurdles that need to some kind of protection to recoup R&D costs, but it seems most often these days it's simply a stop gap to prevent competition. I'm fine with companies requiring time to recoup expenses investing in inventing something. That makes sense as it encourages innovation, "We can only go ahead with investing this R&D money if we can get a guarantee we have exclusivity to it for some time so we can recoup." Sounds good. But now we are seeing stuff with basically no R&D being patented. In software patents they are patenting ideas basically.

I personally think time and money put into (or that will need to be put into something) should be what validates a patent. The most recent person I knew to apply for a patent definitely needed it. They were working on a new fuel (that would work in a normal gas/petrol ICE). They had an initial formula and some initial promising test results, but it would take a few years of testing, jumping through hoops and working on a way to produce on commercial scales (i.e. money) to make it into a product. They needed a patent. Do I need a patent for a solution to a problem that was created beginning to end in a day, week, month? I could go out and patent using a piezoelectric element on the printing surface of a 3d printer for calibrating the z-axis. It's a trivial (and possible lame, but I'm just shooting from the hip) solution. Piezo on the printing surface, wired to A2D on microcontroller, print head slowly depresses over piezo while we poll the A2D. Assuming no prior art etc.. do I deserve a patent for that? I mean I can write it up and send it in to the patent office. Once I file fees regardless of it being new or unique I'll probably get the patent, but what for? I don't need to recoup anything.

Regardless of my poor made up example I think my point is somewhat clear. The current US patent system is full of patents that weren't needed to recoup any kind of expense or to encourage innovation. They are simply road blocks. No matter what you try to create these days it seems you'll run into some obscure patent on some seemingly obvious solution. And that patent holder will come with one hand out asking for money and a hammer in the other hand. To me that doesn't seem in the spirit of the patent system.

Actually.. selling vinyl as well would be pretty cool. Video store / record store. I'd hit that up in a second. I buy vinyl (there are a few successful vinyl shops in town) and I might be tempted to rent a physical disc if I was out record shopping.

Depends on market entirely. The store I was referring to is in Victoria (I'm assuming you are from Vancouver). I'd think in the right area of Vancouver it could work. Would it work in Surrey, Langley, Ladner, PoCo? Doubtful. You need to be in a cool area with people who are into that sort of thing.

I think part of the success of Pic-a-flic is location (Cook St Village). Plenty of University students and artsy types in that area. It's also how long they have been around, so they already had a big client base and didn't have to start from nothing getting their name out there.

It's definitely not a business I'd get into. They had a combination of factors that have kept them alive (for now), but I think even their days must be numbered.

Yes it's a big city, but does it have the demographic of people that would shop at a business like that? I mean, if a business can survive in Victoria (greater area of 300K people), then it has to be demographics and marketing.

So that justifies high prices? I'd expect the elasticity of demand on a product like Windows would mean more purchases in the consumer world if the price was lower (i.e. less pirating).

The flip side is corporate customers are much less elastic. They must buy Windows licenses, so they do, regardless of price. There is also the OEM market, which does get lower pricing, but that's not exposed to the customers and is huge business for MS. Upgrades to software may have been common in the 90s (3.11 -> 95 -> 98 -> XP), but now people often upgrade their hardware and get the latest MS OS that way (thanks to hardware being so disposable these days). Can't really blame people as you can buy a decent laptop for the price of my first CD burner.

Could MS charge a bigger price difference on home vs pro? Sure. Would it make them much more profit? I'd assume no, as they have some pretty smart people working there. Either the market isn't big enough to make a big difference or it would cause issues with their corporate or OEM (e.g. OEM expect X% off retail licenses.. retail go down, they expect their license cost to go down).

If you check the subject of the parent (which your post is still using) they were referring to Ubuntu. Implying people will jump through hoops to get a free version of Windows when you can get a free as in beer (no hacks, no license required) OS, even on a disc mailed to you.

Yes it's not true that Windows is being given away with no hack or license.. that's not what the parent posted.

Ding ding ding ding ding. We have a winner.

Seriously.

The ONLY video store I know that is still successful specializes in difficult to find material. The kicker is all their staff are avid film and movie fans and can recommend films you haven't seen, "Oh you like that director? Have you seen his little known release X? What about this director from a decade prior that was his main influence?"

Personally I think it would be cool if rental places could do a beer growler style service. You bring a flash drive in, they drop a 1080P film on it of your choice. I like my movies in HD, but I'm no fan of BR. Of course DRM and the MPAA stands between that ever realistically happening. Why would I want such a service rather than online or a kiosk? Aside from online DL speed being slow on low compression HD videos (especially less popular ones), the same reason the as above. So I can have a human help me select something. That's where the value is added.