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From CP newsletter
I thought software subscriptions were a ripoff until I did the math | ZDNET[^]
It uses a couple examples to show why subscription software is better than buying a stand alone at a one time cost.
But the cost isn't why I buy stand alone. I look at the following reasons.
- It must continue to work regardless of how long I keep the computer.
- It must work even if the internet is not working.
- If I cannot afford to pay for a new computer in the future then I can't pay for a subscription either.
- There should be no possibility that my work will disappear. Related to the above, but one can also look to cases like kindle where books that had been bought suddenly disappeared from the device.
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A subscription might be OK for people who rely on something every day, particularly for making money and having access to all the latest features. I don't.
One example is Photoshop -- I bought Photoshop v7 back in 2002 and I still use it on occasion. How much would I have spent if I had been paying for a subscription all that time? I certainly don't need most of its features. It works for my needs.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: One example is Photoshop
Good example, I bought the last version that was not subscription and I use it occasionally, but definitely not enough to justify subscription.
"Ten men in the country could buy the world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat." Will Rogers
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - Release Version 1.3.1 JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: EventAggregator
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The same could be said for web newspapers: Over the years, there must be at least two hundred web newspapers/magazines that have told me that if I only sign up for a subscription (which, experience shows, may be very hard to have terminated), they will let me read that article someone linked to.
I am not going to pay for two hundred different web publications, reading on the average one or two articles a year in each of them.
My ideal payment method, both for web publication articles and for software, would be a voucher / ticket based system: I would go to a ticket office to deposit to my account the pay for, say, 50 general vouchers/tickets. Whenever I want to read an article in publication X, I would ask the ticket office: Give me one of my 50 paid-for tickets, marked for publication X, for me to show so that I can read that article I want to see.
If that ticket was for the X web site in general, not for just the one article, but valid for, say, 8 hours or 24 hours access, I might discover other articles that would make me later return, again and again. After a while I might realize that a regular subscription would be cheaper than 8- or 24 hour single tickets.
Similar for ticket based software use: If a software house would, through a ticket office (hopefully, a lot of software houses would come together for a common ticket office) sell me a 24-hour or maybe a 1-week ticket for a specific software suite, or maybe for any software from a given software house, I could pay according to my use. If 365 single-day tickets cost ten times as much as one year regular subscription: Fine with me. If I use the software more than 36 days a year, I can switch to a regular yearly subscription.
I would like such a ticket based system even if the ticket office handled only one large software vendor (MS, say) as long as I could ask for a 'cheap' ticket for one single application, or a more expensive and comprehensive ticket for a software suite (such as MS Office), all from the same account, paying for the use of different tools in the same 'currency'. It would of course be great if many software houses would agree on a common ticket office, a single 'currency'.
The software to implement such a system is more or less readily available - the Kerberos would need minimal modifications to do the job (maybe a little bit in the Ticket Granting service, both for accepting deposits to each account and for forwarding payments to the software houses according to the tickets issued). Each application would have to be instrumented to require a valid ticket for unlocking its functionality to be provided. This would be a standard mechanism, common to all - a lot of it can be picked from the way applications are 'kerberized'. A one-year or a perpetual license would use the same ticket mechanism, using tickets with a different expiration time from those provided by the ticket server.
With such a ticket based system. the threshold for accessing services would be so low that I would probably spend a lot on single tickets before realizing late that switching to a monthly/yearly subscription would be cheaper. Along the route, I would probably have seen (and spent money on) a lot of software that I might become a regular (subscription) user of, at some later time.
I never heard of anyone providing access to software (or web publications) using a ticket based system such as this. Yet I think that if some major software provider (MS, say) introduces such a system, a lot of others will say "Why didn't we think of that before?"
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Yeah, I have thought something similar many times. In my case was with the example of a fitness studio.
Numbers not real, just as example
Fee for one day only access = 20€
10x one day access fee (not limited to a month) = 150€
Monthly fee for unlimited access = 300€
This method could be applied to many, many online (and even offline) things.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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trønderen wrote: would be a voucher / ticket based system:
That is a an interesting idea.
I also would be interested in that. I don't mind paying for something because I know people rely on it but just like you I am not going to be paying for all of them.
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Or Paint.NET and get updates at any price you want to pay.
Hogan
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Quote: look to cases like kindle where books that had been bought suddenly disappeared from the device.
Wow, this one scares me a bit  ... I have perhaps 80 books in my Kindle on Windows 10. I hope they are safe ...
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OK, thanks ... I will check
A few hours later ...  :
- I had a quick look and I will certainly give it a try, thank you again 
modified 27-Jan-24 20:27pm.
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Just curious....
Does that matter if kindle removed it? Once it goes in would kindle just remove it anyways if it that had already happened?
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Nope. Calibre library has nothing to do with Kindle.
Mircea
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Yes but you said...
"that I shuffle in and out of my Kindle."
So once it is in the Kindle, then the Kindle itself does nothing with it (removed books)?
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Not that I’ve noticed. What I didn’t try was to erase it from my Kindle/Amazon account. Not sure it’s even possible.
Mircea
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Here is how this works for me. I download a book from my Amazon account and it asks for what device I need the download. The book is downloaded and DRM protected but I can add it to the Calibre library. However I cannot open it on the PC. I can download the book to Kindle and read it fine. There is no way Amazon could remove or alter the book from the Calibre library but maybe the decrypting key on the Kindle could be invalidated. Anyway, it never happened to me.
Mircea
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From CP newsletter
Agile is no Excuse - DevOps.com[^]
It somewhat references agile but also references long term plans and telling customers about those long term plans. Not in special cases but in all cases.
No that isn't a good idea, especially when agile is in play.
That is because, even though it probably shouldn't work that way, I have been on too many longer term initiatives via agile that got delayed or even axed because something else came up later that seemed more important.
And then someone is left explaining to the customers that were eagerly waiting for it why it didn't show up.
------------------------------------
Actually reminds me of attending long ago company meetings where the sales department would eagerly tell everyone about the major potential customers that were in the pipeline. And then one would never hear about those customers again.
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Yeah, never tell anyone about "plans".
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Received an email from Chris Maunder today to make sure I can still access this site after my ip address was mistakenly blocked by a post DDOS cleanup process, not many site owners would do that. So tip of the hat to Chris and the boys.
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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pkfox wrote: Chris and the boys.
They're called hamsters, thank you very much...
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Not to me their not
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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VPN's (like Tor) come in handy for this situation. I have a mail scrubbing service that blocks my IP here. Use it for that (no, I don't use Tor).
>64
There is never enough time to do it right, but there is enough time to do it over.
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pkfox wrote: to Chris and the boys.
And the girls... there are some involved in making CP, what CP is too 
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Greetings & Kind Regards
I seek advice and knowledge of others' practice re/ a minor matter of style. In particular to be specific I vacillate betwixt and between two forms of final statement of if ... else ... series of statements assuming every possible condition is accounted for as shown in simple specimen / example / sample below (not snippet as it is not a snip of a larger code base).
1st style :
if(expression == true) {...}
else {...}
2nd style :
if(expression == true) {...}
else if(expression == false) {...}
Note it is the final statement I am inquiring regards. Do your kind selves accept the default final result as shown in 1st style or perform explicit unnecessary test as shown in 2nd style for no other reason than to make the code self documenting and easier to understand in particular for a complex lengthy series of conditions.
btw in 2nd style on occasion I add as final statement else throw who_the_heck_knows_what_happened;
Thank You Kindly
[edit] I have concluded kind Jacquers is quite correct. As it happened upon some coding just now of a simple series of such it was evident an explicit final test results in confusion as it is clearly not necessary. However in a lengthy complex series an explicit test makes code self documenting and so simpler to understand. KISS
modified 26-Jan-24 0:31am.
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