The more you know

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[–] 195 points 9 months ago (10 children)

Thats because winrar is useful.

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  • [–] 54 points 9 months ago (9 children)

    It’s is not useful. It is fucking great.

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  • [–] 50 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    Wait till you learn about 7zip…

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    7zip didn't exist when winrar was released... im pretty sure anyway...

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  • [+] 42 points 9 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Yeah there was a time when winrar was basically the best option for zip files it made it easy...

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago* (3 children)

    Yeah, but it was a poster child for nagware. Edit to be fair so did WinRAR, but that sweet sweet compression and multi-volume splitting made it the best tool for those sailing a jolly roger on those slow, stormy seas...

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I don't really have an issue with nagware. You got a powerful, useful piece of software for free. I'm starting to see a lot of comments in this vein on Lemmy. Open Source is fantastic, but it's also okay to want to get paid for the time and effort put into something.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    What you're seeing on Lemmy is up to you.

    What I'm talking about is late 90s and early 00s, with WinZip being the prime example but others like ACDSee or even mIRC also coming to mind, where the whole shareware model for the era was companies testing out just how inconvenient they could be and still get the users to buy their apps.

    The glorious counterpoint to this was WinAmp, who not only whipped the lama's ass, but was also free (for non-comercial use) shareware and users paid voluntarily, which I gladly would have if I wasn't a broke kid at the time.

    This era died off completely after that, as the internet became more accessible, open source and libre licenses exploded, and many apps migrated to web browsers.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    What you're seeing on Lemmy is up to you.

    What is your point? The issue isn't that I'm seeing it, it's the level of entitlement people feel they have to free stuff.

    I remember using winzip frequently, I don't remember ever paying for it, ditto mirc. It would have been a damn sight more inconvenient if they'd actually ended the 21 day trial vs clicking a button after 30s, no? Shareware was primarily limited trials - you usually had to pay for the full version.

    The name died because we didn't need to share the disks any more, it grew into modern freemium apps, mtx and ad supported software, I'm not sure I like any of those more.

    OS has grown, as has the complexity of free programmes, sure, the number has grown because there are a lot more devs, people have always been willing to give software away - they should be seen as generous, not the base level of expectation.

    I still don't see why any of that should stop people wanting to get paid for the work they're doing and I do find it somewhat bizarre the level of expectation people have that others give away software then maintain and support it for free.

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  • [–] 26 points 9 months ago

    More useful too.

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  • [–] 50 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    That's absolutely hilarious. All the times I've either patched Winrar or ignored the 40 day subscription nagging did not matter for their bottom line at all.

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  • [–] 66 points 9 months ago* (4 children)

    All the times I've either patched Winrar or ignored the 40 day subscription nagging did not matter for their bottom line at all.

    You individually? No. But RARLAB aren't saps; the "40-day limit"(TM) transforms their software from nagware into something valuable the user is "getting away with". If one or two stray consumers happen to purchase a license based off of that, then excellent. The real kicker, though, is that a culture where everyone uses WinRAR for creating and extracting archives is one where they can push a ton of business licenses – one of the main reasons e.g. Microsoft will often provide Office to universities at steep discounts. By using WinRAR, you act as a brick in the wall of WinRAR's (thankfully waning) hegemony, even just by giving it word-of-mouth or not using competing software.

    They want you to feel like you're getting more value than you are out of a product that is near-strictly inferior to free and open-source software with a public domain compression algorithm like 7-Zip. This has been common knowledge for over a decade.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (3 children)

    How is 7-Zip superior to Winrar? Every time I tried using 7-Zip it felt a little... weird to use, plus every RAR file I tried to use with it was a pain in the ass. But then again the last time I used it was like... uh, 14 years ago?

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    That's not directed at you, but RAR archives are so inconvinient to deal with I'm surprised to even see one in the wild. ZIPs may be created and opened by most file managers nowadays, and it's not so much to compress files with modern bandwidht, but to collect multiple files as one package. The RAR formar times are seemingly almost over.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    rar and 7-zip are both compression formats as well as applications, so it can help to not get them confused. 7-zip as a compression format is simply more advanced and better than rar, which should be expected as it's a newer format.

    As for the software used to interact with the compressed archives, the official 7-zip client isn't as streamlined and as nice as WinRAR, but it is open source and cross platform. And it's not the only option, there are other applications that can be used to open 7-zip files (maybe WinRAR can even do it). Nanazip is a nice option that I'm currently using on Windows. But it's ultimately a personal decision and comes down to whatever you prefer.

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    There are lemonade stands making more money than OpenAI. Right now. In January. In sub-freezing weather.

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  • [–] 32 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The poop in my pants makes more money than OpenAI

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Ah man that takes me back,….to when windows was somewhat useable.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Windows got market power because they took the term "Personal Computer" seriously. It was yours, and you could put what you wanted on it. They are now heading down Apples path of proprietry ownership, without Apples flair.

    Loving Linux Mint atm. Maybe it'll help me get more adventurous with other distros?

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago*

    Kinda like a rich person saying "You have more money than I do because you only have $100k in debt" to a normal person because they have a $2 million dollar loan for a house, but only have $500k in easily liquidated assets.

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  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (1 child)
    [–] 12 points 9 months ago

    Yes? They don't care it's an infinite money glitch where big corporations pretend that they are in a growth phase and give each other money by using shares that they can print at will.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    Then I'll hurry up and buy some WinRAR stocks!

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    Maybe ChatGPT should get one of those super annoying nag messages to get you to pay up like WinRAR used to have. That ought to rake in the many billions they need... right?

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    Setting a pile of money on fire is more profitable then openai. Like you can not physically shovel enough to come close to even a tiny amount of what openai goes though.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago
    [–] 8 points 9 months ago

    I want to know what unprofitable businesses are still more profitable than WinRAR.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    profitable for whom?

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    Are winrar memes the champion as far as long-lived memes? I think it might be the longest running internet meme I can think of.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Absolutely brutal. I love it.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    I want that WinRAR bag

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Username checks out

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    All humans, whether homeless or famined African, are more profitable than Open AI

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  • [+] 1 point 9 months ago (20 children)
  • [–] 41 points 9 months ago (15 children)

    It costs vastly more money to run OpenAI than it does any gross income they're receiving.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (14 children)

    It was the same for google and youtube for a long time.

    They need to get people/businesses addicted to it first.

    Edit: Does this comment make it seem like I like AI? Am I wrong about Google and YT's business strategy?

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  • [–] 16 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Sort of? Google and YT (which was google soon enough) had something called a “business plan” where they grew after they got new business - enough to “justify” growth.

    Also, it was easy to see how they could turn a profit and how the pricing would work, which made it like every other business in the world.

    With open AI, they set a price based on “feels” and it’s far too low to pay for the computing costs. Then they offered it free to everyone. And they only burn money, there’s not enough money coming in to pay anyone.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Also the fact people in general who aren't right wingers who would be fascinated by flashing lights absolutely hate AI and the way it's being shoved into everything.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (9 children)

    The thing is... uh... NO ONE LIKES AI. Regular people don't like when a technology is shoved in their face over and over and over without their consent so they're forced to use it. Google and Youtube were actually compelling things for the consumer and had real world usage. AI has very little actual real world usage because it's a text prediction algorithm that does not do anything that other things today wouldn't be able to.

    The only people that like AI are TESCREAL-supporting billionaires who genuinely think LLMs will achieve AGI and thus replace humanity (refer to this video to know how absolutely INSANE those idiots are) and their right wing simps. Pretty much everyone in the creative, educational, and programming field that have actual coding experience hate it because it's literally making people dumber AND taking away jobs from artists AND creating programmers with no actual coding experience.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    I agree with most those things. But it's not only tech billionaires and right wing. This here is an echochamber of AI hate (which I'm a part of), and that is fine. A lot of people in a lot of countries are using it for a lot of different things. It doesn't matter how much it works, if it did a lot of products wouldn't be on the market today.

    The business strategy and politics is what matters in the end. Even to a bubble.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (7 children)

    AI is absolutely useful. Speaking as a developer, it has definitely changed my profession.

    This is more like the dotcom bubble. There's a seed of truth in there, but it's buried in overhype, nonsense, and chaff.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Many developers do not use any "AI" and continue to write code by hand.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    Many drivers refuse cars and still use horse and buggy.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    They are making money, they just burn a lot more money (tens of billions of usd a year) and they don't even plan on becoming profitable till 2030, which is insane for almost any other non-ai bubble or gov. funded company on the planet.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    You praise the epitome of all the negatives with capitalisn that is closed source sodtware to put down one of the most important Firms on the planet?

    Pure self own.

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