Squeezing the long tail for all its worth

[akuma624]

I had to write about this recent article on slashdot - as it turns out sending a text message is roughly four times more expensive than NASA downloading a picture from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Considering that story and also this one about printer ink costing more than vintage champagne, I had to stop and think about a general question: how much does the average consumer or computer user get f**ked by a massive company? I’m really not thinking about a “small” increase on price for some type of convenience - more so a complete right rip-off.

Adding some *nix angle to this - does this subconscious knowledge of getting screwed at every corner bring more people over to a FOSS type of computing platform?

Any thoughts?

[allix]

You can get ink refills QA is not guaranteed though.
I do agree with you technology is an expense.

[snarkout]

I thought this was going to be another thread about lost pr0n on dead hard drives.