The same ‘piracy tax’ is used in Hungary, too (maybe in all of the EU?). Plus, the VAT (sales tax) is 27%.
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LOL - That is funny. I am guessing the money never reaches the actual creators. That is how our taxes and fees work. Government mismanages it, uses it for itself or “loses” it to a third party.
Controversy happens without any political ramifications, money is never seen or spoken of again. On top of that, we get billed extra for someone’s failure. E.g.:
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We had a utility fee (for 2 decades?) to cover the losses of a bankrupt private energy contractor: it was called a “debt retirement” charge. At least it was an item on the invoice…
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Our province constructed and sold a highway (freeway) to a third party. It has a toll, is manicured, largely unused and doesn’t support public interests, while other highways are falling apart, under endless construction and the most congested in all of North America!
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Now, we plan on building a highway to nowhere. Too bad though, our province had the lowest election turnout in history! Apparently, no one cares.
Where the taxes and fees go, no one knows. If only they were used as advertised. In Canada, we are known for our public spaces and services, in contrast to the States, but slowly and surely, governments are selling capital, goods and services to private entities with the promise that they will be in better hands and offset risk, when the exact opposite is true.
In sum: we cannot have cake and eat it, unless one is an insider. That is how the world works. 
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You got that right… after a few years none of the money reached the artists, and the government branch that was handling this part of the money doesn’t know where it went 
I feel for you on that. Not particularly in a private vs public manner(As we have some private projects paid by the gov that actually went well), but governments seem to be efficient machines at wasting people’s money. Just this year we spent 3.4B € acquiring our national air company because it went bankrupt with covid… all for nothing since it won’t turn a profit any time soon. Meanwhile our national healthcare system is blowing up because doctors and nurses aren’t well paid, so they leave for the private sector, etc etc etc.
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It’s a shame… And I thought Portugal was high with 23% VAT. Reminds me of Poland, that for all its cultural problems with the current government, seems to have enacted some good policies, like 0% tax on food for example(we pay 6% here.)
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I agree that privatisation is a disaster, every time. Distresses me to see things handed to them by elected leaders who, often, did not say they would do that while electioneering.
Thankfully, we don’t get to decide which artists “deserve” our money. I may think Bob Dylan is rich enough, but I’m glad I don’t get to say “nope–you’ve got enough,” or decide some other artist is derivative, so I get their work for free. True perhaps that the artist doesn’t get his or her bit. Shocking that Spotify etc. succeed and somehow get the funds that the artist was to get! But I know musical friends who used to beat their chests about the ripoff of Spotify, and now they have no CDs in their house, and use Spotify or the home listening devices to play “their” music.
Back to staring at computer specs …
I was just making sure your $1300 was not the translated same as my $1700. I’m happy to spend whatever so long as it lasts a very long time. Other things I like to do: scan, scan, scan old negatives and slides. I just scanned for the first time some rangefinder slides, Kodacolor II, from December 1978. The commercial processor stuck the cut negs in taped sleeves, so all tacky and one of the images I consider my best. So trying to preserve the images digitally. 600dpi. So I want a reliable SSD or M.2 hard drive, capacious. Then my iPhone is completely stuffed–can’t take another photo. I don’t like to use clouds. So I need to dump it to my new solution. I also like to digitise my LPs, and try to get them on YouTube past the AI guardians, share music people haven’t heard for decades. Audacity. More space needed. Bit of iMovie for that. And all the RAW photo processing and storage.
It is a double dipping. Pretty much like the advertising on TV. First you pay for the cable (so you can watch TV) then you watch adds (not the TV).
Sadly - there is too much opportunism in this world - that is stealing and pushing everybody else until one can get to the top.
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Just get the mac. Using a high quality wide gamut display with Linux/Windows is awful, those systems have no colour management so you get crazy saturated colours. And calibrating only helps colour managed apps, even then you have to select the profile manually in the settings of many apps. MacOS has colour management built in so it applies consistently to everything you see on screen.
I spent years trying to use linux. Don’t waste your time unless you really love linux and don’t care about colour. (Same applies to Windows)
Oi. I have almost decided on Linux, though the Triniti machines come loaded with Windows 10 and I know I’d be worried about switching them … and you say Apple. But M1 is not yet ready for darktable … though I suppose I could boot up Linux or VM that, though I don’t know anything about that. Maybe I’ll present my needs to the local Apple guy, and see what he suggests, though I don’t really trust him because one’s stuff comes back from the shop with the software that lets him take over your computer if needed … and one is not asked, and I think it’s unethical.
Lots of fun hobbies but while most SSD will serve as fast intermediary drive for this sort of work…you will fill up the standard SSD in no time….I think you should look at building or buying a NAS drive for your home to serve as your media back-up/server…… this is what you will need long term….
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Sorry. Hate to have promoted apple like that.
I don’t really trust him because one’s stuff comes back from the shop with the software that lets him take over your computer if needed
Ew, definitely avoid that.
@afre, what you described makes my blood boil. So much of our money lining the pockets of the government’s cronies while basic supports for the rank and file are chipped away and our environment gets sacrificed.
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Yep, I am on basic supports and that has been subjected to a 7 year freeze, COVID-19 or not!! I got an interview for a short-term job tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully that will become something more if I am successful. I can’t live in poverty for much longer given the pressures of the day. I wish to have cake and a new computer someday.
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Clearly I need to make a decision soon. To give a situational, I’ve spent the last day trying to finish scanning a roll of film that saw commercial processing in 1978. Unlike most of my old film, I have never scanned this one. There is much in each frame that the commercial guys didn’t bother to try and capture, and lifeless colour. I had to take off the lab’s 50-year-old tape that affixed a piece of paper to the edge of the film–which stickiness will never be gone. I have had to force-close my computer three times so far. It freezes. The images are quite striking, if I may say so, scans are complete, but I cannot get darktable to finish the output to JPG; I think space has run out. I will now delete the entire day’s scanning, and re-scan at a smaller dpi…
I think you should go with the system that best supports your workflow. If you are using it exclusively for the stuff we discuss on this particular forum, then Linux is probably your best bet, since that is the world most of us inhabit, create and develop in. Not only will the FLOSS applications run reasonably well but you also have a community to reach out to if you get stuck.
In terms of the machine, I am not currently a mac user but my impression is that Apple of late is not very supportive of running Linux on macs, or they don’t know how it will look like within their new series of OSes and M hardware. That leaves us with PCs, on which we have a flexible choice of whether to install Linux and/or Windows.
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This does sound pretty killer. Oddly, when I click on your link above, I get error messages. Could you resend?
This one…Legion Slim 7 AMD Gaming Laptop | 15.6” Display | Lenovo CA
Might be best to poke around and see what other models are there as well …but this seemed pretty reasonable…
“Novo hole” is such an awkward terrible name. The page itself doesn’t even tell people what it is for! (Apparently, it is used for default system reset.)
I’m late to the party and haven’t read all the thread, but was in a similar position to you last year. 15 odd years on a Mac, but had grown to consider darktable as my top priority software. Mac ending support for OpenCL meant they were no longer an option, given how much darktable speed relies upon it. This was almost a relief, because the price of a high quality desktop Mac was 2-3x more than a Windows/Linux at similar performance. You do get a lot of stability with that (never really had any issues on a mac), but it hurts the wallet! Didn’t wish to go to Windows, as I absolutely loathe their telemetry, spyware, ads, forced features, and had experienced many problems with them prior to going Mac (viruses, or seemingly random malfunctions). This left Linux, which I’d never used before, and was a bit apprehensive about, because the instructions online were always to type some thing I don’t understand into the terminal, instead of go there click this like Mac and Win. So I dual booted Linux and Windows to test the waters. Have been on Linux Mint for 6+ months now and almost never use Windows. Took quite a bit of research before installing to make sure I managed it correctly, but since its been up and running has been pretty smooth sailing. It was pretty ugly out of the box, but the installation of some themes solved that.
I have one of these, and don’t see an issue, albeit I did calibrate on Windows part of dual boot. Darktable is colour managed, as is Geeqie which I use as image viewer (the only one I know of that is colour managed), as is Firefox. Don’t really need colour management for anything else. Yes thumbnails look awful in file manager, but I don’t need them to look good there. Obviously Mac sets the ideal standard for a colour managed system, but Linux has just enough to be suitable. If you didn’t calibrate on Windows it would be more fiddly on Linux, but there are options.
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