And Open SOurce software is like cooking at home- endlessly customizable, may (but not always) take more effort, but generally provides a superior experience (with an occasional epic fail).
Eating out is nice occasionally, but I avoid "fine dining" establishments and their exorbitant pricing, because they usually leave me hungry (I have observed portion sizes being inversely proportional to prices at such establishments), and besides, my wife and I can cook up a superior meal using freely available recipes (sometimes of our own making) in about the same amount of time it takes to go out to eat.
Cooking at home saves money, and so does Open Source software :)
I think you've missed the point of fine dining, or maybe it's just not for you. It's not about the utility of refilling your hunger meter. Like the article says, you're paying for the whole experience, and the level of craftsmanship. I also highly doubt you can make a superior meal, that's a little offensive to people who focus their lives and careers on the art of food. It's subjective, of course, but similar to how some companies think they don't need software because their home-grown spreadsheet solution is "superior" (i.e. cheaper).
I mean, if it's just not your thing, that's fine, but your comment is stereotypical of the purely utilitarian and rather smug perspective often taken by nerdy types. No doubt you find fashion equally frivolous and can't fathom why people would pay above Target prices for clothing.
I also highly doubt you can make a superior meal, that's a little offensive to people who focus their lives and careers on the art of food.
Meh. In my experience you reach a point of diminishing returns very quickly, in terms of price / quality ratio at "fine dining" restaurants. Paying $40.00 for a steak gets you a significantly better steak than the $15.00 one, yes. But paying $80.00 for a steak doesn't get you much more, if any more than the $40.00 steak. And I, for one, have no problem believing that a home chef can replicate the $40.00 steak in their own kitchen.
Most of what you're paying for at those upscale, trendy, fine-dining places is service, ambiance, status-signalling,ego gratification, etc. You don't pay 4 times more for a meal because you expect the food to be 4 times better.
You are also paying for superior quality ingredients. That $80 steak might be because the restaurant has an exclusive relationship with a specific organic beef rancher and you can't buy that rancher's meat in regular stores. Those grilled scallops may have been caught that morning, sent fresh to the restaurant, and shucked five minutes prior to you eating them.
If you're only getting grocery store quality ingredients at a fine dining restaurant, you're getting ripped off.
You are also paying for superior quality ingredients.
Agreed, that is part of it. But I will contend that a 4x increase in price does not reflect a 4x increase in the quality of the ingredients. Now, granted, that's all very subjective and hard to measure. And all I have is anecdotal evidence, but on the occasions when I have found myself paying $80.00 or more for a steak, I've never finished it and thought "wow that was 4 times better than the $20.00 steak I had last week".
If you're only getting grocery store quality ingredients at a fine dining restaurant, you're getting ripped off.
Fair enough. I agree that ingredients do matter, just not sure they fully justify the higher price of the nicer restaurants. Having grown up at the coast, near Holden Beach, NC, I got used to eating very fresh seafood. Now, when I have seafood further inland, I can definitely notice a difference based on the ingredients not being as fresh. That actually leads to a bit of a paradox... some restaurants, just due to their location, will never be able to replicate the best possible seafood experience, due to the need to transport ingredients. So the $50.00 seafood meal you eat at a restaurant in, say, St. Louis, probably won't be as good in some regards as a $15.00 meal you could have in Calabash, NC, just due to geography.
I also highly doubt you can make a superior meal, that's a little offensive to people who focus their lives and careers on the art of food.
How offensive; I shouldn't need to pay $100+ a head to get a superior steak, parsnip, and greens; but, like the parent, I've yet to find convenient or suitably priced dining to that of my own cast iron. Granted, there are plenty of styles or meats I don't cook or source as well (eg. sous-vide or braised lamb) and am more than happy to go out for, but it's not hard to imagine amateur home-chefs cooking these dishes. There are entire shows around surfacing non-classical or non-fine-dining chefs.
I think Open Source is hard to map to a physical analogy due to how it exploits communal intelligence and effort with close to zero cost copying and distribution. It really only works for knowledge.
Eating out is nice occasionally, but I avoid "fine dining" establishments and their exorbitant pricing, because they usually leave me hungry (I have observed portion sizes being inversely proportional to prices at such establishments), and besides, my wife and I can cook up a superior meal using freely available recipes (sometimes of our own making) in about the same amount of time it takes to go out to eat.
Cooking at home saves money, and so does Open Source software :)