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The same spies that push porn spam while they "investigate" or that use automated "investigation" that can't tell the difference between a file sharer and a printer? Yeah I kinda doubt it is really costing them much for their "investigation work" there.

But let us be honest here,this has absolutely NOTHING to do with artists or creators,and is nothing but unrestrained greed from non producing middlemen. How else can you explain getting up in court and with a straight face saying Ripping your CD to your iPod isn't fair use because you didn't get prior "authorization"(in the form of giving them another check) first.

And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work. The fact that Steamboat Willie is still under copyright should prove the contract is broken and not worth the paper copyright laws were written on.

All of which we can thank the late Sonny Bono for sponsoring his wonderful legislation. AG

The same spies that push porn spam while they "investigate" or that use automated "investigation" that can't tell the difference between a file sharer and a printer? Yeah I kinda doubt it is really costing them much for their "investigation work" there.

But let us be honest here,this has absolutely NOTHING to do with artists or creators,and is nothing but unrestrained greed from non producing middlemen. How else can you explain getting up in court and with a straight face saying Ripping your CD to your iPod isn't fair use because you didn't get prior "authorization"(in the form of giving them another check) first.

And finally,since we always have at least a few "get the dirty evil pirates" every time we have this conversation,I am going to say this again: There is NO WAY that anyone can stand up here and with a straight face say that copyrights are anything but broken. If you try,I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,and yet his FIRST work,one that was made when most cars had to be started with a freaking handcrank,is still under copyright. I think we can all agree that is severely fucked up. Copyright was supposed to be a contract,nothing more or less. We got a richer public domain in return for a LIMITED monopoly on a work. The fact that Steamboat Willie is still under copyright should prove the contract is broken and not worth the paper copyright laws were written on.

Damn straight. From your original post, let's do the math.

1287+1068+1002+959+914+897+753+572+550+513+490+488+487+473+470+457+424+400+371+360+353+353+338+336+331=14646 letters sent to the top 25 universities in 06-07.

14646*($3000) (the typical settlement amount) = $43,938,000

Sure beats working for a living, doesn't it? Greed personified.

You will not need to install Silverlight to use it:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/11/12/office-web-to-be-multi-platform-silverlight-not-required

Nokia has however announced that there will be new tablet devices with OMAP3 (ARMv7) and 3G. It makes sense that Ubuntu would be mainly interested in targeting these upcoming much more powerful devices.

NT 3.x NT 4.0 Win2k - 5.0 WinXp - 5.1 Vista - 6.0 (No next version will be called Win7) Win7 - 6.1 (probably) http://arstechnica.com/journals/microsoft.ars/2008/10/15/final-release-of-windows-7-to-have-kernel-version-6-1

Sorry pal,but I took economics too. Now allow me to quote your post "There is a price vs demand equilibria which maximizes revenue and there is no reason for these companies not to strive for maximum profits." But that isn't what we have now,is it? Instead we have every major game company charging the absolute limit they can without coming off as totally obscene,and yet they are amazed that their profits are going down. And still we get statements like This from the head of EA where he says and I quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand," he said. "If I'd had a chance to have a conversation with them, they'd have gotten it.". You see,THIS is the kind of attitude we have been getting from publishers. No matter how badly we treat you,no matter how much we charge,if you don't like our crazy price for a rental then you are "teh piratez"(hey,just like I said,huh?) or you are stupid.

So,since they are only doing what the market dictates,they must be rolling in the dough,huh? Well they sure are,if you call layoffs and a pile of class action lawsuits that they'll have to pay lawyers out the nose for doing good.

But hey,instead of insulting me why don't you read the links for yourself. Notice how in NOT A SINGLE ONE does anyone from EA even hint that screwing customers might be a tiny bit of the reason their income ain't coming in. Or that lowering prices might be a good thing,especially in a recession. Look,we have seen this before in the music industry. They charged way too much for their product,and whenever possible they DRM'd the hell out of it. Now you can buy MP3 singles all over the place and Walmart doesn't have any single albums last I checked for more than $13. Why? Because their "must make more profits!" mentality bit them in the ass,that's why. Yet even with a worldwide economic recession,prices aren't going down on games,if anything they are steadily increasing. Does that sound like equilibria to you? Hell it sounds like a complete divorce from reality to me.

But you believe what you want. But I'll make a prediction,and the prediction is this: The game companies will keep screaming about "teh piratez!" while charging $60 for substandard,DRM infested,buggy as hell product. They will all start to post huge losses,and be completely clueless as to why. Pirates will keep playing for free,guys like me that don't pirate will be buying the $20 bargain bin games that have been out long enough to have DRM removers and bug fixes,and many of the game companies will tank. And then,like a lightbulb going off,somebody will sell a decent new game for $30 or less and watch its sales go through the roof. Everyone will talk about how insightful and innovative they were for reading the market so well,and the game companies that are left will follow the leader trying to mooch off their success. And hey,what do you know? For a lot of them it'll work! And then folks will look back on the days of game companies charging $60+ for a new game with much amazement and with a "what were they thinking?" attitude. Because treating your customers like dirt and charging the absolute highest the market can bear will eventually bite you on the ass.

Sorry pal,but I took economics too. Now allow me to quote your post "There is a price vs demand equilibria which maximizes revenue and there is no reason for these companies not to strive for maximum profits." But that isn't what we have now,is it? Instead we have every major game company charging the absolute limit they can without coming off as totally obscene,and yet they are amazed that their profits are going down. And still we get statements like This from the head of EA where he says and I quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand," he said. "If I'd had a chance to have a conversation with them, they'd have gotten it.". You see,THIS is the kind of attitude we have been getting from publishers. No matter how badly we treat you,no matter how much we charge,if you don't like our crazy price for a rental then you are "teh piratez"(hey,just like I said,huh?) or you are stupid.

So,since they are only doing what the market dictates,they must be rolling in the dough,huh? Well they sure are,if you call layoffs and a pile of class action lawsuits that they'll have to pay lawyers out the nose for doing good.

But hey,instead of insulting me why don't you read the links for yourself. Notice how in NOT A SINGLE ONE does anyone from EA even hint that screwing customers might be a tiny bit of the reason their income ain't coming in. Or that lowering prices might be a good thing,especially in a recession. Look,we have seen this before in the music industry. They charged way too much for their product,and whenever possible they DRM'd the hell out of it. Now you can buy MP3 singles all over the place and Walmart doesn't have any single albums last I checked for more than $13. Why? Because their "must make more profits!" mentality bit them in the ass,that's why. Yet even with a worldwide economic recession,prices aren't going down on games,if anything they are steadily increasing. Does that sound like equilibria to you? Hell it sounds like a complete divorce from reality to me.

But you believe what you want. But I'll make a prediction,and the prediction is this: The game companies will keep screaming about "teh piratez!" while charging $60 for substandard,DRM infested,buggy as hell product. They will all start to post huge losses,and be completely clueless as to why. Pirates will keep playing for free,guys like me that don't pirate will be buying the $20 bargain bin games that have been out long enough to have DRM removers and bug fixes,and many of the game companies will tank. And then,like a lightbulb going off,somebody will sell a decent new game for $30 or less and watch its sales go through the roof. Everyone will talk about how insightful and innovative they were for reading the market so well,and the game companies that are left will follow the leader trying to mooch off their success. And hey,what do you know? For a lot of them it'll work! And then folks will look back on the days of game companies charging $60+ for a new game with much amazement and with a "what were they thinking?" attitude. Because treating your customers like dirt and charging the absolute highest the market can bear will eventually bite you on the ass.

Sorry pal,but I took economics too. Now allow me to quote your post "There is a price vs demand equilibria which maximizes revenue and there is no reason for these companies not to strive for maximum profits." But that isn't what we have now,is it? Instead we have every major game company charging the absolute limit they can without coming off as totally obscene,and yet they are amazed that their profits are going down. And still we get statements like This from the head of EA where he says and I quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand," he said. "If I'd had a chance to have a conversation with them, they'd have gotten it.". You see,THIS is the kind of attitude we have been getting from publishers. No matter how badly we treat you,no matter how much we charge,if you don't like our crazy price for a rental then you are "teh piratez"(hey,just like I said,huh?) or you are stupid.

So,since they are only doing what the market dictates,they must be rolling in the dough,huh? Well they sure are,if you call layoffs and a pile of class action lawsuits that they'll have to pay lawyers out the nose for doing good.

But hey,instead of insulting me why don't you read the links for yourself. Notice how in NOT A SINGLE ONE does anyone from EA even hint that screwing customers might be a tiny bit of the reason their income ain't coming in. Or that lowering prices might be a good thing,especially in a recession. Look,we have seen this before in the music industry. They charged way too much for their product,and whenever possible they DRM'd the hell out of it. Now you can buy MP3 singles all over the place and Walmart doesn't have any single albums last I checked for more than $13. Why? Because their "must make more profits!" mentality bit them in the ass,that's why. Yet even with a worldwide economic recession,prices aren't going down on games,if anything they are steadily increasing. Does that sound like equilibria to you? Hell it sounds like a complete divorce from reality to me.

But you believe what you want. But I'll make a prediction,and the prediction is this: The game companies will keep screaming about "teh piratez!" while charging $60 for substandard,DRM infested,buggy as hell product. They will all start to post huge losses,and be completely clueless as to why. Pirates will keep playing for free,guys like me that don't pirate will be buying the $20 bargain bin games that have been out long enough to have DRM removers and bug fixes,and many of the game companies will tank. And then,like a lightbulb going off,somebody will sell a decent new game for $30 or less and watch its sales go through the roof. Everyone will talk about how insightful and innovative they were for reading the market so well,and the game companies that are left will follow the leader trying to mooch off their success. And hey,what do you know? For a lot of them it'll work! And then folks will look back on the days of game companies charging $60+ for a new game with much amazement and with a "what were they thinking?" attitude. Because treating your customers like dirt and charging the absolute highest the market can bear will eventually bite you on the ass.

I wouldn't really expect any applications to run faster on Windows 7 unless the hardware was upgraded.

If that were true, then there shouldn't have been performance differences between XP and Vista, but there were. These differences continued on into the Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 upgrades.

Theoretically, there is a maximum "speed" that any application can run at. This is based upon the raw speed of the CPU, Memory, disks, graphics, and other subsystems, used in the most efficient manner. While no OS can ever achieve that, it is the function of the OS to maximize system performance.

System performance will always be a moving target, not just because of hardware changes or hardware options, but also because what is the best performance for a server differs from what is the best performance for a workstation.

As for the "Apple fanboys," they do have reason to poke fun. With each release of OS X, there have been performance improvements over the previous release; 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5. This has been improvements on the same physical hardware.

It appears that Microsoft has chosen to focus their work on improving the UI's responsiveness, or adding new bells and whistles, while not dealing with the performance issues that individual applications run into. While UI responsiveness can be helpful, if the application doesn't finish any faster, the UI being able to show you that it is still busy, doesn't make that much 'real' difference.

I wouldn't really expect any applications to run faster on Windows 7 unless the hardware was upgraded.

If that were true, then there shouldn't have been performance differences between XP and Vista, but there were. These differences continued on into the Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 upgrades.

Theoretically, there is a maximum "speed" that any application can run at. This is based upon the raw speed of the CPU, Memory, disks, graphics, and other subsystems, used in the most efficient manner. While no OS can ever achieve that, it is the function of the OS to maximize system performance.

System performance will always be a moving target, not just because of hardware changes or hardware options, but also because what is the best performance for a server differs from what is the best performance for a workstation.

As for the "Apple fanboys," they do have reason to poke fun. With each release of OS X, there have been performance improvements over the previous release; 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5. This has been improvements on the same physical hardware.

It appears that Microsoft has chosen to focus their work on improving the UI's responsiveness, or adding new bells and whistles, while not dealing with the performance issues that individual applications run into. While UI responsiveness can be helpful, if the application doesn't finish any faster, the UI being able to show you that it is still busy, doesn't make that much 'real' difference.

I wouldn't really expect any applications to run faster on Windows 7 unless the hardware was upgraded.

If that were true, then there shouldn't have been performance differences between XP and Vista, but there were. These differences continued on into the Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 upgrades.

Theoretically, there is a maximum "speed" that any application can run at. This is based upon the raw speed of the CPU, Memory, disks, graphics, and other subsystems, used in the most efficient manner. While no OS can ever achieve that, it is the function of the OS to maximize system performance.

System performance will always be a moving target, not just because of hardware changes or hardware options, but also because what is the best performance for a server differs from what is the best performance for a workstation.

As for the "Apple fanboys," they do have reason to poke fun. With each release of OS X, there have been performance improvements over the previous release; 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5. This has been improvements on the same physical hardware.

It appears that Microsoft has chosen to focus their work on improving the UI's responsiveness, or adding new bells and whistles, while not dealing with the performance issues that individual applications run into. While UI responsiveness can be helpful, if the application doesn't finish any faster, the UI being able to show you that it is still busy, doesn't make that much 'real' difference.

I wouldn't really expect any applications to run faster on Windows 7 unless the hardware was upgraded.

If that were true, then there shouldn't have been performance differences between XP and Vista, but there were. These differences continued on into the Vista SP 1 and XP SP3 upgrades.

Theoretically, there is a maximum "speed" that any application can run at. This is based upon the raw speed of the CPU, Memory, disks, graphics, and other subsystems, used in the most efficient manner. While no OS can ever achieve that, it is the function of the OS to maximize system performance.

System performance will always be a moving target, not just because of hardware changes or hardware options, but also because what is the best performance for a server differs from what is the best performance for a workstation.

As for the "Apple fanboys," they do have reason to poke fun. With each release of OS X, there have been performance improvements over the previous release; 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5. This has been improvements on the same physical hardware.

It appears that Microsoft has chosen to focus their work on improving the UI's responsiveness, or adding new bells and whistles, while not dealing with the performance issues that individual applications run into. While UI responsiveness can be helpful, if the application doesn't finish any faster, the UI being able to show you that it is still busy, doesn't make that much 'real' difference.

For those who don't know, it's a puzzle game like good old Lemmings using an elaborate physics engine.
 
  Best of all it's DRM free!! A nice break from game companies treating their customers like they are dishonest idiots that need to be *guided*.

The major telcos aren't turning over individual content. It's better than that - they just pipe everything through the NSA. Investigations with warrants, how so 20th century.

Vista is a failure

Keep saying it enough and you might convince yourself. Meanwhile, if your metric for failure is sales, then I'd suggestion 180 million sales isn't a bad metric to go by.

To be objective, Vista did break a lot of things when it RTMed, hence the bad rap it took. Nearly 2 years on now, and things are much much smoother.

But no, you're right, Vista is a failure. Keep repeating it and it'll be true eventually I promise!

Ghostbusters was originally to be published by Vivendi. Vivendi was swallowed up by the Activision/Blizzard merger, and they decided to pass on the game (apparently because it couldn't be re-released every year).

It's definitely great news that a publisher finally picked this game up. From what I've read, it sounds like it will actually be pretty good.

It's not 50%, but its not a very good picture either.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html

It was actually 29%, so I won't require your $20.

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/03/28/29-of-windows-vista-crashes-caused-by-nvidia-drivers/
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080325-vista-capable-lawsuit-paints-picture-of-buggy-nvidia-drivers.html
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/03/28/nvidia_vista_drivers/

Why are mainstream game publishers run by such douche bags?

You haven't seen anything yet.

Yeah.

Why are mainstream game publishers run by such douche bags?

You haven't seen anything yet.

If Bill Gates/Microsoft and Google really pushed for this then you KNOW it is for the good of the people and not some attempt at corporate financial padding.

I read on Ars Technica that Google, Dell, Intel, and Microsoft submitted a proof-of-concept prototype to the FCC for testing. Now that this (de)regulation has been approved, any thoughts on who will be the first to roll out White Space devices.

Well you can read a little of it here(you'll need to read the PDF linked to the article) or Google "Universal Service Fund" which they were allowed to raise at least 4 times during the '90s IIRC under the promise of making braodband available for the whole USA and improving speeds and backbone connections. Now what they have actually done with the money is anyone's guess. But where my mom lives she is less than 2 blocks from both the DSL and cable junctions,and neither one has progressed one single inch since she moved there in 1981! And I have a friend who lived in Nashville TN last year and said there are parts of DOWNTOWN that still don't have any broadband coverage! So any way you look at it our broadband,both in service area and speed,pretty much suck.

Now that AMD isn't competitive, Intel is taking their time to roll out new technology. It may be mid-2009 before desktop i7 parts show up. According to Ars Technica: "AMD will instead launch Shanghai in all server brackets simultaneously, from one-socket to four-socket. Intel, in contrast, plans to ramp Nehalem rather leisurely. Dual-socket Nehalem (Gainestown) will launch sometime in the first quarter of 2009, with Beckton (octal core) arriving in the first half of next year... Current predictions suggest we won't see a wide desktop presence for Nehalem until the second or third quarter of 2009"

Intel has been hit with antitrust charges in several countries. I assumed a Slashdot reader would be familiar.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070726-eu-slaps-intel-with-formal-antitrust-charges.html

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Weblets/0,,7832_12670_13242,00.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/142443/intel_and_antitrust_a_brief_history.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_v._Intel

"This is because the Korea Fair Trade Commission has issued a fine of US$25.4 million against Intel."

Several vendors have come forward to corroborate AMD's story, and issue statements against Intel for these cases.

I could keep going, but that should suffice.

Various studies recently have shown no real link between violent video games and aggression. So we have one study that shows it does and various other studies that show it does not. Which one should we believe?

Here's just a few other studies that conflict with this study:
http://www.physorg.com/news5758.html
http://www.geeknewscentral.com/archives/007883.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050815-5205.html
http://www.computing.co.uk/vnunet/news/2184836/link-video-games-violent-teens

Whether it be a rules designed to stop folks from stealing media, violating their monthly transfer cap, or even using a competitor's VoIP package, they are all susceptible to malware attacks. Given an interesting enough malware that doesn't seek to steal your data, but rather use you as a conduit, we all finally have plausible deniability.

Every time they get into this, there is an assumption that I am in complete control of my hardware and software. History has clearly shown that even with tightly-controlled systems, including those with TPM (Click to read about cracking TPM), a compromise is easy for a determined individual with even limited cracking skills. And what if there's malicious hardware (Click Here for PDF)? Anything can happen.

We may have the hardware sitting on our desk, but every security guy will tell you that physical access is everything. They'll probably try and turn my computer into a multitouch kiosk, but they'll leave a USB or serial port open on the back for bootstrapping. They may dumb computers down, but somebody has to be smart enough to build them, and some will be left to write malware that allows not so honest folk to channel their black market traffic through otherwise unsuspecting innocents who will take the fall for the infraction.

Do this a few times and courts around the globe will rule the laws an unenforcable leaving us with more trash computers and companies with too much power to see into our private lives, which is what this is partly about anyways.

Go ahead, Britain. Keep leading the way.

8 cores is what you can currently buy. It goes wihtout saying that in the future more cores will be available. Exponentially so. Intel made a prototype of an 80 core chip last year.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060926-7840.html

A 256 core capacity would handle about 3 of those with a few to spare. By the time they develop (or put to market) anything larger than that, the next verison will be out.

It doesn't matter how many cores a Linux system can support. Don't forget that a large portion of the market uses Windows for their SQL database management, application clustering and hosting, and networking serverside. Building up a Linux bsed hosting system that can handle this for many companies simply isn't a cost effective option. Windows lets them plug and play and crash. If you can use more cores, it makes things that much better.

On the side, administrating a Linux server is much less of a headache. Unless you're trying to get it to use all of your 1024 cores effectively.

perpetual seizure without cause, suppression of journalism ( both professional & citizen -- "hear, you have no right to photograph in public. I'm taking your camera. You are under surveillance! ), etc?

WHAT checks & balances? Retroactive immunity for unconstitutional activities?

Bush's regime INSISTS that no law, not International, not Constitution, not ANYthing limits the President's authority, and has gotten that to stick, more and more.

You haven't been reading about this that is making it less likely that you will have any rights in the future?

This tide of segregation-of-rights (FROM citizens, TO government corporate authority) increases if McCain wins, and slows if Obama wins.

( damn, I wish a coalition of Ron Paul & Obama could'a been )

Try reading http://yro.slashdot.org/ sometime, or subscribing to it on your feed reader.

Try also http://arstechnica.com/law.ars and http://minstrelboy.blogspot.com/

Or do you WANT to be a prisoner "citizen" with millions of others, in less than a single generation ( read about Hitler's up-to-war Germany, and see if you recognize the methods going down now, moving the "rules" endlessly ).

I hope you live a loooong time...

I don't know about most places, but in California (where Apple is based), the courts have already ruled that non-compete clauses are invalid.

Why Macs? Well, if you need a lot of power (I do a lot of PhotoShop) you can't get a Windows machine with 8 cores cheaper than you can get a Mac Pro - sorry. It's cheaper to buy the Mac Pro and put Windows on it (even with the cost of that license) than it is to buy an 8-core Windows machine. Go figure!

If only there was some use for all those cores...

Scroll down for graphs of Power Macintosh G5 routinely outperforming Mac Pro in Photoshop:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/macpro.ars/7

Read the text to see why it does not really matter (in most cases) if you have 8 or 2 cores:
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2006/12/photoshop_and_multicore.html

>>>>Wouldn't there be huge amounts of interference if the spectrum was unlicensed?

I sent a comment to the FCC about this November 4 hearing, and in short I said this: "My channel count will drop from 15 to just 3 channels, if you allow whitespace devices to broadcast on the television band." If a neighbor turns-on a WSD next year, its broadcasts will block any television station further away that 25 miles. So instead of watching Baltimore, Philly, or Harrisburg television like I normally do, I will be limited to just the local DTV stations in little podunk Lancaster PA.

Furthermore even if I had cable, testing has shown the her Ipod, since her bedroom is literally just feet away, will cause interference on both the analog and digital channels.

I'm all for whitespace, but I'm NOT for destroying the existing television spectrum (channel 2 to 51). Keep the whitespace devices off the TV band.

MORE FROM ARS TECHNICA:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081023-white-space-battle-gets-dirty-as-the-mud-flies.html

"The broadcasters contend that adjacent channel interference would be significant even at the 40 mW level proposed by Kevin Martin. In fact, they claim that such a device would interfere with digital television signals when the viewer is 25 miles from the television tower and the whitespace device is 40 feet or less from the TV set. At 50 miles from the television tower, a whitespace device within 200 feet from a set could allegedly cause interference."

MORE FROM ARS TECHNICA:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081023-white-space-battle-gets-dirty-as-the-mud-flies.html

"The broadcasters contend that adjacent channel interference would be significant even at the 40 mW level proposed by Kevin Martin. In fact, they claim that such a device would interfere with digital television signals when the viewer is 25 miles from the television tower and the whitespace device is 40 feet or less from the TV set. At 50 miles from the television tower, a whitespace device within 200 feet from a set could allegedly cause interference."

I am starting to wonder if EA is wanting to get out of the PC games biz and is simply using this kind of crap as a way to do an end run around the shareholders without them realizing the true purpose. Because in the last six months or so EA seems to have gone as far out of their way as possible to piss off their PC games customers.

First they kill Madden on PC which is the first time since 1995 that they haven't had a Madden PC title,then they give everyone the finger with Spore's DRM and then their president has the gall to add you are a pirate or stupid if you don't love their DRM. Quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand," End quote. And of course now this crap.

So all this has to be hurting the bottom line of the PC division. Which,if they are wanting to kill off the PC division and go strictly console would make sense. After all the shareholders would balk if you killed off a very profitable line,but if they generate enough bad will and boycotts from the PC gamers they can say "See how low the PC sales are. And it is generating loads of negative press from our attempts to protect our IP from thieves. So we should stick to the more profitable consoles.". IMHO it is the only logical explanation. I mean,why else would you go so far out of your way to bite the hand that feeds? So congrats EA,in my case at least it worked. While I have a closet filled with EA titles,like MoH and C&C,I simply can't buy any more of your products. So no Dead Space or C&C 3 for me. There are other companies that will take my money and NOT kick me in the nuts when they do.

I am starting to wonder if EA is wanting to get out of the PC games biz and is simply using this kind of crap as a way to do an end run around the shareholders without them realizing the true purpose. Because in the last six months or so EA seems to have gone as far out of their way as possible to piss off their PC games customers.

First they kill Madden on PC which is the first time since 1995 that they haven't had a Madden PC title,then they give everyone the finger with Spore's DRM and then their president has the gall to add you are a pirate or stupid if you don't love their DRM. Quote "I'm guessing that half of them were pirates and the other half were people caught up in something that they didn't understand," End quote. And of course now this crap.

So all this has to be hurting the bottom line of the PC division. Which,if they are wanting to kill off the PC division and go strictly console would make sense. After all the shareholders would balk if you killed off a very profitable line,but if they generate enough bad will and boycotts from the PC gamers they can say "See how low the PC sales are. And it is generating loads of negative press from our attempts to protect our IP from thieves. So we should stick to the more profitable consoles.". IMHO it is the only logical explanation. I mean,why else would you go so far out of your way to bite the hand that feeds? So congrats EA,in my case at least it worked. While I have a closet filled with EA titles,like MoH and C&C,I simply can't buy any more of your products. So no Dead Space or C&C 3 for me. There are other companies that will take my money and NOT kick me in the nuts when they do.

When they can be bothered to release a linux version let me know then I might be able to give answer.

WebKit is open source and as for the Linux version, let me point you towards an Ars Technica article:

http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2008/09/02/google-unveils-chrome-source-code-and-linux-port

OSX does not support 64 bit applications yet. Our last project required 64 bit rendering. We literally could not have completed it on schedule with OSX.

This is factually untrue. Leopard has full 64-bit support, and it's the latest version of OS X. This page at ArsTechnica compares the partial 64-bit support in Tiger with the full 64-bit support in Leopard. True, the GUI portions of the Carbon API won't be 64-bit, but that didn't stop Adobe from releasing Lightroom as a 64-bit Cocoa app for OS X. So maybe your favorite application (or vendor) doesn't have 64-bit native support for OS X, but it's well-established that Leopard is a 64-bit OS. Carbon is pretty much deprecated; the only reason to use it is that your code base predates Mac OS X.

As always -- read your own links carefully. For a balanced analysis, see the arstechnica link at the bottom: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080811-the-sky-isnt-falling-a-look-at-a-new-vista-security-bypass.html which explains why this isn't a big deal.

The problem with the basic stuff is that we have priced ourselves out of our own labor market. No one in the US is going to work for $1 a day making basic goods, but there are people in southeast asia who will and they'll be happy to get a whole dollar.

Are you suggesting that it is Americans' fault for insisting upon a decent standard of living? Perhaps we should adjust our standard of living to match that of the average Chinese employee working at a Foxconn plant making iPods. I'm sure looking forward to 12 or 15 hour work days, 6 or 7 days per week for $100 a month. That's just enough money to pay for rent at my factory-owned dormitory, and pay for my crappy factory-supplied meals. Oh yes, and since the factory owns the dormitory, I'll be homeless the instant I quit my job, too. And this is APPLE, for crying out loud. Imagine what it's like making crappy little Happy Meal toys.

It's all too easy for us to take advantage of overseas conditions like this. All the dirty details remain hidden from the average Wal-Mart customer. All we care about is getting something cheaper, but nobody really takes notice of why it is cheaper.

Here you go google search was for "emule arstechnica", your google-fu is gone sir.

Until we fix the horribly broken copyright system there simply can't be any balance or fairness. For all those that don't think the copyright system is broken beyond repair I have one sentence for you: Steamboat Willie is still under copyright. The man has been dead for half a century,yet his very first cartoon,one made when many cars on the road had to be started with a freaking crank,is still under copyright. That is just fucked up. How can anyone be expected to respect copyrights when the game has been rigged so obscenely?

I have said it before and I'll say it again: Copyrights are SUPPOSED to be a contract between the copyright holder and We,The People. We,The People are SUPPOSED to get a greater Public Domain in return for their LIMITED monopolies. Instead we get "Boo Hoo,Pirates!" and lawyers for these ass clowns getting up and with a straight face saying ripping your cd to your iPod is stealing! because you didn't cut them another check first. I repeat that is just fucked up.

While the *.A.As don't put out anything I'd actually bother pirating,how can they expect the kids growing up now to "respect their IP" when they have rigged the game so obscenely that CSPAN might as well run "This lawmaker was bought from you by..." and have ads plugging whichever corp bought them off this week. The system is broken,and until it is fixed nobody can say with a straight face that our laws haven't been taken from us by those with the $$$ to buy the lawmakers. And that is just fucked up royally.

For the moment Vista and this image come to mind.

People are talking as if Chrome's V8 was the fastest JavaScript engine around, but it wasn't - WebKit's SquirrelFish Extreme was faster. Is Minefield's engine even faster? Ars Technica's tests show that TraceMonkey runs the SunSpider benchmark in between 78% and 84% of V8's time. However, according to earlier tests, SquirelFish Extreme completes the benchmark in 74% of V8's time, making it even faster than the newest TraceMonkey. So it looks like Minefield, though fast, is not the fastest browser in JavaScript.

Apparently open office was "downloaded" 3 million times.

Ok... let's take a look at those numbers. There are about 1 billion PC's in use today:
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=9119

About 90% of which are windows installed. Most windows machines come bundled with office, so almost that entire number has office on it. Additionally, office is the single most widely used application for OSX, which has about 7% market share:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/01/mac-os-x-market-share-sets-new-record-at-the-end-of-2007

so very *conservatively* speaking, there are about 800 to 900 million office installs out there. And I'm basically throwing out a couple hundred million just on the assumption I've made *some* kind of error.

Now, my bet is that a good fraction of major open office users on windows have already upgraded their install, so that 3 million number is probably within an order of magnitude of the total install base. I'll give open office the benefit of the doubt and say that they have 10 times as many users as have already upgraded; however, I'll say right now that I doubt that number is that high.

So, heavily weighting the numbers in favor of open office, I still only come up with 30 million open office users to 800 million MS office installs.

So open office has, being very optimistic in open office's favor, 3 or 4% the number of MS office users?

Now the stupid slashdot summary says:
"As one commentator noted, when it comes to a choice between almost identical software (e.g. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice), price is the determining factor."

Uh, whatever. I guess the software isn't "almost identical." Moron.

90% of the documents I get passed are in MS office format, and those documents can be "rendered" by open office, but then they will without exception look like shit.

That means that open office can't even *read* the documents I want to read. How does that make it a competitor for MS office? Why are people who don't know what the word "open source" means going to throw out software they already own to use software that doesn't do the job any better?

They aren't. They haven't. They won't.

I'm glad there *is* OO.org, because if I don't have a copy of office on hand, which is kinda rare, I can still layout a basic document.

However, I've got to say, it must be depressing to spend so much effort working on software that isn't going anywhere.

that depends on which European country you're talking about.

and it's not just an issue of advertised speed. it's an issue of quality of service--bandwidth caps, overselling, traffic throttling/shaping, packet monitoring & other usage restrictions. and all of these ultimately tie to _value_, which is what we need to compare.

we don't need to be faster than everyone else or as fast as Japan and Korea. that's not what i'm arguing. but we shouldn't be paying more for less. Japan is far and ahead of the U.S. because their government has focused on developing this vital infrastructure through government subsidies and technology initiative. in the U.S., we tax payers are still subsidizing the ISPs & telecoms but we're not getting anything out of it because our government cares only about business interests.

even BusinessWeek puts us at #16 out 46 surveyed countries. even countries like Lithuania, Latvia, and Slovenia are doing better than U.S. in terms of broadband quality. but more importantly, if we are to be a technology leader, or just continue to be relevant in the information age, we need more competitive broadband pricing. the current business model used by U.S. ISPs is basically preventing our broadband infrastructure from being upgraded in step with growing demand.

the blind greed of corporations is not driving technology forward. it's ever-growing consumer demand that is usually the driving force behind technological progress. but now ISPs are trying to suppress that demand by villanizing power users and manipulating internet usage. not only that, but the lack of industry regulation means ISPs can abuse their monopoly to artificially inflate broadband prices, thereby further manipulating bandwidth usage/demand economically.

We weren't discussing telcos. We were discussing internet companies, which means someone like Quantum Link (now AOL) or Erols or Earthlink.

Just what do think a telco is? Telco is a generic term for an LEC. In the vast majority of the US, the LEC is an RBOC. To quote the comment I originally replied to:

The latest technology called "FiOS" is being rolled-out, and that apparently can offer 100,000k connections.

FiOS is the term used by Verizon for what is actually known as FTTP (Fiber to the Premises). Guess what Verizon is: an RBOC, a telco. By the way, Verizon is the only company building out a FTTP network of any significant scale.

If you want to discuss "internet companies," just how do you think the data service provided by them gets to your home? Magical data lines of Freedom? It all runs over the lines owned by the ILEC, so they are the ones worth discussing, not the high-speed connections that [insert your favorite CLEC here] wants to provide you.

Those were the ones I was discussing which gradually grew from 1.2k to 56k to 12,000k connections. They didn't have to do that, but they did, in order to keep customers happy.

"The ones"? Everyone "gradually" grew along with technology, and they didn't do it because of their big hearts and a desire to make people happy. It would be business suicide not to provide a service to your customers that another company is trying to provide. Notice how AT&T is just now starting to come out with their U-Verse service in response to Verizon's growing FiOS network?

The US is the in the bandwidth dark ages compared to other first-world countries.In countries in Asia and Europe, ISPs offer full 100Mbps connections for less than we pay for crappy DSL in the US.

The U.S. average is approximately 10 megabit/s. The E.U. average and Canadian average and Australian average is also 10 megabit/s. I don't see how we're falling behind.

Well, as evidenced by the sentence after the one you quoted (which you left out), I was referring in particular to the maximum available connection speed as offered to residential customers. If you want to discuss averages, fine, but where are you getting your numbers? A hat? The CWA says the US average is 1.9Mbps whereas the ITIF says 4.8Mbps. See: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070529-survey-average-broadband-speed-in-us-is-1-9mbps.html
Either way, it's quite short of your "approximately 10 megabit/s."

As for the $200 billion, that was given for *telephone line improvements*, not just fiber optics. Most of the money was earmarked for upgrading rural telephone lines from analog to digital connections. Stop reading PBS articles, and go read the actual 1996 bill, and you'll see that was I say is true.

Interesting, because every source that I can find seems to disagree with you. Care to provide one? There is no way it takes anywhere near $200 billion to upgrade from analog to digital telephone connections. Besides, computerization of the telephone exchanges happened back in the 80s and doesn't require modification of anything but the branch exchange, the subscriber loop stays the same. Even the bill seems to disagree with you, at least in terms of intention:

To promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies.

Higher quality service for lower price with rapid deployment of new technology... yeah, that happened.

I'd just like to be able to trust anti-virus software.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/10/20/mac-malware-program-macguard-masquerades-as-antivirus-app

I'm getting really paranoid about things. I find myself avoiding any web service that wants me to download a app or plug in I'm not very familiar with.

No, TOLKIEN Rings.

And please see the story on Ars Geeks are Not Comic Book Guy

> Didn't wikipedia just take a hit for being wildly inaccurate?

"Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts"
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061127-8296.html