But voting in writing as well as with money is better than only voting with money.
If the studio gets enough people writing in saying "We'll forever hate you and your children if you license our beloved franchise XYZ to Uwe Boll, and we'll never buy your games again", that's more powerful than simply not seeing the movies.
Someone else pointed out as well that if Uwe Boll makes a craptastic film "version" of a video game, the chances that someone who is capable of making a good movie making a good film version of that video game is virtually zero.
The moral of the story is, if I want someone to make a good film version of Half-Life, to pick a random example, I'd better complain loud and incessantly if Valve mentions possibly licensing the franchise to a crappy director. Only if the complaints and letters fail would I have the need to vote with my wallet.
They're two separate forms of protest used at different times. Sometimes, neither is sufficient without the other.
I used to use a set of Windows 3.1 install floppies to make Win98SE's upgrade disc do a clean install. It was annoying... it insisted on validating all four floppies.
My Dell Inspiron 6400 came with XP Home (which I wiped in favor of XP Pro). Six months after I bought it, I decided to give Vista a chance, and installed Vista Business. Between UAC, video driver issues, networking issues, and game compatibility issues, I decided it wasn't worth the frustration, and now I dual boot Gentoo and XP Pro.
XP and Gentoo are both much faster than Vista was (in terms of UI responsiveness, startup/shutdown time, etc).
The CR told me that they don't cut people off with warning (which I don't believe), instead (he says) they send several warning letters (by snail-mail?) first. The example of this happening he gave was laughable though - "some guy was sending three thousand e-mails per month." I did some math... That's a measly 4 e-mails per hour. Hardly a real spammer. I bet many mailing lists have much more activity than that. Let's assume all of the the e-mails were a whopping 50KB; that works out to just 146.5 MB, or 5MB per day. Even if it was all at once, people obviously make larger downloads than that regularly.
His comment on BitTorrent (other than to deny that Comcast interferes with it) was "the only use for that stuff is illegal downloading." I quickly disabused him of that notion with several examples, of course, but I doubt it changed what he'd say to the next prospective customer to ask about it.
Yeah but throttling based on usage isn't the same as cutting off the connection for high usage. I wanted to know what the cutoff threshold is. And since it probably does differ based on the usage of the local node, he should tell me that instead of saying "there's no hard limit" and refusing to answer my question. An example along the lines of "if the network is under heavy use, then going over X Mbps is excessive and will be cause for cutoff" would suffice. There is no reason to evade the question other than to make "unlimited" still apply. Once you pick a number, it's no longer "unlimited" by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway that's not why I decided against Comcast. Their Terms of Service don't allow you to run a server on your home connection.... plus Comcast is slower than the connection I'm getting.
When i was shopping around for internet a few months ago I tried to get a comcast call center employee to explain this "unlimited - no it's not" thing to me. It went like this:
Me: "Is there a limit on bandwidth usage?" CR: "No." Me: "So I'll never be cut off no matter how much bandwidth I use?" CR: "If you disrupt other customers' service with your usage, you will be cut off." Me: "How much bandwidth would I have to use to disrupt other customers' service?" CR: "There's no actual limit." Me: "But if I'll be cut off for using enough to disrupt other customers, you must know how much it would take to do that." CR: "There's no hard limit on bandwidth usage."
So... there's no such thing as too much... but I'd better not use too much.
What do you mean by "Intel integrated memory"? I presume you refer to the Intel graphics chipset. The Inspiron line was split; the Small Business Inspiron line is now known as Vostro, and the Home and Home Office line retained the name Inspiron. Dell no longer offers nVidia chipsets on Inspirons, and instead introduced a lower-priced XPS system with nVidia graphics.
MacBooks (not Pros) are 13"; for my price comparisons I only looked at 15.4" widescreen laptops. I must use MacBook Pros to get the same screen size. I grabbed the following prices and configurations off the respective websites of Apple and Dell:
The 15" Macbook Pro has a resolution of 1440x900, there is no upgrade option. The Vostro's max screen resolution is 1680x1050. That is *not* identical. Both had the GeForce 8600M GT. Base configuration of the MacBook Pro is $1999. To upgrade to the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo is another $500. The Vostro is $1407 including the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and XP Pro. (To make it clear, that's either a $592 or $1100 difference, depending on your processor choice for the MacBook.)
To make the hard drives identical add $50 to the MacBook Pro price and $100 to the Vostro price. The Vostro does not have a webcam.
The (non-Small Business) Inspiron is $1124 with the exception that it comes with the Intel X3100 GMA.
The XPS M1530 with the same specs as the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro costs $1599, but it does not have a webcam (at least, I couldn't see one on the configuration).
None of the Dell offerings have a metal case.
If you're willing to pay between $500 and $1100 more for lower screen resolution, a webcam (the Inspiron has one), a backlit keyboard, and a metal case, I guess you're welcome to do so. For my part, I'll put my extra $600 in savings.
I think most of it is plastic; but then, I'm not picky about the frame (I take care of it). It doesn't have back-lit keys. I don't know whether it has an accelerometer to shut off the hard drive, but I doubt it.
To be fair, Apple laptops have an external power brick too, the difference is the magnetic connection to the laptop. Yeah, it can be useful, but for most users it doesn't make much of a difference.
I don't like built-in microphones (or webcams), as I think they're poor quality; if I want a mic I'll get an external one (and I do have an external mic). Most models have optional mics and webcams now, I think the price on those is ~$30. Don't quote me on that, I could be wrong, but it's certainly less than $100, and likely less than $50.
Closing the lid to put the computer in sleep mode is an OS setting, it has nothing to do with the hardware. Windows can be set to go into sleep when the lid is closed, yes.
It boots quickly, yes. Shutdown is faster in Linux than Windows, but still fast. That has more to do with OS than hardware, as well, especially considering that MacBooks are Intel hardware too.
As for cost for these features... If you want a more durable frame you're going to have to look at an XPS which starts much more expensive than the Inspiron (now Vostro) line, and some of the price edge goes away, but not all of it. Like I said, however, the frame is really only an issue if you treat your laptop like a textbook. I don't.
I don't think back-lit keys, accelerometer-protected hard drives, or magnetic power connectors are available from Dell, but those features together do not justify an at least $600 price increase over otherwise (nearly) feature-identical hardware.
Actually, Pirates of Silicon Valley doesn't make the insinuation that Gates stole BASIC. In fact it quite clearly shows the opposite occurring. I'm not saying that's how it actually happened, I'm just saying that you shouldn't cite a source that doesn't support you;)
I agree. They should sell their OS as a standalone product that is unsupported on non-Apple hardware; that way, like you said, power users can fool around with it if they want and normal users won't know or care.
although they did say their prices were too high in the 1980s. Too high in the 1980s? They've been too high in the 2000s.
I wrote a rather long blog post (and a series of forum arguments with an Apple fanboy who happens to be my brother-in-law) once about how much higher Apple computers cost.
I configured a Dell Inspiron laptop and a MacBook Pro with nearly identical specs (the Dell had a better video card and a higher screen resolution) and the Dell cost $600 less. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. That means Apple is charging at least $600 for OSX, and I'm not even counting the included cost of XP in Dell's price. MS charges less than half that much for Vista Ultimate.
You could argue that the MacBook is more durable or something, and thus worth the extra money, but really, my Inspiron has turned out to be extremely durable. If people wouldn't treat their laptop like a hardcover textbook they wouldn't have to spend $600 extra to get a laptop that doesn't "fall apart".
Regarding Bill Gates' success, Pirates of Silicon Valley is a great movie.
This isn't really new... We've been able to search individual sites (with "site:foo.com" in the search box) for as long as I can remember, and those results pages show ads possibly from competitors. Google has just added a user interface component to make this easier.
That wouldn't be enough. They'd have to replace the existing Quick Launch and Desktop shortcuts for IE and/or Firefox with equivalent shortcuts to Safari, and set Safari's homepage to the same homepage as the user's default browser.
Even if they did install Safari on my computer and it hijacked the default browser setting, I'd still be launching Firefox from the Quick Launch bar and it'd tell me "Hey, I'm not the default browser anymore, can I fix that?" and nothing be different after that except the hard drive space wasted by Safari.
Since it's whole purpose is to keep your computers software fresh and working properly, having Software Update suggest that you might want to swap out your clunky old browser for one that will take less space on your hard drive and make your computer work faster (which this one will), is indeed a valid suggestion. Two things. First, Safari is not an update for any existing software on the system, and should not be offered as such - it confuses people. I'm fortunate in that my wife won't click "OK" on anything she doesn't recognize and understand, so I got a yell from the other room "It wants me to install Safari, is that ok?"
Second, "swap out your clunky old browser" is not what it's doing. Even if it does hijack your default browser preferences - which I hope it does not - it doesn't uninstall your old browser, so it's not swapping anything, it's adding to the bloat on your computer. Furthermore, it does not replace your existing Quick Launch icons - so if you're like me, and you have a Firefox shortcut in your Quick Launch bar, you're still going to be using Firefox because you access it through that toolbar.
How, then, does it "take less space on [my] hard drive and make [my] computer work faster?" Looks to me like it sits there taking up space and never runs. That's a poor way to improve performance.
Even if Safari is "faster" than Firefox and/or Opera (which I'm not convinced it is), that's no excuse for attempting to install new software and pass it off as an update to existing software.
As long as you're not violating the terms of the software license, there's not a problem (IANAL).
For example, a large corporation buys a volume license of Windows Vista valid for 50k installations. Say Microsoft ships them 50 CDs. To make life easier on IT, the company duplicates each of those CDs five times (so they now have 300 CDs), but they use their volume license for the installations from those CDs. I doubt anyone would call that illegal.
Its only serious if you can't afford to pay the money the companies are asking for access to the content that is protected by the DRM. I'm not homeless, I can afford it. I assume as you have internet access you could afford it too. Two things. First, you're equating "not homeless" with "able to afford the prices asked for by Big Media for digital recordings". This is a flawed equality in many ways - for example, I'm a married college student with a part-time job. I can afford an internet connection only because I make room for it in my budget, at the expense of other things I'd otherwise purchase. I'm a computer science major, so I'd have to spend my entire life on campus if I didn't have an internet connection, and I wouldn't have time for a job, since I'd have to be on campus during the afternoons, which would result in having even less money. So you see, "not homeless" is certainly not equivalent to "able to afford the prices asked for by Big Media for digital recordings".
Second, you're assuming that the prices Big Media is asking for are fair. They're not, not by a long shot, as others have pointed out. Sure, I buy music on iTunes once in a while, but I remove the DRM because I don't feel it's fair (or even legal) for them to dictate when and where I listen to the music I have purchased, and because I have a cheap Coby MP3 player that only works with MP3s (and WMAs, but who cares about WMA?).
In a free market economy, prices are dictated by what people are willing to pay for the commodity. Big Media is trying to get people to pay more - and some people protest by getting around DRM and avoiding systems that force DRM on them (e.g. Vista, iTunes).
Just because you don't mind paying what Big Media asks, doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way, and it doesn't mean everyone else is homeless.
What's worst is when the manufacturer ships the wrong Windows driver CD. I ordered a laptop from Dell, then had it replaced (I ordered the wrong screen resolution the first time). Both times they shipped the wrong driver CD. None of the hardware in the laptop matched the drivers on the CD. The network card drivers don't ship with XP SP2, nor do the wireless card drivers. Try downloading drivers without a network connection... it doesn't work very well.
On the other side of the fence, most of the drivers for my laptop are shipping as part of the Linux kernel now - even the wireless drivers.
Since when *didn't* you have to download extra drivers to fully utilize your shiny display card on Windows? On top of that, I can't get the newest drivers for my laptop graphics card in Windows. Dell makes some slight modifications, and only their version of the nVidia driver works with my GeForce 7300 Go - nVidia's driver package refuses to install. The last time Dell bothered updating their driver was early last year. But in Linux I have available to me a working fully up-to-date graphics driver... it works out in my favor.
Antivirus and Spyware? Whats that? I figure they make antivirus programs for Linux for a reason. Keep in mind that most botnet c&c servers are hacked Linux boxes... not from viruses, most likely, but from poorly set up firewalls and poorly chosen passwords... but the principle is the same.
Copy and paste without having to right click Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, anyone? I use right-click in Linux more than I do in Windows, precisely because the keyboard shortcuts aren't consistent across applications in Linux.
I create a new OpenOffice document, and when I rename it I dont have to deal with the extension, it doesnt write over that (although for most things I dont need an extension anyways!) Depending on your settings, Windows can do that.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Windows, I'm just trying to bring some sense of sanity to your rant;) Make sure you think about things before you write them, ok?
And, for the record, I just finished(ish) setting up a fully functional Gentoo installation.
Before either of those can be invented, we need a power source capable of powering them. The transporter would require vast amounts of energy to do its work, and the replicator needs energy to turn into matter. So we need antimatter generators I guess.
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But voting in writing as well as with money is better than only voting with money.
If the studio gets enough people writing in saying "We'll forever hate you and your children if you license our beloved franchise XYZ to Uwe Boll, and we'll never buy your games again", that's more powerful than simply not seeing the movies.
Someone else pointed out as well that if Uwe Boll makes a craptastic film "version" of a video game, the chances that someone who is capable of making a good movie making a good film version of that video game is virtually zero.
The moral of the story is, if I want someone to make a good film version of Half-Life, to pick a random example, I'd better complain loud and incessantly if Valve mentions possibly licensing the franchise to a crappy director. Only if the complaints and letters fail would I have the need to vote with my wallet.
They're two separate forms of protest used at different times. Sometimes, neither is sufficient without the other.
I agree. Deus Ex must be protected!
I used to use a set of Windows 3.1 install floppies to make Win98SE's upgrade disc do a clean install. It was annoying... it insisted on validating all four floppies.
My Dell Inspiron 6400 came with XP Home (which I wiped in favor of XP Pro). Six months after I bought it, I decided to give Vista a chance, and installed Vista Business. Between UAC, video driver issues, networking issues, and game compatibility issues, I decided it wasn't worth the frustration, and now I dual boot Gentoo and XP Pro.
XP and Gentoo are both much faster than Vista was (in terms of UI responsiveness, startup/shutdown time, etc).
Oops, that should say "they don't cut people off without warning". I apparently fail at proofreading.
Good point.
The CR told me that they don't cut people off with warning (which I don't believe), instead (he says) they send several warning letters (by snail-mail?) first. The example of this happening he gave was laughable though - "some guy was sending three thousand e-mails per month." I did some math... That's a measly 4 e-mails per hour. Hardly a real spammer. I bet many mailing lists have much more activity than that. Let's assume all of the the e-mails were a whopping 50KB; that works out to just 146.5 MB, or 5MB per day. Even if it was all at once, people obviously make larger downloads than that regularly.
His comment on BitTorrent (other than to deny that Comcast interferes with it) was "the only use for that stuff is illegal downloading." I quickly disabused him of that notion with several examples, of course, but I doubt it changed what he'd say to the next prospective customer to ask about it.
Yeah but throttling based on usage isn't the same as cutting off the connection for high usage. I wanted to know what the cutoff threshold is. And since it probably does differ based on the usage of the local node, he should tell me that instead of saying "there's no hard limit" and refusing to answer my question. An example along the lines of "if the network is under heavy use, then going over X Mbps is excessive and will be cause for cutoff" would suffice. There is no reason to evade the question other than to make "unlimited" still apply. Once you pick a number, it's no longer "unlimited" by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway that's not why I decided against Comcast. Their Terms of Service don't allow you to run a server on your home connection.... plus Comcast is slower than the connection I'm getting.
Three cheers for symmetric 15Mbps fiber!
Why are we holding a grudge against Dvorak? or Natalie Portman?
When i was shopping around for internet a few months ago I tried to get a comcast call center employee to explain this "unlimited - no it's not" thing to me. It went like this:
Me: "Is there a limit on bandwidth usage?"
CR: "No."
Me: "So I'll never be cut off no matter how much bandwidth I use?"
CR: "If you disrupt other customers' service with your usage, you will be cut off."
Me: "How much bandwidth would I have to use to disrupt other customers' service?"
CR: "There's no actual limit."
Me: "But if I'll be cut off for using enough to disrupt other customers, you must know how much it would take to do that."
CR: "There's no hard limit on bandwidth usage."
So... there's no such thing as too much... but I'd better not use too much.
What do you mean by "Intel integrated memory"? I presume you refer to the Intel graphics chipset. The Inspiron line was split; the Small Business Inspiron line is now known as Vostro, and the Home and Home Office line retained the name Inspiron. Dell no longer offers nVidia chipsets on Inspirons, and instead introduced a lower-priced XPS system with nVidia graphics.
MacBooks (not Pros) are 13"; for my price comparisons I only looked at 15.4" widescreen laptops. I must use MacBook Pros to get the same screen size. I grabbed the following prices and configurations off the respective websites of Apple and Dell:
The 15" Macbook Pro has a resolution of 1440x900, there is no upgrade option. The Vostro's max screen resolution is 1680x1050. That is *not* identical. Both had the GeForce 8600M GT. Base configuration of the MacBook Pro is $1999. To upgrade to the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo is another $500. The Vostro is $1407 including the 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo and XP Pro. (To make it clear, that's either a $592 or $1100 difference, depending on your processor choice for the MacBook.)
To make the hard drives identical add $50 to the MacBook Pro price and $100 to the Vostro price. The Vostro does not have a webcam.
The (non-Small Business) Inspiron is $1124 with the exception that it comes with the Intel X3100 GMA.
The XPS M1530 with the same specs as the 2.4GHz MacBook Pro costs $1599, but it does not have a webcam (at least, I couldn't see one on the configuration).
None of the Dell offerings have a metal case.
If you're willing to pay between $500 and $1100 more for lower screen resolution, a webcam (the Inspiron has one), a backlit keyboard, and a metal case, I guess you're welcome to do so. For my part, I'll put my extra $600 in savings.
I think most of it is plastic; but then, I'm not picky about the frame (I take care of it). It doesn't have back-lit keys. I don't know whether it has an accelerometer to shut off the hard drive, but I doubt it.
To be fair, Apple laptops have an external power brick too, the difference is the magnetic connection to the laptop. Yeah, it can be useful, but for most users it doesn't make much of a difference.
I don't like built-in microphones (or webcams), as I think they're poor quality; if I want a mic I'll get an external one (and I do have an external mic). Most models have optional mics and webcams now, I think the price on those is ~$30. Don't quote me on that, I could be wrong, but it's certainly less than $100, and likely less than $50.
Closing the lid to put the computer in sleep mode is an OS setting, it has nothing to do with the hardware. Windows can be set to go into sleep when the lid is closed, yes.
It boots quickly, yes. Shutdown is faster in Linux than Windows, but still fast. That has more to do with OS than hardware, as well, especially considering that MacBooks are Intel hardware too.
As for cost for these features... If you want a more durable frame you're going to have to look at an XPS which starts much more expensive than the Inspiron (now Vostro) line, and some of the price edge goes away, but not all of it. Like I said, however, the frame is really only an issue if you treat your laptop like a textbook. I don't.
I don't think back-lit keys, accelerometer-protected hard drives, or magnetic power connectors are available from Dell, but those features together do not justify an at least $600 price increase over otherwise (nearly) feature-identical hardware.
Actually, Pirates of Silicon Valley doesn't make the insinuation that Gates stole BASIC. In fact it quite clearly shows the opposite occurring. I'm not saying that's how it actually happened, I'm just saying that you shouldn't cite a source that doesn't support you ;)
I agree. They should sell their OS as a standalone product that is unsupported on non-Apple hardware; that way, like you said, power users can fool around with it if they want and normal users won't know or care.
I wrote a rather long blog post (and a series of forum arguments with an Apple fanboy who happens to be my brother-in-law) once about how much higher Apple computers cost.
I configured a Dell Inspiron laptop and a MacBook Pro with nearly identical specs (the Dell had a better video card and a higher screen resolution) and the Dell cost $600 less. SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. That means Apple is charging at least $600 for OSX, and I'm not even counting the included cost of XP in Dell's price. MS charges less than half that much for Vista Ultimate.
You could argue that the MacBook is more durable or something, and thus worth the extra money, but really, my Inspiron has turned out to be extremely durable. If people wouldn't treat their laptop like a hardcover textbook they wouldn't have to spend $600 extra to get a laptop that doesn't "fall apart".
Regarding Bill Gates' success, Pirates of Silicon Valley is a great movie.
This isn't really new... We've been able to search individual sites (with "site:foo.com" in the search box) for as long as I can remember, and those results pages show ads possibly from competitors. Google has just added a user interface component to make this easier.
That wouldn't be enough. They'd have to replace the existing Quick Launch and Desktop shortcuts for IE and/or Firefox with equivalent shortcuts to Safari, and set Safari's homepage to the same homepage as the user's default browser.
Even if they did install Safari on my computer and it hijacked the default browser setting, I'd still be launching Firefox from the Quick Launch bar and it'd tell me "Hey, I'm not the default browser anymore, can I fix that?" and nothing be different after that except the hard drive space wasted by Safari.
Second, "swap out your clunky old browser" is not what it's doing. Even if it does hijack your default browser preferences - which I hope it does not - it doesn't uninstall your old browser, so it's not swapping anything, it's adding to the bloat on your computer. Furthermore, it does not replace your existing Quick Launch icons - so if you're like me, and you have a Firefox shortcut in your Quick Launch bar, you're still going to be using Firefox because you access it through that toolbar.
How, then, does it "take less space on [my] hard drive and make [my] computer work faster?" Looks to me like it sits there taking up space and never runs. That's a poor way to improve performance.
Even if Safari is "faster" than Firefox and/or Opera (which I'm not convinced it is), that's no excuse for attempting to install new software and pass it off as an update to existing software.
As long as you're not violating the terms of the software license, there's not a problem (IANAL).
For example, a large corporation buys a volume license of Windows Vista valid for 50k installations. Say Microsoft ships them 50 CDs. To make life easier on IT, the company duplicates each of those CDs five times (so they now have 300 CDs), but they use their volume license for the installations from those CDs. I doubt anyone would call that illegal.
So Comcast is basically saying "Even if we're breaking rules you can't do anything about it"?
I can imagine a Comcast rep at an FCC meeting doing a Nelson-esque "HA-HA!"...
Second, you're assuming that the prices Big Media is asking for are fair. They're not, not by a long shot, as others have pointed out. Sure, I buy music on iTunes once in a while, but I remove the DRM because I don't feel it's fair (or even legal) for them to dictate when and where I listen to the music I have purchased, and because I have a cheap Coby MP3 player that only works with MP3s (and WMAs, but who cares about WMA?).
In a free market economy, prices are dictated by what people are willing to pay for the commodity. Big Media is trying to get people to pay more - and some people protest by getting around DRM and avoiding systems that force DRM on them (e.g. Vista, iTunes).
Just because you don't mind paying what Big Media asks, doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way, and it doesn't mean everyone else is homeless.
What's worst is when the manufacturer ships the wrong Windows driver CD. I ordered a laptop from Dell, then had it replaced (I ordered the wrong screen resolution the first time). Both times they shipped the wrong driver CD. None of the hardware in the laptop matched the drivers on the CD. The network card drivers don't ship with XP SP2, nor do the wireless card drivers. Try downloading drivers without a network connection... it doesn't work very well.
On the other side of the fence, most of the drivers for my laptop are shipping as part of the Linux kernel now - even the wireless drivers.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Windows, I'm just trying to bring some sense of sanity to your rant
And, for the record, I just finished(ish) setting up a fully functional Gentoo installation.
Before either of those can be invented, we need a power source capable of powering them. The transporter would require vast amounts of energy to do its work, and the replicator needs energy to turn into matter. So we need antimatter generators I guess.
I second the motion for a HUD system. Failing contacts, I'd be happy if it just worked with my glasses (or even sunglasses).