Jeez, you mean to tell me you weren't seeing blood or at least something resembling it in video games? When I was 11, the SNES came out, and street fighter shortly thereafter. That had like a mist that sort of looked like blood, and we were always looking for a game genie code or some other hax to turn it red so that it was more realistic. SNES Mortal Kombat, that actually had blood, i think. I must have been in 4th-ish grade, and I haven't killed anyone yet.
Seriously, I'd imagine there are a total of probably 30 people on earth who understand the math behind what's going on here. Not really news, even for nerds.
Not to mention, if you're looking to go old skool, your PS2 will still play spyro.
Plus... Jak and dexter. They may not be games for 6 year olds, but I don't remember anything in Jak II that a 3rd or 4th grader couldn't handle. Nothing that I hadn't seen in Battletoads or Ninja Gaiden or Bionic Commando. Well, except boobs, but they're clothed, and they're going to see worse than that on the 6 o'clock news.
Oh, and that brings me to things like Tony Hawk (which is admittedly also available on the gamecube). THPS is kid friendly.
So, yeah, there are good games for kids on playstation.
Of course, the first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't "Oh, wow, cell phones are dangerous". It was "Well... Driving drunk is no more dangerous than driving while talking on a cell phone, and I do that all the time!".
-bash-3.00$ yum info gcc Repository updates-released is listed more than once in the configuration Repository base is listed more than once in the configuration Setting up repositories Reading repository metadata in from local files Installed Packages Name : gcc Arch : i386 Version: 4.0.2 Release: 8.fc4 Size : 5.1 M Repo : installed Summary: The GNU cc and gcc C compilers.
Description:
The gcc package includes the cc and gcc GNU compilers for compiling C code.
"[Ward's] most challenging days may be ahead. The videogame industry has been in the doldrums for months; video game sales are lagging as consumers wait to buy the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 3.
This statement has made the rounds from CNN to MaximumPC to Slashdot to probably Fox News.
Video game sales have decreased in retail markets. This is not an industry crisis; it is a paradigm shift. What hasn't been decreasing are revenues in areas which here-to-fore did not exist. Steam is not making less money than it did in 2000. People are willing to buy games online and download them. Even if CS:S turns your brain to mush and is addictive as sweet, sweet heroin. But, guess who didn't get a sale. Best Buy.
Another factor in Video Game sales is persistant subscription sales models. It is completely inexplicable that these people don't mention MMO profits. At 5 million subscriptions times $15/month each, and this warrants italics, Blizzard will make $900,000,000 [NINE HUNDRED MILLION] gross this year on WoW. That a nine, with 8 zeros behind it. That's a license to print money. And that's not counting EQ2, AO, DAoC, Eve, and others.
Yes, there is a slump in video game purchases right now. There aren't any must have games; everyone is waiting for X, Y, or Z. But THAT'S HOW IT'S ALWAYS BEEN. It's not the automobile industry; there's not a new model released every year. NES = 1985, SNES = 1992. Ish. What happened in the interum? A falloff of game sales. It goes in cycles. IT'S NORMAL. You know what happens when a Must Have Game comes out? People buy it.*
When you couple that with the fact that ONE IN 45 AMERICANS PLAYS WOW, you start to see what people are doing with their time. And most of the infants and nursing home patrons aren't playing. It's the coveted 18-34 demographic.
So, STFU & GBTW.
~W
*"Dragon Quest VIII was released in Japan in November 27, 2004 and sold more then three million units in its opening weekend. Shipments in North America have topped 430,000 since its release on November 17, 2005. European gamers can look forward to the game arriving in April." (Jan 30 2006). I have this game. It's great.
To be honest, in an objective fashion, I've found good cigars from Padron, Camacho, and Fuente, which are of honduran origin, to be better in flavor than the Cubans that I've had. I mean, I'd imagine there's some reason everyone says Cubans are the best - it is an ideal climate for tobacco, and there's generations of hand-rollers who make it an art in cuba - but, still. I'll take a Maduro 8-5-8 or a Camacho Liberty 2003 over the Cubans.
That's a software problem. Dell bundles crap software. You know what, though? Get a copy of the windows XP OEM disk and use the product key on the sticker outside the case. Reinstall. Blammo.
In fact, after replying to your comment, I went to spec out a system.
Dell: Pentium 930 (Dual Core 3.0 Ghz) + motherboard XP home Dual GeForce 6800 in SLI 2 GB DDR-2 533 160GB HDD DVD-Rom/CD-RW 20 inch LCD Sound Blaster X-Fi Keyboard/Mouse ---------- $2,379
Configured at Newegg: Antec P-180 Case Intel 930 Dual core 3.0 Abit Ni8-SLI mobo 2GB Corsair valuram 2x Geforce 6800 windows XP Home CD-RW/DVD 160 GB DiamondMax HDD Samsung 20 inch LCD Creative X-Fi Keyboard/Mouse ----------------- $1,985
Total Savings: $394, or 16%. BUT, now you've got to assemble the damn thing, install the OS, and support it for a year out of your own pocket (or deal with Abit's RMA service... shudder). It's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing.
So, you're paying $400 for the name, the assembly, and the support. For a $2400 computer, that's really not that bad.
1. Power supply. The Dell (at least Optiplex and Dimensions I've used) power supply is not standard. You cannot mount an off the shelf power supply because the power cord connector will be blocked by the Dell case.
For starters, http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/dellconverter. html fixes the pinout problem. PC Power and Cooling and a number of other manufacturers also make native dell power supplies. For space concerns, ok, you'll have to get a dell or dell-style replacement, but... it's not a blocking issue. My local tiwanese-run bars-on-the-windows PC store sells 'em.
2. Case connector. The connector that attaches to the motherboard for power switch, reset, speaker etc. is in one solid block which plugs directly into the motherboard. Now the ordering of connectors on the block will not plug into an off the shelf motherboard. So you are generally out of luck if you want to use a non-Dell motherboard with a Dell case. You CAN cut the block off and rewire seperate connectors to allow connection to a different motherboard, but it's hardly worth the effort.
Agreed. But, that means that the dell case / motherboard are mated. It's not the end of the world. If the motherboard dies, throw the case away with it - you're down what, $40 these days? If the case dies... whatever, get a real case, put the dell mobo in it, and pin it out. Read the PCB.
3. Fan. The fan connector that plugs into the motherboard is not standard. Replacing the fan with an off the shelf generic one will not let you connect the fan connector to the Dell motherboard. This means that the Dell bios will think the fan has failed.
F1 -> halt on... -> no errors. Plug fan into molex connector.
You are correct in that add in boards and drives are not proprietary but you may find that Dell skimps in some ways on their motherboards. For example, the mid range Optiplex computers have no AGP slot and no PCI Express X16 slot. So no way you can add in a video card, you are stuck with onboard. Also most Dell desktops have only 2 DIMM slots compared to 3 or 4 on most standard motherboards. You also will need to pay a bit more if you want to get say 1 512MB DIMM versus 2 256MB DIMMS - in order to leave a slot open for future expansion.
You are comparing machines with vastly different purposes. This is probably better than the quality of motherboard you'd get in a standard dell cheapie business machine. Granted the one in the link has a PCI-E x16 slot, but it does only have 2 ram slots. Business people don't upgrade their graphics card. Those machines are the kind we buy for our computer labs here at VT - we need a fast processor, a good bit of ram, and then anything that will display 1280x1024 - 3D not required. And we buy 100 of them, plus monitors, at a time. Onboard graphics are great because they save money in these circumstances.
The high end motherboards you're talking about - ones with one, or even two, PCI-E slots and 4 ram slots - have you priced them lately? What's an SLI motherboard run? At least $115, and upwards of $160 to $200 if you want a good one or really good one. By comparison, that motherboard I linked to was made by intel, has onboard lan/audio/video/sata and only costs $65.
When dell makes a gaming machine (XPS or what have you), they use a motherboard with two PCI-E x16 slots and 3 or 4 ram slots. Dell is actually one of the only OEMs with advance access to motherboards which have FOUR x16 slots, and can do quad-sli.
So, in short, I'm not sure what you want them to be. You say their business support is fantastic, but then you say there are cheaper gaming PC's out there. Well... some gaming PC's suck, dell's high end ones don't. And Dell's high end gaming PC's come with the same support their shitty business PC's come with, which has to be paid from somewhere.
And also, I bet there are more laptops. I'd surmise that the ratio of (laptops stolen):(total laptops) is probably largely unchanged. More items, quantitatively, means more quantity available for theft.
Ahhh, so that's what happened to Corel Linux. I wondered about that. I've got several old CDs of corel laying around somewhere, along with a Corel Office product (corel office? forget what the name was). I remember them being a cut above the rest in usability.
Seriously, though... the competition was redhat 6.2. No one knew how to edit their x11 config. By comparison, today every linux distro is significantly easier than Corel was back in their day.
I either A.) Go to college and my department has an MSDN License B.) Work for said college department
I have access to at least one copy of your software, legally. I do not have time / patience / know-how to build my own machine. Therefore, I want to buy a machine, and skip the cost of windows, since I get it for free anyway.
Hah, you did that, too? Control-Open Apple-Shift-Esc got my IIgs into the text prompt where it had a static copy of Prodos8 and Applesoft Basic in ROM. It was awesome. I used to write basic programs, and then when I'd have them work, I'd copy the program into that space in memory so it wasn't constantly seeking the disk. My parents paid for the upgrade to the IIgs to get 4 MB of ram (i think?) Maybe it was 2MB. I thought it was 4, though. Anyway, whatever. I remember that. W00t.
And yes, it's called Open-Apple. That key. No Command. Open-Apple. STFU.
In fact, I'm willing to agree with a post somewhere above you and say, if this laptop costs $100 to a developing country poor person, I'm willing to pay $200 for it here, to get myself a $100 laptop AND get someone else a $100 laptop. Absolutely. I mean, I'll get a cheap laptop, someone else will get a free one, and the world is a slightly better place.
~Will
Re:not FUD, feature deleted in Series 2 ... years
on
Life or Death for Tivo
·
· Score: 1
Woah, really?
Ok, that is a little dumb. I mean, admittedly, a VCR can do that.
Still, though, the channel lineup is a recurring cost to tivo... I stick with that. And even this new knowledge, though it pisses me off somewhat, isn't going to stop me from using my tivo. I love that little guy.
Everyone knows about it when they buy a Tivo. AND THE TIVO WILL WORK WITHOUT IT. The Tivo performs perfectly as a time shifting device without the subscription.
What the subscription does is allow you to continue to download a list of things which will play on the channels your tivo already gets. It tells the Tivo that Channel 54 is "Spike TV" and that it will have "STAR TREK TNG" on from 2PM to 3PM.
I don't see what people complain about. The UNIT ITS SELF is what you buy when you buy the unit - if you then want to use it to heat your tea kettle, feel free. The guide downloads are a recurring cost to tivo (they have to have people submit them and keep them up to date, as well as the infrastructure to provide them to people), so they pass it to you. Yeah, they make money. So what? You don't like it, cancel. Tell your Tivo to record "Channel 11 from 8PM to 9:30PM on Tuesday, 4/4/2006" rather than "Record American Idol". You do what you think is right.
ALSO: THE TIVO DOES NOT REQUIRE A PHONE LINE EXCEPT FOR INITIAL SETUP. Mine uses Ethernet, and has since I bought it. It even says in the book what you need - a $10 USB to Ethernet adapter will work, and a wide range of models are supported. Plug and play, man.
I'm a fan of your posts, but what this specific one fails to cover is the fact that there *does* exist a place for patents in the world today. As usual, the answer is a middle ground between you and the grandparent.
The place for patents is this: New ideas, really new ideas, take time to materialize. If I were to say "I have an idea", it may take 4 or 5 years worth of research, testing, development, more testing, and then at the end, I have to hire a designer to make it look pretty, a manufacturer to ramp up production, a distributer to get it to the public, and a marketing person to push the idea to whoever.
A patent system encourages people to take risks - to eat ramen and live in a 1 bedroom efficiency, spending every waking hour coding / soldering / testing / brainstorming, because they can be reasonably assured that once their product gets to market, they'll have a reasonable amount of time to earn money to compensate them for the time they spent in R&D.
Without a patent system, the same person could take the same risks, do the same things, and bring their product to market, and someone could go "What a great idea, let's do EXACTLY that", and copy the product. And lo and behold, they can do it cheaper. Why? Because the first guy is selling it at (cost)+(profit margin)+(compensation for R&D), while the copycat can sell at (cost)+(profit margin). The innovator is now out of business because someone is offering a cheaper version of the product he spent 4 years perfecting and producing.
Now, the down side is that the current patent system goes so far beyond the pale that it's a joke. Rather than, say, 5-7 years (which is an eternity in technological terms) for a company to make back money on something they invent, the patents last at least 25 years, and most of the time longer (due to extentions, paperwork, and errata).
The way it should work is that people should be encouraged and confident when they decide to invent something. They should be able to patent it, and when the patent expires in a few years, and cheap copies show up, the inventor can drop the (compensation for R&D) from the pricing equation, and suddenly "the origional" is on a level playing field with the copycats, and who wouldn't buy a Toshiba over a Matsakataishanana for the same price?
Slashdot Mirror
Jeez, you mean to tell me you weren't seeing blood or at least something resembling it in video games? When I was 11, the SNES came out, and street fighter shortly thereafter. That had like a mist that sort of looked like blood, and we were always looking for a game genie code or some other hax to turn it red so that it was more realistic. SNES Mortal Kombat, that actually had blood, i think. I must have been in 4th-ish grade, and I haven't killed anyone yet.
~Will
Let me introduce you to http://www.google.com/linux/
Seriously, I'd imagine there are a total of probably 30 people on earth who understand the math behind what's going on here. Not really news, even for nerds.
Katamari Damacy.
Not to mention, if you're looking to go old skool, your PS2 will still play spyro.
Plus... Jak and dexter. They may not be games for 6 year olds, but I don't remember anything in Jak II that a 3rd or 4th grader couldn't handle. Nothing that I hadn't seen in Battletoads or Ninja Gaiden or Bionic Commando. Well, except boobs, but they're clothed, and they're going to see worse than that on the 6 o'clock news.
Oh, and that brings me to things like Tony Hawk (which is admittedly also available on the gamecube). THPS is kid friendly.
So, yeah, there are good games for kids on playstation.
I'm reminded of previous stories on slashdot, fark, and others, reporting that Driving while talking on your cell phone is as dangerous as driving drunk.
Of course, the first thing I thought when I saw this wasn't "Oh, wow, cell phones are dangerous". It was "Well... Driving drunk is no more dangerous than driving while talking on a cell phone, and I do that all the time!".
~Will
"[Ward's] most challenging days may be ahead. The videogame industry has been in the doldrums for months; video game sales are lagging as consumers wait to buy the next generation of consoles, including the PlayStation 3.
This statement has made the rounds from CNN to MaximumPC to Slashdot to probably Fox News.
Video game sales have decreased in retail markets. This is not an industry crisis; it is a paradigm shift. What hasn't been decreasing are revenues in areas which here-to-fore did not exist. Steam is not making less money than it did in 2000. People are willing to buy games online and download them. Even if CS:S turns your brain to mush and is addictive as sweet, sweet heroin. But, guess who didn't get a sale. Best Buy.
Another factor in Video Game sales is persistant subscription sales models. It is completely inexplicable that these people don't mention MMO profits. At 5 million subscriptions times $15/month each, and this warrants italics, Blizzard will make $900,000,000 [NINE HUNDRED MILLION] gross this year on WoW. That a nine, with 8 zeros behind it. That's a license to print money. And that's not counting EQ2, AO, DAoC, Eve, and others.
Yes, there is a slump in video game purchases right now. There aren't any must have games; everyone is waiting for X, Y, or Z. But THAT'S HOW IT'S ALWAYS BEEN. It's not the automobile industry; there's not a new model released every year. NES = 1985, SNES = 1992. Ish. What happened in the interum? A falloff of game sales. It goes in cycles. IT'S NORMAL. You know what happens when a Must Have Game comes out? People buy it.*
When you couple that with the fact that ONE IN 45 AMERICANS PLAYS WOW, you start to see what people are doing with their time. And most of the infants and nursing home patrons aren't playing. It's the coveted 18-34 demographic.
So, STFU & GBTW.
~W
*"Dragon Quest VIII was released in Japan in November 27, 2004 and sold more then three million units in its opening weekend. Shipments in North America have topped 430,000 since its release on November 17, 2005. European gamers can look forward to the game arriving in April." (Jan 30 2006). I have this game. It's great.
Was shooting from the hip, I didn't know for sure. I was fairly Camachos were from Honduras, and I know that at least part of fuente's stuff is.
I had a padron presedente once that was flat out amazing. Just... wow. Cool, smooth, complex, and an hour and a half.
~Will
To be honest, in an objective fashion, I've found good cigars from Padron, Camacho, and Fuente, which are of honduran origin, to be better in flavor than the Cubans that I've had. I mean, I'd imagine there's some reason everyone says Cubans are the best - it is an ideal climate for tobacco, and there's generations of hand-rollers who make it an art in cuba - but, still. I'll take a Maduro 8-5-8 or a Camacho Liberty 2003 over the Cubans.
~Will
Oh, and add a $70 power supply to the newegg config, making the markup now $330.
~W
That's a software problem. Dell bundles crap software. You know what, though? Get a copy of the windows XP OEM disk and use the product key on the sticker outside the case. Reinstall. Blammo.
~Will
In fact, after replying to your comment, I went to spec out a system.
Dell:
Pentium 930 (Dual Core 3.0 Ghz) + motherboard
XP home
Dual GeForce 6800 in SLI
2 GB DDR-2 533
160GB HDD
DVD-Rom/CD-RW
20 inch LCD
Sound Blaster X-Fi
Keyboard/Mouse
----------
$2,379
Configured at Newegg:
Antec P-180 Case
Intel 930 Dual core 3.0
Abit Ni8-SLI mobo
2GB Corsair valuram
2x Geforce 6800
windows XP Home
CD-RW/DVD
160 GB DiamondMax HDD
Samsung 20 inch LCD
Creative X-Fi
Keyboard/Mouse
-----------------
$1,985
Total Savings: $394, or 16%. BUT, now you've got to assemble the damn thing, install the OS, and support it for a year out of your own pocket (or deal with Abit's RMA service... shudder). It's only cheaper if your time is worth nothing.
So, you're paying $400 for the name, the assembly, and the support. For a $2400 computer, that's really not that bad.
~Will
1. Power supply. The Dell (at least Optiplex and Dimensions I've used) power supply is not standard. You cannot mount an off the shelf power supply because the power cord connector will be blocked by the Dell case.
For starters, http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/dellconverter. html fixes the pinout problem. PC Power and Cooling and a number of other manufacturers also make native dell power supplies. For space concerns, ok, you'll have to get a dell or dell-style replacement, but... it's not a blocking issue. My local tiwanese-run bars-on-the-windows PC store sells 'em.
2. Case connector. The connector that attaches to the motherboard for power switch, reset, speaker etc. is in one solid block which plugs directly into the motherboard. Now the ordering of connectors on the block will not plug into an off the shelf motherboard. So you are generally out of luck if you want to use a non-Dell motherboard with a Dell case. You CAN cut the block off and rewire seperate connectors to allow connection to a different motherboard, but it's hardly worth the effort.
Agreed. But, that means that the dell case / motherboard are mated. It's not the end of the world. If the motherboard dies, throw the case away with it - you're down what, $40 these days? If the case dies... whatever, get a real case, put the dell mobo in it, and pin it out. Read the PCB.
3. Fan. The fan connector that plugs into the motherboard is not standard. Replacing the fan with an off the shelf generic one will not let you connect the fan connector to the Dell motherboard. This means that the Dell bios will think the fan has failed.
F1 -> halt on... -> no errors. Plug fan into molex connector.
You are correct in that add in boards and drives are not proprietary but you may find that Dell skimps in some ways on their motherboards. For example, the mid range Optiplex computers have no AGP slot and no PCI Express X16 slot. So no way you can add in a video card, you are stuck with onboard. Also most Dell desktops have only 2 DIMM slots compared to 3 or 4 on most standard motherboards. You also will need to pay a bit more if you want to get say 1 512MB DIMM versus 2 256MB DIMMS - in order to leave a slot open for future expansion.
You are comparing machines with vastly different purposes. This is probably better than the quality of motherboard you'd get in a standard dell cheapie business machine. Granted the one in the link has a PCI-E x16 slot, but it does only have 2 ram slots. Business people don't upgrade their graphics card. Those machines are the kind we buy for our computer labs here at VT - we need a fast processor, a good bit of ram, and then anything that will display 1280x1024 - 3D not required. And we buy 100 of them, plus monitors, at a time. Onboard graphics are great because they save money in these circumstances.
The high end motherboards you're talking about - ones with one, or even two, PCI-E slots and 4 ram slots - have you priced them lately? What's an SLI motherboard run? At least $115, and upwards of $160 to $200 if you want a good one or really good one. By comparison, that motherboard I linked to was made by intel, has onboard lan/audio/video/sata and only costs $65.
When dell makes a gaming machine (XPS or what have you), they use a motherboard with two PCI-E x16 slots and 3 or 4 ram slots. Dell is actually one of the only OEMs with advance access to motherboards which have FOUR x16 slots, and can do quad-sli.
So, in short, I'm not sure what you want them to be. You say their business support is fantastic, but then you say there are cheaper gaming PC's out there. Well... some gaming PC's suck, dell's high end ones don't. And Dell's high end gaming PC's come with the same support their shitty business PC's come with, which has to be paid from somewhere.
And also, I bet there are more laptops. I'd surmise that the ratio of (laptops stolen):(total laptops) is probably largely unchanged. More items, quantitatively, means more quantity available for theft.
~W
Ahhh, so that's what happened to Corel Linux. I wondered about that. I've got several old CDs of corel laying around somewhere, along with a Corel Office product (corel office? forget what the name was). I remember them being a cut above the rest in usability.
Seriously, though... the competition was redhat 6.2. No one knew how to edit their x11 config. By comparison, today every linux distro is significantly easier than Corel was back in their day.
I want to move to canada.
I like snow. And reasonable people. I want to get away from these morons.
You're 98% similar to a cockroach. The similarity with Chimps is more like 99.9999%.
Dear Microsoft:
I either
A.) Go to college and my department has an MSDN License
B.) Work for said college department
I have access to at least one copy of your software, legally. I do not have time / patience / know-how to build my own machine. Therefore, I want to buy a machine, and skip the cost of windows, since I get it for free anyway.
Thank you.
Concerned Customer.
Oh, and it's all about CHR$(4).
Hah, you did that, too? Control-Open Apple-Shift-Esc got my IIgs into the text prompt where it had a static copy of Prodos8 and Applesoft Basic in ROM. It was awesome. I used to write basic programs, and then when I'd have them work, I'd copy the program into that space in memory so it wasn't constantly seeking the disk. My parents paid for the upgrade to the IIgs to get 4 MB of ram (i think?) Maybe it was 2MB. I thought it was 4, though. Anyway, whatever. I remember that. W00t.
And yes, it's called Open-Apple. That key. No Command. Open-Apple. STFU.
In fact, I'm willing to agree with a post somewhere above you and say, if this laptop costs $100 to a developing country poor person, I'm willing to pay $200 for it here, to get myself a $100 laptop AND get someone else a $100 laptop. Absolutely. I mean, I'll get a cheap laptop, someone else will get a free one, and the world is a slightly better place.
~Will
Woah, really?
Ok, that is a little dumb. I mean, admittedly, a VCR can do that.
Still, though, the channel lineup is a recurring cost to tivo... I stick with that. And even this new knowledge, though it pisses me off somewhat, isn't going to stop me from using my tivo. I love that little guy.
I admit, I'm working "in theory". In theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, it isn't.
So, I'm an idealist.
~Will
NOT A HIDDEN COST.
Everyone knows about it when they buy a Tivo. AND THE TIVO WILL WORK WITHOUT IT. The Tivo performs perfectly as a time shifting device without the subscription.
What the subscription does is allow you to continue to download a list of things which will play on the channels your tivo already gets. It tells the Tivo that Channel 54 is "Spike TV" and that it will have "STAR TREK TNG" on from 2PM to 3PM.
I don't see what people complain about. The UNIT ITS SELF is what you buy when you buy the unit - if you then want to use it to heat your tea kettle, feel free. The guide downloads are a recurring cost to tivo (they have to have people submit them and keep them up to date, as well as the infrastructure to provide them to people), so they pass it to you. Yeah, they make money. So what? You don't like it, cancel. Tell your Tivo to record "Channel 11 from 8PM to 9:30PM on Tuesday, 4/4/2006" rather than "Record American Idol". You do what you think is right.
ALSO: THE TIVO DOES NOT REQUIRE A PHONE LINE EXCEPT FOR INITIAL SETUP. Mine uses Ethernet, and has since I bought it. It even says in the book what you need - a $10 USB to Ethernet adapter will work, and a wide range of models are supported. Plug and play, man.
Stop with the FUD.
~Will
I'm a fan of your posts, but what this specific one fails to cover is the fact that there *does* exist a place for patents in the world today. As usual, the answer is a middle ground between you and the grandparent.
The place for patents is this: New ideas, really new ideas, take time to materialize. If I were to say "I have an idea", it may take 4 or 5 years worth of research, testing, development, more testing, and then at the end, I have to hire a designer to make it look pretty, a manufacturer to ramp up production, a distributer to get it to the public, and a marketing person to push the idea to whoever.
A patent system encourages people to take risks - to eat ramen and live in a 1 bedroom efficiency, spending every waking hour coding / soldering / testing / brainstorming, because they can be reasonably assured that once their product gets to market, they'll have a reasonable amount of time to earn money to compensate them for the time they spent in R&D.
Without a patent system, the same person could take the same risks, do the same things, and bring their product to market, and someone could go "What a great idea, let's do EXACTLY that", and copy the product. And lo and behold, they can do it cheaper. Why? Because the first guy is selling it at (cost)+(profit margin)+(compensation for R&D), while the copycat can sell at (cost)+(profit margin). The innovator is now out of business because someone is offering a cheaper version of the product he spent 4 years perfecting and producing.
Now, the down side is that the current patent system goes so far beyond the pale that it's a joke. Rather than, say, 5-7 years (which is an eternity in technological terms) for a company to make back money on something they invent, the patents last at least 25 years, and most of the time longer (due to extentions, paperwork, and errata).
The way it should work is that people should be encouraged and confident when they decide to invent something. They should be able to patent it, and when the patent expires in a few years, and cheap copies show up, the inventor can drop the (compensation for R&D) from the pricing equation, and suddenly "the origional" is on a level playing field with the copycats, and who wouldn't buy a Toshiba over a Matsakataishanana for the same price?
~Will