1) Sony's own load images are to blame for much of the pre-installed adware and unnecessary bloat, why should there even be a fee in the first place to NOT install software?
Because Sony subsidizes the cost of the computer this way.
I know that on Slashdot, and really amoungst all IT literate people, its long been the trend to hate the software that PC manfacturers package in. But the reality is that it isn't malice or greed that puts its there, its consumer demand; not for the software itself, but for PC manufacturers to do anything to make computers cheaper. People like my mom don't care that the machine runs slower, or that her son spends long time removing this crap, she does care that the unit cost $100 less than it would have otherwise.
(disclaimer: I used to work for Dell, and before that I worked indirectly for HP; while this was never part of my job for either company, I did at times get information on how much specific companies paid to be slapped in every system, and from everything I've heard $100 is a very conservative estimate of how much units are being subsidized)
The amount of mercury in a modern lightbulb is thousands of times less than what is found in a mercury thermometer or a thermostat.
People buy more lights (than thermometers), wear them out more quickly and break them more frequently.
Since switching to CF lights four years ago I have broken three and had to replace every one at least once for burning out (far shy of their reported lifespans). I have never in my lifetime broken or disposed of a mercury thermometer.
(I find it interesting that you mention mercury being used in thermostats; every home I have ever lived in used metal coil thermometers; I guess its where you live)
That reminds me of a conversation I had years ago. I was discussing the dental coverage we got through work with a couple of co-workers when one of them declared that it didn't matter to him because he didn't go to dentists. When I asked him why not, he said he didn't need to go because he knew he didn't have any cavities. He refused to accept that this was circular reasoning.
The desire to suck blood, howl at the moon, hoard treasure or lure ships onto rocks just don't hit home with me. But stuffing one's face with cookies is something that I can relate too. Plus none of those other monsters have as catchy a song as "C is For Cookie".
Submit the work to the journal. Don't tell them you don't have the copyright anymore.
I would be shocked if they don't require you to sign something that indicates the work belongs to you. However, let's pretend for a moment that you could pull this off, what then? Don't you think that word would get around pretty quickly what you had done, and that in all likelyhood no journal would ever publish your work again? I somehow doubt retaining the copyright of one work would be worth never again being published.
doing something to kill NAFTA and the like would do something good for the US
Its funny how something that really ought to make the news in the US, sometimes doesn't...
A few weeks ago the Canadian government announced that if the US government ever wants to renegotiate NAFTA, that the provisions in it that guarentee oil to the US are off the table (ie Canada will not resign unless those clauses are removed). For those of you who don't know just what NAFTA guarentee the US in terms of oil, under the treaty Canada can never limit oil exports to the US.
I know its always easy, and also encourage by the press and many politicians, to rag on the bad parts of treaties while totally ignoring the parts of it that benefit your side, but that doesn't make such a stance intelligent.
We would be able to get back on our own feet, then consider trade.
You think oil's expensive now? Where do you think its going to be in five years? How much worse do think it might be then if your largest supplier of oil decides to turn the tap down a little? Which would be worse for the US economy, competing with Mexico or $20/gal gas?
Since this 'age' you speak of only started like 15 years ago (if that), I would say you haven't grown up at all.
For some reason the violent video games of my youth didn't count as violent video games. Perhaps they were too pixelated to count as violence. Perhaps people just weren't that concerned about violence against space invaders, ghosts, or goombas. But most likely the people who came to blame video games for all of societies woes were just so busy blaming Dungeons and Dragons for all of societies woes that video games were flying under their radar. (which change when Mortal Kombat got so much negative publicity circa 1992)
(on another note, the fact the GP said he grew up in the age of violent video games doesn't mean he was born post 1993; I like to say I grew up in the 80s, but I was born well before then, I say that I grew up then because the fondest memories of my youth all come from that decade)
Quick! Using Google Images, find me a picture of a sheep facing left at sunset.
While your point is taken, my experience in looking for items with similarily stringent requirements is that libraries aren't any better. Just to use your example, searching for "sheep facing left at sunset" on google would likely involve looking through hundreds of pages of search results with a good chance of never finding what you wanted, while searching for the same image in a library would involved flipping through hundreds of pages of books on sheep and photography with a good chance of never finding what you wanted.
Yes. Sometimes there are things in the junk mail that are useful, such as ads from supermarkets.
Four years ago my wife and I moved into a house, having lived in an apartment before that, and discoverd that the amount of junk mail we were receiving was much much more. Within a short time I was getting so upset about it I was going to put a No Flyers sign out (Canada Post and many flyer delivery companys in Canada won't leave unadressed junk at your home if you simply put a sign saying "No Flyers") when my wife stopped me, explaining that while she disliked the quantity of crap we were receiving, there were certain flyers she had to have and as such a "No Flyers" sign was unacceptable.
I shudder to think of how many trees died so my wife could know what was on sale each week at Zellers and Walmart.
Apart from, you know, 2nd Edition was a brutal hack-job created as an interim measure only to deprive Gary Gygax of royalties. 2E was riddled with terrible rules (THAC0 being one of the more benign terrible rules). I don't know if you're only looking back on 2E nostalgically or if you've just never run a 3/3.5E campaign before, but the newer rulesets are much much much better. The supplements, however, are not. They don't even try to balance things like Psionics, and creating a character using the book Savage Species is a pretty quick way to create an overpowered character. My suggestion to you is to avoid both of these things, and also to get a better DM because 3E, properly run, should be quite a bit harder (or at least more tactical).
THAC0 could have been done better than it was (see 3E), but in 1989 it was a god send. Suddenly there was no need to always have the DMG open to the two page spread that was that the to-hit tables. No more were the unpredictable and illogical entries the riddled the extreme ends of the to-hit table; now a change in AC by 1 always meant the number you needed to roll changed by 1. I honestly doubt that the to-hit system could have been optimized any more than it was, in light of how many people were outraged at the small change ditching the table envoked.
As for the supplements creating over powered characters - that has always been the way of D&D. Every new edition starts out with a (mostly) fair and balanced ruleset, then the add-ons spin out of control. Eventually they decided to trash everything and release a new edition; rinse repeat.
I know I'm a bit of a rarity, but I honestly believe that every new edition has been an improvement of the previous. I have many fond memories of every one of them, but I don't equate fond memories to eliquent rules.
As an avid poker player I was going to come in here and bring up the enormous amount of evidence I have seen that fish almost certainly cannot count to four, then I read a little further and realised its about the animal. Never mind.
Re:Intel mistakes: CPU development is VERY difficu
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 1
2005 did arrive. You must have still been in high school then.
I love the internet, mostly because of stuff like this. I am talking about events that pre-date the ones you are talking about by five years, and somehow you figure that makes me younger than you; I suspect reality would be even more obvious had you not posted AC.
AMD has never had the success that many predicted for it. They have had some years lately that have been better than any before, but never have taken over the proc market in the way they were expected to. This is very much like Linux. Linux has made progress and gained market share every year, but they have never had that huge break through year that experts and fanboys alike keep predicting.
Re:Intel mistakes: CPU development is VERY difficu
on
Is AMD Dead Yet?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Anyone thinking that Intel can always be ahead of AMD should read the history of the Pentium 4 on Wikipedia. Two quotes:
Silly me, I thought you were going to drag out AMD being the first to 1GHz and intel's failed attempt to leap frog them with the 1.13 GHz.
Kinda like Linux, AMD's big year has always been just around the corner, but has never arrived.
May I point out that this is *not* a patent, but rather a publication of an application for a patent. I wish someone on this friggin' site would learn the difference between the two.
If you are being critical of the patent office the difference is very important, if you are being critical of the applicant, not so much so.
We didn't have cable in my area so unless you saw a movie the first week or so of it's release you had to hope for a cut down TV version of the film.
Your local theatre was far from normal if it cycled films out in week; movies stayed in theatres much longer back then than they do now.
When you think about it, its the natural economic result of adding a new source of revenue. As VCRs (then later DVD, PPV, and larger overseas sales) increased the profitability of movies it became feasable to make more and more movies. Despite the rise of the multiplex, the growth in number of films has outpaced the growth in screens, resulting in shorter and shorter runs in theatres. I remember reading an interview with George Lucas six or seven years ago where he was talking about this and how he thought it was a huge tragedy because its made it very difficult for a small film to reach notoriety by word of mouth.
Having said all that, I agree with your main point that we are all tech junkies who will do anything for our fix and often forget that things weren't always as they are. (one of my favorite things to laugh at is whenever they are talking about cell phones and driving on tv they always seem to interview someone old enough to know better who proclaims that its impossible to run a business without constant cell phone access; I find myself always yelling at the screen "how did you do it 10 years ago dumbass?")
Also, the way they ignored the trollish "what are you doing to make this game less nerdish?" question made me laugh.
I think I laughed as much at the question as the answer. Without changing the basic premise, how could you possibly make it less nerdish? They won't ever make it less nerdish because they don't know who would buy it if they made such a radical change, but know as long as its a table top role playing game there will be nerds like me who will shell out the bucks.
Exactly, when things such as the gPC start appearing more often people will naturally switch to Linux. Why? Because A) The hardware price-performance ration is good, B) The OS is free cutting down the cost of the computer and C) Nearly all software is free. Joe Sixpack really doesn't need much more software then is installed by default in Ubuntu. About the only things would be Flash and MP3 support which is trivial to add. All in all, when cheap Linux-based desktops/laptops start appearing more often expect the dominant OS to change.
I expect that not much will happen till the day that the guys who pay Dell big bucks to have their trial software on Windows boxes start showing an interest in Linux. When/if that happens then Dell will start really pushing Linux boxes (since the profit on them will start being more than Windows boxes), and that will give Joe Sixpack a chance.
Remember, Joe Sixpack more often than not doesn't have a clue what he wants (other than a new computer); generally he buys what the sales person tells him he needs. I guess my point is that everyone who thinks that Linux can do everything Joe Sixpack needs are right, but misses the fact that Joe isn't really on the up and up, and will buy whatever is put in front of him (which for now, isn't Linux).
Most telling is how the ISPs and judges have stood on these issues in the past. A judge in Canada recently compared the use of file sharing software having illegal uses to a photocopier in a library being usable for illegally reproducing entire books. Do you remove photocopiers from libraries just because they could be used for illegal purposes? Exactly.
While I agree with you, I think there is an important point to be made about why this is much more possible in Canada that the US.
In the US 90% of all media are controlled by just six companies; they make virtually all the movies, music, and television seen by Americans. They also have a sizable stake of the ISP business. This gives them both economic motive to accert the kind of control they do, and the muscle to do it (both monetary muscle, and the immense power they can have over public opinion via what they choose to put on the news).
In Canada the situation is very different. We don't have any media conglomerates comparable to those in the states. Our movie industry, after being practically dead for half a century, exists now primarly as a cheap shooting location for American productions. While we have a music industry, in every measurable way foreign, especially American, music has dominated for a very long time. While we have plenty of home grown television stations, except for cbc they tend to show only as much Canadian content as CRTC regulations require; its quite telling that of the top 20 shows in Canada the past few years only two are Canadian (Hockey Night in Canada and Corner Gas), and before Corner Gas became such a hit HNIC spent something like a decade all alone.
In a very real way there is a huge irony to the way American media companies have come to hate Canada. The situation in Canada, where we only produce a tiny fraction of the media we view, is entirely because of economic bullying from American content producers; quite simply they drove Canadian companies out of business. So our media companies have practically no stake in the production of content and as such barely care about things like DMCA. The media companies not having a stake means that not only do they not see draconian measures as not helping them, but it would hurt them in so far as it would create expenses for them with little reward.
On more than one occassion various industry groups in the US have threatened to cut Canada off if we don't do something about copyright infringement. And while I really don't think they have the balls to do it, I think it would benefit us greatly if it did; possibly breathing new life into industries long dominated by American content.
"Arctic ocean will be free of summer ice by 2013"
consider the following:
either i'm wrong and tree huggers ARE serious environmentalists, in which case they are totally useless and wasting their life if the arctic is indeed free of ice by 2013, having failed completely to convince the world that this impending disaster is real........ OR they aren't serious and just bangwagon jumpers, clinging to the lastest catch cry of the righteous, and the sea ice is still going to be there in 2013 (as i'm most positive it would be)
take your pick, because it's one of the two.
I'm pretty sure that for my entire lifetime global catastrophy has never been more than five years away by their clocks. Sometimes the reason the world is going to end changes, and often the date is quietly moved a little further back. Just off the top of my head, here's some things I was promised should have killed us years ago:
smog
global cooling
nuclear disaster
acid rain
ozone hole
deforestation
global warming
Also its worth noting, that while a number of species have gone extinct in my lifetime, its never been the ones that tree huggers have promised would (and not because of their efforts either, considering those doing the killing were never stopped). I don't recall any exact dates, but I am quite sure that elephants, several varieties of whales and apes were all due to be extinct more than a decade ago. (and as far as I know, the actvities that threaten them have never stopped)
As for the question of are they wasting their time or are they just not serious, I used to believe that there were some in each camp. However, actions and statements of several high profile environmentalists (notably Dadid Suzuki) in the past few years have convinced me that they are all bandwagon jumpers.
It can be. As the saying goes, 40% of questions are statements in disguise.
Its worth pointing out that almost any adware removal company's definition of adware could have been used, as could an enormous variety of commercial software, and still made the same point (that plenty of legitimate software does crap we don't want it to do). And while I certainly can certainly see the irony in using MS for both parties in this topic, the GP is abolutely right that the topic implies something about MS in a manner not unlike how MS attacks Linux. Still, I can think of several companies off the top of my head that have malware removel products, and also have software that could fall into a very broad generalization of what malware is.
To get back to my original point, that questions can be FUD, wouldn't you consider it FUD if MS made a press release titled "Can Your Company Really Afford the High Total Cost of Ownership of OOS?" I bet most Slashdotters would, despite it being phrased as a question.
Personally, I thought Conan, Colbert and Stewart were a lot funnier WITHOUT the writers. It forced them to get creative for the first time in years.
I think alot of what we were seeing was entertaining primarily because it was not expected from them. Like last night when talking about Mitt Romey's dropping out speach Jon Stewart's reply was "well fuck you!" I loved it cause I didn't see it coming, but given a few more months it would seem as tired as the old stuff, and at least with regard to Stewart and Colbert, their old stuff was usually pretty clever.
The contracts include licensing for ports to other platforms that aren't the PS3
If what you say is true, then I now understand why people say that sony has been screwing developers.
Like to Sony.
So you think Sony would get into to this? Let me give you some reasons they wouldn't:
no clear market - gamers would still want to play windows games, non-gamers wouldn't care that it plays PS3 games
graphics that look great 6 feet away, don't look as hot 18 inches away
they would worry about it stealing sales from PS3
chicken and egg; there would be little reason to buy it till developers starting porting, and no reason to create the ports till people starting buying the box
if they included a bluray player, the cost would be higher than a cheap pc (and do you really think sony would make a PS3 without a bluray?)
Since Ubuntu already runs on Cell, a cheap Windows killer could take the Cell architecture to the top of the CPU stakes in record time from release. It would be a much easier/cheaper/faster target for porting PS3 games than Intel PCs. Apple, which supposedly dropped PPC for Intel because of heat:performance limitations, would have to look seriously at a return to PPC, especially since 45nm Cell with only a few SPUs could be a perfect fit for an iPhone successor. If not from Apple, then from someone smart enough to use Cell in the biggest market of all.
So you are suggesting that IBM should sell processors to a computer manufacturer who will use them to make a desktop box that plays PS3 ports. (and in fact would likely be marketed as "It plays all your favorite PS3 games!!!")
Have you considered what Sony would think about this? I am sure IBM would consider what Sony would think before pissing off such a huge customer.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Sony subsidizes the cost of the computer this way.
I know that on Slashdot, and really amoungst all IT literate people, its long been the trend to hate the software that PC manfacturers package in. But the reality is that it isn't malice or greed that puts its there, its consumer demand; not for the software itself, but for PC manufacturers to do anything to make computers cheaper. People like my mom don't care that the machine runs slower, or that her son spends long time removing this crap, she does care that the unit cost $100 less than it would have otherwise.
(disclaimer: I used to work for Dell, and before that I worked indirectly for HP; while this was never part of my job for either company, I did at times get information on how much specific companies paid to be slapped in every system, and from everything I've heard $100 is a very conservative estimate of how much units are being subsidized)
People buy more lights (than thermometers), wear them out more quickly and break them more frequently.
Since switching to CF lights four years ago I have broken three and had to replace every one at least once for burning out (far shy of their reported lifespans). I have never in my lifetime broken or disposed of a mercury thermometer.
(I find it interesting that you mention mercury being used in thermostats; every home I have ever lived in used metal coil thermometers; I guess its where you live)
To date, I've never been bitten by any viruses
That you know of...
That reminds me of a conversation I had years ago. I was discussing the dental coverage we got through work with a couple of co-workers when one of them declared that it didn't matter to him because he didn't go to dentists. When I asked him why not, he said he didn't need to go because he knew he didn't have any cavities. He refused to accept that this was circular reasoning.
I second that.
The desire to suck blood, howl at the moon, hoard treasure or lure ships onto rocks just don't hit home with me. But stuffing one's face with cookies is something that I can relate too. Plus none of those other monsters have as catchy a song as "C is For Cookie".
I would be shocked if they don't require you to sign something that indicates the work belongs to you. However, let's pretend for a moment that you could pull this off, what then? Don't you think that word would get around pretty quickly what you had done, and that in all likelyhood no journal would ever publish your work again? I somehow doubt retaining the copyright of one work would be worth never again being published.
Its funny how something that really ought to make the news in the US, sometimes doesn't...
A few weeks ago the Canadian government announced that if the US government ever wants to renegotiate NAFTA, that the provisions in it that guarentee oil to the US are off the table (ie Canada will not resign unless those clauses are removed). For those of you who don't know just what NAFTA guarentee the US in terms of oil, under the treaty Canada can never limit oil exports to the US.
I know its always easy, and also encourage by the press and many politicians, to rag on the bad parts of treaties while totally ignoring the parts of it that benefit your side, but that doesn't make such a stance intelligent.
We would be able to get back on our own feet, then consider trade.You think oil's expensive now? Where do you think its going to be in five years? How much worse do think it might be then if your largest supplier of oil decides to turn the tap down a little? Which would be worse for the US economy, competing with Mexico or $20/gal gas?
For some reason the violent video games of my youth didn't count as violent video games. Perhaps they were too pixelated to count as violence. Perhaps people just weren't that concerned about violence against space invaders, ghosts, or goombas. But most likely the people who came to blame video games for all of societies woes were just so busy blaming Dungeons and Dragons for all of societies woes that video games were flying under their radar. (which change when Mortal Kombat got so much negative publicity circa 1992)
(on another note, the fact the GP said he grew up in the age of violent video games doesn't mean he was born post 1993; I like to say I grew up in the 80s, but I was born well before then, I say that I grew up then because the fondest memories of my youth all come from that decade)
Of course they can't count beyond 24 hours - Jack Bauer only ever has 24 hours!
While your point is taken, my experience in looking for items with similarily stringent requirements is that libraries aren't any better. Just to use your example, searching for "sheep facing left at sunset" on google would likely involve looking through hundreds of pages of search results with a good chance of never finding what you wanted, while searching for the same image in a library would involved flipping through hundreds of pages of books on sheep and photography with a good chance of never finding what you wanted.
Four years ago my wife and I moved into a house, having lived in an apartment before that, and discoverd that the amount of junk mail we were receiving was much much more. Within a short time I was getting so upset about it I was going to put a No Flyers sign out (Canada Post and many flyer delivery companys in Canada won't leave unadressed junk at your home if you simply put a sign saying "No Flyers") when my wife stopped me, explaining that while she disliked the quantity of crap we were receiving, there were certain flyers she had to have and as such a "No Flyers" sign was unacceptable.
I shudder to think of how many trees died so my wife could know what was on sale each week at Zellers and Walmart.
THAC0 could have been done better than it was (see 3E), but in 1989 it was a god send. Suddenly there was no need to always have the DMG open to the two page spread that was that the to-hit tables. No more were the unpredictable and illogical entries the riddled the extreme ends of the to-hit table; now a change in AC by 1 always meant the number you needed to roll changed by 1. I honestly doubt that the to-hit system could have been optimized any more than it was, in light of how many people were outraged at the small change ditching the table envoked.
As for the supplements creating over powered characters - that has always been the way of D&D. Every new edition starts out with a (mostly) fair and balanced ruleset, then the add-ons spin out of control. Eventually they decided to trash everything and release a new edition; rinse repeat.
I know I'm a bit of a rarity, but I honestly believe that every new edition has been an improvement of the previous. I have many fond memories of every one of them, but I don't equate fond memories to eliquent rules.
Step 1: Hire more patent officers.
Step 2: Raise the price of applying to meet costs of #1.
Step 3: Once backlog is clear create stricter application process.
Step 4: Based on number of man hours required for new process introduced in 3, raise prices again.
Step 5: Review demand now that it costs more and is less likely to success; adust staffing to meet new demand.
As an avid poker player I was going to come in here and bring up the enormous amount of evidence I have seen that fish almost certainly cannot count to four, then I read a little further and realised its about the animal. Never mind.
I love the internet, mostly because of stuff like this. I am talking about events that pre-date the ones you are talking about by five years, and somehow you figure that makes me younger than you; I suspect reality would be even more obvious had you not posted AC.
AMD has never had the success that many predicted for it. They have had some years lately that have been better than any before, but never have taken over the proc market in the way they were expected to. This is very much like Linux. Linux has made progress and gained market share every year, but they have never had that huge break through year that experts and fanboys alike keep predicting.
Silly me, I thought you were going to drag out AMD being the first to 1GHz and intel's failed attempt to leap frog them with the 1.13 GHz.
Kinda like Linux, AMD's big year has always been just around the corner, but has never arrived.
If you are being critical of the patent office the difference is very important, if you are being critical of the applicant, not so much so.
Your local theatre was far from normal if it cycled films out in week; movies stayed in theatres much longer back then than they do now.
When you think about it, its the natural economic result of adding a new source of revenue. As VCRs (then later DVD, PPV, and larger overseas sales) increased the profitability of movies it became feasable to make more and more movies. Despite the rise of the multiplex, the growth in number of films has outpaced the growth in screens, resulting in shorter and shorter runs in theatres. I remember reading an interview with George Lucas six or seven years ago where he was talking about this and how he thought it was a huge tragedy because its made it very difficult for a small film to reach notoriety by word of mouth.
Having said all that, I agree with your main point that we are all tech junkies who will do anything for our fix and often forget that things weren't always as they are. (one of my favorite things to laugh at is whenever they are talking about cell phones and driving on tv they always seem to interview someone old enough to know better who proclaims that its impossible to run a business without constant cell phone access; I find myself always yelling at the screen "how did you do it 10 years ago dumbass?")
I think I laughed as much at the question as the answer. Without changing the basic premise, how could you possibly make it less nerdish? They won't ever make it less nerdish because they don't know who would buy it if they made such a radical change, but know as long as its a table top role playing game there will be nerds like me who will shell out the bucks.
I expect that not much will happen till the day that the guys who pay Dell big bucks to have their trial software on Windows boxes start showing an interest in Linux. When/if that happens then Dell will start really pushing Linux boxes (since the profit on them will start being more than Windows boxes), and that will give Joe Sixpack a chance.
Remember, Joe Sixpack more often than not doesn't have a clue what he wants (other than a new computer); generally he buys what the sales person tells him he needs. I guess my point is that everyone who thinks that Linux can do everything Joe Sixpack needs are right, but misses the fact that Joe isn't really on the up and up, and will buy whatever is put in front of him (which for now, isn't Linux).
While I agree with you, I think there is an important point to be made about why this is much more possible in Canada that the US.
In the US 90% of all media are controlled by just six companies; they make virtually all the movies, music, and television seen by Americans. They also have a sizable stake of the ISP business. This gives them both economic motive to accert the kind of control they do, and the muscle to do it (both monetary muscle, and the immense power they can have over public opinion via what they choose to put on the news).
In Canada the situation is very different. We don't have any media conglomerates comparable to those in the states. Our movie industry, after being practically dead for half a century, exists now primarly as a cheap shooting location for American productions. While we have a music industry, in every measurable way foreign, especially American, music has dominated for a very long time. While we have plenty of home grown television stations, except for cbc they tend to show only as much Canadian content as CRTC regulations require; its quite telling that of the top 20 shows in Canada the past few years only two are Canadian (Hockey Night in Canada and Corner Gas), and before Corner Gas became such a hit HNIC spent something like a decade all alone.
In a very real way there is a huge irony to the way American media companies have come to hate Canada. The situation in Canada, where we only produce a tiny fraction of the media we view, is entirely because of economic bullying from American content producers; quite simply they drove Canadian companies out of business. So our media companies have practically no stake in the production of content and as such barely care about things like DMCA. The media companies not having a stake means that not only do they not see draconian measures as not helping them, but it would hurt them in so far as it would create expenses for them with little reward.
On more than one occassion various industry groups in the US have threatened to cut Canada off if we don't do something about copyright infringement. And while I really don't think they have the balls to do it, I think it would benefit us greatly if it did; possibly breathing new life into industries long dominated by American content.
I'm pretty sure that for my entire lifetime global catastrophy has never been more than five years away by their clocks. Sometimes the reason the world is going to end changes, and often the date is quietly moved a little further back. Just off the top of my head, here's some things I was promised should have killed us years ago:
Also its worth noting, that while a number of species have gone extinct in my lifetime, its never been the ones that tree huggers have promised would (and not because of their efforts either, considering those doing the killing were never stopped). I don't recall any exact dates, but I am quite sure that elephants, several varieties of whales and apes were all due to be extinct more than a decade ago. (and as far as I know, the actvities that threaten them have never stopped)
As for the question of are they wasting their time or are they just not serious, I used to believe that there were some in each camp. However, actions and statements of several high profile environmentalists (notably Dadid Suzuki) in the past few years have convinced me that they are all bandwagon jumpers.
It can be. As the saying goes, 40% of questions are statements in disguise.
Its worth pointing out that almost any adware removal company's definition of adware could have been used, as could an enormous variety of commercial software, and still made the same point (that plenty of legitimate software does crap we don't want it to do). And while I certainly can certainly see the irony in using MS for both parties in this topic, the GP is abolutely right that the topic implies something about MS in a manner not unlike how MS attacks Linux. Still, I can think of several companies off the top of my head that have malware removel products, and also have software that could fall into a very broad generalization of what malware is.
To get back to my original point, that questions can be FUD, wouldn't you consider it FUD if MS made a press release titled "Can Your Company Really Afford the High Total Cost of Ownership of OOS?" I bet most Slashdotters would, despite it being phrased as a question.
I think alot of what we were seeing was entertaining primarily because it was not expected from them. Like last night when talking about Mitt Romey's dropping out speach Jon Stewart's reply was "well fuck you!" I loved it cause I didn't see it coming, but given a few more months it would seem as tired as the old stuff, and at least with regard to Stewart and Colbert, their old stuff was usually pretty clever.
If what you say is true, then I now understand why people say that sony has been screwing developers.
Like to Sony.So you think Sony would get into to this? Let me give you some reasons they wouldn't:
So you are suggesting that IBM should sell processors to a computer manufacturer who will use them to make a desktop box that plays PS3 ports. (and in fact would likely be marketed as "It plays all your favorite PS3 games!!!")
Have you considered what Sony would think about this? I am sure IBM would consider what Sony would think before pissing off such a huge customer.