If you have $100,000 today and you calculate the future value of that money at 6% a year, the actual is around $430K over 25 years.
That's assuming you have $100K upfront to pay for it. If you have to take out a loan to pay for the system, the loan payments over 25 years are about $630 a month.
So that's $7,500 a year to pay for it, not the $4,000 claimed by Caminiti.
If you have the money upfront, you're losing the opportunity cost of the money (which is significant).
If you don't have the money, you need to take out a loan to pay for it (just under $200K over the life of the loan).
The reason the two scenarios have far different numbers is the opportunity cost assumes you never touch any of the money and let it accumulate interest.
"and that reason isnt to screw some mythical abberant 1% of the population."
No not at all, and perhaps that's a misconception. People aren't concerned about ridiculous copy protection just as a theoretical exercise, it's more practical than that.
Copy Protection (so called DRM) exists to segment the market artificially. If you buy a CD, the record company would strongly prefer that the only thing you do to it is listen to it in a CD player. In their view, putting the music on an iPod, on a home network, etc is against their use rules and they feel you should pay more for it. After all, you're getting more use without them getting more money. DRM is a way to make sure you only use it where they intend.
Same way with DVD's. While people would buy VHS and DVD to watch movies at home, the use is more complex with computers, iPod video players (zunes!), and home networking. Again, to them, this is a way to segment the market and create scarcity where none exists.
There is a multi-billion dollar industry around ringtones! Imagine if you could just rip your CD and put it on your phone! Why...that would be more money the consumer would have and less the record company would have!
To the record companies, the CD was a big blunder. Not only does it have excellent sound (which they are already charging us extra!) but you can repurpose the music to suit your needs from home stereo, to cars, to personal music players to phones, to what else is new next week. And they don't get any more money.
Yes yes, people will make illegal copies, but this loss is peanuts compared to what they see as new markets made possible by stopping you from copying your own music to another medium.
and, I don't have a problem with them trying to get more money for the same music over and over. I do have a problem when we have the government essentially on the take to support this model. It certainly doesn't benefit me as a consumer, and apparently it doesn't benefit the artist either (http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2004-05-1 6-royalties-main_x.htm).
So your argument is superficially convincing, nonetheless, I think it's not the real reason for copy protection and DRM.
"One processor architecture (x86) is better than four completely different"
Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line.
It probably would have forced OS vendor to be far more innovative in terms of virtualization and other technologies that we can't even dream of.
We're violently agreeing. I wasn't arguing whether there was global cooling or if there is global warming, I was discussing the public's perception and why there is widespread public skepticism of global warming.
But Time, Newsweek, NYT, etc. didn't just come up with this stuff. There must have been more than one "authority" who was pushing this point of view. Was it junk science? Maybe. No idea. We'd have to actually read through the articles in question, and again, nobody has indexed their stuff that far back in time and made it accessible to view via Google or other search engines.
But the suggestion is that there was a core of scientist claiming global cooling. Later debunked (of course).
You do understand why this argument can legitimately brought up, correct?
iPhone is a registered tracemark of Cisco. Check the TESS system at the USPTO, the registration is 2293011.
Could Cisco lose that trademark because of some legal reason? Let's assume the answer is yes (I have no idea). I don't understand how that helps Apple any time soon. It will take years before they lose the trademark because of legal action.
Just because Cisco loses the trademark doesn't mean that Apple gets to have it. The best that Apple could hope for is the term becomes generic. Well... does apple want to call their new cell phone by a generic name that they couldn't trademark themselves?
Apple is screwed on the name at this point. It could have easily been avoided. Apple will either have to pay Cisco for the name or pick a new name. It's not that big a deal. The fact that one big corporation has to pay another big corporation money to use a name has no effect on you or me. It's just a sideshow.
Maybe they can call it "The MacPhone". Or "The Powerphone".
"Once the sales start to slow, look to Sony for price cuts to continue the selling. "
Oh, I think the price cuts are inevitable (and soon), but the timing is tricky.
If they cut the price within the next 90 days, it will possibly do a couple bad things:
1) Punish the early adopters, the fanatics
2) Give rise to the idea that the PS3 isn't selling all that well
3) Convince the average consumer that more price cuts will be coming.
Incidentally, all these reports that sony is "losing money" on each PS3 sale is ridiculous. If you check all these sites that make the claim, they show sony buying parts at retail or near retail prices. But it's more likely that sony's margins on the PS3 are better by several hundred dollars because their buying power is tremendous (not to mention they have great experience at manufacturing electronics cheaply).
I remember it too... Both Time and Newsweek (who were much more influential at the time) had dire warnings about the climate, much of it was about the coming ice age. And this was not considered fringe or junk science.
Some people want society to take desperate and immediate action to somehow stop global warming. To do that they'll use a phrase I learned on slashdot the other day, "Cognitive Dissonance" to ignore or discount information which challenges their world view.
I'm guessing these are the same people who say "oh dear, a very warm January, more evidence of global warming. Those ignorant people just don't understand the scientific evidence", and they don't quite understand the irony of their comments.
"If Cisco has allowed this to happen and not filed trademark infringments on those companies then, the trademark has been diluted and is no longer enoforcable"
Perhaps true, but ultimately irrelevant to Apple's desire to launch the phone in 5+ months. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and Cisco will surely get an injunction against Apple's iPhone if it goes on sale. You may be right about everything, and it won't mean a thing, because the burden will be on Apple to prove the trademark is unenforceable.
And while you and I may be so excited that by iPhone that June seems like it's a long way away, in fact, June is right around the corner for a product launch. With this trademark suit hanging over Apple, the chances of releasing iPhone in June are pretty close to zero, unless they settle or change the name.
So even if Apple is right, they'll lose. Apple jumped the gun on the announcement and they're going to pay the price if they insist on sticking with the iPhone name.
And again, this has nothing to do with the Cisco allegedly not abiding by the GPL.
(and if you want irony, take a look in Cisco's site where they point out that Steve Jobs made a point of saying they would protect the IP in the iPhone, all the while not respecting Cisco's IP on the actual name).
Again, I'm not bashing Apple in the sense you seem to think. But I think if I'm on the board of directors, I'd ask a few pointed questions about announcing a major new product without securing the rights to the name first. At best, it smacks of poor judgment.
Around Washington DC they're stacked up. I was in Target in Columbia MD and they had a few in the case with a decided disinterest by consumers.
The local Malls all have a few as well. A PS3 is not a big deal. At this point, I'm waiting for the inevitable price cuts that will have to come before the summer. The PS3 is getting hammered by XBox360 on the high end and the Wii on the low end. Wii's are tight, but if you keep a careful eye out, you can find them if you know when stores get their shipments.
I expect with a few weeks, both will have boxes stacked up to the ceiling.
I just think $600 is a tough sell when Wii is $250 and the XB360 is $380 (prices came down before xmas), particularly when Sony hasn't released any games worth buying yet.
iPhone is a trademark dispute between Apple and Cisco.
The other appears to be a vague accusation the Cisco didn't abide by a usage restriction (not related to apple in the least) on source code....
I mean, perhaps this could be considered ironic, but irony is not a legal challenge and in any case, even if the GPL has been violated, it has no bearing at all on the case between Apple and Cisco.
I'm not a big fan of the way either of these companies use their legal teams, but you don't have to be a lawyer to realize that Apple is wrong here. They gave away their entire negotiating position when they announced iPhone before securing the rights to the name. They either pony up what Cisco wants, or choose a new name. It's not that difficult.
"Apple are just sending a very public, early message that it's going to protect the iPhone image and is warning other people about it."
That's why Cisco is suing apple over the word iPhone (since they own it). The people at Cisco know how much Apple values trademarks so they want to see just how much Apple values a trademark.
Plus, they're probably suing Apple first knowing that Apple will shortly sue them anyway. Maybe they'll lay claim to the whole iProductName thing.
it says in part:
"these associations represent not only the world of theatrical film, but serve as leader and advocate for major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, home video and future delivery systems not yet imagined. "
"I think that the only real solution is to not allow the movies to be played on a computer. Only on dedicated set top boxes."
It is my opinion that unless a new medium works on the PC, it will never become all that important.
Think about all the laptop computers that are sold with DVD drives in many cases to allow travelers to watch movies as they travel. If those people can't do that, then they'll just stick with DVD's.
So the market for the new-fangled-DVD-replacement will be limited to people with large TV's who just want to watch in their living rooms and never watch it anywhere else, despite the fact that we have desktop & laptop computers, slingboxes, Video iPods, Zunes, etc etc.
I mean, if that's the market, god bless them, but I want to see someone with that pitch before the board of directors.
Maybe it would be cheaper to just do something where people have to go to a large room and watch it with a bunch of strangers. They'd pay like $8-10, and buy popcorn, and hope the people next to them will shut up and let them watch in peace. Hey! I may patent this idea. I'll call it "Moving Pictures in a Dark Theater" or something snappy like that.
"And why would you thrash the high RPM end of a large displacement v-6, when it's intentionally built for a torquey low end? Leave the tach-pegging to the small displacement engines."
I don't consider 5,000 RPM "high". And yet BMW makes large displacement L6 that rev smoothly up to their 6500 RPM redline with tons of torque at the bottom.
Do you see my point? Why can't GM make one engine that is at the technological edge and is put in a reasonably priced car? Why can't they make a 4 that is brilliant? Or a V6 that is the equal of Nissan's V6? Or a V8 that relies on something other than pushrods to produce power? Why? Because it costs engineering money to make engines that good, and GM doesn't want to spend money on too much engineering. Heck, they're still debating whether or not IRS is a good thing. Why? Because if they use IRS, they have to make the chassis stiffer which means.... more engineering. It's why a GM car cannot go through a hard turn with bumps without the backend kicking around
There's an interesting effect that takes place on the internet about this stuff too. I've noticed it whenever someone posts a complaint about a company.
I found there is a class of people who defend the company no matter how outrageous the behavior or product. Like you bought a car, and every time you used it, the hood flew off, the doors jammed shut, and the engine blows up. If you post about it and then detail your experience, you'll inevitably get people calling you an idiot, unreasonable, and impatient.
I don't think they're pro-company shills, I think there's an odd psychology at work. It reminds of about 15 years ago I almost bought a Saab 900, but something told me to just get a Honda. Unfortunately, my brother in law did buy one. From the moment he got it, he had trouble, I mean, like engine replacement at 800 miles, broken seats, just continuous problems. He finally got his money back under the lemon laws. I talked to other long-time Saab owners and many of them felt he was unreasonable and that a certain amount of repair work was normal for a Saab. Their response made me feel as if they felt threatened by the complaint.
It's a weird thing, like a kind of bizarre Stockholm Syndrome thing where they're stuck in some product hell, and seem to enjoy it. I can't quite figure it out.
"What would happen if the "industry" responded by saying, "Fuck it. We'll just release DVDs. "
That is clearly their right to do that. What would happen if they said "Hey, all those dirty pirates, we're not releasing anything in DVD ever again, much less hi-def formats"
But what would "happen" is they'd make less money. As I said earlier, the MPAA doesn't care about copyright infringement in the sense that they feel it hurts moral rights of content owners. They care because it makes less money.
Their attempts at copy protection of discs are not an attempt to stop piracy, rather they are attempt to increase sales and revenue. What I mean is that if the industry feels that 10% of all movie content is pirated, and copy protection changes that to 8%, they do the math to determine which gets them more money (since copy protection costs them money). If they make enough additional revenue to justify the cost they do it.
Do you see my point? They certainly could stop selling hi-def content, they could stop licensing of software to play back on PCs but the effect would be to endanger adoption of their pet format and ultimately less money. So they won't do those things.
At the risk of being a broken record, copy protection is not a moral crusade, it is simply a route to more revenue.
Prohibiting PC playback of HD content, in my opinion, is a death knell for either format. I don't believe any new format is viable as something that can only be played in the living room.
It is an old design. It thrashes at high RPM, it's power delivery isn't particularly silky, it's not all that efficient. Oh, it does the job. It's not really bad. It embodies the GM philosophy of "good enough" instead of being a class leader.
You can't really fault it for anything, but it's not the best of breed V6, either.
"especially at GM with their ubiquitous pushrod 3.8 L V6 engine."
That engine pretty much sums up everything wrong with GM. It doesn't require any words, you just look at it and you know why they're getting their butts beat for the last few decades.
Slashdot Mirror
"play them on your 50 USD Chinese HD-DVD player"
Which will probably suit more people better than that fancy $1,500 Aero-enabled Vista computer.
It takes real engineering prowess to do that. On both sides.
If you have $100,000 today and you calculate the future value of that money at 6% a year, the actual is around $430K over 25 years.
That's assuming you have $100K upfront to pay for it. If you have to take out a loan to pay for the system, the loan payments over 25 years are about $630 a month.
So that's $7,500 a year to pay for it, not the $4,000 claimed by Caminiti.
If you have the money upfront, you're losing the opportunity cost of the money (which is significant).
If you don't have the money, you need to take out a loan to pay for it (just under $200K over the life of the loan).
The reason the two scenarios have far different numbers is the opportunity cost assumes you never touch any of the money and let it accumulate interest.
"and that reason isnt to screw some mythical abberant 1% of the population."
1 6-royalties-main_x.htm).
No not at all, and perhaps that's a misconception. People aren't concerned about ridiculous copy protection just as a theoretical exercise, it's more practical than that.
Copy Protection (so called DRM) exists to segment the market artificially. If you buy a CD, the record company would strongly prefer that the only thing you do to it is listen to it in a CD player. In their view, putting the music on an iPod, on a home network, etc is against their use rules and they feel you should pay more for it. After all, you're getting more use without them getting more money. DRM is a way to make sure you only use it where they intend.
Same way with DVD's. While people would buy VHS and DVD to watch movies at home, the use is more complex with computers, iPod video players (zunes!), and home networking. Again, to them, this is a way to segment the market and create scarcity where none exists.
There is a multi-billion dollar industry around ringtones! Imagine if you could just rip your CD and put it on your phone! Why...that would be more money the consumer would have and less the record company would have!
To the record companies, the CD was a big blunder. Not only does it have excellent sound (which they are already charging us extra!) but you can repurpose the music to suit your needs from home stereo, to cars, to personal music players to phones, to what else is new next week. And they don't get any more money.
Yes yes, people will make illegal copies, but this loss is peanuts compared to what they see as new markets made possible by stopping you from copying your own music to another medium.
and, I don't have a problem with them trying to get more money for the same music over and over. I do have a problem when we have the government essentially on the take to support this model. It certainly doesn't benefit me as a consumer, and apparently it doesn't benefit the artist either (http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2004-05-
So your argument is superficially convincing, nonetheless, I think it's not the real reason for copy protection and DRM.
"One processor architecture (x86) is better than four completely different"
Not at all. If there were lots and lots of CPU architectures, OS's would have to be written to run or be ported easily to another processor architecture. This would open up competition to the "best" processor, rather than the best implementation of the X86 command line.
It probably would have forced OS vendor to be far more innovative in terms of virtualization and other technologies that we can't even dream of.
We're violently agreeing. I wasn't arguing whether there was global cooling or if there is global warming, I was discussing the public's perception and why there is widespread public skepticism of global warming.
Can I show a journal from that time? I personally didn't get any weather journals in the 70's, so it's tough to do.
S CEP_report
The closest I can come is this little blurb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling#1970_
But Time, Newsweek, NYT, etc. didn't just come up with this stuff. There must have been more than one "authority" who was pushing this point of view. Was it junk science? Maybe. No idea. We'd have to actually read through the articles in question, and again, nobody has indexed their stuff that far back in time and made it accessible to view via Google or other search engines.
But the suggestion is that there was a core of scientist claiming global cooling. Later debunked (of course).
You do understand why this argument can legitimately brought up, correct?
iPhone is a registered tracemark of Cisco. Check the TESS system at the USPTO, the registration is 2293011.
Could Cisco lose that trademark because of some legal reason? Let's assume the answer is yes (I have no idea). I don't understand how that helps Apple any time soon. It will take years before they lose the trademark because of legal action.
Just because Cisco loses the trademark doesn't mean that Apple gets to have it. The best that Apple could hope for is the term becomes generic. Well... does apple want to call their new cell phone by a generic name that they couldn't trademark themselves?
Apple is screwed on the name at this point. It could have easily been avoided. Apple will either have to pay Cisco for the name or pick a new name. It's not that big a deal. The fact that one big corporation has to pay another big corporation money to use a name has no effect on you or me. It's just a sideshow.
Maybe they can call it "The MacPhone". Or "The Powerphone".
It was repeatedly on the cover of Time and Newsweek as well as the NY Times and other major publications.
This indicates it wasn't fringe science.
"Once the sales start to slow, look to Sony for price cuts to continue the selling. "
Oh, I think the price cuts are inevitable (and soon), but the timing is tricky.
If they cut the price within the next 90 days, it will possibly do a couple bad things:
1) Punish the early adopters, the fanatics
2) Give rise to the idea that the PS3 isn't selling all that well
3) Convince the average consumer that more price cuts will be coming.
Incidentally, all these reports that sony is "losing money" on each PS3 sale is ridiculous. If you check all these sites that make the claim, they show sony buying parts at retail or near retail prices. But it's more likely that sony's margins on the PS3 are better by several hundred dollars because their buying power is tremendous (not to mention they have great experience at manufacturing electronics cheaply).
I think it's going to be a painful year for Sony.
Well, way to miss my point. I'm not doubting global warming. The climate is changing. There is no doubt of that.
But I am pointing out people who deny that 30 years ago there was a widespread belief in global cooling are simply ignoring facts.
I hope that make the difference clear.
I remember it too... Both Time and Newsweek (who were much more influential at the time) had dire warnings about the climate, much of it was about the coming ice age. And this was not considered fringe or junk science.
Some people want society to take desperate and immediate action to somehow stop global warming. To do that they'll use a phrase I learned on slashdot the other day, "Cognitive Dissonance" to ignore or discount information which challenges their world view.
I'm guessing these are the same people who say "oh dear, a very warm January, more evidence of global warming. Those ignorant people just don't understand the scientific evidence", and they don't quite understand the irony of their comments.
"If Cisco has allowed this to happen and not filed trademark infringments on those companies then, the trademark has been diluted and is no longer enoforcable"
Perhaps true, but ultimately irrelevant to Apple's desire to launch the phone in 5+ months. The wheels of justice grind slowly, and Cisco will surely get an injunction against Apple's iPhone if it goes on sale. You may be right about everything, and it won't mean a thing, because the burden will be on Apple to prove the trademark is unenforceable.
And while you and I may be so excited that by iPhone that June seems like it's a long way away, in fact, June is right around the corner for a product launch. With this trademark suit hanging over Apple, the chances of releasing iPhone in June are pretty close to zero, unless they settle or change the name.
So even if Apple is right, they'll lose. Apple jumped the gun on the announcement and they're going to pay the price if they insist on sticking with the iPhone name.
And again, this has nothing to do with the Cisco allegedly not abiding by the GPL.
(and if you want irony, take a look in Cisco's site where they point out that Steve Jobs made a point of saying they would protect the IP in the iPhone, all the while not respecting Cisco's IP on the actual name).
Again, I'm not bashing Apple in the sense you seem to think. But I think if I'm on the board of directors, I'd ask a few pointed questions about announcing a major new product without securing the rights to the name first. At best, it smacks of poor judgment.
"Hold on there trigger."
The phrase is "Hold on there TIGER".
You're welcome!
Around Washington DC they're stacked up. I was in Target in Columbia MD and they had a few in the case with a decided disinterest by consumers.
The local Malls all have a few as well. A PS3 is not a big deal. At this point, I'm waiting for the inevitable price cuts that will have to come before the summer. The PS3 is getting hammered by XBox360 on the high end and the Wii on the low end. Wii's are tight, but if you keep a careful eye out, you can find them if you know when stores get their shipments.
I expect with a few weeks, both will have boxes stacked up to the ceiling.
I just think $600 is a tough sell when Wii is $250 and the XB360 is $380 (prices came down before xmas), particularly when Sony hasn't released any games worth buying yet.
The article implies a linkage that isn't there.
iPhone is a trademark dispute between Apple and Cisco.
The other appears to be a vague accusation the Cisco didn't abide by a usage restriction (not related to apple in the least) on source code....
I mean, perhaps this could be considered ironic, but irony is not a legal challenge and in any case, even if the GPL has been violated, it has no bearing at all on the case between Apple and Cisco.
I'm not a big fan of the way either of these companies use their legal teams, but you don't have to be a lawyer to realize that Apple is wrong here. They gave away their entire negotiating position when they announced iPhone before securing the rights to the name. They either pony up what Cisco wants, or choose a new name. It's not that difficult.
"Apple are just sending a very public, early message that it's going to protect the iPhone image and is warning other people about it."
That's why Cisco is suing apple over the word iPhone (since they own it). The people at Cisco know how much Apple values trademarks so they want to see just how much Apple values a trademark.
Plus, they're probably suing Apple first knowing that Apple will shortly sue them anyway. Maybe they'll lay claim to the whole iProductName thing.
"You may have no use for the trade association these creative people support, but you'd better also have no use for films as good as Serenity."
p ?j=207126280&p=zx7yz6986
I got the impression that the MPAA is not an organization for creative people, rather it is an organization of film distributors.
If you look here:
http://www.mpaa.org/AboutUs.asp
it says in part:
"these associations represent not only the world of theatrical film, but serve as leader and advocate for major producers and distributors of entertainment programming for television, cable, home video and future delivery systems not yet imagined. "
So while I fully appreciate your comment, the MPAA doesn't appear to serve as the voice of the creative community, unless you're counting the creative accounting practices that some people say are typical of MPAA members:
http://breakingnews.iol.ie/entertainment/story.as
But who really knows what's true and what's not?
"I think that the only real solution is to not allow the movies to be played on a computer. Only on dedicated set top boxes."
It is my opinion that unless a new medium works on the PC, it will never become all that important.
Think about all the laptop computers that are sold with DVD drives in many cases to allow travelers to watch movies as they travel. If those people can't do that, then they'll just stick with DVD's.
So the market for the new-fangled-DVD-replacement will be limited to people with large TV's who just want to watch in their living rooms and never watch it anywhere else, despite the fact that we have desktop & laptop computers, slingboxes, Video iPods, Zunes, etc etc.
I mean, if that's the market, god bless them, but I want to see someone with that pitch before the board of directors.
Maybe it would be cheaper to just do something where people have to go to a large room and watch it with a bunch of strangers. They'd pay like $8-10, and buy popcorn, and hope the people next to them will shut up and let them watch in peace. Hey! I may patent this idea. I'll call it "Moving Pictures in a Dark Theater" or something snappy like that.
"And why would you thrash the high RPM end of a large displacement v-6, when it's intentionally built for a torquey low end? Leave the tach-pegging to the small displacement engines."
I don't consider 5,000 RPM "high". And yet BMW makes large displacement L6 that rev smoothly up to their 6500 RPM redline with tons of torque at the bottom.
Do you see my point? Why can't GM make one engine that is at the technological edge and is put in a reasonably priced car? Why can't they make a 4 that is brilliant? Or a V6 that is the equal of Nissan's V6? Or a V8 that relies on something other than pushrods to produce power? Why? Because it costs engineering money to make engines that good, and GM doesn't want to spend money on too much engineering. Heck, they're still debating whether or not IRS is a good thing. Why? Because if they use IRS, they have to make the chassis stiffer which means.... more engineering. It's why a GM car cannot go through a hard turn with bumps without the backend kicking around
"My parents don't listen to Green Day/Pumpkins/Oasis/etc"
Well no wonder... these bands haven't had a new album out in years.
There's an interesting effect that takes place on the internet about this stuff too. I've noticed it whenever someone posts a complaint about a company.
I found there is a class of people who defend the company no matter how outrageous the behavior or product. Like you bought a car, and every time you used it, the hood flew off, the doors jammed shut, and the engine blows up. If you post about it and then detail your experience, you'll inevitably get people calling you an idiot, unreasonable, and impatient.
I don't think they're pro-company shills, I think there's an odd psychology at work. It reminds of about 15 years ago I almost bought a Saab 900, but something told me to just get a Honda. Unfortunately, my brother in law did buy one. From the moment he got it, he had trouble, I mean, like engine replacement at 800 miles, broken seats, just continuous problems. He finally got his money back under the lemon laws. I talked to other long-time Saab owners and many of them felt he was unreasonable and that a certain amount of repair work was normal for a Saab. Their response made me feel as if they felt threatened by the complaint.
It's a weird thing, like a kind of bizarre Stockholm Syndrome thing where they're stuck in some product hell, and seem to enjoy it. I can't quite figure it out.
"What would happen if the "industry" responded by saying, "Fuck it. We'll just release DVDs. "
That is clearly their right to do that. What would happen if they said "Hey, all those dirty pirates, we're not releasing anything in DVD ever again, much less hi-def formats"
But what would "happen" is they'd make less money. As I said earlier, the MPAA doesn't care about copyright infringement in the sense that they feel it hurts moral rights of content owners. They care because it makes less money.
Their attempts at copy protection of discs are not an attempt to stop piracy, rather they are attempt to increase sales and revenue. What I mean is that if the industry feels that 10% of all movie content is pirated, and copy protection changes that to 8%, they do the math to determine which gets them more money (since copy protection costs them money). If they make enough additional revenue to justify the cost they do it.
Do you see my point? They certainly could stop selling hi-def content, they could stop licensing of software to play back on PCs but the effect would be to endanger adoption of their pet format and ultimately less money. So they won't do those things.
At the risk of being a broken record, copy protection is not a moral crusade, it is simply a route to more revenue.
Prohibiting PC playback of HD content, in my opinion, is a death knell for either format. I don't believe any new format is viable as something that can only be played in the living room.
It is the definition of mediocre.
It is an old design. It thrashes at high RPM, it's power delivery isn't particularly silky, it's not all that efficient. Oh, it does the job. It's not really bad. It embodies the GM philosophy of "good enough" instead of being a class leader.
You can't really fault it for anything, but it's not the best of breed V6, either.
"especially at GM with their ubiquitous pushrod 3.8 L V6 engine."
That engine pretty much sums up everything wrong with GM. It doesn't require any words, you just look at it and you know why they're getting their butts beat for the last few decades.
"For example, I'm against the sale of automatic weapons to teenagers"
Well, you're in luck. No one can buy automatic weapons, at least not in the United States.
You can rest easy tonight.