It's now just after 5am, Chicago time. Is anyone else fighting the urge to dial *67,773-391-0595 'till someone picks up, act drunk, and try to order a pizza?
It's not black and white like this. Effective spam laws could be devised that would prevent people we don't want mailing us from doing so. Enforcement might be a problem, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.
Let me repeat: effective spam laws are not an oxymoron. We can make it work. We just have to try, and try again.
Don't you think that if a law were passed that made illegal forms of e-mail we needed, there wouldn't be public outcry enough to modify that law? The first step is a big one, but if they can ban drugs, they can ban spam.
One more thing, don't you think the guy that spearheads this into law will get some serious kudos for it? I mean, take Mr. Tax-and-spend, the guy whose entire reason for being in politics is to subsidize big business with tax money. He's coming up for election, needs to win a few votes, so he helps push through some imaginary legislation that makes a 50% dent in spam. Would you not be more likely to kiss his ass come election time? I know I would.
Wouldn't there eventually be a point at which people don't need more access? I'm not saying that we're there, I'm saying that such a point could exist, and it's not likely to increase significantly. So somebody puts up an FTP server and does a few gigs a day in traffic. If more people were doing this, it would certainly be a drain on current infrastructure, but wouldn't we eventually reach a point where supply met demand? I think that a savvy business can make money until that point is met. It's just about making the right choices.
So how much bandwith do we really need? Videoconferencing, Divx Futurama episodes, pr0n, even PPV streamed movies only take up so much bandwith. If everybody who wanted it could get 10mbps to their house, would broadband cease to be a commodity, or a toy, and start to become ingrained into the lives of everyday (read: non-/. readers) citizens? How would things be different if there weren't the bottleneck of bandwith?
I know, more questions than insightful comments, but inquiring minds want to know.
Note: I connect to my ISP at 28.8 because my phone lines suck balls. I have two phone lines, and my computer automatically dials out to the internet whenever the line is disconnected (about every 6 to 8 hours). My effective costs, ISP plus extra phone line, is about $50/month. For 28.8. I would gladly pay twice as much for DSL. Don't you think that somebody charging me $100/month could eke out a profit somehow?
I don't think that MS would have any serious trouble taking Nintendo's portable crown here. The GBA is, IMHO, several years behind the times. Remember the Sega portable? Now that was ahead of it's time. The color was great, and you could even get a TV adapter for it. If MS wanted to make a serious run at the GBA, I can all but guarantee victory. At least, it'll be a lot easier than the console market.
I agree. I've always been very satisfied with Windows 2000, but XP seemed to me like it wasn't as well made. I can't close the session on CDRWs that I burn, supposedly so that you can add files at any time, but the side-effect is that my MP3 CD player doesn't work. I was only able to properly shut down once, ever. I had 2 BSODs in 2 weeks. It's randomly frozen up on my on three separate occasions. Now, granted that these things may be due to my older P2/350 computer, but Win2k doesn't care one bit, so why should XP?
This computer has never run well. I would freshly install windows 98, and it would start crashing within 3 days. 2000 crashes once every couple of weeks to once a month. I can live with that. System Availability: 99.9329%. So I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't like Windows, but a properly set-up 2000 install really runs well. It just works.
The greatest job in the world, and one for which there's definately a need: an admin, to run everything. You could hold a vote amongst all the tenants to elect one, and part of his compensation would be an apartment there. It'd be like being the super, only with computers.
I'm sure there are countless amongst us who would gladly pay through the teeth for lots and lots of dedicated bandwith. If you have a building where every tenant is going to use it, you can really cut your costs, not to mention that these buildings already have the infrastructure in place, so it's only a matter of flipping the switch. So what would the per-user bandwith costs come out to if you were just plugging an entire building into, say, a T-3, based on how much bandwith you would want to dedicate to each apartment.
Also, how difficult would it be to set up QOS for each apartment, so that one guy couldn't hog it all and piss everyone else off? This is much more important for home users than for businesses.
I'm sure it'll be quite a while before you see PQCs at Best Buy, but if that ever happens, we're in more trouble than just needing a new encryption scheme. I could start capturing secured traffic now, wait for this thing to get big, and decrypt it then. I could capture most everything that's been encrypted with current schemes, and decrypt it in the future.
It's kinda scary when you think about it like that.
Re:Hey, let's build a prison just for them
on
Crazy Stats on Spam
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· Score: 1
Just the thought of giving these people what they deserve sends chills up my spine. When I rule the world (any day now...), you will be the warden, if you promise to bandwidth-limit them to 2400 baud.
We may be better off working out our own solutions, but my computer-illiterate parents sure won't be. They can barely check their e-mail. Installing filtering software is definately beyond them.
What if a law were devised that would not stop legitmate e-mail, but which would stop spam? Unlikely, you say? That's not my point. What if? Productivity would increase, ISPs would have their costs lowered, and another form of fraud could be stopped. Stopping spam should be our goal, even if the possibility exists that it could block legitimate mail. We have to try.
Re:How do you tell what is and isn't spam?
on
Crazy Stats on Spam
·
· Score: 1
What if I want to contact a company about employment? They don't know me, and they aren't currently fulfilling a business transaction of any sort. Should I not be allowed to e-mail them?
This is a more complicated issue than can be solved in one sentence, I'm afraid. We should figure it out, and work out all the kinks, so that we have something to get behind. If we come up with a simple set of rules that, if followed, would stop spam but not harm individual users, our position will be much stronger. You and I know what spam is when we see it, but it's still hard to define.
I think part of those rules should include a ban on selling addresses. If I send a company my address, and they spam me, I can just unsubscribe. But if they sell my address to another company, and they sell it to a thousand spammers, I can't be expected to unsubscribe from all of them. So if you can stop the sale, you can stop a lot of the spam before it starts. And there are no legitimate reasons why anyone would need millions of e-mail addresses, so I don't think this would hurt anybody doing legitimate business.
Also, the 3 months of classes was about 1/3 of the time I spent on this. So not 3 or 4 years, but not 3 months either. The thing is, I'm 20, so by the time I'm 30, and the age of most people in those classes, I'll have those 3 or 4 years, and then some.
I wanna say just one more thing. In my experiences, on my quest to get my MCSE, I've met a lot of people, some of whom I respected, some I didn't. From the guy who spent the last 14 years with Compaq debugging Unix dumps for corporate customers, who knows WTF he's doing, to the guy who--god knows how--just got his masters in comp sci, who can't spell Asia without junxtaposing the S and I. It is my opinion that the certification track weeds out the worst of them, which is it's job. There were people in my class that, god bless 'em, wouldn't be passing their tests, ever, and there were people who could study for it in 2 days and pass it. Speaking of which, I have one day to go.
I completely agree. The MCSE is only a start. Your Cisco Engineer had to get his Cisco certification first, then move on to other things. When he only had his one certification, did you chide him for putting all his eggs in one basket? Or did you encourage him to learn more? People here have the wrong attitude sometimes. Most people here would rather criticize than encourage. They would rather say, "MCSEs are crap" than "CCNA might do you better, but learn Perl and Linux and you're even better yet" or something. It's that attitude that gives *IX users a bad name. Not you personally, but people in general on/.
So, you know, work on that, people! Be nice. Please?
You make some good points, and I appreciate your reply. The AC kinda pissed me off, and I'm not surprised I got modded down as flamebait (I probably was), but there are a few things, not in any particular order, I'd like to address:
1) these classes taught me a whole lot. My instructors really, really knew what they were doing. And they mostly glanced over the material, spent about 2 minutes per page and went on. I really struggled to keep up, but when I went back and read through everything, it all came together.
2) I'm sure a decent UNIX admin could do a lot that I couldn't, but the reality of things is that if you work in a corporate environment, you're going to use Windows at one time or another. I'd sure like to be that UNIX admin, but this seemed like a good place to start.
3) As for windows-based firewalls, I may have misspoke. The day I use a windows-based firewall is my last day on the job.
4) As for increasing availability, there are lots of things that can be done. Load balancing, for one. Sure, Windows crashes. Hardware fails. More of the former than the latter. But if it's set up right, that's not a problem.
5) Anybody who claims that I can read, what'd I say, 3 linear feet of text? And not learn a whole lot(at least in theory), is just plain wrong. Comparing myself to where I was 6 months ago is like comparing a caterpillar to a butterfly. And making light of that is irresponsible.
Cheers.
I done read about 4 linear feet of books, took about 3 months' worth of classes, and as of Thursday, I'll have my MCSE. Does that make me the be-all, end-all, uber-hacker? No. But it qualifies me to design and implement Windows 2000 in a corporate environment, lock it down, and make sure it's available 24/7. And it qualifies me to detect your linux box screwing around on my firewall and alert your ISP. I'm not stupid, and your stipulation that MCSE candidates are stupid, not to mention the fact that you're too afraid to back it up with your nick, upsets me more than you know. I love Slashdot, but if I see more tripe like this modded up, I'm going to have to love something else. Like *shudder* activewin.com. Don't make me do it!
Your steak dinner analogy is pretty good, but not perfectly accurate. They only have to make(develop) one steak, although admittedly a rather large one. After that, future steaks cost nothing but the cost of the meat and the spices(the hardware). So you could aim for just above what the meat and spices cost, hoping to recoup the cost of developing the steak by selling lots and lots of them, you can charge a lot, thereby driving out a lot of customers who would rather have your delicately prepared steak than something they can make themselves, or you can go for somewhere in the middle, where the people who really like steak will be happy to pay the premium.
Economics class tells us that the bulk of the money is to be made in the middle. SonicBlue is aiming for the top. And they're aiming there, but not shooting for audiophiles, the only significant market segment that will gladly spend $1500 on a component.
This seems like a product without a market. Imagine if the iPod cost $800, how popular it would be. Who would want a nice, reliable, fuel-efficient Honda Civic if the base price was $20,000?
The product may be good, but the customer is only willing to pay a certain price for it. And very few would pay $1500. If the hardware cost was $300, and it was sold for $700, it would need to sell 3x as many units to make the same amount of money. So do you think you could sell 3x as many of these if the price were less than half? It's certainly a possibility.
Maybe you don't realize, but you posted this to slashdot.org, filled with free-software fans. Don't expect to get much sympathy selling consumer software here for $1500. In economics class, we learn that the lower the price, the more buyers there are. You seem to be trying to out-price most people, which is fine by us, because we can get the same functionality out of a custom setup, or another company's product, for less.
We also have a view that if this product isn't marketed to us, if it's not in our price range, it's destined to fail. Maybe not wholly accurate, but what's the target market for a $1500 mp3 player, anyway? Because it sure isn't me. I'm still miffed that portable MP3 CD players carry a $50-100 premium over their audio-cd-playing contemporaries. This thing costs $1500. I could buy a whole new computer for that price, use free software to run it, and have enough left over for enough Fat Tire to keep me happy for 6 months. Or I could just run cables, and have enough left for a year's worth of beer.
Your post would have been a better use of your time if you were to highlight for us some of the things that you can do with this that can't be done as well, or better, by a computer with SPDIF out. Because just saying that it cost a lot of money to develop the software isn't going to win anybody over.
If they're going to include 100mbps ethernet, why bother putting a HD on the unit in the first place? Why not stream the data over the e-net, from the larger, cheaper, more upgradeable HD in your PC? And if you're doing that, and seeing as to how most people would prefer the audio be input directly into their pre-amp via glass or RCA unconverted, what exactly are you paying for? The remote?
I don't know what tech support people you're talking to, but it sure isn't the SonicBlue people. My Rio Volt broke a week and a half ago, so I checked their website for a number to call to get help with it. The only number available was the priority support number, which costs $20 per call. There is no other number. So I e-mailed them, and they took 4 days to respond with an RMA form (they took 4 days to respond with a form). I filled out the form, and am now waiting for my RMA number and an address to mail this thing to. It's been 5 days. Meanwhile, I have to use audio CDs to listen to music, which I really hate, after having experienced the ease and flexibility of MP3 CDs. So I'm never ever going to buy anything they sell again, because it shouldn't take 2 weeks to do by e-mail what could be done in 10 minutes over the phone with adequate support. That's assuming that they get back to me this week, which I'm not entirely sure they will. I'm afraid they're just going to ignore my warranty requests. Suffice to say I won't be purchasing a Digital Audio Center.
It's an absurd association to make, but given the fact that the people and gov't will rally behind the idea (and this is what Verizon is counting on,) it will be another victory for ignorance.
You say that it's a foregone conclusion that people will accept this as a Good Thing, but I disagree. Here on Slashdot, if you were to summarize the posters' feelings on this issue, it's gotta be 90-98% against. Now the/. crowd disapproves of a lot of things that much of the public either could care less about or agrees with, but I really don't think this is going to go all the way without somebody saying, "Wait a minute, what if Verizon doesn't actually care about terrorism, and is just trying to stifle competition?" I really do think that rational thought will prevail in the end, and the government will do the right thing.
I have noticed a decline in smoking recently though. Not because of laws, but because social tolerance of it has decreased. Maybe that's the way it should go. This is why I like Apple's iPod commercial. At the bottom of the TV it says in really small letters, "Don't steal music."
If my friends found out I downloaded an mp3 illegaly last night, and my stature decreased with them as a result, that would be the last MP3 I EVER download. Social acceptance is the biggest influence on culture anywhere. Bigger than laws, by a long shot. Now, you have to realize that for criminals, a lot of them are social deviants. They do things not for society's attention, but...
Well, I honestly don't know why they do these things. Murder, Grand Theft, and what not. But I really don't think it's for social acceptance. And if the law says they shouldn't, that's not too great a deterrent either. No more so, anyway. So why do they do these things? What's their reward? Because if we know what their reward is, we might be able to take it away. Maybe it's just money, which means that we can only take it away if we can catch them, which doesn't change anything.
Sorry for rambling.
Yap yap yap, at least we can play GTA. And as for guns, I don't know any numbers, but I was there earlier this year, and my hotel sat right across the street from a gun shop. So I don't know what that's about. But my theory on guns is this: if everybody had guns, there would be no crime. If nobody had guns, there would be no crime. But once you let the cat out of the bag, it's tough to stuff it back in. In the US, we have a saying, "Outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have guns." That's the gist of it anyway. But it makes sense to us.
That being said, you guys do what you want, make up your own crazy laws, censor stuff you don't like, whatever. If I don't like it, I'll just not move there, and to hell with the great weather and beaches and all the BBQing and what not. If they did that here, I'd move somewhere else. I really would. Really.
But your definition of freedom mustn't include freedom from censorship, because if it did, you wouldn't be able to say that US citizens have no more freedom than you. I'm not saying we're perfect, but GTA is a great game, and you aren't free to play it.
I'm not saying he is, by any means. But as to whether he should say whatever he can to get out of jail, you should've seen last night's South Park. The Butters special.
And the truth shall set you free.
Slashdot Mirror
It's now just after 5am, Chicago time. Is anyone else fighting the urge to dial *67,773-391-0595 'till someone picks up, act drunk, and try to order a pizza?
It's not black and white like this. Effective spam laws could be devised that would prevent people we don't want mailing us from doing so. Enforcement might be a problem, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.
Let me repeat: effective spam laws are not an oxymoron. We can make it work. We just have to try, and try again.
Don't you think that if a law were passed that made illegal forms of e-mail we needed, there wouldn't be public outcry enough to modify that law? The first step is a big one, but if they can ban drugs, they can ban spam.
One more thing, don't you think the guy that spearheads this into law will get some serious kudos for it? I mean, take Mr. Tax-and-spend, the guy whose entire reason for being in politics is to subsidize big business with tax money. He's coming up for election, needs to win a few votes, so he helps push through some imaginary legislation that makes a 50% dent in spam. Would you not be more likely to kiss his ass come election time? I know I would.
Wouldn't there eventually be a point at which people don't need more access? I'm not saying that we're there, I'm saying that such a point could exist, and it's not likely to increase significantly. So somebody puts up an FTP server and does a few gigs a day in traffic. If more people were doing this, it would certainly be a drain on current infrastructure, but wouldn't we eventually reach a point where supply met demand? I think that a savvy business can make money until that point is met. It's just about making the right choices.
So how much bandwith do we really need? Videoconferencing, Divx Futurama episodes, pr0n, even PPV streamed movies only take up so much bandwith. If everybody who wanted it could get 10mbps to their house, would broadband cease to be a commodity, or a toy, and start to become ingrained into the lives of everyday (read: non-/. readers) citizens? How would things be different if there weren't the bottleneck of bandwith?
I know, more questions than insightful comments, but inquiring minds want to know.
Note: I connect to my ISP at 28.8 because my phone lines suck balls. I have two phone lines, and my computer automatically dials out to the internet whenever the line is disconnected (about every 6 to 8 hours). My effective costs, ISP plus extra phone line, is about $50/month. For 28.8. I would gladly pay twice as much for DSL. Don't you think that somebody charging me $100/month could eke out a profit somehow?
I don't think that MS would have any serious trouble taking Nintendo's portable crown here. The GBA is, IMHO, several years behind the times. Remember the Sega portable? Now that was ahead of it's time. The color was great, and you could even get a TV adapter for it. If MS wanted to make a serious run at the GBA, I can all but guarantee victory. At least, it'll be a lot easier than the console market.
I agree. I've always been very satisfied with Windows 2000, but XP seemed to me like it wasn't as well made. I can't close the session on CDRWs that I burn, supposedly so that you can add files at any time, but the side-effect is that my MP3 CD player doesn't work. I was only able to properly shut down once, ever. I had 2 BSODs in 2 weeks. It's randomly frozen up on my on three separate occasions. Now, granted that these things may be due to my older P2/350 computer, but Win2k doesn't care one bit, so why should XP?
This computer has never run well. I would freshly install windows 98, and it would start crashing within 3 days. 2000 crashes once every couple of weeks to once a month. I can live with that. System Availability: 99.9329%. So I'm sure there are a lot of people who don't like Windows, but a properly set-up 2000 install really runs well. It just works.
The greatest job in the world, and one for which there's definately a need: an admin, to run everything. You could hold a vote amongst all the tenants to elect one, and part of his compensation would be an apartment there. It'd be like being the super, only with computers.
I'm sure there are countless amongst us who would gladly pay through the teeth for lots and lots of dedicated bandwith. If you have a building where every tenant is going to use it, you can really cut your costs, not to mention that these buildings already have the infrastructure in place, so it's only a matter of flipping the switch. So what would the per-user bandwith costs come out to if you were just plugging an entire building into, say, a T-3, based on how much bandwith you would want to dedicate to each apartment.
Also, how difficult would it be to set up QOS for each apartment, so that one guy couldn't hog it all and piss everyone else off? This is much more important for home users than for businesses.
I'm sure it'll be quite a while before you see PQCs at Best Buy, but if that ever happens, we're in more trouble than just needing a new encryption scheme. I could start capturing secured traffic now, wait for this thing to get big, and decrypt it then. I could capture most everything that's been encrypted with current schemes, and decrypt it in the future.
It's kinda scary when you think about it like that.
Just the thought of giving these people what they deserve sends chills up my spine. When I rule the world (any day now...), you will be the warden, if you promise to bandwidth-limit them to 2400 baud.
We may be better off working out our own solutions, but my computer-illiterate parents sure won't be. They can barely check their e-mail. Installing filtering software is definately beyond them.
What if a law were devised that would not stop legitmate e-mail, but which would stop spam? Unlikely, you say? That's not my point. What if? Productivity would increase, ISPs would have their costs lowered, and another form of fraud could be stopped. Stopping spam should be our goal, even if the possibility exists that it could block legitimate mail. We have to try.
What if I want to contact a company about employment? They don't know me, and they aren't currently fulfilling a business transaction of any sort. Should I not be allowed to e-mail them?
This is a more complicated issue than can be solved in one sentence, I'm afraid. We should figure it out, and work out all the kinks, so that we have something to get behind. If we come up with a simple set of rules that, if followed, would stop spam but not harm individual users, our position will be much stronger. You and I know what spam is when we see it, but it's still hard to define.
I think part of those rules should include a ban on selling addresses. If I send a company my address, and they spam me, I can just unsubscribe. But if they sell my address to another company, and they sell it to a thousand spammers, I can't be expected to unsubscribe from all of them. So if you can stop the sale, you can stop a lot of the spam before it starts. And there are no legitimate reasons why anyone would need millions of e-mail addresses, so I don't think this would hurt anybody doing legitimate business.
Also, the 3 months of classes was about 1/3 of the time I spent on this. So not 3 or 4 years, but not 3 months either. The thing is, I'm 20, so by the time I'm 30, and the age of most people in those classes, I'll have those 3 or 4 years, and then some.
I wanna say just one more thing. In my experiences, on my quest to get my MCSE, I've met a lot of people, some of whom I respected, some I didn't. From the guy who spent the last 14 years with Compaq debugging Unix dumps for corporate customers, who knows WTF he's doing, to the guy who--god knows how--just got his masters in comp sci, who can't spell Asia without junxtaposing the S and I. It is my opinion that the certification track weeds out the worst of them, which is it's job. There were people in my class that, god bless 'em, wouldn't be passing their tests, ever, and there were people who could study for it in 2 days and pass it. Speaking of which, I have one day to go.
I completely agree. The MCSE is only a start. Your Cisco Engineer had to get his Cisco certification first, then move on to other things. When he only had his one certification, did you chide him for putting all his eggs in one basket? Or did you encourage him to learn more? People here have the wrong attitude sometimes. Most people here would rather criticize than encourage. They would rather say, "MCSEs are crap" than "CCNA might do you better, but learn Perl and Linux and you're even better yet" or something. It's that attitude that gives *IX users a bad name. Not you personally, but people in general on /.
So, you know, work on that, people! Be nice. Please?
You make some good points, and I appreciate your reply. The AC kinda pissed me off, and I'm not surprised I got modded down as flamebait (I probably was), but there are a few things, not in any particular order, I'd like to address:
1) these classes taught me a whole lot. My instructors really, really knew what they were doing. And they mostly glanced over the material, spent about 2 minutes per page and went on. I really struggled to keep up, but when I went back and read through everything, it all came together.
2) I'm sure a decent UNIX admin could do a lot that I couldn't, but the reality of things is that if you work in a corporate environment, you're going to use Windows at one time or another. I'd sure like to be that UNIX admin, but this seemed like a good place to start.
3) As for windows-based firewalls, I may have misspoke. The day I use a windows-based firewall is my last day on the job.
4) As for increasing availability, there are lots of things that can be done. Load balancing, for one. Sure, Windows crashes. Hardware fails. More of the former than the latter. But if it's set up right, that's not a problem.
5) Anybody who claims that I can read, what'd I say, 3 linear feet of text? And not learn a whole lot(at least in theory), is just plain wrong. Comparing myself to where I was 6 months ago is like comparing a caterpillar to a butterfly. And making light of that is irresponsible.
Cheers.
I done read about 4 linear feet of books, took about 3 months' worth of classes, and as of Thursday, I'll have my MCSE. Does that make me the be-all, end-all, uber-hacker? No. But it qualifies me to design and implement Windows 2000 in a corporate environment, lock it down, and make sure it's available 24/7. And it qualifies me to detect your linux box screwing around on my firewall and alert your ISP. I'm not stupid, and your stipulation that MCSE candidates are stupid, not to mention the fact that you're too afraid to back it up with your nick, upsets me more than you know. I love Slashdot, but if I see more tripe like this modded up, I'm going to have to love something else. Like *shudder* activewin.com. Don't make me do it!
Economics class tells us that the bulk of the money is to be made in the middle. SonicBlue is aiming for the top. And they're aiming there, but not shooting for audiophiles, the only significant market segment that will gladly spend $1500 on a component.
This seems like a product without a market. Imagine if the iPod cost $800, how popular it would be. Who would want a nice, reliable, fuel-efficient Honda Civic if the base price was $20,000?
The product may be good, but the customer is only willing to pay a certain price for it. And very few would pay $1500. If the hardware cost was $300, and it was sold for $700, it would need to sell 3x as many units to make the same amount of money. So do you think you could sell 3x as many of these if the price were less than half? It's certainly a possibility.
Maybe you don't realize, but you posted this to slashdot.org, filled with free-software fans. Don't expect to get much sympathy selling consumer software here for $1500. In economics class, we learn that the lower the price, the more buyers there are. You seem to be trying to out-price most people, which is fine by us, because we can get the same functionality out of a custom setup, or another company's product, for less.
We also have a view that if this product isn't marketed to us, if it's not in our price range, it's destined to fail. Maybe not wholly accurate, but what's the target market for a $1500 mp3 player, anyway? Because it sure isn't me. I'm still miffed that portable MP3 CD players carry a $50-100 premium over their audio-cd-playing contemporaries. This thing costs $1500. I could buy a whole new computer for that price, use free software to run it, and have enough left over for enough Fat Tire to keep me happy for 6 months. Or I could just run cables, and have enough left for a year's worth of beer.
Your post would have been a better use of your time if you were to highlight for us some of the things that you can do with this that can't be done as well, or better, by a computer with SPDIF out. Because just saying that it cost a lot of money to develop the software isn't going to win anybody over.
If they're going to include 100mbps ethernet, why bother putting a HD on the unit in the first place? Why not stream the data over the e-net, from the larger, cheaper, more upgradeable HD in your PC? And if you're doing that, and seeing as to how most people would prefer the audio be input directly into their pre-amp via glass or RCA unconverted, what exactly are you paying for? The remote?
I don't know what tech support people you're talking to, but it sure isn't the SonicBlue people. My Rio Volt broke a week and a half ago, so I checked their website for a number to call to get help with it. The only number available was the priority support number, which costs $20 per call. There is no other number. So I e-mailed them, and they took 4 days to respond with an RMA form (they took 4 days to respond with a form). I filled out the form, and am now waiting for my RMA number and an address to mail this thing to. It's been 5 days. Meanwhile, I have to use audio CDs to listen to music, which I really hate, after having experienced the ease and flexibility of MP3 CDs. So I'm never ever going to buy anything they sell again, because it shouldn't take 2 weeks to do by e-mail what could be done in 10 minutes over the phone with adequate support. That's assuming that they get back to me this week, which I'm not entirely sure they will. I'm afraid they're just going to ignore my warranty requests. Suffice to say I won't be purchasing a Digital Audio Center.
You say that it's a foregone conclusion that people will accept this as a Good Thing, but I disagree. Here on Slashdot, if you were to summarize the posters' feelings on this issue, it's gotta be 90-98% against. Now the /. crowd disapproves of a lot of things that much of the public either could care less about or agrees with, but I really don't think this is going to go all the way without somebody saying, "Wait a minute, what if Verizon doesn't actually care about terrorism, and is just trying to stifle competition?" I really do think that rational thought will prevail in the end, and the government will do the right thing.
I have noticed a decline in smoking recently though. Not because of laws, but because social tolerance of it has decreased. Maybe that's the way it should go.
This is why I like Apple's iPod commercial. At the bottom of the TV it says in really small letters, "Don't steal music."
If my friends found out I downloaded an mp3 illegaly last night, and my stature decreased with them as a result, that would be the last MP3 I EVER download. Social acceptance is the biggest influence on culture anywhere. Bigger than laws, by a long shot. Now, you have to realize that for criminals, a lot of them are social deviants. They do things not for society's attention, but...
Well, I honestly don't know why they do these things. Murder, Grand Theft, and what not. But I really don't think it's for social acceptance. And if the law says they shouldn't, that's not too great a deterrent either. No more so, anyway. So why do they do these things? What's their reward? Because if we know what their reward is, we might be able to take it away. Maybe it's just money, which means that we can only take it away if we can catch them, which doesn't change anything.
Sorry for rambling.
Yap yap yap, at least we can play GTA. And as for guns, I don't know any numbers, but I was there earlier this year, and my hotel sat right across the street from a gun shop. So I don't know what that's about. But my theory on guns is this: if everybody had guns, there would be no crime. If nobody had guns, there would be no crime. But once you let the cat out of the bag, it's tough to stuff it back in. In the US, we have a saying, "Outlaw guns, and only outlaws will have guns." That's the gist of it anyway. But it makes sense to us.
That being said, you guys do what you want, make up your own crazy laws, censor stuff you don't like, whatever. If I don't like it, I'll just not move there, and to hell with the great weather and beaches and all the BBQing and what not. If they did that here, I'd move somewhere else. I really would. Really.
But your definition of freedom mustn't include freedom from censorship, because if it did, you wouldn't be able to say that US citizens have no more freedom than you. I'm not saying we're perfect, but GTA is a great game, and you aren't free to play it.
Yeah, in Australia, they make fun of Fosters, just like they make fun of that crocodile hunter guy. Or maybe they just hate him.
I'm not saying he is, by any means. But as to whether he should say whatever he can to get out of jail, you should've seen last night's South Park. The Butters special.
And the truth shall set you free.