In Sweden though, parliamentary representation is based off of % of people voting for your party. So if the equivalent system was placed into the US senate, each 1% would give a seat in the Senate effectively giving third parties a chance. However in the USA today, a third party that gets 40% of the vote does not get that in actual representation.
Its in 2010, and back in 2006 (coincidently right after another unpopular ruling by Sweden against TPB) they managed to have a very good showing and were only a few members shy of getting government funds for advertising, etc.
So nothing better than to walk underneath a streetlight that can burn a hole through a CD case? Somehow I think this might be an unsafe thing to have....
But usable bandwidth and price are the two things that really are the difference. Just because both can take you to www.google.com, doesn't mean that they are equal. Its equivalent if there were two roads to the same destination, one was a gravel road that was a few miles longer, and one was an interstate, sure, both get you there, but one is going to be a whole lot faster and better. Not to mention that there are some parts of the internet that you can't really utilize if you are using a low-speed connection, streaming video comes to mind along with VOIP.
Its things like this that would make regulation of ISPs a bad idea. Both a fiber optic network and a dial-up connection take you to the same internet, but I sure as heck don't want to be stuck with the dial-up speeds. Regulation would remove any competition for some customers and leave them stuck with last-generation speed, similar to if everyone in a certain neighborhood had to use a G3 iMac whereas someone in another neighborhood could use whatever computer they wanted even their brand new Core i7 box. Both are computers, so they are the same right?
but we have no similar protection in the world of E-book or MP3 devices. That needs to change.
No, its even worse then that. There would be nothing wrong with me if I had the skills to make personal air filters for my engine, but if I have the skills to rip a legally bought DVD into a compatible format thats illegal, if I had a legally bought DRM-ed song that wouldn't play on the device I couldn't strip out the DRM to make it play. Thats the real problem.
However, the wires should be owned by a regulated entity that doesn't play favorites with interconnection carriers and data providers.
That won't happen. Every regulatory body will play favorites, heck, just look at MS basically buying out ISO, an international standards body. Congress is supposed to be in the favor of the people, that doesn't happen. The truth is, regulatory bodies don't do anything good. In fact, I'd rather be screwed by a company that I have a power (no matter how limited) to get into the market and make a better product then to be screwed by the regulatory bodies where I have zero control over them.
No, no, no, no, no, and heck no. Regulation in the style of power/water companies will end up with no innovation. Theres really no difference if I have water from utility A, B, C, or D. Neither really with electricity companies A, B, C, or D. On the other hand theres a heck of a lot of difference between NetZero, Time-Warner, Generic local ISP (which are a rarity these days), and Comcast. What this will lead to is board of regulators either approving rate increases for no real reason, or them not approving rate increases for increased speed. If ISPs had been regulated from day one, the fastest connection any of us would get would be possibly DSL. Regulation makes sense for utilities because just about everything is equal, you can't get really any faster water or electrical service and theres little need for more high-capacity lines to homes, so its all about reliability.
Well, when you figure that the newest version of Ubuntu is going to support more things out of the box than Vista, I would say that there would be little reason for not thinking that. While you do need to put blame where blame is due, it is well within MS's power to put in a ton more drivers to the main disks and maintain some of them.
...But similarly, I'm not going to type in "Heterosexual romance" whenever I search. And its similar to all other controversial topics, abortion, gun control, etc that you are going to get at least two sides to the argument. When one side uses the "formal" term that is used to not offend, and the other side uses the slang term, when you type in the formal term you are going to get more arguments opposing it then for it. Anyone that I have met who was homosexual, did not refer to themselves as homosexual, but rather as gay or lesbian, just about everyone I have heard opposing the gay lifestyle uses the term homosexual.
I honestly don't think we will have an Orwellian future on the internet without it being blocked at the ISP level. The nice thing about internet site is, people are open to change. Just look at the recent social networking boom, first it was Friendster, then it was Myspace and now its Facebook, 2-3 years from now who knows what the masses will be using. Search engines are the same way, remember the days of Yahoo? If Google or Amazon end up censoring mainstream things, expect to see a mass migration.
...Or it could be that most people who are homosexual wouldn't really need a book explaining it, whereas people who are anti-gay would read more books about it, and would be inclined to read anti-homosexual literature.
No, but theres a few things that make UAC different than sudo on a Linux system. For one, most Linux systems are well documented and you know why you need to run it as root. For Windows its a constant guessing game (even more so with older software), sometimes it will run without running it as admin on UAC, sometimes it won't, sometimes some functionality is broken, etc. Whenever I sudo apt-get install something I know why I must run it as root, for a lot of programs in Windows, you don't have a clue.
UAC also has the annoying habit of blocking out anything else and slowing down your system until you click OK. Then theres the fact that it really doesn't do anything other than condition people to click OK, and even if you want to be informed on when you click OK, theres no way you can. Basically its just "Click OK to continue", at least in Linux I can at least figure out why I must run it as root.
I have to respectfully disagree.
Once you install SP1 and disable UAC, the OS is quite usable. It actually performs better than XP in some areas.
Thats the thing though, its not usable by default. Anyone who buys a new computer at Best Buy and gets Vista ends up with UAC and a nearly unusable computer. Being mostly computer illiterate save for surfing the web and checking e-mail, they don't really know how to fix it. So they know its Vista, know that its a new computer so it should be faster then their aging Pentium 4 with XP, but when its not they know who to blame: MS and Vista. Sure, Vista can be made usable, but the fact that it isn't by default shows a lack of planning by MS.
The difference is, the newer versions of Ubuntu, dare I say it, actually work. If I don't like Ubuntu or it doesn't work, I can just as easily move to Debian, Red Hat, openSUSE, or any other distro with minimal loss because all the applications are still there and everything is standardized, not to mention its free. With Windows if I wanted to jump ship, I would either have to learn a new OS (Mac, Linux, etc), or stay with Windows, buy overpriced hardware and still spend money retraining people and pay for the software too.
When I upgrade Ubuntu, its painless, just about everything works the same, same data, same everything just newer versions of some software which generally work the same as the prior versions. Everything is still reasonably fast (though it might be a tad slower), on the other hand, performance is almost non existent on Vista and you will notice a drop in speed and a loss of money in your wallet.
Why would businesses "upgrade" to Windows 7 whenever XP (or dare I say it, Vista) does the job fine. Windows 7 really offers nothing more than XP. Why? Because most businesses have one purpose for an OS, to run applications. MS's applications are usually so crappy that a third-party application has to be installed to do the job. If this third party application runs on XP then thats all they really need. The reason why Vista was so ill received is that the sole purpose of MS's OS (in the business world) didn't work. UAC made half of the applications be run as admin to run correctly, the OS itself was slow and sluggish, the new dialogs seemed change for change sakes rather then any usability improvements (especially for the computer illiterate types you have at the top of businesses that know only how to click the third icon from the left), etc.
There is no need for a business to "upgrade" from XP to Windows 7. No speed/performance increase, no new interesting programs, no gain of any new capabilities when coding programs so no new programs will require Windows 7, etc.
Um, I don't think you understand Christianity in the least. By "fulfilling the law" basically Jesus was claiming that he was the messiah that was referenced heavily in the law (which refers to the old testament).
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. Romans 6:14
Shows that Christians are not bound by the Old Testament laws because Jesus fulfilled them. There are several references to where Jesus goes opposes society's norm such as Mark 2:23-28 where Jesus plucked grain on the Sabbath. And another instance where he saved a woman from stoning because of adultery*
Jesus can easily be taken as a good role model, even if you do not believe he is God. Muhammad on the other hand can not. Find me one instance in Jesus' life that would be morally wrong today. And you can find several in the life of Muhammad (pedophilia, etc). It would be hard to argue that Muhammad was a perfect role model for a good life.
*This instance was not documented in some of the earliest manuscripts and is a point of debate for theologians to this day
Optical media = fail. All optical media fails with time. Blu-Ray is an emerging standard that is not yet entrenched (nor do we have the guarantee that next year a new, better, storage solution comes out and Blu-Ray goes the way of Betamax), Blu-Ray is not a fully open standard, the readers involve some expensive parts and licensing, plus an atrocious DRM scheme. How many desktops ship with Blu-Ray standard? Very, very, very, few. How many laptops? The number is even fewer. Even the PS3 doesn't have enough marketshare to guarantee Blu-Ray really surviving. If any optical media we should have them on CDs, something that just about every computer (save netbooks/tops) has built-in standard.
But honestly flash memory makes a lot more sense. Flash memory can withstand a lot more damage then optical media. For example, how many people have had Game Boy games that have made it through the washer, dropped countless times, handled without care, etc that still works? Compare that to a CD that may have suffered bit rot, scratching, etc.
Thats a great idea... except paper is going to end up being less reliable then a current digital standard. Take for example Compact Flash or SD cards, they would last a long time and because the standard is open, its going to be trivial to even build one from near scratch ~40 years into the future. Those have the capacity to store just about any high-res image on it and is able to be easily converted to more future-proof media when the time comes. On the other hand, in a crowded warehouse, an unknowing employee might just throw away all the "Sheets of paper with holes cut out of them", or they might tear, etc. making the binary totally useless because even with a small switch of 1 and 0, the entire picture would be completely unreadable.
Even the games that get this all somewhat right (like Advanced Wars, which in the end added too many units ruining the simplicity) wear out their welcome by cramming so many sequels out (I know it's a long series in Japan, but they had time between releases some times didn't they?).
To answer your comment about time between releases, not really, 4 games were released within a few years of each other, Game Boy Wars II and Super Famicom Wars were both released in 1998 and Game Boy Wars III and Advance wars were released in 2001, but on the rest of your comment Advance Wars is one of those games in a genre where each new game will feel more like an expansion pack then a new game. There are a few reasons for this:
A) The hardware is advanced enough to provide all the gameplay without sacrificing anything save graphics unlike NES-era RPGs were even some words could not be fully spelled out (for example, the lightning spell on Final Fantasy I displayed LIT whenever it was cast).
B) Adding any extras to the gameplay would kill it, anything beyond a few new CO powers would either diminish the realism of the game or make it unplayable. The game has effectively reached its "fun peak".
C) There are only so many things you can do with the storyline when the characters are impersonal like the units of Advance Wars.
A similar game series Fire Emblem takes the strategy elements of Advance Wars and puts them in a medieval RPG. The 3 Game Boy Advance games (Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade was only released in Japan), have the same engine as Advance Wars but the storyline adds much more to the gameplay making them seem more "innovative" even with little more then new missions and units.
For anything that isn't electronic, a shortened URL has you make less mistakes. For example: example.com/typeskjd583 is going to be more accurately typed than somesite.org/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php . A lot of people when they see a site in print can easily mentally change it around, so somesite.org/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php might become somesite.com/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php , the shortened URL protects from this because people aren't trying to convert it to words and then type it, for example, something that was written as "Gray" may be mentally changed by someone to "Grey" because when they say the word "Gray" in their heads they see it written as "Grey".
Its like typing in those serial numbers with software compared to cheat codes in old-school video games. The serial numbers are abstract so the letters in it are simply letters, whereas the cheat code may spell part of some word, if someone frequently misspells it (or the code is a misspelling of a word), it may be harder to enter.
Why do companies go to these great lengths to censor these people? Its a lot more effective to let the bloggers blog in relative obscurity then to make a big deal of it and then increase the pagerank of their blog. Pursing these types of cases only leads people to believe you do have something to hide, and that something to hide just got a lot higher up on Google by threatening to sue them....
Sure, Hungary might not, but there have been many, many, many countries that have switched to OSS. And whenever a few more do, then Red Hat, Novell, Sun and a ton of other US based companies in OSS can say, "Hey, we are based in the USA like MS is, and all these countries have switched to OSS and have saved X dollars, why not use a pilot program in X department and look at the cost savings" and then OSS will have a larger foothold in the USA.
Um, no, no, no. Apple introduced dirt cheap computers into the education market so people would be familiar with them and end up buying them. On the other hand, DOS systems were already dirt cheap so businesses looking to field many computers would choose the DOS systems even though they (in some respects) were inferior to the Apple boxes. So between school and work most people chose to go with the cheap option they would be using for their professional lives which was DOS.
Fast forward a few years and we still have the same thing (though, in many schools it is mixed Macs along with Windows boxes), businesses (save for publishing, photography and other arts places that almost always use Macs) still use Windows, not because its really better but because its cheaper (and some mission-critical apps may not work emulated in WINE on Linux), and people still choose Windows because its what their work uses and its cheap.
...That makes no sense in the digital world. Whereas a physical CD could be overstocked, theres no way you can "overstock" a digital song. So while it might make some economic sense to do it that way, most labels will just price everything at $1.29 and keep on going. The.69 price point will almost never be reached because either A) The song needs to be expensive to justify recording it, B) Its a popular song C) When its old its still known as one of the artist's greatest hits, and their lesser-known hits will be marked up because of reason A.
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There is an active Pirate Party in the USA at the moment however it is not formally recognized (yet)
In Sweden though, parliamentary representation is based off of % of people voting for your party. So if the equivalent system was placed into the US senate, each 1% would give a seat in the Senate effectively giving third parties a chance. However in the USA today, a third party that gets 40% of the vote does not get that in actual representation.
Its in 2010, and back in 2006 (coincidently right after another unpopular ruling by Sweden against TPB) they managed to have a very good showing and were only a few members shy of getting government funds for advertising, etc.
So nothing better than to walk underneath a streetlight that can burn a hole through a CD case? Somehow I think this might be an unsafe thing to have....
But usable bandwidth and price are the two things that really are the difference. Just because both can take you to www.google.com, doesn't mean that they are equal. Its equivalent if there were two roads to the same destination, one was a gravel road that was a few miles longer, and one was an interstate, sure, both get you there, but one is going to be a whole lot faster and better. Not to mention that there are some parts of the internet that you can't really utilize if you are using a low-speed connection, streaming video comes to mind along with VOIP.
Its things like this that would make regulation of ISPs a bad idea. Both a fiber optic network and a dial-up connection take you to the same internet, but I sure as heck don't want to be stuck with the dial-up speeds. Regulation would remove any competition for some customers and leave them stuck with last-generation speed, similar to if everyone in a certain neighborhood had to use a G3 iMac whereas someone in another neighborhood could use whatever computer they wanted even their brand new Core i7 box. Both are computers, so they are the same right?
but we have no similar protection in the world of E-book or MP3 devices. That needs to change.
No, its even worse then that. There would be nothing wrong with me if I had the skills to make personal air filters for my engine, but if I have the skills to rip a legally bought DVD into a compatible format thats illegal, if I had a legally bought DRM-ed song that wouldn't play on the device I couldn't strip out the DRM to make it play. Thats the real problem.
However, the wires should be owned by a regulated entity that doesn't play favorites with interconnection carriers and data providers.
That won't happen. Every regulatory body will play favorites, heck, just look at MS basically buying out ISO, an international standards body. Congress is supposed to be in the favor of the people, that doesn't happen. The truth is, regulatory bodies don't do anything good. In fact, I'd rather be screwed by a company that I have a power (no matter how limited) to get into the market and make a better product then to be screwed by the regulatory bodies where I have zero control over them.
No, no, no, no, no, and heck no. Regulation in the style of power/water companies will end up with no innovation. Theres really no difference if I have water from utility A, B, C, or D. Neither really with electricity companies A, B, C, or D. On the other hand theres a heck of a lot of difference between NetZero, Time-Warner, Generic local ISP (which are a rarity these days), and Comcast. What this will lead to is board of regulators either approving rate increases for no real reason, or them not approving rate increases for increased speed. If ISPs had been regulated from day one, the fastest connection any of us would get would be possibly DSL. Regulation makes sense for utilities because just about everything is equal, you can't get really any faster water or electrical service and theres little need for more high-capacity lines to homes, so its all about reliability.
Well, when you figure that the newest version of Ubuntu is going to support more things out of the box than Vista, I would say that there would be little reason for not thinking that. While you do need to put blame where blame is due, it is well within MS's power to put in a ton more drivers to the main disks and maintain some of them.
...But similarly, I'm not going to type in "Heterosexual romance" whenever I search. And its similar to all other controversial topics, abortion, gun control, etc that you are going to get at least two sides to the argument. When one side uses the "formal" term that is used to not offend, and the other side uses the slang term, when you type in the formal term you are going to get more arguments opposing it then for it. Anyone that I have met who was homosexual, did not refer to themselves as homosexual, but rather as gay or lesbian, just about everyone I have heard opposing the gay lifestyle uses the term homosexual.
I honestly don't think we will have an Orwellian future on the internet without it being blocked at the ISP level. The nice thing about internet site is, people are open to change. Just look at the recent social networking boom, first it was Friendster, then it was Myspace and now its Facebook, 2-3 years from now who knows what the masses will be using. Search engines are the same way, remember the days of Yahoo? If Google or Amazon end up censoring mainstream things, expect to see a mass migration.
...Or it could be that most people who are homosexual wouldn't really need a book explaining it, whereas people who are anti-gay would read more books about it, and would be inclined to read anti-homosexual literature.
No, but theres a few things that make UAC different than sudo on a Linux system. For one, most Linux systems are well documented and you know why you need to run it as root. For Windows its a constant guessing game (even more so with older software), sometimes it will run without running it as admin on UAC, sometimes it won't, sometimes some functionality is broken, etc. Whenever I sudo apt-get install something I know why I must run it as root, for a lot of programs in Windows, you don't have a clue.
UAC also has the annoying habit of blocking out anything else and slowing down your system until you click OK. Then theres the fact that it really doesn't do anything other than condition people to click OK, and even if you want to be informed on when you click OK, theres no way you can. Basically its just "Click OK to continue", at least in Linux I can at least figure out why I must run it as root.
I have to respectfully disagree. Once you install SP1 and disable UAC, the OS is quite usable. It actually performs better than XP in some areas.
Thats the thing though, its not usable by default. Anyone who buys a new computer at Best Buy and gets Vista ends up with UAC and a nearly unusable computer. Being mostly computer illiterate save for surfing the web and checking e-mail, they don't really know how to fix it. So they know its Vista, know that its a new computer so it should be faster then their aging Pentium 4 with XP, but when its not they know who to blame: MS and Vista. Sure, Vista can be made usable, but the fact that it isn't by default shows a lack of planning by MS.
The difference is, the newer versions of Ubuntu, dare I say it, actually work. If I don't like Ubuntu or it doesn't work, I can just as easily move to Debian, Red Hat, openSUSE, or any other distro with minimal loss because all the applications are still there and everything is standardized, not to mention its free. With Windows if I wanted to jump ship, I would either have to learn a new OS (Mac, Linux, etc), or stay with Windows, buy overpriced hardware and still spend money retraining people and pay for the software too.
When I upgrade Ubuntu, its painless, just about everything works the same, same data, same everything just newer versions of some software which generally work the same as the prior versions. Everything is still reasonably fast (though it might be a tad slower), on the other hand, performance is almost non existent on Vista and you will notice a drop in speed and a loss of money in your wallet.
Why would businesses "upgrade" to Windows 7 whenever XP (or dare I say it, Vista) does the job fine. Windows 7 really offers nothing more than XP. Why? Because most businesses have one purpose for an OS, to run applications. MS's applications are usually so crappy that a third-party application has to be installed to do the job. If this third party application runs on XP then thats all they really need. The reason why Vista was so ill received is that the sole purpose of MS's OS (in the business world) didn't work. UAC made half of the applications be run as admin to run correctly, the OS itself was slow and sluggish, the new dialogs seemed change for change sakes rather then any usability improvements (especially for the computer illiterate types you have at the top of businesses that know only how to click the third icon from the left), etc.
There is no need for a business to "upgrade" from XP to Windows 7. No speed/performance increase, no new interesting programs, no gain of any new capabilities when coding programs so no new programs will require Windows 7, etc.
For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. Romans 6:14
Shows that Christians are not bound by the Old Testament laws because Jesus fulfilled them. There are several references to where Jesus goes opposes society's norm such as Mark 2:23-28 where Jesus plucked grain on the Sabbath. And another instance where he saved a woman from stoning because of adultery*
Jesus can easily be taken as a good role model, even if you do not believe he is God. Muhammad on the other hand can not. Find me one instance in Jesus' life that would be morally wrong today. And you can find several in the life of Muhammad (pedophilia, etc). It would be hard to argue that Muhammad was a perfect role model for a good life. *This instance was not documented in some of the earliest manuscripts and is a point of debate for theologians to this day
Optical media = fail. All optical media fails with time. Blu-Ray is an emerging standard that is not yet entrenched (nor do we have the guarantee that next year a new, better, storage solution comes out and Blu-Ray goes the way of Betamax), Blu-Ray is not a fully open standard, the readers involve some expensive parts and licensing, plus an atrocious DRM scheme. How many desktops ship with Blu-Ray standard? Very, very, very, few. How many laptops? The number is even fewer. Even the PS3 doesn't have enough marketshare to guarantee Blu-Ray really surviving. If any optical media we should have them on CDs, something that just about every computer (save netbooks/tops) has built-in standard.
But honestly flash memory makes a lot more sense. Flash memory can withstand a lot more damage then optical media. For example, how many people have had Game Boy games that have made it through the washer, dropped countless times, handled without care, etc that still works? Compare that to a CD that may have suffered bit rot, scratching, etc.
Thats a great idea... except paper is going to end up being less reliable then a current digital standard. Take for example Compact Flash or SD cards, they would last a long time and because the standard is open, its going to be trivial to even build one from near scratch ~40 years into the future. Those have the capacity to store just about any high-res image on it and is able to be easily converted to more future-proof media when the time comes. On the other hand, in a crowded warehouse, an unknowing employee might just throw away all the "Sheets of paper with holes cut out of them", or they might tear, etc. making the binary totally useless because even with a small switch of 1 and 0, the entire picture would be completely unreadable.
Even the games that get this all somewhat right (like Advanced Wars, which in the end added too many units ruining the simplicity) wear out their welcome by cramming so many sequels out (I know it's a long series in Japan, but they had time between releases some times didn't they?).
To answer your comment about time between releases, not really, 4 games were released within a few years of each other, Game Boy Wars II and Super Famicom Wars were both released in 1998 and Game Boy Wars III and Advance wars were released in 2001, but on the rest of your comment Advance Wars is one of those games in a genre where each new game will feel more like an expansion pack then a new game. There are a few reasons for this:
A) The hardware is advanced enough to provide all the gameplay without sacrificing anything save graphics unlike NES-era RPGs were even some words could not be fully spelled out (for example, the lightning spell on Final Fantasy I displayed LIT whenever it was cast).
B) Adding any extras to the gameplay would kill it, anything beyond a few new CO powers would either diminish the realism of the game or make it unplayable. The game has effectively reached its "fun peak".
C) There are only so many things you can do with the storyline when the characters are impersonal like the units of Advance Wars.
A similar game series Fire Emblem takes the strategy elements of Advance Wars and puts them in a medieval RPG. The 3 Game Boy Advance games (Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade was only released in Japan), have the same engine as Advance Wars but the storyline adds much more to the gameplay making them seem more "innovative" even with little more then new missions and units.
For anything that isn't electronic, a shortened URL has you make less mistakes. For example: example.com/typeskjd583 is going to be more accurately typed than somesite.org/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php . A lot of people when they see a site in print can easily mentally change it around, so somesite.org/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php might become somesite.com/wiki/index/cool_tips/code/perl/hello_world.php , the shortened URL protects from this because people aren't trying to convert it to words and then type it, for example, something that was written as "Gray" may be mentally changed by someone to "Grey" because when they say the word "Gray" in their heads they see it written as "Grey".
Its like typing in those serial numbers with software compared to cheat codes in old-school video games. The serial numbers are abstract so the letters in it are simply letters, whereas the cheat code may spell part of some word, if someone frequently misspells it (or the code is a misspelling of a word), it may be harder to enter.
Why do companies go to these great lengths to censor these people? Its a lot more effective to let the bloggers blog in relative obscurity then to make a big deal of it and then increase the pagerank of their blog. Pursing these types of cases only leads people to believe you do have something to hide, and that something to hide just got a lot higher up on Google by threatening to sue them....
Sure, Hungary might not, but there have been many, many, many countries that have switched to OSS. And whenever a few more do, then Red Hat, Novell, Sun and a ton of other US based companies in OSS can say, "Hey, we are based in the USA like MS is, and all these countries have switched to OSS and have saved X dollars, why not use a pilot program in X department and look at the cost savings" and then OSS will have a larger foothold in the USA.
Um, no, no, no. Apple introduced dirt cheap computers into the education market so people would be familiar with them and end up buying them. On the other hand, DOS systems were already dirt cheap so businesses looking to field many computers would choose the DOS systems even though they (in some respects) were inferior to the Apple boxes. So between school and work most people chose to go with the cheap option they would be using for their professional lives which was DOS.
Fast forward a few years and we still have the same thing (though, in many schools it is mixed Macs along with Windows boxes), businesses (save for publishing, photography and other arts places that almost always use Macs) still use Windows, not because its really better but because its cheaper (and some mission-critical apps may not work emulated in WINE on Linux), and people still choose Windows because its what their work uses and its cheap.
...That makes no sense in the digital world. Whereas a physical CD could be overstocked, theres no way you can "overstock" a digital song. So while it might make some economic sense to do it that way, most labels will just price everything at $1.29 and keep on going. The .69 price point will almost never be reached because either A) The song needs to be expensive to justify recording it, B) Its a popular song C) When its old its still known as one of the artist's greatest hits, and their lesser-known hits will be marked up because of reason A.