Remember they (telcos) knew that you would need a minimum of 224 GB per month back in the year 2006. What CAP is being proposed in your market, 5 GB, 10GB, 50 GB, 100 GB? If the companies had used the Billions in our tax money and government funding to build out their Fiber offerings since 1994 as they promised they would, there would be no need for CAPs and the companies would all be making more money, even at $55.00 per month. It is over a 1000 percent markup over their costs. And their costs are decreasing, not increasing.
They have received Billions from the government to build out Fiber offerings since before 1996, here it is 2009, almost a decade after the Japanese got 100 MB / 100 MB for less than $55.00 per month. Now they are rolling out 1 GB / 1 GB for less than $55.00 thanks to government deregulation of NTT (the dominant telco in Japan).
Even Japanese NTT officiers have stated that they are making plenty of money, even while only charging customers $55.00 or less per month. (I saw this first hand on CSPAN, heard it from the officials mouth myself)
Their profits have gone up, their bandwidth usages have gone down and they still want to maintain a scarce resource in order to drive up your monthly costs to $150 per month. All the while never giving you better than 20 - 40 Mbps down, who knows how they will throttle you to slow you down further or what your upstream speeds will be.
I know this is NOT what you want to hear, but move to another state...sorry, but I believe it is that bad.
Look for Fiber to the home; (the Last Mile). Is there any company offering 100MB / 100MB over Fiber here in the US for less than $55.00 per month as the Japanese have had since 2000? Heck, Does any body have Fiber coming to their home or apartment...and I am NOT talking FIOS, they cap at around 45 - 50 Mbps.
Look for No state income tax. (I believe there are still about 20 states with no income tax. Why is it some states politicians can control themselves and others can NOT? Florida vs California would be a good example.)
A place that will rarely if ever use Eminent Domain. (After all excessive use of Eminent domain is equivalent to poor planning and you being unable to pass your property on to whoever you wish when you die, government will make a grab for everything you own.)
No Walmarts within a 500 mile radius and counties and cities that have already worked hard to ban Walmart from entering. (Just watch the videos on YouTube, here is one to get you started, Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man. Another great series is Wal-Mart â" The High Cost of Low Price â" Part 1 (This is the first of 10 videos, if you watch these and still shop at Wal-Mart, well I would not want to live near you.).. There are others from here, watch a few of them and see how you feel about them as a company. You will not want to shop there either when you see how they treat their employees (overseas and here in US), how products like fertilizer are allowed to leach in and pollute a towns water source and more. And do NOT forget about how a town s infrastructure is devestated, businesses put out-of-business, people to lose jobs, higher paying jobs replaced by lower paying jobs - without medical benefits or benefits that are too expensive to purchase - all in a race to the bottom, its just sad.)
Look for a STRONG independent representation in both state and federal government / legislature; if either Democrats or Republicans are too dominant they will eventually screw up your lives. Chances are you are not a Democrat or a Republican anyway, The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz (Of 8,753,787 people who have taken the quiz as of 12/12/08; less than 8.81% identify themselves as Republican or Conservative and less than 17.27% identify themselves as Democrat or Liberal. Those labels just do NOT fit any more and when the majority of us wake up to this fact perhaps we can replace this two party system where both parties are slowly killing us slowly and softly over years and years and years. Remember that the Republicans have controlled the White house for well over 12 years and so have the Democrats, It is even worse the farther back you go.)
Tolerance, regardless of the issue, lack of tolerance is good for nobody. As soon as you allow one group to use heavy handed tactics subverting another group, regardless of the topic, you are one step from them telling you what you can and can not do.
Religious freedom. A strong understanding of the constitution, what the founders intended. If any one religious group, no matter how well intending, is allowed to pass any laws based on religion; you have allowed a legal precedent that will allow another religious group with a larger population to pass laws forcing their religion on you and others. Thus no longer do you have rel
My definition of unlimited is the latter. With that definition of unlimited, 1 megabit per second times 3600 seconds times 24 hours, time 30 days Is some 300 Gigabytes.
I agree with you. And yet Comcast and Time Warner are suggesting CAPs as low as 5 Gigabytes or 50 Gigabytes per month.
And if I was streaming over the net, you bet I would want the high definition signal, period. You know you will too. The telcos know this also and it worries them greatly.
I say let them sweat, they are not doing us any favors.
Hey telcos, ISPs, Cable companies, etc, you are PIPES, NOTHING MORE. Get over it!
If you continue in the future as you have in the past attempting to convince us that you are giving us something more when you are NOT (and we now know this to be true) we are hardly going to feel sorry for you when a new competitor enters the market, refuses to play by your rules and starts actually providing service to us. Nope, we will never look back and you will have earned the bed you are forced to lie in.
If you want to charge more, innovate and give me a reason, a value proposition to pay you more. Start providing service, applications, features that I actually want and stop it with the BS tiered customer-no-service system you have been successfully cramming down our throats since 1994.
If I have your cable TV service, then get rid of the old crop of DVRs and provide me, your customer with a decent current processor speed, memory, hard disk space that will allow me to watch a movie, in my house, with my power backup when your service fails me for any reason.
Yes the movies should be stored locally on the hard drive of the DVR that you force me to rent from you. There should never be a reason to erase them from my DVR, in fact only I should erase the hard disk of my DVR when I need to make space for another movie, period. Fail to do this and I will build my own Linux DVR on steroids and never need your p
Our problem here in the US is that the entities (telcos) in charge of delivering our bandwidth, refuse to lay down a strand of glass to each of our houses (the last mile).
I personally watched a Japanese official, on CSPAN, state that they make more than enough money as their costs are less than $1.00, the American telco executives looked a bit uncomfortable with what this Japanese NTT telco executive was admitting too. It was telling, humorous and a bit depressing all at the same time. We Americans are so getting raped and dragged over the coals via high fees, customer no service and telco industry FUD!
Yet both Comcast and Time Warner, etc, are suggesting to be financially viable they need caps as low as 5 Gigabytes, pathetic. (Note: THIS IS FUD) They, themselves suggested 250 Gigabytes once upon a time (which is still pathetic), but have now started quoting CAPS of less than 50 Gigabytes. I would like 1+ Terabyte of service and usage for around $55.00 per month and you the telco could still make almost double your costs, everyone stop buying the telco FUD.
If you are in an area of the US where the telcos and/or ISPs are talking about monthly bandwidth CAPS of less than 250 megabytes per month, you had better start screaming to your elected officials before you get SCREWED by them. Per BellSouth's Chief Architect Henry Kafka (note his figures are blatantly WRONG) The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month
In other words, if your cap is less than 224 gigabytes per month, you are setting yourself up to be charged a heck of lot more each month for service. Besides HD IP television, movie, online gaming and video watching, you have zero control of how much FLASH and other CSS, JavaScript that is loaded from different websites each time you access them, yes it might be small, but it all adds up. The point, if telcos had started building out their fiber since 1994 as they promised to do, over the last mile, pathetic bandwidth CAPS would be NOT be needed. But not building out, keeping the resource scarce they give themselves the excuse they need to charge you more.
When I first purchased PaintShop Pro, I simply did not have hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, so I bought PaintShop Pro. Never stated that it was better than anything else, just that I could do everything I needed to do with it. Period. In fact I am willing to go on the record, based on many Graphics Experts (I am not one) experience that PhotoShop is superior, it simply doe NOT MATTER.
My problems started when I went to update my version of PaintShop Pro, no biggie, right, OOPS WRONG.
Instead of just upgrading as it should, the first thing they TRIED to do was lie to me and tell me I MUST UPDATE my MICROSOFT Operating System. Fortunately with over 20 years of IT experience, I KNEW that this was NOT TRUE.
I had already gotten fed up with setting my Windows 2000 desktop at work to NOT auto update, I wanted to control this, and having Microsoft in their inferior infinite wisdom ignoring my wishes and proceeding to auto update my PC anyway, even though I expressly set this NOT TO OCCUR. This change occurred mid way through the Windows 2000 updates, one day the setting worked, meaning you could say NO, only update manually by me and it would do what you wanted. However the next day, after updating to the current version of Windows 2000, if you set your system to NEVER update without your approval, well the updates happened anyway.
I knew a banking system administrator that pointed out a rule in the banking regulations that stated that no software application and/or operating system should do anything within the IT environment of the bank without approval of the Bank personel...obviously not the exact wording, but you get the drift, if anyone knows the specific financial and/or banking regulation, please point it out to me and others as I did not write it down. I admit that the concept makes 100% sense, no third party should be able to make changes to the internal systems of any financial or banking institution without an officer of the institution signing off on it first.
This ignoring of a users (my) wishes did not change with XP, nor with Vista, nor will it change with any future Microsoft OS. And to be honest, even if they did temporarily set this to work correctly (i.e. you set it NOT to auto update, it should wait until you initiate the update, period, end of discussion, no exceptions); I can NO longer TRUST THEM not to decide to change their mind with a future update and/or release and change this to ignore my wishes again. Just as they did with Windows 2000.
Fortunately I KNEW that I could take a current copy of the OS running on ANY PC, install the PaintShop Pro software to a USB device and it would run just fine on my now outdated, never auto updating, version of Windows 2000 (pre the release that would NOT let you turn off auto updating). Granted I had to use a current version of XP to bypass their (Corel and Microsoft) attempts to vendor lock in me to Microsoft operating systems. In fact Corels installation software tried to prevent me from installing to the USB also, however you simply ignore the defaults, make your own choices as to where the software installs and after it is installed, copy it to the USB device and your good to go. Conficker was yet another weak attempt to demonize the USB ports so as to make them unavailable to users out of FUD. (Based on Conficker being defeated by a strong ID/password combination and game over for that FUD.)
So I can now run the current copy of PaintShop Pro that I own, I bought it, on my outdated PC with my outdated Microsoft operating system.
However this will be the last version of the software I ever purchase. Their attempt at vendor lockin for me, pissed me off enough to finally get me into GIMP and see what the new version could do. Imagine my surprise when I found that I could do EVERYTHING with GIMP that I was doing with PaintShop Pro. I was very pleasantly surprised. I really liked Paint Shop Pro, really l
...I believe that both the webcam and wireless networking were not functional on the Linux version...
I bought 3 ASUS Eee PCs, one for me and two for others (one 6 years old and she loves it...no problems and prior to using the Eee PC, she had only used Microsoft Windows PCs, no Apple Macs yet, though I am sure that day will come) basically three netbooks for the price of one desktop or one laptop PC. Anyway, both WiFi and the Webcam worked out of the box. So what you believe, based on my personal experience X3 is incorrect, just FYI.
Rule of thumb, if the box (laptop, subnotebook, netbook or desktop running Linux) comes configured from whatever manufacturer with hardware pre-installed with Linux, the hardware just works out of the box, period.
Where you run into problems with Unix, Linux and Mac OS, is when you add hardware, especially any proprietary hardware (which is almost everything newly released) as the proprietary vendor, desiring vendor LOCK IN; (Escaping vendor LOCK-IN) for themselves, or forced upon them by a company, will NOT create, produce, offer the drivers for their proprietary hardware until they are about to replace it with something new. Nvidia is one of the worst offenders. Intel is not much better.
I do not get that excited anymore when I hear a vendor is releasing drivers into open source. Only because in every instance, the drivers that are released into open source is for hardware that they are end of lifeing, being replaced by something more recent. The Nvida GPUs are a good example, they recently released either the 3xxx through 4xxx drivers, however they have released only proprietary drivers for the 8xxx and 9xxx newer adapters with GPUs. Perhaps in two years those drivers will be available...personally I would prefer a company come out with a competing GPU and release the open source drivers within a day or two of the proprietary drivers so all platforms could use their new hardware products...I will keep wishing.
Now that at least one vendor has released a CD burner that will burn HD DVDs (yes they will burn Blue Ray also if you are into that format) it will be interesting to see how quickly the drivers are released into the open source community. With a HD camera like this one (Vision Research's Phantom HD, 2048 x 1080 @ 1,000 frames-per second HD Camera;) and software like Cinelerra-cv; Only with Linux would you be able to add memory to a PC and have the OS NOT eat up the lion share of the memory, leaving more memory available for the application software to run faster....and do NOT get me started on the software bloat that comes with auto-updating, egad save me from that crap. In this example, a heck of allot more memory available to do video manipulation of all kinds, including editing, compression, etc...
Is there a Windows software application that will let you set up a server farm for a production movie studio environment like Cinelerra-cv? (Some Codecs supported: WMV; FLV; H.264; MPEG-4; Default: H.264 or MPEG-4 on Quicktime among others... cinelerra on vimeo - to actually see examples of what Cinelerra can do.) If so I bet it costs quite a bit more. And what happens if you the studio, needs to do so
Even people who do not like Linux, would kill to get XP instead of Vista or Windows 7 on their netbook. Sadly they no longer are offered this option.
Will Windows 7 even run in under 1 GB of RAM? And I mean run well...NOT well if at all.
I can still run Linux with 128 MB of RAM, but it runs well with 512 MB of RAM....and things get better and better with 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM. Even better if you have more RAM, than Linux leaves it available for your applications, the operating system does not suck it up....you gotta love that!
When all the beta users of Windows 7 are forced into Vista in the future, as is the current plan, than the Microsoft FUD spinners will be out in force again, as they are with most mainstream media sources like the source quoted in the article here.
I am glad multiple people here have pointed out that the hardware vendors are forced to carry the Windows Operating System, thus the statistics are hugely inflated and unreliable.
Great post I agree that the majority of us are in similar boats, or trains so to speak.
Obviously riding a train, bus or metro is not the same as driving a car; even there it always should come down to Personal Responsibility.
There is probably not much you can do at work without approval from someone, though it can be as cheap as it can be at home for the entire office if you boss is so inclined. If you have a formal IT department, talk to them. However if you do NOT have formal IT, you could run it by your boss and add it to the network. There are many ways to make it secure, even down to NOT having it broadcast its presence, thus no hackers can see it. If you do decide to get a router for work or home, make sure you ONLY purchase a DD-WRT supported router. The DD-WRT open source software gives you some great additional capabilities normally only found on routers costing hundreds for routers costing in the $15 - $60 range.
I take exception with this FUD that you appear, as many, to have bought into...:
...is probably much more secure than open wifi.
Whether your WiFi is open or not should not matter. In fact we should all keep our WiFi open and available for all as we have choice, between SSH, SFTP, VPNs, secure ID/passwords, VLANs and more; so there is no reason to worry about open WiFi anymore. I like many get tired of the industry scare tactics and FUD.
Stop buying into the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, the FUD, spread by the FEAR mongering corporations that want to charge all of us monthly fees and provide as little service as possible.
Monthly fees in and of themselves are NOT necessarily a bad thing, especially if the company is innovative and truly providing service.
These days, that is NOT true of the telecoms, cellular providers, ISPs, Cable Companies, and other corporations trying to squeeze every last drop out of the internet. These poor excuses for companies have received billions in federal funding to build out fiber since before 1996. If a telecom bought out and/or is now servicing the area of a telecom that got funding, they should still be expected to provide the service to the people living there. Just like the financial companies, these companies, accepted funding, added fees (totaling more than $200 Billion) and started buying up the competition instead of building the infrastructure as they promised. Add on their customer-no-service-response for any error in the monthly billing, based on searches online seems to happen to new people every day.
In fact over the last 5 years the episodes of customer no service have risen to new highs. It is so bad that there is not a single corporation out there that honestly gives a darn about their customers. If they did the complaints on Rip Off
What's becoming increasingly clear is that it is not about protecting children. It is about enforcing views and most of those views appear to stem from theological rather than rational origins.
You pretty well covered it there. Censor yourself, let me censor me and do not worry yourself at what level I choose to censor myself. Oh and by the way, if I censor myself, okay, but trust me, whatever I do will NOT impact anyone else, no matter what. If my actions impact another, without their approval, than I am impacting their net neutrality, their freedom.
That would be taking away your freedom....not something I would ever advocate, no matter how the argument / discussion / proposal was phrased.
In fact lets take this a step further, if I am not willing to stand up for another persons right to net neutrality and freedom, than I do not deserve it myself.
Its my responsibility to decide what the children in my family do or do not see, as their parent, no one else but me has that responsibility. I will not relinquish it to you, to the government, to the church or anyone that wishes to control anything because of their own agenda. If you try to force it on me, you are WRONG. Nothing, will ever make that RIGHT. Get over it...worry about yourself and let me worry about me.
If you suspect someone of violating the law and someone's life is in danger, please inform the correct legal entity for the problem to be resolved. If no one is in danger, perhaps the law should be changed as some other non-thinking-do-guider-with-an-agenda probably had the law passed based on their own personal agenda. If no one is being harmed, the law probably should not be on the books.
So use your brain, maintain personal responsibility, and never, never let another force their views on you. Since I do NOT want another to force their views on me, I must join with you to protect you as that protects me.
Personal responsibility dictates just because another says something, films something, records something, etc.... that does not give any one else the right to harm another because of what was said, viewed, filmed, recorded, etc... If you do something that harms another, you and only you should be called on the carpet for your indiscretion. You must be held accountable for your actions. Period. Game over.
Personal Responsibility, solves most of these moral dilemmas that some people get up in arms about.
One of the best definitions of Personal Responsibility that I have seen to date on the web. Her definition covers the following: Accepting personal responsibility includes:; When you have not accepted personal responsibility, you can run the risk of becoming:; What do people believe who have not accepted personal responsibility?:; What terms are used to describe those who have not accepted personal responsibility?:; In order to accept personal responsibility you need to develop the ability to::; Recommend that you save this link and use it as much as possible for others in similar discussions here on slashdot....Warning note: there is a headless image of a woman in underwear and garters, less skin showing then you would see with most bathing suits, however some might find this offensive...consider yourself warned and take Personal Responsibility for your click and your welcome!
Insist on Personal Responsibility from everyone, holding each accountable to their own actions, period. That is the only solution. Nothing else is going to do it, no matter how your phrase the proposal. No excuses, no BS,
But, I'm not sure why you're bringing religion into the argument
Basically because after reading the posts that were already there, I realized there were many posts referencing religion and censorship based on religion. So I am definitely not the first nor the only one pointing out that censorship often occurs first from a religious perspective.
I also disagree with you that the two are not
related. I would suggest to you that most censorship is based on moral issues. Never mind that you can choose not to watch, not to hear, not to partake by turning off, personally blocking a site, etc....
For most, it is not enough to censor themselves, they want to censor you, me and everyone else, as they know what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. It is not enough for them to live their lives, they want to control how you live yours.
As most of us have learned, too many politicians, at least here in the US, hope that most people will NOT show up to vote. When that happens, groups, especially religious groups, that historically are whipped into a frenzy with anti-religious propaganda will show up and vote. Often voting based on a card handed out in their church or group, rather than using the brain that the god they believe in gave them (I would suggest to NOT use that brain is SIN...but that is just me.)
When they vote from a religious perspective on anything, they open the doors, setting precedents, for other religious groups with higher popluation (i.e. more voters) to change laws that ultimately can result in all of us losing religious freedom.
I am not anti religoius...I am pro freedom, which MUST include religious freedom.
I just wish other religious people would realize, its not that they can NOT pass laws...they can and have....
Rather they need to ask themselves, SHOULD WE? Most of the time they SHOULD NOT.
So far I've had 100% (2/2 yei!) success with converting co-workers from Office to OpenOffice....
Small print: these guys were not programmers or writers and only do simple tasks; they most likely had never even (nor will learn in the future) learned how to use styles with word processor.
Considering what the average manager in any company does with WordProcessing(Word), Spreadsheets(Excel) and Slide Presentation (PowerPoint) (the three biggest reason for Office) they have been able to do since the Windows 95 days...this is not a surprise.
OOo Writer, Calc and Impress do everything that those three do and as you get use to it you start to love them.
Not surprised that you are having such success.
Now if we can get people to turn the auto update crap OFF, selectively updating only a couple of times per year, than Microsoft will no longer control their desktops.
This of course is why they insist via FUD, that you MUST KEEP auto update turned on to be safe - NOT.
My response, if the operating system is That BAD, that unsafe than I need a different BETTER operating system. I suggest Linux, at least you can turn auto update OFF with Linux.
The auto update BLOAT can ONLY be conquered by turning it OFF. FUD, FUD, FUD...lol, when are you people going to stop believing this crapola FUD?
Eventually you too will get tired of your PC being slowed down by their FUD, when that happens you will look for a better alternative.
Good news: there are many Linux alternatives out there...go for one of them and leave Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt where it belongs, in your past, permanently left behind!
I'd assume they are offering some sort of "unlimited" plan at a low cost....
Got screwed over by a cellular company (actually two before I walked with my dollars and never looked back...) I had a monthly plan, purchase their ALL-I-CAN-EAT-TEXT-MESSAGING plan (almost doubling my monthly in the process) for one reason.
I DID NOT WANT SURPRISES. I wanted to KNOW what my monthly was, pay it and be done with it.
Still they messed it up, set up the messaging wrong, it ate my voice minutes than begin charging me...one customer service rep admitted that it had been setup up wrong and said that they would take care of it. They DID NOT take care of it.
So after a three year positive track record of paying my bill ontime, instead of customer service for their mistake, they turned off my service for non payment.
Like I am going to pay for their mistake...NOT.
Been using VoIP, Total Cost of service for 1 year is less than $100. Done, no extras, no surprises and very successful for over 4 years now. I was paying in excess of $1,000 per year before the additional text messaging, which added over $500 per year to my bill... I was willing to pay that, but no more.
They obviously thought they could just send me a large bill ($500+ and I would pay it), not.
And these people that get $1,000, $5,000, $15,000 bills because of either lies or the cellular company's mistakes...too many to count. I for one, having first hand experience, believe you.
Solution is simple: Do not buy their service any more.
In fact, continue searching, until you see zero complaints for three or more years, do not purchase service through that company.
The first time I had over a 5 year positive track record; the second time I had over a 3 year positive track record. (Positive track record = I paid my bill every month)
None of the companies care about any of us, their customer no service - to - collections policies prove this.
None of them deserve to succeed.
I will NOT use them until I see 3+ years of NO NEW COMPLAINTS. As of today, April 2009, they all have new complaints....they suck.
Great post...keep em coming. Too many people over here believe the corporate FUD!
The lobbiest for the Telecom / Cellular community here in America has been extremely successful. They have successfully stagnated and prevented innovation since before 1996. And they continue today.
They pay politicians, get money to provide service, do NOT provide the service, complain that it is too expensive, get more money from politicians in their pockets, use money to buy out competition...never do they give us the service they promise.
The industries best today in America is FIOS, and it is capped at 45 MBPS down...do not know what up is, not that it matters.
Anything less than 100MB / 100MB for less than $55 per month as Japan has had since 2000 is unacceptable anyway.
To add insult to injury, after taking billions for years, since before 1996, we still have nothing to show for it. The FIOS people are spending more money trying to convince people that they are getting something great in advertising, instead of building out their fiber offerings.
Many of us are waiting for a new competitor to enter the market, when that happens, these Anti-American telcoms (all of them) will get their comeuppance.
Even if they drop their prices below that of the competitor that is first to offer 100 MB / 100 MB for less than $55 per month; I will never do business with them again. Why encourage them to do tomorrow what they have been doing to all Americans for over two decades....
Nope, they blew the wad when their customer no service antics combined with their political lobbying resulted in less service and less choice. The LOST OUR TRUST!
I for one, will never give them a chance to mess with my TRUST ever again.
Please keep making posts to help wake up Americans, as the companies want us to stay asleep so they can continue raping, pillaging and burning, they are the new Vikings and Americans need to see them for what they are.
Between the search engines and Rip Off Reports, you can learn just had bad all the Telecom and Cellular companies really are...pathetic.
Just purchase a Nokia N800 running
OS2008 Linux or other Linux hand held that has built in WiFi. You will find that in 80% of the places you spend significant time, your home, your work being the two at the top of the list, you have FREE WiFi.
Forget Windows CE or any other OS where the cellular companies are controlling what they can and can NOT do as in this example...assuming it is not an April Fools post.
Thus you do NOT have to pay a monthly FEE for service.
The industry has been fighting this losing battle for years, by attempting to force chip and board manufacturers NOT to release their technology on WiFi, but cellular. That way they can use their networks and charge monthly fees.
Fine if you want to pay monthly fees, especially in this down economy. But when those same companies practice customer no service policies with increased phantom bills (for services you did not use, or mistakes they made, but try to charge you) what do you expect.
Add in VoIP at a cost from FREE (VoIP under Linux, Asterisk) to less than $100 per year (Skype) and you have a real winning combination.
I second many others who have stated the obvious, the providers provide pipes, nothing more. Any time they have provided more, it either limits or degrades the service the user experiences. Not because it has to, but because their billing model (monthly) demands it to be so.
Simple solution, stop buying them. Get a hand held that runs on Maemo open source software project, thus you can run Linux and use FREE WiFi. Game over.
I am surprised that no one has created a server driven ad model for WiFi and/or cellular text messaging. It would make a ton of money.
Let fools who want to text via cellular pay that monthly expense, and those more intelligent users that connect via Ethernet or WiFi to the internet can text for FREE to their hearts content. Add in accounts and do NOT exclude anyone for any reason....offer a one line add and make more money then you spend in providing service.
They scream, porn, rape, child molestation, crime, etc, etc, etc, this moral issue, that moral issue.
Of course you CAN legislate morality, the better question to ask is SHOULD YOU?
To have freedom of religion, no one religion can dominate, otherwise we all lose religious freedom. THIS IS BAD.
Now ask yourself, is your religion the dominant religion right now? (Answer is probably No)
Are members of your religion having more babies than all other religions? (Answer is NO, unless you are Muslim)
If you are Muslim, do NOT get too excited as ultimately you too will lose because the fanatic Islamist, also claiming to be Muslims are going to start nuking as soon as they get the capability, the money to purchase, to do so. So while from a population perspective you will dominant, after the first dirty nuke, those numbers will change, like it or not. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Nothing anyone does can stop this fact...either Islamist become tolerant or the Muslim religion is ultimately doomed.)
Good luck with that one...you will need it.
The only point, any law passed with Religious intent or perspective, allows your law to be replaced by a religion with more population.
This is why you MUST NOT pass any law of a religious nature and why government and religion should NEVER mix.
To do so risks the loss of freedom of religion for you and your posterity.
Obviously any law of censorship, ultimately threatens your freedom of religion, no matter how that law is worded. Do you really want to do that to your kids? To their kids?
In America, our founding fathers understood religious persecution, sadly we have forgotten those lessons.
Net Neutrality is in YOUR religions best interest. Net Neutrality is what god wants you to have. Now go, worship freely, get out of government and sin no more!
Please enough flash already...if you are going to use flash, please allow me to turn that crap off.
Stop designing websites best viewed with Adobe flash player also, the fact that it has over 80% of the market is why many of us want an alternative...we understand what happens in either a Monopoly or Oligopoly (add in Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, Phoenix and anyone else who caters to Microsoft and ignores other non Microsoft platforms)
...What other industry do you know of that is basically an oligopoly, and the price of the goods they produce has INCREASED over the life of the long run...
Easy, the car industry.
One of my brothers, 6 years before my purchase had a base sticker price of under $1,000. I believe it was a Cutlass Supreme, circa 1972-3.
Another family member, 2 years later, Malibu Classic, circa 1974, base sticker price just over $2,000.
Finally I purchase, 1980, base sticker price is $8,000.00 for a Chevy product.
Enough said.
I want a car that either does NOT need gas or gets OVER 100 miles per gallon before Hypermiling. So right now, none of them make a car I would purchase. And the base sticker price today, please, what a joke.
Buy used for under $2,000, purchase used engine ($1,000) w/ less than 20,000 miles on it, replace your engine; purchase new paint job, $1,000. Have car that looks new and will last for 10 years for around $4,000 - $5,000 Total up front cost. Invest the balance that you would have paid assuming you have it, or better yet pay your self first, i.e. make monthly payments to an investment that you control and start enjoying life again.
Pay more than $5,000 for a car that will last less than 10 years, no thank you.
P.S. The car above, Honda Civic, 4 cyl, 45 - 50 miles per gallon before Hypermiling.
Or get on the waiting list for the cars from either India or some other third world country, total cost: $3,000; plan to buy a new $3,000 car every 2 - 3 years and use the old one for parts. Still be financially way ahead of the game.
When either Italy or that other country begins selling the compressed air engines that get over 100 miles and do NOT need any gas, now you have a car that I want to purchase.
The US car manufacturers have NOT made a car I wanted to purchase for many, many years. If they do not start producing cars for alternative fuels to gasoline, I say let them fail.
We have all heard stories about engines that powered Cadillacs circa 1965 - 1975 (story I heard was that person that worked at Martin Marietta Aerospace had one that got 100 miles per gallon, showed his friend, his friend told me, so second hand story that one, but I believed him) that disappeared, assumption either the car companies or oil companies bought up the rights and buried em...time to let them bury themselves.
When the game manufacturers read your post, they will spin it as yet another satisified customer, after all you bought the game system even though it was overpriced, understanding that it will burn out and you will get burned yet again....
Now if you did something different, like NOT buy the crapola, than perhaps, just perhaps, after a few other like minded souls stopped purchasing, we all might get a decent system worth are hard earned money.
I agree with you, there is NO customer satisfaction when your system burns out...and if you purchase another, eventually it will burn out too.
And with the next generation of systems, the same old BS.
I stopped buying after Ninetendo, I won a free Super Nintendo at a company function when it was new...
I played the Wii, its okay, not worth the money. When I look at the playstation, I think, my computer should be able to play this.
I wish someone would release the information on the BE (Break Even) point where ticket prices got so high that even with concession sales of popcorn, soda, etc... the theaters started losing money.
I remember thinking that the BE point for movies felt like $5 - $6 per ticket...but there is no science behind that...just a feeling and by the time the price hit $7+ per ticket my friends and I had stopped going regularly. And I always bought two large popcorns and two large sodas...not sure what the markup is on those, but expect that it is over 200%, especially when you consider that a bag of kernels costs less than $2.00 and the syrup for soda is dirt cheap, even today. How much more money might the theater have made if it kept its ticket prices down to get over 50% fuller audiences plus concession stand sells? (For games, concession stand type of sells would be additional modules that add hours of playing time, functionality or capability, add a few modules at $5 - $10 per module and before long your profit is going to be higher)
My guess is whenever the movies started being less than 50% full for prime time, that should have been a wake up call for all parties concerned and it was not. Hardly surprising that they make less money today than they use too. Not surprised the game industry is making similar miss-steps.
Seems like the same decision makers in the movie and film industry are in the game industry. I know as in the Telecom industry, these companies have percentage ownership in each other, thus they are all in bed with each other. What movie comes out today from a major studio that does not also have a companion website, merchandise, games, etc....
At $15 - $30 per game (assuming a minimum of 50+ hours of non repetitive play) is a heck of allot more affordable than the $50 - $80 per title that they try to get today. And if the game does not give 50+ hours of non repetitive play, I still might put down $5 - $10 dollars for it if I thought it was fun. Another reason I thought those that produced for the iPhone were very short-sighted. A brain dead game that is fun to play should be worth $5 dollars at least, but no, you Apple iPhone store users insist on it being either FREE or less than $1.00 (i.e..99 cents), no wonder you only have crap titles coming out for your platform. And if you are a game provider, good luck getting any notice or play in that confused, cluttered, hard to stand out app store they have. If your market is only willing to pay $.99 cents for what you produce, do yourself a favor and find a new market.
These higher prices and planned obsolescence is why I stopped buying game consoles (Nintendo, PlayStation, etc...) and games for any Microsoft operating system. Why pay $50 for a game just have the manufacturer discontinue the console and NOT be able to play it. Same with Microsoft operating specific games, why pay $50 for a game whose shelf life is less than 3 years. If a game is good I might put it down, as I do most board games, and pick it up again at a later date to play again, however once that operating system changes, you are toast. And I am not going to keep buying the same game title, over
Amazing...this is NOT directed at you, as your post makes sense to me, however somewhere out here I read that someone thought Linux violated many Microsoft patents and could not find the entry, and it might have been deleted while I was copy/pasting links...but I figured your heading,
Microsoft please stop spreading FUD, the only reason more people are NOT AWARE of your FUD is because of the pro Microsoft FUD that Microsoft spreads and people mistakenly pick up and spread as gospel...hardly the truth, but than again, that is the point of FUD isnt it! To keep users ignorant to the truth and extend the Windows desktop as a money maker for Microsoft.
Fortunately most people are waking up to the lies of pro Microsoft FUD, thus it loses its impact. This is why Microsoft continually tweaks and changes their message as people wake up and see through their BS. All the experts know that any short term success is overshadowed by long term failure, ultimately they will fail. We are seeing this now as the Microsoft desktop dominance continues to weaken over time. The only place they have over 60% market share is in the public or government sector. The last number I saw for the private sector was closer to 46%. Didnt they use to have 85% - 90% of the desktop market? And thanks to netbooks (the Vista mis step hurt them) less than $400; running Linux with only 512 MB of RAM; that will do everything most business management people need to do, their desktop market share continues its negative slide.
Why spend over $1,000 for a desktop when I can purchase a netbook running Linux with 512 MB of RAM for under $400. A huge plus in that it will do everything a typical business person needs it to do. Literally EVERYTHING, no exceptions. (you can replace Office, Word Processor, Adobe Reader, Outlook, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Windows Media Player, Databases, you name it, etc with superior alternatives under Linux.) And if I purchase more memory: 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB of RAM or more; the Linux operating system will not eat it up, rather that extra memory will be available for my applications which means everything runs faster on my computer thanks to Linux. Heck Linux, will run with only 128 MB of RAM. Will even Windows 95 run with that little RAM memory?; Granted Linux runs much better with 512 MB or even 1 GB of RAM or more....
Microsoft steals from Linux and Open source, and they hide the theft in their proprietary code. They
After IBM and Microsoft had their falling out, IBM separately developed PC DOS 6.1 in 1993, and since Microsoft failed to file against IBM, my guess is that any operating system similar to PC DOS 6.1 developed up to and including 1993 would successfully weaken any Microsoft claim if not out right invalidate it. That fact in addition to plenty of prior art (see some examples below, there are many others as other posters here have mentioned...) should be more than enough for any person and or company to tell Microsoft to stuff their misplaced Legal FUD!
TomTom was stupid and blew it big time, they should have called Microsoft's bluff and said go ahead and file your court case, while the lawsuit was working through the court system any potential issues with long filenames, still questionable in my opinion could have been removed from the platform, that way by the time the issue would have worked its way through the court system TomTom would NOT have been in jeopardy any longer....they should have stood their ground and called Microsoft's bluff. (The last thing Microsoft wants is for any of these BS patent claims to go to court and be legally invalidated.)
MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code.
If a site has not actually restored their systems from backups to verify that the backups are actually valid and good....than their backups just may be so secure no one can get them.
Having experienced this first hand with a commercial backup product (#1 in its industry) from a very large and respected company with a heck of a good track record...thus you sorta expect it to work...
Not fun at all. Since the team had existed before I came on board, I was surprised no one before me had attempted to restore data from the backups. Amazing, but it does happen.
I have also been asked where the Any key is? One person could not wrap their mind around the fact that there was not any key on the keyboard called the Any key; seeing their lack of understanding and dismay at my reply that there was NOT an Any key; I took a different perspective and corrected myself. I pointed to the space bar on their keyboard and told them that was the ANY KEY.
Based on the relieved smile I received in return, I guess I helped them, even if the answer was both wrong and right. At least now they had a key to press, whenever they read press any key in a manual. Problem solved.
Slashdot Mirror
why would they release information about this only to quickly revert their intentions?
Good catch, you are right, they will NOT. They will keep pushing for this in every and all markets.
They have made it clear that they want everyones monthly bill to reach $150 per month, in all circumstances, no matter what.
Remember they (telcos) knew that you would need a minimum of 224 GB per month back in the year 2006. What CAP is being proposed in your market, 5 GB, 10GB, 50 GB, 100 GB? If the companies had used the Billions in our tax money and government funding to build out their Fiber offerings since 1994 as they promised they would, there would be no need for CAPs and the companies would all be making more money, even at $55.00 per month. It is over a 1000 percent markup over their costs. And their costs are decreasing, not increasing.
Per BellSouth's Chief Architect Henry Kafka (note his figures are blatantly WRONG) The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month
They have received Billions from the government to build out Fiber offerings since before 1996, here it is 2009, almost a decade after the Japanese got 100 MB / 100 MB for less than $55.00 per month. Now they are rolling out 1 GB / 1 GB for less than $55.00 thanks to government deregulation of NTT (the dominant telco in Japan).
Even Japanese NTT officiers have stated that they are making plenty of money, even while only charging customers $55.00 or less per month. (I saw this first hand on CSPAN, heard it from the officials mouth myself)
Not surprising when even US telcom officials have known for years that it costs them less than .50 cents to offer 1 GB of service to the customer.
Their profits have gone up, their bandwidth usages have gone down and they still want to maintain a scarce resource in order to drive up your monthly costs to $150 per month. All the while never giving you better than 20 - 40 Mbps down, who knows how they will throttle you to slow you down further or what your upstream speeds will be.
Another area they should have explored further is industry lobbying. They said that cable and phone companies spend $1.5 million per week in Washington
People the telecoms have been lying to you since before 1996, and continue to do so because you are gullible enough to buy their FUD .
Its almost a decade later and no one in the US has 100 MB / 100 MB internet for less than
Look for Fiber to the home; (the Last Mile). Is there any company offering 100MB / 100MB over Fiber here in the US for less than $55.00 per month as the Japanese have had since 2000? Heck, Does any body have Fiber coming to their home or apartment...and I am NOT talking FIOS, they cap at around 45 - 50 Mbps.
Look for No state income tax. (I believe there are still about 20 states with no income tax. Why is it some states politicians can control themselves and others can NOT? Florida vs California would be a good example.)
A place that will rarely if ever use Eminent Domain. (After all excessive use of Eminent domain is equivalent to poor planning and you being unable to pass your property on to whoever you wish when you die, government will make a grab for everything you own.)
No Walmarts within a 500 mile radius and counties and cities that have already worked hard to ban Walmart from entering. (Just watch the videos on YouTube, here is one to get you started, Confessions of a Wal-Mart Hit Man. Another great series is Wal-Mart â" The High Cost of Low Price â" Part 1 (This is the first of 10 videos, if you watch these and still shop at Wal-Mart, well I would not want to live near you.).. There are others from here, watch a few of them and see how you feel about them as a company. You will not want to shop there either when you see how they treat their employees (overseas and here in US), how products like fertilizer are allowed to leach in and pollute a towns water source and more. And do NOT forget about how a town s infrastructure is devestated, businesses put out-of-business, people to lose jobs, higher paying jobs replaced by lower paying jobs - without medical benefits or benefits that are too expensive to purchase - all in a race to the bottom, its just sad.)
Look for a STRONG independent representation in both state and federal government / legislature; if either Democrats or Republicans are too dominant they will eventually screw up your lives. Chances are you are not a Democrat or a Republican anyway, The Worlds Smallest Political Quiz (Of 8,753,787 people who have taken the quiz as of 12/12/08; less than 8.81% identify themselves as Republican or Conservative and less than 17.27% identify themselves as Democrat or Liberal. Those labels just do NOT fit any more and when the majority of us wake up to this fact perhaps we can replace this two party system where both parties are slowly killing us slowly and softly over years and years and years. Remember that the Republicans have controlled the White house for well over 12 years and so have the Democrats, It is even worse the farther back you go.)
Tolerance, regardless of the issue, lack of tolerance is good for nobody. As soon as you allow one group to use heavy handed tactics subverting another group, regardless of the topic, you are one step from them telling you what you can and can not do.
Religious freedom. A strong understanding of the constitution, what the founders intended. If any one religious group, no matter how well intending, is allowed to pass any laws based on religion; you have allowed a legal precedent that will allow another religious group with a larger population to pass laws forcing their religion on you and others. Thus no longer do you have rel
My definition of unlimited is the latter. With that definition of unlimited, 1 megabit per second times 3600 seconds times 24 hours, time 30 days Is some 300 Gigabytes.
I agree with you. And yet Comcast and Time Warner are suggesting CAPs as low as 5 Gigabytes or 50 Gigabytes per month.
I would suggest that we (anyone with imposed bandwidth CAPS) are going to get screwed in the future with any bandwidth CAPS, especially bandwidth CAPS less than 1 Terabyte per month. Even back in 2006, the telcos knew that the day of a single house consuming 224 Gigabytes or more would come.
We are all caught in a problem of the telcos own making, now they want to profit from it as well, welcome to America.
An in my definition, High Definition is 1024P, not interlaced, not 720 or lower...Heck the Vision Research's Phantom HD, 2048 x 1080 @ 1,000 frames-per second HD Camera will film true high definition, my TV will show 1024P, you better believe I would rather see a higher quality image.
And if I was streaming over the net, you bet I would want the high definition signal, period. You know you will too. The telcos know this also and it worries them greatly.
I say let them sweat, they are not doing us any favors.
Hey telcos, ISPs, Cable companies, etc, you are PIPES, NOTHING MORE. Get over it!
If you continue in the future as you have in the past attempting to convince us that you are giving us something more when you are NOT (and we now know this to be true) we are hardly going to feel sorry for you when a new competitor enters the market, refuses to play by your rules and starts actually providing service to us. Nope, we will never look back and you will have earned the bed you are forced to lie in.
We now, in 2009, understand that it costs you less than .50 cents (that was a 2006 price and technology has made your delivery systems cheaper) to provide us with a Gigabyte of service for the month (yes consumer, their costs are less than .50 cents per 1 Gigabyte per month). If you can not give me Fiber considering the over 1000 percent markup I and others pay for the pathetic throttled service that you have decided to provide to us, than you no longer deserve to be in business.
If you want to charge more, innovate and give me a reason, a value proposition to pay you more. Start providing service, applications, features that I actually want and stop it with the BS tiered customer-no-service system you have been successfully cramming down our throats since 1994.
You can start by not inspecting my packets (Respect our Privacy) and guaranteeing me Net Neutrality now and forever, nothing less is acceptable.
If I have your cable TV service, then get rid of the old crop of DVRs and provide me, your customer with a decent current processor speed, memory, hard disk space that will allow me to watch a movie, in my house, with my power backup when your service fails me for any reason.
Yes the movies should be stored locally on the hard drive of the DVR that you force me to rent from you. There should never be a reason to erase them from my DVR, in fact only I should erase the hard disk of my DVR when I need to make space for another movie, period. Fail to do this and I will build my own Linux DVR on steroids and never need your p
The network is the computer, not the opposite .. :D
Not without Net Neutrality.
Our problem here in the US is that the entities (telcos) in charge of delivering our bandwidth, refuse to lay down a strand of glass to each of our houses (the last mile).
They typically state It will cost too much, I call BS, please force them US government as they had to in Japan. If they had the will, we would already have it. The telcos financially will NEVER have the will to give us MORE at a reasonable monthly rate. (Japan monthly rates thanks to de-regulation would be a more than reasonable place to start, especially when you consider that it costs less than $5.00 per month to deliver (2 Gigs = $1.00 or .50 cents per 1 Gbps of bandwidth, they can probably provide it cheaper than this, please do NOT accept their FUD).
I personally watched a Japanese official, on CSPAN, state that they make more than enough money as their costs are less than $1.00, the American telco executives looked a bit uncomfortable with what this Japanese NTT telco executive was admitting too. It was telling, humorous and a bit depressing all at the same time. We Americans are so getting raped and dragged over the coals via high fees, customer no service and telco industry FUD!
As you can see, at a figure roughly double Kafka's doomsday HDTV family usage figure of 1+ Terabytes per month, the total cost can be projected at $32, not $560.
Yet both Comcast and Time Warner, etc, are suggesting to be financially viable they need caps as low as 5 Gigabytes, pathetic. (Note: THIS IS FUD ) They, themselves suggested 250 Gigabytes once upon a time (which is still pathetic), but have now started quoting CAPS of less than 50 Gigabytes. I would like 1+ Terabyte of service and usage for around $55.00 per month and you the telco could still make almost double your costs, everyone stop buying the telco FUD.
If you are in an area of the US where the telcos and/or ISPs are talking about monthly bandwidth CAPS of less than 250 megabytes per month, you had better start screaming to your elected officials before you get SCREWED by them. Per BellSouth's Chief Architect Henry Kafka (note his figures are blatantly WRONG) The average IPTV user will likely consume about 224 gigabytes per month
In other words, if your cap is less than 224 gigabytes per month, you are setting yourself up to be charged a heck of lot more each month for service. Besides HD IP television, movie, online gaming and video watching, you have zero control of how much FLASH and other CSS, JavaScript that is loaded from different websites each time you access them, yes it might be small, but it all adds up. The point, if telcos had started building out their fiber since 1994 as they promised to do, over the last mile, pathetic bandwidth CAPS would be NOT be needed. But not building out, keeping the resource scarce they give themselves the excuse they need to charge you more.
Not only should they (telcos) NOT be rewarde
When I first purchased PaintShop Pro, I simply did not have hundreds of dollars for Photoshop, so I bought PaintShop Pro. Never stated that it was better than anything else, just that I could do everything I needed to do with it. Period. In fact I am willing to go on the record, based on many Graphics Experts (I am not one) experience that PhotoShop is superior, it simply doe NOT MATTER.
My problems started when I went to update my version of PaintShop Pro, no biggie, right, OOPS WRONG.
Instead of just upgrading as it should, the first thing they TRIED to do was lie to me and tell me I MUST UPDATE my MICROSOFT Operating System. Fortunately with over 20 years of IT experience, I KNEW that this was NOT TRUE.
I had already gotten fed up with setting my Windows 2000 desktop at work to NOT auto update, I wanted to control this, and having Microsoft in their inferior infinite wisdom ignoring my wishes and proceeding to auto update my PC anyway, even though I expressly set this NOT TO OCCUR. This change occurred mid way through the Windows 2000 updates, one day the setting worked, meaning you could say NO, only update manually by me and it would do what you wanted. However the next day, after updating to the current version of Windows 2000, if you set your system to NEVER update without your approval, well the updates happened anyway.
I knew a banking system administrator that pointed out a rule in the banking regulations that stated that no software application and/or operating system should do anything within the IT environment of the bank without approval of the Bank personel...obviously not the exact wording, but you get the drift, if anyone knows the specific financial and/or banking regulation, please point it out to me and others as I did not write it down. I admit that the concept makes 100% sense, no third party should be able to make changes to the internal systems of any financial or banking institution without an officer of the institution signing off on it first.
This ignoring of a users (my) wishes did not change with XP, nor with Vista, nor will it change with any future Microsoft OS. And to be honest, even if they did temporarily set this to work correctly (i.e. you set it NOT to auto update, it should wait until you initiate the update, period, end of discussion, no exceptions); I can NO longer TRUST THEM not to decide to change their mind with a future update and/or release and change this to ignore my wishes again. Just as they did with Windows 2000.
Fortunately I KNEW that I could take a current copy of the OS running on ANY PC, install the PaintShop Pro software to a USB device and it would run just fine on my now outdated, never auto updating, version of Windows 2000 (pre the release that would NOT let you turn off auto updating). Granted I had to use a current version of XP to bypass their (Corel and Microsoft) attempts to vendor lock in me to Microsoft operating systems. In fact Corels installation software tried to prevent me from installing to the USB also, however you simply ignore the defaults, make your own choices as to where the software installs and after it is installed, copy it to the USB device and your good to go. Conficker was yet another weak attempt to demonize the USB ports so as to make them unavailable to users out of FUD. (Based on Conficker being defeated by a strong ID/password combination and game over for that FUD.)
So I can now run the current copy of PaintShop Pro that I own, I bought it, on my outdated PC with my outdated Microsoft operating system.
However this will be the last version of the software I ever purchase. Their attempt at vendor lockin for me, pissed me off enough to finally get me into GIMP and see what the new version could do. Imagine my surprise when I found that I could do EVERYTHING with GIMP that I was doing with PaintShop Pro. I was very pleasantly surprised. I really liked Paint Shop Pro, really l
...I believe that both the webcam and wireless networking were not functional on the Linux version...
I bought 3 ASUS Eee PCs, one for me and two for others (one 6 years old and she loves it...no problems and prior to using the Eee PC, she had only used Microsoft Windows PCs, no Apple Macs yet, though I am sure that day will come) basically three netbooks for the price of one desktop or one laptop PC. Anyway, both WiFi and the Webcam worked out of the box. So what you believe, based on my personal experience X3 is incorrect, just FYI.
Rule of thumb, if the box (laptop, subnotebook, netbook or desktop running Linux) comes configured from whatever manufacturer with hardware pre-installed with Linux, the hardware just works out of the box, period.
Where you run into problems with Unix, Linux and Mac OS, is when you add hardware, especially any proprietary hardware (which is almost everything newly released) as the proprietary vendor, desiring vendor LOCK IN; ( Escaping vendor LOCK-IN ) for themselves, or forced upon them by a company, will NOT create, produce, offer the drivers for their proprietary hardware until they are about to replace it with something new. Nvidia is one of the worst offenders. Intel is not much better.
I do not get that excited anymore when I hear a vendor is releasing drivers into open source. Only because in every instance, the drivers that are released into open source is for hardware that they are end of lifeing, being replaced by something more recent. The Nvida GPUs are a good example, they recently released either the 3xxx through 4xxx drivers, however they have released only proprietary drivers for the 8xxx and 9xxx newer adapters with GPUs. Perhaps in two years those drivers will be available...personally I would prefer a company come out with a competing GPU and release the open source drivers within a day or two of the proprietary drivers so all platforms could use their new hardware products...I will keep wishing.
Now that at least one vendor has released a CD burner that will burn HD DVDs (yes they will burn Blue Ray also if you are into that format) it will be interesting to see how quickly the drivers are released into the open source community. With a HD camera like this one (Vision Research's Phantom HD, 2048 x 1080 @ 1,000 frames-per second HD Camera;) and software like Cinelerra-cv; Only with Linux would you be able to add memory to a PC and have the OS NOT eat up the lion share of the memory, leaving more memory available for the application software to run faster....and do NOT get me started on the software bloat that comes with auto-updating, egad save me from that crap. In this example, a heck of allot more memory available to do video manipulation of all kinds, including editing, compression, etc...
Is there a Windows software application that will let you set up a server farm for a production movie studio environment like Cinelerra-cv? (Some Codecs supported: WMV; FLV; H.264; MPEG-4; Default: H.264 or MPEG-4 on Quicktime among others... cinelerra on vimeo - to actually see examples of what Cinelerra can do.) If so I bet it costs quite a bit more. And what happens if you the studio, needs to do so
Even people who do not like Linux, would kill to get XP instead of Vista or Windows 7 on their netbook. Sadly they no longer are offered this option.
Will Windows 7 even run in under 1 GB of RAM? And I mean run well...NOT well if at all.
I can still run Linux with 128 MB of RAM, but it runs well with 512 MB of RAM....and things get better and better with 1 GB or 2 GB of RAM. Even better if you have more RAM, than Linux leaves it available for your applications, the operating system does not suck it up....you gotta love that!
When all the beta users of Windows 7 are forced into Vista in the future, as is the current plan, than the Microsoft FUD spinners will be out in force again, as they are with most mainstream media sources like the source quoted in the article here.
I am glad multiple people here have pointed out that the hardware vendors are forced to carry the Windows Operating System, thus the statistics are hugely inflated and unreliable.
Spinning wheel going round.... but NOT for me!
FUD is NOT new is it.
Great post I agree that the majority of us are in similar boats, or trains so to speak. Obviously riding a train, bus or metro is not the same as driving a car; even there it always should come down to Personal Responsibility.
There is probably not much you can do at work without approval from someone, though it can be as cheap as it can be at home for the entire office if you boss is so inclined. If you have a formal IT department, talk to them. However if you do NOT have formal IT, you could run it by your boss and add it to the network. There are many ways to make it secure, even down to NOT having it broadcast its presence, thus no hackers can see it. If you do decide to get a router for work or home, make sure you ONLY purchase a DD-WRT supported router. The DD-WRT open source software gives you some great additional capabilities normally only found on routers costing hundreds for routers costing in the $15 - $60 range.
I take exception with this FUD that you appear, as many, to have bought into...:
...is probably much more secure than open wifi.
Whether your WiFi is open or not should not matter. In fact we should all keep our WiFi open and available for all as we have choice, between SSH, SFTP, VPNs, secure ID/passwords, VLANs and more; so there is no reason to worry about open WiFi anymore. I like many get tired of the industry scare tactics and FUD.
Stop buying into the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, the FUD, spread by the FEAR mongering corporations that want to charge all of us monthly fees and provide as little service as possible.
Monthly fees in and of themselves are NOT necessarily a bad thing, especially if the company is innovative and truly providing service.
Why have U.S. customers paid an estimated $200 billion in higher services rates and tax breaks for fiber-optic networks they never received?
These days, that is NOT true of the telecoms, cellular providers, ISPs, Cable Companies, and other corporations trying to squeeze every last drop out of the internet. These poor excuses for companies have received billions in federal funding to build out fiber since before 1996. If a telecom bought out and/or is now servicing the area of a telecom that got funding, they should still be expected to provide the service to the people living there. Just like the financial companies, these companies, accepted funding, added fees (totaling more than $200 Billion) and started buying up the competition instead of building the infrastructure as they promised. Add on their customer-no-service-response for any error in the monthly billing, based on searches online seems to happen to new people every day.
In fact over the last 5 years the episodes of customer no service have risen to new highs. It is so bad that there is not a single corporation out there that honestly gives a darn about their customers. If they did the complaints on Rip Off
As most of us have learned, too many politicians, at least here in the US, hope that most people will NOT show up to vote.
Voting in Australia is compulsory. Those that do not show up to vote get hit with a fine.
I had never heard that before, amazing.... how is that working for Australia?
What's becoming increasingly clear is that it is not about protecting children. It is about enforcing views and most of those views appear to stem from theological rather than rational origins.
You pretty well covered it there. Censor yourself, let me censor me and do not worry yourself at what level I choose to censor myself. Oh and by the way, if I censor myself, okay, but trust me, whatever I do will NOT impact anyone else, no matter what. If my actions impact another, without their approval, than I am impacting their net neutrality, their freedom.
That would be taking away your freedom....not something I would ever advocate, no matter how the argument / discussion / proposal was phrased.
In fact lets take this a step further, if I am not willing to stand up for another persons right to net neutrality and freedom, than I do not deserve it myself.
Its my responsibility to decide what the children in my family do or do not see, as their parent, no one else but me has that responsibility. I will not relinquish it to you, to the government, to the church or anyone that wishes to control anything because of their own agenda. If you try to force it on me, you are WRONG. Nothing, will ever make that RIGHT. Get over it...worry about yourself and let me worry about me.
If you suspect someone of violating the law and someone's life is in danger, please inform the correct legal entity for the problem to be resolved. If no one is in danger, perhaps the law should be changed as some other non-thinking-do-guider-with-an-agenda probably had the law passed based on their own personal agenda. If no one is being harmed, the law probably should not be on the books.
So use your brain, maintain personal responsibility, and never, never let another force their views on you. Since I do NOT want another to force their views on me, I must join with you to protect you as that protects me.
Personal responsibility dictates just because another says something, films something, records something, etc.... that does not give any one else the right to harm another because of what was said, viewed, filmed, recorded, etc... If you do something that harms another, you and only you should be called on the carpet for your indiscretion. You must be held accountable for your actions. Period. Game over.
Personal Responsibility, solves most of these moral dilemmas that some people get up in arms about.
One of the best definitions of Personal Responsibility that I have seen to date on the web. Her definition covers the following: Accepting personal responsibility includes:; When you have not accepted personal responsibility, you can run the risk of becoming:; What do people believe who have not accepted personal responsibility?:; What terms are used to describe those who have not accepted personal responsibility?:; In order to accept personal responsibility you need to develop the ability to::; Recommend that you save this link and use it as much as possible for others in similar discussions here on slashdot....Warning note: there is a headless image of a woman in underwear and garters, less skin showing then you would see with most bathing suits, however some might find this offensive...consider yourself warned and take Personal Responsibility for your click and your welcome!
Insist on Personal Responsibility from everyone, holding each accountable to their own actions, period. That is the only solution. Nothing else is going to do it, no matter how your phrase the proposal. No excuses, no BS,
But, I'm not sure why you're bringing religion into the argument
Basically because after reading the posts that were already there, I realized there were many posts referencing religion and censorship based on religion. So I am definitely not the first nor the only one pointing out that censorship often occurs first from a religious perspective.
I also disagree with you that the two are not related. I would suggest to you that most censorship is based on moral issues. Never mind that you can choose not to watch, not to hear, not to partake by turning off, personally blocking a site, etc....
For most, it is not enough to censor themselves, they want to censor you, me and everyone else, as they know what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. It is not enough for them to live their lives, they want to control how you live yours.
As most of us have learned, too many politicians, at least here in the US, hope that most people will NOT show up to vote. When that happens, groups, especially religious groups, that historically are whipped into a frenzy with anti-religious propaganda will show up and vote. Often voting based on a card handed out in their church or group, rather than using the brain that the god they believe in gave them (I would suggest to NOT use that brain is SIN...but that is just me.)
When they vote from a religious perspective on anything, they open the doors, setting precedents, for other religious groups with higher popluation (i.e. more voters) to change laws that ultimately can result in all of us losing religious freedom.
I am not anti religoius...I am pro freedom, which MUST include religious freedom.
I just wish other religious people would realize, its not that they can NOT pass laws...they can and have....
Rather they need to ask themselves, SHOULD WE? Most of the time they SHOULD NOT.
And for the reasons that I stated above.
So far I've had 100% (2/2 yei!) success with converting co-workers from Office to OpenOffice....
Small print: these guys were not programmers or writers and only do simple tasks; they most likely had never even (nor will learn in the future) learned how to use styles with word processor.
Considering what the average manager in any company does with WordProcessing(Word), Spreadsheets(Excel) and Slide Presentation (PowerPoint) (the three biggest reason for Office) they have been able to do since the Windows 95 days...this is not a surprise.
OOo Writer, Calc and Impress do everything that those three do and as you get use to it you start to love them.
Not surprised that you are having such success.
Now if we can get people to turn the auto update crap OFF, selectively updating only a couple of times per year, than Microsoft will no longer control their desktops.
This of course is why they insist via FUD, that you MUST KEEP auto update turned on to be safe - NOT.
My response, if the operating system is That BAD, that unsafe than I need a different BETTER operating system. I suggest Linux, at least you can turn auto update OFF with Linux.
The auto update BLOAT can ONLY be conquered by turning it OFF. FUD, FUD, FUD...lol, when are you people going to stop believing this crapola FUD?
Eventually you too will get tired of your PC being slowed down by their FUD, when that happens you will look for a better alternative.
Good news: there are many Linux alternatives out there...go for one of them and leave Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt where it belongs, in your past, permanently left behind!
I'd assume they are offering some sort of "unlimited" plan at a low cost ....
Got screwed over by a cellular company (actually two before I walked with my dollars and never looked back...) I had a monthly plan, purchase their ALL-I-CAN-EAT-TEXT-MESSAGING plan (almost doubling my monthly in the process) for one reason.
I DID NOT WANT SURPRISES. I wanted to KNOW what my monthly was, pay it and be done with it.
Still they messed it up, set up the messaging wrong, it ate my voice minutes than begin charging me...one customer service rep admitted that it had been setup up wrong and said that they would take care of it. They DID NOT take care of it.
So after a three year positive track record of paying my bill ontime, instead of customer service for their mistake, they turned off my service for non payment.
Like I am going to pay for their mistake...NOT.
Been using VoIP, Total Cost of service for 1 year is less than $100. Done, no extras, no surprises and very successful for over 4 years now. I was paying in excess of $1,000 per year before the additional text messaging, which added over $500 per year to my bill... I was willing to pay that, but no more.
They obviously thought they could just send me a large bill ($500+ and I would pay it), not.
And these people that get $1,000, $5,000, $15,000 bills because of either lies or the cellular company's mistakes...too many to count. I for one, having first hand experience, believe you.
Solution is simple: Do not buy their service any more.
In fact, continue searching, until you see zero complaints for three or more years, do not purchase service through that company.
The first time I had over a 5 year positive track record; the second time I had over a 3 year positive track record. (Positive track record = I paid my bill every month)
None of the companies care about any of us, their customer no service - to - collections policies prove this.
None of them deserve to succeed.
I will NOT use them until I see 3+ years of NO NEW COMPLAINTS. As of today, April 2009, they all have new complaints....they suck.
None the less, paying to receive SMS = bullshit
paying to receive phone calls? = bullshit
Great post...keep em coming. Too many people over here believe the corporate FUD!
The lobbiest for the Telecom / Cellular community here in America has been extremely successful. They have successfully stagnated and prevented innovation since before 1996. And they continue today.
They pay politicians, get money to provide service, do NOT provide the service, complain that it is too expensive, get more money from politicians in their pockets, use money to buy out competition...never do they give us the service they promise.
The industries best today in America is FIOS, and it is capped at 45 MBPS down...do not know what up is, not that it matters.
Anything less than 100MB / 100MB for less than $55 per month as Japan has had since 2000 is unacceptable anyway.
To add insult to injury, after taking billions for years, since before 1996, we still have nothing to show for it. The FIOS people are spending more money trying to convince people that they are getting something great in advertising, instead of building out their fiber offerings.
Many of us are waiting for a new competitor to enter the market, when that happens, these Anti-American telcoms (all of them) will get their comeuppance.
Even if they drop their prices below that of the competitor that is first to offer 100 MB / 100 MB for less than $55 per month; I will never do business with them again. Why encourage them to do tomorrow what they have been doing to all Americans for over two decades....
Nope, they blew the wad when their customer no service antics combined with their political lobbying resulted in less service and less choice. The LOST OUR TRUST!
I for one, will never give them a chance to mess with my TRUST ever again.
Please keep making posts to help wake up Americans, as the companies want us to stay asleep so they can continue raping, pillaging and burning, they are the new Vikings and Americans need to see them for what they are.
Between the search engines and Rip Off Reports, you can learn just had bad all the Telecom and Cellular companies really are...pathetic.
Forget Windows CE or any other OS where the cellular companies are controlling what they can and can NOT do as in this example...assuming it is not an April Fools post.
Thus you do NOT have to pay a monthly FEE for service.
The industry has been fighting this losing battle for years, by attempting to force chip and board manufacturers NOT to release their technology on WiFi, but cellular. That way they can use their networks and charge monthly fees.
Fine if you want to pay monthly fees, especially in this down economy. But when those same companies practice customer no service policies with increased phantom bills (for services you did not use, or mistakes they made, but try to charge you) what do you expect.
Hand helds based on the Maemo open source software project will keep you safe.
343 different applications available for the Nokia N800 and N810using the OS2008 software that is based on Maemo...
Add in VoIP at a cost from FREE (VoIP under Linux, Asterisk) to less than $100 per year (Skype) and you have a real winning combination.
I second many others who have stated the obvious, the providers provide pipes, nothing more. Any time they have provided more, it either limits or degrades the service the user experiences. Not because it has to, but because their billing model (monthly) demands it to be so.
Simple solution, stop buying them. Get a hand held that runs on Maemo open source software project, thus you can run Linux and use FREE WiFi. Game over.
I am surprised that no one has created a server driven ad model for WiFi and/or cellular text messaging. It would make a ton of money.
Let fools who want to text via cellular pay that monthly expense, and those more intelligent users that connect via Ethernet or WiFi to the internet can text for FREE to their hearts content. Add in accounts and do NOT exclude anyone for any reason....offer a one line add and make more money then you spend in providing service.
most censorship does not make any sense, as this article points out.
Politicians can be so short sighted and stupid.
They scream, porn, rape, child molestation, crime, etc, etc, etc, this moral issue, that moral issue.
Of course you CAN legislate morality, the better question to ask is SHOULD YOU?
To have freedom of religion, no one religion can dominate, otherwise we all lose religious freedom. THIS IS BAD.
Now ask yourself, is your religion the dominant religion right now? (Answer is probably No)
Are members of your religion having more babies than all other religions? (Answer is NO, unless you are Muslim)
If you are Muslim, do NOT get too excited as ultimately you too will lose because the fanatic Islamist, also claiming to be Muslims are going to start nuking as soon as they get the capability, the money to purchase, to do so. So while from a population perspective you will dominant, after the first dirty nuke, those numbers will change, like it or not. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. Nothing anyone does can stop this fact...either Islamist become tolerant or the Muslim religion is ultimately doomed.)
Good luck with that one...you will need it.
The only point, any law passed with Religious intent or perspective, allows your law to be replaced by a religion with more population.
This is why you MUST NOT pass any law of a religious nature and why government and religion should NEVER mix.
To do so risks the loss of freedom of religion for you and your posterity.
Obviously any law of censorship, ultimately threatens your freedom of religion, no matter how that law is worded. Do you really want to do that to your kids? To their kids?
In America, our founding fathers understood religious persecution, sadly we have forgotten those lessons.
Net Neutrality is in YOUR religions best interest. Net Neutrality is what god wants you to have. Now go, worship freely, get out of government and sin no more!
Please enough flash already...if you are going to use flash, please allow me to turn that crap off.
Stop designing websites best viewed with Adobe flash player also, the fact that it has over 80% of the market is why many of us want an alternative...we understand what happens in either a Monopoly or Oligopoly (add in Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, Phoenix and anyone else who caters to Microsoft and ignores other non Microsoft platforms)
...What other industry do you know of that is basically an oligopoly, and the price of the goods they produce has INCREASED over the life of the long run...
Easy, the car industry.
One of my brothers, 6 years before my purchase had a base sticker price of under $1,000. I believe it was a Cutlass Supreme, circa 1972-3.
Another family member, 2 years later, Malibu Classic, circa 1974, base sticker price just over $2,000.
Finally I purchase, 1980, base sticker price is $8,000.00 for a Chevy product.
Enough said.
I want a car that either does NOT need gas or gets OVER 100 miles per gallon before Hypermiling. So right now, none of them make a car I would purchase. And the base sticker price today, please, what a joke.
Buy used for under $2,000, purchase used engine ($1,000) w/ less than 20,000 miles on it, replace your engine; purchase new paint job, $1,000. Have car that looks new and will last for 10 years for around $4,000 - $5,000 Total up front cost. Invest the balance that you would have paid assuming you have it, or better yet pay your self first, i.e. make monthly payments to an investment that you control and start enjoying life again.
Pay more than $5,000 for a car that will last less than 10 years, no thank you.
P.S. The car above, Honda Civic, 4 cyl, 45 - 50 miles per gallon before Hypermiling.
Or get on the waiting list for the cars from either India or some other third world country, total cost: $3,000; plan to buy a new $3,000 car every 2 - 3 years and use the old one for parts. Still be financially way ahead of the game.
When either Italy or that other country begins selling the compressed air engines that get over 100 miles and do NOT need any gas, now you have a car that I want to purchase.
The US car manufacturers have NOT made a car I wanted to purchase for many, many years. If they do not start producing cars for alternative fuels to gasoline, I say let them fail.
We have all heard stories about engines that powered Cadillacs circa 1965 - 1975 (story I heard was that person that worked at Martin Marietta Aerospace had one that got 100 miles per gallon, showed his friend, his friend told me, so second hand story that one, but I believed him) that disappeared, assumption either the car companies or oil companies bought up the rights and buried em...time to let them bury themselves.
When the game manufacturers read your post, they will spin it as yet another satisified customer, after all you bought the game system even though it was overpriced, understanding that it will burn out and you will get burned yet again....
Now if you did something different, like NOT buy the crapola, than perhaps, just perhaps, after a few other like minded souls stopped purchasing, we all might get a decent system worth are hard earned money.
I agree with you, there is NO customer satisfaction when your system burns out...and if you purchase another, eventually it will burn out too.
And with the next generation of systems, the same old BS.
I stopped buying after Ninetendo, I won a free Super Nintendo at a company function when it was new...
I played the Wii, its okay, not worth the money. When I look at the playstation, I think, my computer should be able to play this.
I think that raising prices is the wrong way to go.
Agree with your post. The movie industry, which in many ways is the same as the game industry, does the same thing. Raising the ticket price until movies in the theater are simply not affordable anymore. Every movie in the movie theater that I have gone to lately (with the exception of FREE premieres) have been less than 1/5 full, often less than 6 people are in there. And this is at prime movie time, not matinée or midnight movies. I firmly believe this is because of the higher ticket prices.
I wish someone would release the information on the BE (Break Even) point where ticket prices got so high that even with concession sales of popcorn, soda, etc... the theaters started losing money.
I remember thinking that the BE point for movies felt like $5 - $6 per ticket...but there is no science behind that...just a feeling and by the time the price hit $7+ per ticket my friends and I had stopped going regularly. And I always bought two large popcorns and two large sodas...not sure what the markup is on those, but expect that it is over 200%, especially when you consider that a bag of kernels costs less than $2.00 and the syrup for soda is dirt cheap, even today. How much more money might the theater have made if it kept its ticket prices down to get over 50% fuller audiences plus concession stand sells? (For games, concession stand type of sells would be additional modules that add hours of playing time, functionality or capability, add a few modules at $5 - $10 per module and before long your profit is going to be higher)
My guess is whenever the movies started being less than 50% full for prime time, that should have been a wake up call for all parties concerned and it was not. Hardly surprising that they make less money today than they use too. Not surprised the game industry is making similar miss-steps.
Seems like the same decision makers in the movie and film industry are in the game industry. I know as in the Telecom industry, these companies have percentage ownership in each other, thus they are all in bed with each other. What movie comes out today from a major studio that does not also have a companion website, merchandise, games, etc....
At $15 - $30 per game (assuming a minimum of 50+ hours of non repetitive play) is a heck of allot more affordable than the $50 - $80 per title that they try to get today. And if the game does not give 50+ hours of non repetitive play, I still might put down $5 - $10 dollars for it if I thought it was fun. Another reason I thought those that produced for the iPhone were very short-sighted. A brain dead game that is fun to play should be worth $5 dollars at least, but no, you Apple iPhone store users insist on it being either FREE or less than $1.00 (i.e. .99 cents), no wonder you only have crap titles coming out for your platform. And if you are a game provider, good luck getting any notice or play in that confused, cluttered, hard to stand out app store they have. If your market is only willing to pay $.99 cents for what you produce, do yourself a favor and find a new market.
These higher prices and planned obsolescence is why I stopped buying game consoles (Nintendo, PlayStation, etc...) and games for any Microsoft operating system. Why pay $50 for a game just have the manufacturer discontinue the console and NOT be able to play it. Same with Microsoft operating specific games, why pay $50 for a game whose shelf life is less than 3 years. If a game is good I might put it down, as I do most board games, and pick it up again at a later date to play again, however once that operating system changes, you are toast. And I am not going to keep buying the same game title, over
Amazing...this is NOT directed at you, as your post makes sense to me, however somewhere out here I read that someone thought Linux violated many Microsoft patents and could not find the entry, and it might have been deleted while I was copy/pasting links...but I figured your heading,
Re: let me be the first to say..
was a perfect place to say...:
FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD, FUD.
Microsoft please stop spreading FUD, the only reason more people are NOT AWARE of your FUD is because of the pro Microsoft FUD that Microsoft spreads and people mistakenly pick up and spread as gospel...hardly the truth, but than again, that is the point of FUD isnt it! To keep users ignorant to the truth and extend the Windows desktop as a money maker for Microsoft.
Fortunately most people are waking up to the lies of pro Microsoft FUD, thus it loses its impact. This is why Microsoft continually tweaks and changes their message as people wake up and see through their BS. All the experts know that any short term success is overshadowed by long term failure, ultimately they will fail. We are seeing this now as the Microsoft desktop dominance continues to weaken over time. The only place they have over 60% market share is in the public or government sector. The last number I saw for the private sector was closer to 46%. Didnt they use to have 85% - 90% of the desktop market? And thanks to netbooks (the Vista mis step hurt them) less than $400; running Linux with only 512 MB of RAM; that will do everything most business management people need to do, their desktop market share continues its negative slide.
Why spend over $1,000 for a desktop when I can purchase a netbook running Linux with 512 MB of RAM for under $400. A huge plus in that it will do everything a typical business person needs it to do. Literally EVERYTHING, no exceptions. (you can replace Office, Word Processor, Adobe Reader, Outlook, Calendar, Spreadsheets, Windows Media Player, Databases, you name it, etc with superior alternatives under Linux.) And if I purchase more memory: 1 GB of RAM, 2 GB of RAM or more; the Linux operating system will not eat it up, rather that extra memory will be available for my applications which means everything runs faster on my computer thanks to Linux. Heck Linux, will run with only 128 MB of RAM. Will even Windows 95 run with that little RAM memory?; Granted Linux runs much better with 512 MB or even 1 GB of RAM or more....
Microsoft steals from Linux and Open source, and they hide the theft in their proprietary code. They
After IBM and Microsoft had their falling out, IBM separately developed PC DOS 6.1 in 1993, and since Microsoft failed to file against IBM, my guess is that any operating system similar to PC DOS 6.1 developed up to and including 1993 would successfully weaken any Microsoft claim if not out right invalidate it. That fact in addition to plenty of prior art (see some examples below, there are many others as other posters here have mentioned...) should be more than enough for any person and or company to tell Microsoft to stuff their misplaced Legal FUD!
TomTom was stupid and blew it big time, they should have called Microsoft's bluff and said go ahead and file your court case, while the lawsuit was working through the court system any potential issues with long filenames, still questionable in my opinion could have been removed from the platform, that way by the time the issue would have worked its way through the court system TomTom would NOT have been in jeopardy any longer....they should have stood their ground and called Microsoft's bluff. (The last thing Microsoft wants is for any of these BS patent claims to go to court and be legally invalidated.)
Bear in mind that this was how Microsoft reacted to Stac Electronics lawsuit over the disk compression in MS DOS, thus Microsoft released MS-DOS 6.21 in 1994 in response to that lawsuit.
MS-DOS 6.0 and 6.20 were released in 1993, both including the Microsoft DoubleSpace disk compression utility program. Stac successfully sued Microsoft for patent infringement regarding the compression algorithm used in DoubleSpace. This resulted in the 1994 release of MS-DOS 6.21, which had disk-compression removed. Shortly afterwards came version 6.22, with a new version of the disk compression system, DriveSpace, which had a different compression algorithm to avoid the infringing code.
Examples of prior art:
CP/M was developed in 1973-74;
TRS Model 80 Model I was released in 1977.
MS-DOS was copyrighted by Microsoft in 1979, with MS-DOS 1.0 being released in 1981.
TRS 80 Model III was released in 1981.
Very funny and sadly true for many....
If a site has not actually restored their systems from backups to verify that the backups are actually valid and good....than their backups just may be so secure no one can get them.
Having experienced this first hand with a commercial backup product (#1 in its industry) from a very large and respected company with a heck of a good track record...thus you sorta expect it to work...
Not fun at all. Since the team had existed before I came on board, I was surprised no one before me had attempted to restore data from the backups. Amazing, but it does happen.
I have also been asked where the Any key is? One person could not wrap their mind around the fact that there was not any key on the keyboard called the Any key; seeing their lack of understanding and dismay at my reply that there was NOT an Any key; I took a different perspective and corrected myself. I pointed to the space bar on their keyboard and told them that was the ANY KEY.
Based on the relieved smile I received in return, I guess I helped them, even if the answer was both wrong and right. At least now they had a key to press, whenever they read press any key in a manual. Problem solved.