Actually you don't need that hi end a processor. All the encoding is done on the card.
This makes so little sense it's not even laughable...
First off, HDTV cards don't do encoding on the card, the signal is already digitized.
Also, HDTV is very high resolution, so you need a pretty high-end processor to decode it.
However, if you have a videocard that has MPEG2 decoding built-in, and it is supported under Linux (mainly only NVidia cards), THEN you can get away with a low-end CPU.
Who wants to go back to the days of only being able to watch the channel your recording?
Absolutely everyone who is paying for Satellite or Digital Cable.
The only way to watch one channel and record another is if you don't need a reciever box, which means only analog cable, or broadcast.
That's lamer then lame and defeats the whole purpose.
If you think it defeats the purpose, you don't know what the real purpose is...
I have analog cable, and can watch live TV while recording something else, but I practically NEVER use it. I've got a large enough backlog of recorded programs I haven't yet watched, why would I watch live TV with all the commercials?
Additionally, you could get a second digital-cable/sattelite reciever and get the dual-channel capability back. The downside being the $5/month extra most service providers charge for each additional box.
Lots of other people have been defending Flash, but so far I haven't seen any comments that mention the fact that FLASH IS ALREADY IN CURRENT DVD-PLAYERS.
Those interactive DVD menus, little buttons the light-up when you select them, transitions from one sub-menu to another, etc, it's all done in Flash right now.
Re:Already tried & failed
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Most people don't give a shit.
Prove it.
It failed mostly because e-books just aren't that popular.
Well good. Here I was thinking it was a complex issue, with several reasons it didn't work out, and you come along and just throw ever other consideration away, and say this is the only reason.
Well, thanks for reminding me why you're on my foe list anyhow.
Re:And Paramount's response?
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How would that work? If it was good enough to be worth trying to sell, they'd put it on TV.
There are many, many ways you could do this...
Political: Tell the studio you want to make a "West Wing" style show, and deliver a Gomer Pile-esque show, staring George W Bush as the idiot. With something so blatantly political, no network would broadcast it.
Obscenity: Deliver a show where the lead character is a porn star, usually nude, and always going to strip clubs, etc. If they can't just censor certain portions of it, they won't be able to use it.
Violence: Deliver a show about a serial killer, that is very graphicly violent. When they see heads being chopped-off, they will drop the show in seconds.
In this case, and because of the specific decision that WB made regarding the show, them retaining copyright on the pilot episode might not be the best way to promote the arts.
As I said, if they had any doubt that they could keep it locked-up, they probably wouldn't have paid to get it produced in the first place. The fact that they are funding the production of pilots certainly is a contribution to the arts.
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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P2P aside, if it were that easy, it would already have been done.
Advertising is very expensive, and not always effective. Plus, you have to spend that money up-front, which means much more inital investment before you know if it will be successful or not.
P2P in this context, means very effective, and nearly-free advertising to a huge number of people.
Re:Already tried & failed
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It was a dismal failure: the second chapter was bought by few and re-distributed by many;
Of course, you're pushing the asumption that copyright infringement is the reason nobody bought it, even though you can't prove that. I never read it myself, but it's entirely likely that the story King had started writing was just bad. Lots of his later works were poor, even by his standards.
It's also a bullshit example because he didn't release it in a useful form. People are very rarely willing to purchase an item encrypted and restricted, which was the only way he made it available.
And the final reason it's bullshit to claim copyright infringement is to blame:
Re:Then how is the production funded?
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I would like to first congratulate you for managing to get a troll modded up to +4.
You mean pay in advance for the boxed set that doesn't exist yet?
Who said pay in advance? I didn't see that part anywhere. Oh, you're pulling it out of your ass... I see.
Even the ones who claim they'd "pay" for good content (How much? Ten or twenty dollars? Beyond which they'll just go back to BitTorrent again?).
You have no evidence at all that any of these people are "hell bent" on copyright infringement, yet you keep saying it over and over again. For all you know, they might all buy thousands of dollars worth of DVDs every year. Perhaps not, but my senario is just as likely as yours, isn't it?
And no one's going to finance a project like this, since you've got no proven paying viewership.
Actually, I think just about any studio would be happy to finance this, now. It's not a proven audience, it's more like the world's largest test audience. Studios never have a "sure thing", but this information shows they have a very, very good chance of the show being profitable.
But these desperate attempts to somehow "prove" that P2P is somehow the most desirable distribution mechanism are getting tiresome.
It's a single case. Who's saying this is being used to prove legitimacy? Hell, it's a good contrast to the constant barrage of MPAA-paid stories about P2P costing them millions, and movies like Star Wars being available.
I'm not saying there are NO alternatives; just that it's more than a little hypocritical to completely discount where the money came from to pay for these shows you're downloading.
Is it hypocritical to buy the loss-leader product your local store is selling, and then buy nothing else there, even though you know where the money came from to pay for that low priced product?
Is it hypocritical to buy products with a mail-in rebate, and actually send them all in, even though you know they lose money when you do?
I think most people would say no. It's not up to the customers to make sure your company turns a profit, it's for your company to decide if the benefits of their selling practices are worth the potential negatives. Companies are companies, working for their own interests. They are not non-profit organizations, who should be supported out of the good-will of the people.
This applies to TV as well. Their own actions are forcing people away from watching TV, and costing them money. They can fix the problem, but they'd rather be making record profits, and try legal methods to stop anyone who helps people exercising their right to make commercials less annyoing if they chose to.
Now, they haven't changed their practices, so that must mean this is having almost no effect on their bottom line. If they stupidly refuse to change their practices, they're welcomed to go out of business. I'm sure dozens of other companies will come forward to take their (very profitable) place, and probably do it better. Even if the unthinkable happens, and no companies want to produce TV, I'd be more than happy to dedicate the unused TV spectrum to much better uses, and say goodbye to broadcast TV.
Re:And Paramount's response?
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How is allowing a company to stop this from seeing the light of day a promotion?
Because if they didn't have the right to stop this, they wouldn't have paid to create it in the first place.
If you make something, and don't release it, you shouldn't be allowed to stop someone else from distributing it for no charge.
I could agree with that after a certain length of time, but not immediately. It could be a whole new business model... Get funding from a studio for a pilot, make something good that they couldn't possibly accept, and sell it on DVD instead. Free money...
So what if your computer doesn't have a DVD-rom? buy one. $50 costs less than a single copy of most software/games, and since you can use this drive to burn and then install linux, you're good to go.
So you're going to buy a DVD Drive for every computer you come across that still has a CD-ROM? That would start getting expensive, very quickly.
The parent is right, for something like this, you really want to stick with the CD version (unless you want to carry around both).
We had an engine specialist on site from one of the major helicopter manufacturers and he stated that he would never fly in a helicopter because it was too much of a risk!
As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.
I've come across dozens of cases where people won't eat at the places they work, but will happily eat elsewhere.
People won't buy the cars they make, won't fly in the craft they've built, won't use the products they sell, etc.
They all seem to be cases of being too close to something to see it in perspective. Maybe that engine specialist of yours was just so wrapped up in minor defects and engine problems that he doesn't have perspective anymore, and doesn't know of the safety statistics. Helicopters can land safely even if the engine fails critically in mid-flight.
That's ridiculous. 40% market-share can be a monopoly in some cases.
Incentives don't make you a monopolist.
Not always, but commonly. Illegally subsidising the cost of your product to maintain your significant market share is usually a sign of a monopoly. Where this would REALLY hurt Intel is not in a domestic court, but in the WTO.
You can't compare Intel to DeBeers
You can't compare DeBeers to Intel, and you can't compare DeBeers to Microsoft, but that doesn't change the fact that all of them are monopolies.
It was such a crushing blow that I went and got myself an Ipod the next day. Never underestimate the power of popular culture.
That has got to be one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard.
What if she didn't like his car? Would you go out and buy the most plain, most popular one, which just happens to seriously break down every 18 months?
The WALKMAN was never unseated as the premiere mobile music player in the 80s
You have to very narrowly focus that to make it true. Obviously the Walkman has been unseated, and it breatheren like the Discman are hardly more popular than any other brand.
Don't throw rocks at the throne. Build your own throne; people will come and worship.
I don't see how this is useful or insightful in the slightest. But more than that, I don't see how it has any relation to the rest of your disjointed comment.
The big plus comming out of this is precident. We now have a new standard as to what is legal and what is not legal.
Don't promote your product as an alternative to another product that was successfully sued (Napster).
Don't provide a special function to find copyrighted materials (Top 40 songs).
Don't send out newsletters listing copyrighted materials that are available.
When a user contacts you, asking how they can get copyrighted materials, don't help them...
Don't actively block (the IP addresses of) groups that are trying to monitor illegal activities. (Is it okay if they are distributing fake files? No idea.)
Do not put yourself in a position to directly profit from your product's illegal uses (ad views, product sales, etc).
The Supreme Court was rather clear that it was their active involvement and promotion of copyright infringement that is the issue, and this does not change the Betamax standard. It seems all too easy, though, to be in violation of several of these rules, without any criminal intent. If I was selling a popular commercial FTP program, I would get nervous right about now.
One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the deviceís lawful uses. Pp. 10ñ24.
The changes made in the process of writing a document are almost as important as the end product. Just look up the drafts of the founding documents, and see all that changed from the start to the final draft. A significant ammount of historical information would have been lost if we did not have those revisions.
Besides that, revisions are very, very small, so it's not as if storage is a real problem. When your 500GB hard drive is full, you don't go through and delete all your unneeded text files first, do you? It's merely the complexity of extracting the revision information from a Word document, and outputting it to an XML document that makes it challenging.
Of course there is a difference between data and information, but it seems quite clear that only important information is being preserved.
In the story they talk about multiple revisions of word documents written by leaders, and photos of the effects of agent orange. Do you consider those things "crap"?
The fact is, the government is huge, and there is a hell of a lot of important information to be saved over the years.
I'll say Charter is the worse ISP I've ever used... Broadband, Dialup, wireless, whatever. Your experience wasn't nearly as horrible as mine.
They had rather high prices, charging about $40/month for 256k, while 1+MBps DSL was under $50. Besides that, only once, after I complained quite loudly, did they give me a partial deduction on my monthly bill, because of the service being completely useless 99% of the time. How about a 4 on price/value.
Their tech support was bad (but far, far better than I would later get with Verizon). I'd give Charter a 3 on support.
I had nothing but problems with the connection. At first, it would just be offline during peak hours during the day, so I didn't mind very much. But it got very bad very quickly. For about the last 3 months of the service, I could get a signal about 5% of the time, and it wouldn't last long. It's really unbelievable how torrible it was. I only stayed with them that long because they kept sending technicians out, who made some trivially minor adjustment, (like replacing the brand-new connectors on the coax) and then claim it would work perfectly now. Of course it was down again a few minutes after they left. Call them up again, go through their mind numbing Windows procudures, and get told to call back 75% of the time... I had someone comming out every week, and never once did any one of them say anything about really fixing the problem, or that they couldn't fix it. Replace a connector, replace a small segment of coax, reset the modem, repeat. Charter gets an absolute 0 for the connection quality in my experience with them.
So, overall, I'd give them a 1. Sure, it could have been worse, but not without widespread criminal fraud involved...
Verizon has the absolute worst tech support I've ever seen. They get a big 0. No matter what your problem, either they have some reassuring answer that it'll all be fixed by tomorrow (so call back then, and bother somebody else) that is ridiculous and never happens, or they are just completely wrong, and bullshiting their way through the call. Crap like your cable modem isn't getting a signal because you haven't signed up for an e-mail address yet.
Verizon is pretty good in every other respect though. Very fast connection, reliable, no PPPoE crap, slightly lower cost than the competition, etc. Of course it's entirely possible that they have been sabotaging the competition in all those respects.
Without the a/c on, my basement hovers around 68 degrees throughout the year.
Being a few feet underground is slightly cooler than ambient air tempuratures at ground level. However, it's incredibly easy to keep any room cool when you DON'T have several kWatts of electrical equipment running constantly.
Once you've got a lot of heat pumping into that room, the tiny tempurature advantage becomes insignificant.
It's much easier to control the temperature than elsewhere in the house.
Of course it is... That's where all the cold air is going, making the rest of your house warmer. Your house is also not a heavily insulated industrial building, which makes a difference.
Sure, somebody'll figure out a way to do it - every DRM scheme devised thus far has been cracked, pretty much
Well, that's not true. There are a handful of DRM methods which remain solidly uncracked.
However, it's besides the point. No common DRM systems thus far have used built-in (trusted) hardware. The insertion of a single chip into a system could make a DRM system practically unbreakable by conventional means.
You get a unsupported OS on your PC that may or may not work right with the combination of cards, chipset, and BIOS you happen to have.
Sounds just like Windows to me.
Seriously, though... We aren't really talking about running OS X on any old PC with any old hardware on it. The issue now is that you have a system made almost completely of off-the-shelf PC hardware, and any no-name manufacturer could make a nearly identical system for $200. Hell, this is almost EXACTLY how the IBM Personal Computer became the generic PC we all use today... Reverse-engineer one propritary part, buy everything else off-the-shelf, find a way to get the same software, and you have a new industry building imitation machines.
Do people really think that there's going to be any enterprise demand for that? Really?
Nobody is expecting "enterprise demand" for an unlocked (illegal) version of OS X. It's home users we're really talking about.
That fact combined with the large number of IBM-based systems on the to 100 list really makes it look like IBM is dominating this sector of the market.
It certainly is. The sad thing is how it came about.
Up until about last year, HP/Compaq/DEC made up the majority of the list. Compaq slowed Alpha development to a crawl at that point because they were ready to switch to Intel Itanium. HP had some good high-end machines on the list too, and they killed off their propritary processor lines because they were ready to switch to Intel Itanium. (SGI fell for Intel's same trick, too)
The giant vaccume in the supercomputer market was purely due to Intel managing to trick every supercomputer company into betting the farm on Itanium, and never delivering on their wild claims.
IBM and Sun were the only major players who didn't get suckered in by Intel. Sun isn't exactly known for having fast (or cheap) machines, so they weren't in as good of a position to take over. IBM, though, was in the perfect spot. There was practically no competition, and after about a year with nobody else jumping in to take-over, they developed faster and low-power chips, and started building systems that creamed everyone else.
HP/Compaq/DEC still have some systems on the TOP100, but they are mostly older systems from back in their better days. It's really quite sad when all the players lose, not because they couldn't keep up with the competition, but just make a stupid decision to quit all together.
Face it, free wireless is neither a high priority nor a fundamental necessity of life to the vast majority of people
That's true if there are commercial (non-free) alternatives. No doubt there are in Orlando, but smaller cities are really having a problem with companies moving out, due to lack of commercial high-speed internet access.
The internet has become the all-encompasing medium for distribution and exchange of many things. High-speed internet access has become a necessity, in the same way that paved roads have become a necessity.
I have to wonder if his legacy isn't the easing of mankind's stress levels but accelerating it to the stratosphere. Computers have done wonders in improving our productivity, but at the cost of making humans part of the machine.
And Oppenheimer is a mass murder...
All uses of all tools should not be automatically blamed on their inventor. That's not to say I think you're right about it anyhow.
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This makes so little sense it's not even laughable...
First off, HDTV cards don't do encoding on the card, the signal is already digitized.
Also, HDTV is very high resolution, so you need a pretty high-end processor to decode it.
However, if you have a videocard that has MPEG2 decoding built-in, and it is supported under Linux (mainly only NVidia cards), THEN you can get away with a low-end CPU.
Absolutely everyone who is paying for Satellite or Digital Cable.
The only way to watch one channel and record another is if you don't need a reciever box, which means only analog cable, or broadcast.
If you think it defeats the purpose, you don't know what the real purpose is...
I have analog cable, and can watch live TV while recording something else, but I practically NEVER use it. I've got a large enough backlog of recorded programs I haven't yet watched, why would I watch live TV with all the commercials?
Additionally, you could get a second digital-cable/sattelite reciever and get the dual-channel capability back. The downside being the $5/month extra most service providers charge for each additional box.
What's illegal about that?
Lots of other people have been defending Flash, but so far I haven't seen any comments that mention the fact that FLASH IS ALREADY IN CURRENT DVD-PLAYERS.
Those interactive DVD menus, little buttons the light-up when you select them, transitions from one sub-menu to another, etc, it's all done in Flash right now.
Prove it.
Well good. Here I was thinking it was a complex issue, with several reasons it didn't work out, and you come along and just throw ever other consideration away, and say this is the only reason.
Well, thanks for reminding me why you're on my foe list anyhow.
There are many, many ways you could do this...
Political: Tell the studio you want to make a "West Wing" style show, and deliver a Gomer Pile-esque show, staring George W Bush as the idiot. With something so blatantly political, no network would broadcast it.
Obscenity: Deliver a show where the lead character is a porn star, usually nude, and always going to strip clubs, etc. If they can't just censor certain portions of it, they won't be able to use it.
Violence: Deliver a show about a serial killer, that is very graphicly violent. When they see heads being chopped-off, they will drop the show in seconds.
As I said, if they had any doubt that they could keep it locked-up, they probably wouldn't have paid to get it produced in the first place. The fact that they are funding the production of pilots certainly is a contribution to the arts.
Advertising is very expensive, and not always effective. Plus, you have to spend that money up-front, which means much more inital investment before you know if it will be successful or not.
P2P in this context, means very effective, and nearly-free advertising to a huge number of people.
Of course, you're pushing the asumption that copyright infringement is the reason nobody bought it, even though you can't prove that. I never read it myself, but it's entirely likely that the story King had started writing was just bad. Lots of his later works were poor, even by his standards.
It's also a bullshit example because he didn't release it in a useful form. People are very rarely willing to purchase an item encrypted and restricted, which was the only way he made it available.
And the final reason it's bullshit to claim copyright infringement is to blame:
Who said pay in advance? I didn't see that part anywhere. Oh, you're pulling it out of your ass... I see.
You have no evidence at all that any of these people are "hell bent" on copyright infringement, yet you keep saying it over and over again. For all you know, they might all buy thousands of dollars worth of DVDs every year. Perhaps not, but my senario is just as likely as yours, isn't it?
Actually, I think just about any studio would be happy to finance this, now. It's not a proven audience, it's more like the world's largest test audience. Studios never have a "sure thing", but this information shows they have a very, very good chance of the show being profitable.
It's a single case. Who's saying this is being used to prove legitimacy? Hell, it's a good contrast to the constant barrage of MPAA-paid stories about P2P costing them millions, and movies like Star Wars being available.
Is it hypocritical to buy the loss-leader product your local store is selling, and then buy nothing else there, even though you know where the money came from to pay for that low priced product?
Is it hypocritical to buy products with a mail-in rebate, and actually send them all in, even though you know they lose money when you do?
I think most people would say no. It's not up to the customers to make sure your company turns a profit, it's for your company to decide if the benefits of their selling practices are worth the potential negatives. Companies are companies, working for their own interests. They are not non-profit organizations, who should be supported out of the good-will of the people.
This applies to TV as well. Their own actions are forcing people away from watching TV, and costing them money. They can fix the problem, but they'd rather be making record profits, and try legal methods to stop anyone who helps people exercising their right to make commercials less annyoing if they chose to.
Now, they haven't changed their practices, so that must mean this is having almost no effect on their bottom line. If they stupidly refuse to change their practices, they're welcomed to go out of business. I'm sure dozens of other companies will come forward to take their (very profitable) place, and probably do it better. Even if the unthinkable happens, and no companies want to produce TV, I'd be more than happy to dedicate the unused TV spectrum to much better uses, and say goodbye to broadcast TV.
Because if they didn't have the right to stop this, they wouldn't have paid to create it in the first place.
I could agree with that after a certain length of time, but not immediately. It could be a whole new business model... Get funding from a studio for a pilot, make something good that they couldn't possibly accept, and sell it on DVD instead. Free money...
So you're going to buy a DVD Drive for every computer you come across that still has a CD-ROM? That would start getting expensive, very quickly.
The parent is right, for something like this, you really want to stick with the CD version (unless you want to carry around both).
As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss.
I've come across dozens of cases where people won't eat at the places they work, but will happily eat elsewhere.
People won't buy the cars they make, won't fly in the craft they've built, won't use the products they sell, etc.
They all seem to be cases of being too close to something to see it in perspective. Maybe that engine specialist of yours was just so wrapped up in minor defects and engine problems that he doesn't have perspective anymore, and doesn't know of the safety statistics. Helicopters can land safely even if the engine fails critically in mid-flight.
That's ridiculous. 40% market-share can be a monopoly in some cases.
Not always, but commonly. Illegally subsidising the cost of your product to maintain your significant market share is usually a sign of a monopoly. Where this would REALLY hurt Intel is not in a domestic court, but in the WTO.
You can't compare DeBeers to Intel, and you can't compare DeBeers to Microsoft, but that doesn't change the fact that all of them are monopolies.
That has got to be one of the most pathetic things I've ever heard.
What if she didn't like his car? Would you go out and buy the most plain, most popular one, which just happens to seriously break down every 18 months?
You have to very narrowly focus that to make it true. Obviously the Walkman has been unseated, and it breatheren like the Discman are hardly more popular than any other brand.
I don't see how this is useful or insightful in the slightest. But more than that, I don't see how it has any relation to the rest of your disjointed comment.
The big plus comming out of this is precident. We now have a new standard as to what is legal and what is not legal.
Don't promote your product as an alternative to another product that was successfully sued (Napster).
Don't provide a special function to find copyrighted materials (Top 40 songs).
Don't send out newsletters listing copyrighted materials that are available.
When a user contacts you, asking how they can get copyrighted materials, don't help them...
Don't actively block (the IP addresses of) groups that are trying to monitor illegal activities. (Is it okay if they are distributing fake files? No idea.)
Do not put yourself in a position to directly profit from your product's illegal uses (ad views, product sales, etc).
The Supreme Court was rather clear that it was their active involvement and promotion of copyright infringement that is the issue, and this does not change the Betamax standard. It seems all too easy, though, to be in violation of several of these rules, without any criminal intent. If I was selling a popular commercial FTP program, I would get nervous right about now.
One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the deviceís lawful uses. Pp. 10ñ24.
The changes made in the process of writing a document are almost as important as the end product. Just look up the drafts of the founding documents, and see all that changed from the start to the final draft. A significant ammount of historical information would have been lost if we did not have those revisions.
Besides that, revisions are very, very small, so it's not as if storage is a real problem. When your 500GB hard drive is full, you don't go through and delete all your unneeded text files first, do you? It's merely the complexity of extracting the revision information from a Word document, and outputting it to an XML document that makes it challenging.
Of course there is a difference between data and information, but it seems quite clear that only important information is being preserved.
In the story they talk about multiple revisions of word documents written by leaders, and photos of the effects of agent orange. Do you consider those things "crap"?
The fact is, the government is huge, and there is a hell of a lot of important information to be saved over the years.
I'll say Charter is the worse ISP I've ever used... Broadband, Dialup, wireless, whatever. Your experience wasn't nearly as horrible as mine.
They had rather high prices, charging about $40/month for 256k, while 1+MBps DSL was under $50. Besides that, only once, after I complained quite loudly, did they give me a partial deduction on my monthly bill, because of the service being completely useless 99% of the time. How about a 4 on price/value.
Their tech support was bad (but far, far better than I would later get with Verizon). I'd give Charter a 3 on support.
I had nothing but problems with the connection. At first, it would just be offline during peak hours during the day, so I didn't mind very much. But it got very bad very quickly. For about the last 3 months of the service, I could get a signal about 5% of the time, and it wouldn't last long. It's really unbelievable how torrible it was. I only stayed with them that long because they kept sending technicians out, who made some trivially minor adjustment, (like replacing the brand-new connectors on the coax) and then claim it would work perfectly now. Of course it was down again a few minutes after they left. Call them up again, go through their mind numbing Windows procudures, and get told to call back 75% of the time... I had someone comming out every week, and never once did any one of them say anything about really fixing the problem, or that they couldn't fix it. Replace a connector, replace a small segment of coax, reset the modem, repeat. Charter gets an absolute 0 for the connection quality in my experience with them.
So, overall, I'd give them a 1. Sure, it could have been worse, but not without widespread criminal fraud involved...
Verizon has the absolute worst tech support I've ever seen. They get a big 0. No matter what your problem, either they have some reassuring answer that it'll all be fixed by tomorrow (so call back then, and bother somebody else) that is ridiculous and never happens, or they are just completely wrong, and bullshiting their way through the call. Crap like your cable modem isn't getting a signal because you haven't signed up for an e-mail address yet.
Verizon is pretty good in every other respect though. Very fast connection, reliable, no PPPoE crap, slightly lower cost than the competition, etc. Of course it's entirely possible that they have been sabotaging the competition in all those respects.
Being a few feet underground is slightly cooler than ambient air tempuratures at ground level. However, it's incredibly easy to keep any room cool when you DON'T have several kWatts of electrical equipment running constantly.
Once you've got a lot of heat pumping into that room, the tiny tempurature advantage becomes insignificant.
Of course it is... That's where all the cold air is going, making the rest of your house warmer. Your house is also not a heavily insulated industrial building, which makes a difference.
Easily solved by just a few dollars worth of conductive material (ie. a faraday cage) installed into the building. Preferably hidden.
Huh? Where do you think you are?
Well, that's not true. There are a handful of DRM methods which remain solidly uncracked.
However, it's besides the point. No common DRM systems thus far have used built-in (trusted) hardware. The insertion of a single chip into a system could make a DRM system practically unbreakable by conventional means.
Sounds just like Windows to me.
Seriously, though... We aren't really talking about running OS X on any old PC with any old hardware on it. The issue now is that you have a system made almost completely of off-the-shelf PC hardware, and any no-name manufacturer could make a nearly identical system for $200. Hell, this is almost EXACTLY how the IBM Personal Computer became the generic PC we all use today... Reverse-engineer one propritary part, buy everything else off-the-shelf, find a way to get the same software, and you have a new industry building imitation machines.
Nobody is expecting "enterprise demand" for an unlocked (illegal) version of OS X. It's home users we're really talking about.
It certainly is. The sad thing is how it came about.
Up until about last year, HP/Compaq/DEC made up the majority of the list. Compaq slowed Alpha development to a crawl at that point because they were ready to switch to Intel Itanium. HP had some good high-end machines on the list too, and they killed off their propritary processor lines because they were ready to switch to Intel Itanium. (SGI fell for Intel's same trick, too)
The giant vaccume in the supercomputer market was purely due to Intel managing to trick every supercomputer company into betting the farm on Itanium, and never delivering on their wild claims.
IBM and Sun were the only major players who didn't get suckered in by Intel. Sun isn't exactly known for having fast (or cheap) machines, so they weren't in as good of a position to take over. IBM, though, was in the perfect spot. There was practically no competition, and after about a year with nobody else jumping in to take-over, they developed faster and low-power chips, and started building systems that creamed everyone else.
HP/Compaq/DEC still have some systems on the TOP100, but they are mostly older systems from back in their better days. It's really quite sad when all the players lose, not because they couldn't keep up with the competition, but just make a stupid decision to quit all together.
That's true if there are commercial (non-free) alternatives. No doubt there are in Orlando, but smaller cities are really having a problem with companies moving out, due to lack of commercial high-speed internet access.
The internet has become the all-encompasing medium for distribution and exchange of many things. High-speed internet access has become a necessity, in the same way that paved roads have become a necessity.
And Oppenheimer is a mass murder...
All uses of all tools should not be automatically blamed on their inventor. That's not to say I think you're right about it anyhow.