Not all people can afford to use Napster or the internet to fulfill their music needs. A computer capable of running Napster costs $500, add in $20/month for crappy internet access, or $40 a month for broadband, and you have a jukebox that you can't easily move around? Want to take you music with you? Your portable computer is now $2000, and very easy to steal. A portable CD player costs about $30 around here, and RIAA cds are $15. For the cost of the first solution, you can get a cd player and 31 cds, or 30 hours of music. The second solution is the equivalent of 130 hours of music. A portable CD player is cheap and easy to use, even if you can't read. Napster is useless if you cannot read, and if you try to feed a family off of minimum wage. The record companies can stand to stay around if they continue to press CDs and stop the price fixing. Napster is still seen as a toy for those who are fortunate enough to be middle class.
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The industry associations are usually not out for anybody they claim to be. Hillary Rosen is a politician, as most people in "spokesperson," or "CEO," jobs are. She is just trying to spread some "The RIAA is your friend support us because the nice folks at the mom-and-pop record labels and stores don't carry queer pop groups like Brittney Spears and N*Sync" propaganda. Don't get me wrong, I still buy music, but I would prefer to buy it from a record label that affiliates itself directly with the artists and operates out of a garage than a huge skyscraper in New York.
If your tastes allow it, buy records from independent bands instead of pop sensations. The quality, individuality, and creativity of the music is almost always more evident in such labels, and you can feel good about the fact that no suit is getting rich off of your desire to listen to quality music.
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Microsoft 9x OSes are in a state of permanent beta - my 98SE box never works right, and it makes me hit Windows Update about once a week. Fortunately, for my game-playing and 3DS-using habits, NT works a bit better. Still, it is nowhere as stable as the "Infested With Bugs" RedHat 7. RedHat 7 is far more bugless than the average user needs, thanks to the stability of the individual components.
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That might be good if you run a serious business, but minor easy-to-fix bugs are scads of fun, if you have the time and energy to deal with them. However, I wouldn't trust my parents to RH7.
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Debain can afford to wait for a perfect release. For the most part, it's volunteer, unadvertised (they get copyleft donations from sales of copyleft t-shirts), and free. No money or careers are won or lost in the development of Debian. However, Red Hat, as just another.com, depends on every release to stay open. They're living on the edge just as much as any other dot com company. Debian is at no risk of being dumped by investors - the real Debian investors are those who choose to donate their talent to a 100% free (in all regards) project.
Microsoft investors are as thick-skinned as their users. Their precious good software company can't fail them. It's their hardware causing the daily BSOD.
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Perhaps, with all my AOL messaging, flash-animation viewing, Quake 3 playing, and Real-Player using I haven't put enough stress on my RH7 box to make bugs appear. Obviously, the bugs aren't the big all-consuming problem you make them out to be for us who don't try to run web sites from our desktop box. Besides, Debian runs websites, Red Hat runs Quake, and Windows runs Half-Life.
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As far as I can tell, somebody marketing a product that, although very different, does the same thing as yours, is completely fair. That's why Palm hasn't sued Microsoft for making Outlook. They both hold addresses, send e-mail, and are susecptible to viruses, but one is a hardware solution that is easily portable (Palm), and the other is a software solution that requires a fast computer (never run Outlook on anything <Pentium 2) and some installation time.
Likewise, both the Playstation and Bleem play Playstation games, but the Playstation requires two wires to hook up, only plays PSX games and music cds, and plays PSX games the way they were designed. Bleem requires several minutes of installation time, a CD verification procedure, boot up time, and computer hardware that costs over twice as much as a PSX. And the result? Have you ever seen Chrono Cross on Bleem? Not a pretty sight...
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It could be argued that the PSX bios is what controls the copyrights held by PSX developers, and that the compilation process is a sort of trivial encryption. Sure it is "encrypted" in a well known fashion with a commonly known "key," but so are DVDs. The point is, depending on the level of abstraction, laws can mean many different things.
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<sarcasm>The hardware prices drop off even faster for consoles, because the hardware is more outdated than PC hardware.</sarcasm>
You're correct with that assumption that consoles don't drop off sharply in price because their vendors realize that they have a guaranteed customer (the PlayStation, after release, didn't get any less popular) and they can keep the prices high on their outdated components for longer than they ordinarily would.
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Logically, if you can reverse engineer a complex computing device like a PlayStation, then it ought to be legal to at least link to the results of reverse engineering a simple encryption methond, right? Well, the courts seem to be unable to relate their results to each other for some sort of consistency. With this ruling (which is better than Judge Kaplan's against 2600), it can be reasoned that emulating a simple DVD player is as legal as emulating a PlayStation.
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Look - this word, when designated with a pointing device, takes you to another set of words! And this tab on a computer screen acts exactly like one in a dictionary! And this convenient tool makes shopping take only one action with a mouse!!! Let's patent these obvious ideas!!!
Enough with the patenting of obvious things either ripped off from physical objects (dictionaries,) or conveniences that are now commonplace. BT has the same force holding their patent to themselves that Amazon has to "One-Click" shopping, and Adobe to tabbed dialog boxes: none. Screw these big companies trying to control what is now a pop-culture phenomenon and let's just write good software, keep phone services working, and sell more books.
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Too many college students fight the fight for free speech, music, and love to make banning Napster feasible. Simply put, if the administration were to follow such a path, the student body, and quite possibly the faculty, would be up in arms.
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Nobody says you have to use the default console - the RH6.2 I used up until today didn't even include eTerm, which I installed myself. Sure, you may not like it, but that's the whole theory behind Linux - What you do with your system is up to your taste - we'll just give you the tools.
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They need to use the entire date instead of the year - instead of a silly 7.0.4.6.8.4.46.6.4.6.4.2 number, just call it Red Hat Linux 20000925, and when bugfixes come out tomorrow, it will be 20000926 - most drivers come like that, but the whole OS could stand to do that. Windows 2k service packs would be known by that - in fact, using their asinine 'Windows Update' feature to fix security glitches, it could just call your os 'Windows 20000910', because you have to security update every day.
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I thought the free KDE and GNOME would have finished off CDE long ago, mostly because they're free (as in speech and beer) and for the most part, Open Source (has the qt thing been resolved?) If those haven't wiped CDE off the map, nothing will.
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'poor' driver track record? I would choose my wording differently, such as 'horrid,' 'god-awful,' 'dismal,' 'worthless,' or even 'shitty.' At one point, my friend's ATI card required driver swapping when switching from UT to Half-Life. That's bad, especially because the best UT driver still forced us to use software mode.
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A GF2 isn't as sharp as a Matrox card in 2D apps, but it's a gaming card, essentially. If you buy a GF2, you're either filthy rich or devoted to Q3A/UT/CS/(your favorite 3d game), or a little of both columns. Nowadays, 2D imaging is considered to be a thing of the past, no matter how many people browse the internet, use emacs/vi/notepad, or doodle in the gimp. The point is, it's much more sexy to market for Tomb Raider than Paintbrush.
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3dfx didn't just get mercilessly ripped apart by nVidia - they let it happen. When the TNT2, supposedly the first consumer chip faster than Voodoo2 SLI, came out, sporting 32-bit color and support for over 32 megs of video ram, 3dfx countered months later with the Voodoo3, which had the 16-bit color and 16-megs of ram limitation of the Voodoo2. That was really the first nail in the coffin of 3dfx. Their relase schedule can also be blamed, because nVidia has a new chip out every year or so, and sells them to many different board manufacturers, causing competition. 3dfx makes their own boards, just like ATI.
How is it that, in January, I bought a dang-fast TNT2 for $60, while the Voodoo2, a slower card, sold for over $100 everywhere I looked? Simple - the different board manufacturers compete with each other, trying to sell their TNT2 board over somebody else's. The 3dfx board manufacturer just tries to sell their boards to Voodoo zealots, who are, for the most part, GeForce believers now.
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Building a pilotable airplane can almost be considered an art form nowadays. You can buy plans and parts out of catalogs, build the thing with common tools (wrenches, screwdrivers), and actually fly it without any calculations at all. A rocket on the other hand, is still too uncommon and goes into a far more dangerous territory that cannot be navigated by indivuals yet.
If you bail out of an airplane with a parachute, you have a better chance of surviving than if you bail out of an orbiting spacecraft with a spacesuit and a parachute. The atmosphere that astronomers so curse is the lifeblood of aviation.
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That's actually pretty close to the reason they clean up their mess. It saves a fair amount of money compared to having segmented metal cylinders built to exacting specs with the required equipment built in, and NASA still has to follow international pollution standards.
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Only the big orange tank is not reused. The small white booster rockets are picked up by two ships (possibly the "Liberty" and "Freedom", but I'm not sure about the names) and shipped somewhere to have more propellant put in them, then shipped back down here to KSC to be used. That orange tank is still fairly expensive, though.
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Slashdot Mirror
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If your tastes allow it, buy records from independent bands instead of pop sensations. The quality, individuality, and creativity of the music is almost always more evident in such labels, and you can feel good about the fact that no suit is getting rich off of your desire to listen to quality music.
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Tell me what makes you so afraid
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Microsoft investors are as thick-skinned as their users. Their precious good software company can't fail them. It's their hardware causing the daily BSOD.
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Likewise, both the Playstation and Bleem play Playstation games, but the Playstation requires two wires to hook up, only plays PSX games and music cds, and plays PSX games the way they were designed. Bleem requires several minutes of installation time, a CD verification procedure, boot up time, and computer hardware that costs over twice as much as a PSX. And the result? Have you ever seen Chrono Cross on Bleem? Not a pretty sight...
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You're correct with that assumption that consoles don't drop off sharply in price because their vendors realize that they have a guaranteed customer (the PlayStation, after release, didn't get any less popular) and they can keep the prices high on their outdated components for longer than they ordinarily would.
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- New coders for Valve so they can hurry up and release Team Fortress 2.
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An OC3 so I can get first post before anybody else has a chance to reload the index. (note - I don't first post)
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Requisite fast gaming machine... (>=2 athlons, gf2 , 2g ram, and several hard drives)
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Copyleft t-shirts
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Missile submarine
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FA-18 jet
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TFC - in real life!!!!!
That is my list - deliveries may be made to:BonzoESC.
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Enough with the patenting of obvious things either ripped off from physical objects (dictionaries,) or conveniences that are now commonplace. BT has the same force holding their patent to themselves that Amazon has to "One-Click" shopping, and Adobe to tabbed dialog boxes: none. Screw these big companies trying to control what is now a pop-culture phenomenon and let's just write good software, keep phone services working, and sell more books.
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Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
How is it that, in January, I bought a dang-fast TNT2 for $60, while the Voodoo2, a slower card, sold for over $100 everywhere I looked? Simple - the different board manufacturers compete with each other, trying to sell their TNT2 board over somebody else's. The 3dfx board manufacturer just tries to sell their boards to Voodoo zealots, who are, for the most part, GeForce believers now.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
If you bail out of an airplane with a parachute, you have a better chance of surviving than if you bail out of an orbiting spacecraft with a spacesuit and a parachute. The atmosphere that astronomers so curse is the lifeblood of aviation.
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate
Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate