Re:I think that M$ has Missed the Point
on
Microsoft Freon
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· Score: 1
It's been pointed out before, but I'd just like to make the point that selling consoles at below cost is not a time-honored tradition of the console industry, nor does the most successful console maker (Sony) do any such thing. In fact, at this point in time, Sony makes a tidy profit of the sales of Playstation 2 consoles. Given the advances in manufacturing since it's release, it is estimated that they make in the range of $100 profit per console sold, even with the recent price drop.
I'll give you that Microsoft is selling the XBox below cost (estimated at around a $150 loss per console, although I'm not sure how that has changed since the price drop and since their manufacturing improvements). But seriously, what do you expect? This is the Microsoft way: if you want to get into a market, do whatever it takes, even if it means dumping billions down the drain. All that matters to MS is taking control of the console market, and they'll work on making a profit later (they've got plenty of profit from their other endeavours to keep the XBox afloat).
Anyways, my point is this: don't assume that just because Microsoft (and now, Nintendo as well, to a smaller degree) are stupid enough to fall into the same trap that Sega did with the Dreamcast, that this is how the console industry has always worked, or how the console industry will work in the future. Even now, Sony is still dominating the market, and they make a profit per console on top of that. Somehow, I think that MS is going to have trouble topping that, given that they have to sell around 15 games to a customer to make a profit (console = -$150, each game = roughly +$10 in licensing). Seriously, nobody wants 15 copies of Halo, and that's about the only worthwhile game the XBox has.
I have to disagree that using optical devices within cameras causes much of a problem, battery wise. I currently own a Sony CD Mavica CD200, which uses 3" CDRs and CDRWs, and my experience with it has been excellent.
To begin with, a fully charged battery lasts (IIRC) about 160 minutes. This may not sound like a lot, but this is 160 minutes of being left on. The camera itself powers down automatically after about 5 minutes of being idle, and it powers back up pretty damn fast, although about 1 in 10 power-ups takes a bit longer (perhaps initializing the CD reader is a variable-time operation). It has been my experience that I can go out for a day, and take 150-200 pictures on one battery, as well as a few video clips (up to 1 minute clips, although the new version of the CD Mavica can write clips as long as you can store them). I also keep 1 backup battery in my camera case, and so the battery life has never been an issue.
On top of this, you cannot beat the media for price per megabyte of storage. I can buy a 10-pack of the 3" CDRWs, each of which holds 156MB, for about $15.00 . If you don't care about rewriteability, you can get a 50-pack of 3" CDRs for about $25. In my camera case, I have a small CD wallet that is designed for this size CD (and GameCube games), and it has 10 of these CDRWs in it. For $15, I have at my disposal enough storage to take about 1800 pictures at 1600x1200@32bpp. Try that with flash or other media, and you'll find that you're going to have to spend upwards of $2000.
Optical media is perfect for digital cameras, IMHO. I really hope that this new media ends up in a camera in the future, because it will allow the cameras to be smaller, but still hold a great deal of information on (hopefully) cheap optical discs. Or, alternately, I'd love to see a larger form-factor (perhaps the 3" we have now) of these discs, which would allow for an incredible amount of storage, and hopefully would also help spur adoption of the format in the form of a replacement for CD and DVD drives in computers.
please, dear god, offer RING BOUND versions of your books! I really don't understand why this isn't a common thing, especially among technical references. Standard bindings do not hold up to the abuse that my books take, and are especially annoying if I am trying to work on a piece of code while keeping a reference book open at the same time. Ring bindings allow for books to lie flat on a desk, instead of flopping closed. To get the same effect from a normally bound book, you practically have to break the binding.
Just a thought. I'd probably own more books if they were just easier to use while doing actual work.
That most likely wouldn't help. It isn't just the cost of the licensing that makes porting expensive. It is the sheer manpower required. Loki has written a LOT of stuff to help porting (SDL, etc), but it still isn't a non-trivial task. It requires skilled programmers, and a lot of time. If they sold games for $15 a piece, even if that gave them a profit, it wouldn't be enough to recoup costs.
Games cost $50 a piece for a reason. Sure, the media and packaging only make up $1 or $2, but when you factor in manpower, licensing, marketing, and other things, they might be making $10 or $15 on that $50 game. No matter how good a deal they get from the original publishers, there is no way they could make selling patches a profitable endeavour.
You do realize that Loki has to *pay* companies for the right to port games? And that they front all of the money for the porting? If Loki gave away patches, or sold them for $15, they would lose IMMENSE amounts of cash on every title they ported. The only way they can make money is to sell the game at the normal price.
It isn't their fault that you bought the Windows CD. Would you bitch and moan if you had migrated to a Mac, and needed a new CD?
The only reason Q3A for Linux could use the Windows CDs is because Id made the port themselves, and just contracted Loki to keep it updated and distributed. Loki didn't initially pay to port it.
TINSTAAFL. If you want Linux games, you have to buy Linux games, not buy Windows games with the hope that some company is benevolent enough to front the money to port it, and not get any profits back. Or, you need to convince game shops to make their products cross-platform to begin with, which would negate the need for other companies to port them.
At my university, the IT department is made up almost entirely of paid professionals. Not only that, the school makes it a point not to hire recent graduates into the IT department. There is a very good reason for this: with students running the IT department, there is far too much room for abuse.
I am a student myself, so don't start bitching that I'm underestimating students. The potential for abuse is there, and abuse DOES happen in student-run IT departments. What type of abuse, you ask? Well, lets take a look at an example:
Student A works for the IT department. He has root on various systems across the network, including the mail servers. Student A also has a severe dislike for Student B.
One day, Student B does something that really annoys Student A. So, Student A decides to get revenge. What does he do? He starts monitoring Student B's email, and starts sniffing packets to see what Student B has been looking at on the web. A few weeks later, he discovers Student B's darkest secret. It really doesn't matter what this secret is. Perhaps Student B is gay, but doesn't want anyone to know. Regardless of what this secret is, now Student A knows about it.
See the problem here? Students have far too much contact with the people who use the network. They know them. They are their friends, enemies, lovers, and ex-lovers... and this means that the potential for abuse is enormous. No matter how trustworthy you think they are, the temptation alone should be reason enough not to allow students to run the IT department.
It is far better policy to hire outside professionals who have little or no connection to the school. They have virtually no contact with the users of the network, and have no reason to abuse their powers. This is not to say they won't abuse their powers; it is only to say that, assuming they aren't a person who abuses power in the first place, they won't abuse that power.
I will say, however, that having students involved in the IT department is fine. It simply needs to be limited. At my university, students work at the helpdesk and the shop, as well as occasionally help with physical hardware issues (router configuration, wiring, etc). However, no students have priveledged access to servers or the NOC.
This is as it should be. It is fine to use a university network as a training ground, but only if the proper precautions are taken.
What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.
If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
I must offer a wholehearted agreement to this sentiment.
One of the things that annoys me more than anything in online communities is that invariably, they devolve into a group of people who can't handle any dissent amongst themselves. Everything must be happy and fun , and any discussion that might actually cause conflict is met with derision and fear.
To these people, I say this: what is wrong with arguing? People are human. People have disagreements. And quite frankly, how else can you test your own beliefs other than defending them?
I'd rather have my beliefs challenged so that I am forced to actually examine them, instead of just blindly believing whatever the group wants me to. Unfortunately, it seems that most people don't agree with me. They see arguments as evil.
Of course, these are the same people that vote for the same party every year, because after all, "my parents were [X], and therefore so am I". To them, actually having a unique thought or examining the ideals of their political party is crazy talk. So really, I guess I can't expect much of them.
Still, it would be nice to see a forum where people can actually discuss things in a civilized manner. K5 does a decent job of this at times, but even there it can be difficult to do so. But hey, who knows, it may work out eventually. One thing is for sure though: it sure as hell won't happen on/..
Try about 5% of the possible audience. 95% of the people out there who might buy something like a webpad are also the same people who can't figure out how to use AOL.
Hardware vendors aren't making them because there isn't enough of a market for them. And as I said before, although I'd like to see them, it isn't going to happen until it is economically viable, which it currently is NOT.
Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for...
The simple answer: because you are living in a fantasy land.
Who do you think you are referring to when you say "we" in that statement? The general populous? If so, you're sadly mistaken.
I would like to see devices such as the one you've described, and so would you. But guess what? J. Random Consumer DOES NOT. And quite frankly, the number of people who are willing to buy such devices is so low that it wouldn't make much economic sense for the company to make them.
What's that? You thought the company was making the products out of goodwill towards men? Oh, thats too bad... you see, companies exist for a purpose: to make money. They do not exist to supply you with whatever gadget strikes your fancy. Thus, they are not in the habit of making such devices just because a few tens of thousands of geeks want them.
I work at a company with about 10,000 users. We have 20 exchange servers. And even with this many, they are still fairly bogged down.
I work with another company that has 5,000 users. They have 2 DEC Unix machines running sendmail, and one of them is a backup that only takes over if the first has a hardware failure. So, in reality, those 5,000 users are all on 1 server.
What does this say about Exchange? To me, it says that Exchange is incapable of handling more than 1/10th of what Sendmail is capable of. And realize, the hardware on these machines isn't all that different. Also, the site with 5,000 users has roughly 1.5x the mail volume per user.
But he doesn't HAVE To. Al is a nice guy, and always asks, but if he wants to he could parody anything without permission.
Take a look at the case of "Amish Paradise". Al thought he had permission (his label lied to him and said they had asked), and was very sorry about it, but he still couldn't be sued over it.
Well, the writeup of this story insinuates that this deal makes the distribution of parody legal, which leads us to believe that it was illegal beforehand. So whats the deal?
Can somebody explain to me why LucasFilms has any right to say somebody cannot parody them? I was sort of under the impression that works of parody were protected, and couldn't be stopped just because the original author didn't like it.
Or have we just given up and bent over to take it up the ass from LucasFilms because they can pay lawyers more in a day than most people make in their lifetimes?
OK, I think you are not getting what I'm saying. We're comparing two things here:
1. Drinking : leads to impairment of judgement. Could possibly lead to harm to others.
2. Hypothetical Drug : leads to muderous rampages
Let me ask you something: do you think 1 in 2000 people who drink alcohol end up killing someone? If so, you need to think again. Think about how many people there are in america, and how many drink every night.
Now, think about how many deaths that are caused by this drinking. Does that number approach the 45,450 deaths PER DAY that would occur if use of this hypothetical drug was as widespread as Alcohol? [assuming 33% of the population used it, and of those, 1 in 2000 killed a single person, so we aren't even talking about a real rampage]
I didn't think so.
There is a big difference in my mind between alcohol, which cause impairment and MIGHT lead to harm, and a guaranteed 45,000+ deaths per day. And I think that would be a reason for me to want the drug to be illegal.
There are points where idealism HAS to take notice of reality. And yeah, this is a hypothetical situation, but hey, this is how I would respond to it. Quite honestly, if there were a drug that consistently caused people to go on murderous rampages, I'd be all for making it illegal.
Alcohol, on the other hand, while not exactly the greatest thing, can only cause people to make bad decisions. And most of the time [in my experience] these have been things like sleeping with somebody they shouldn't have, or simply drinking too much and throwing up. That is a far cry from 45,000+ murders each day.
1. Although I think it should be illegal, I don't think this should be mandated by the federal government. Let each state decide on its own.
2. My personal reason for saying it should be illegal is based on simple ratios. I could be mistaken, but I doubt that 1 in 2000 people who drink go on muderous rampages. In fact, I doubt many drunken people actively murder others PERIOD. Drunk driving is another story, and as I've said, that most certainly SHOULD be illegal, as the very act of it endangers others.
Also, taking it out of the public eye doesn't mean jack shit. If I take this drug in my home, unless I've locked myself in a room with no way out, what is to stop me from leaving home on a murderous rampage and killing 20 people? I hardly think your solution would work.
Any drug that only effects the person using should be completely legal. I don't care if it causes their intestines to dissolve. If they want to take it, it is their body, so more power to them.
However, a drug such as you are describing is , in many ways, similar to drinking and driving. Getting drunk is not, in and of itself, illegal. However, getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car IS illegal, and SHOULD be illegal, as you are endangering the lives of others.
Should this drug be illegal? Yes. The act of taking it seriously endangers the lives of others. And I feel that most other Libertarians would agree with me.
I think that you don't give Libertarians enough credit, and you have some bad preconceptions about them. Most of them seem to stem from experiences with people who are not Libertarian, but think they are.
It is fairly common to have people who don't like mainstream politics latch onto one group or another, and act as though they represent it. They take every opportunity to proclaim their views, and claim that everything they say is representative of the group. However, in most cases, fanatics are far from representative of a group. And in fact, most of them proclaim their allegiance to an outside party so loudly because they want to seem "cool" by "not conforming", and really don't know or care about the real beliefs of that party.
Anyways, my point is, try looking for the people who are actually DOING things in the name of the Libertarian Party, and stop listening to posers who want to be "cool".
Also, don't assume that everyone in a party completely agrees. Nothing pisses me off more than hearing someone say something like "I'm a [INSERT PARTY HERE], so of course I think [INSERT OPINION] about [INSERT ISSUE HERE]". They are just as bad as people who say "I was raised a [INSERT PARTY HERE], so I have to vote for [INSERT CANDIDATE HERE]."
Anyways, I'm ranting, and getting offtopic. The moral: you seem to know a lot of people who think they are libertarian, but are not. Or, they want to be, but haven't really thought about the issues, and just want a party other than the Republicrats to dictate ideals to them so that they don't have to think about it.
Let me take a guess: he was 18-25 years old, has never really looked into what a Libertarian is, and thinks that Libertarian means "gun toting nut" (and thus he fits right in)?
Whoever said that is not a Libertarian. I don't even know if I'd call it anarchism. I'd probably just call it "dumbass teenager who has no capacity for actual reasoning".
The main tenet of Libertarianism is that the only time the Government should use force is to prevent one person from harming or infringing upon the rights of another. In other words, you can do anything you want, so long as you do not infringe upon others rights.
Firing shots at you [even if I'm missing] most certainly infringes upon your rights.
Go and actually read some stuff about Libertarianism, and ignore anyone like the one person you have already mentioned. They don't even know what the word means.
The point of the minimum wage law is to prevent people being not able to earn enough money to live.
Example: say Bill is looking for a job. He wants $5.25 an hour. But all the employers will only give him $4/hr .
Bill can't do shit about this. If all the employers lower their wages, he has to either take the job, or go unemployed. Add in the fact that there is almost always somebody who will take the job, even at a low price, and suddenly Bill is unemployable. That, or he'll need 2 or 3 jobs just to live.
The difference between this and volunteerism is that in volunteerism, somebody is saying "I don't want a job, I want to do you a favor. If you want to do me a favor in return [like give me a new video card], thats fine." It isn't intended to be a way of making a living.
I have to just throw in an agreement on what you've said about STL.
Although it SHOULD be entirely portable, it isn't. I develop for CrystalSpace, and we can't use STL due to some of the ports not working at all with it. Kinda sucky having to reinvent the wheel, but unfortunately it has to be done.
First up, I have RARELY had keyboards break. I mean, GOOD keyboards are practically indestructible. I have an IBM keyboard right now that I've actually spilled an entire glass of water on, which I took apart and dried , and it still works fine.
If you have a wooden desk, get something to put your keyboard on. Try rubber feet, or just put down some sort of pad between the desk and your keyboard. You could say the same thing about a monitor, or the computer itself.
Cables... who cares? So its a cable. Most appliances use them. They aren't a big deal.
There are MANY different types of keyboards. You can probably find one that fits your hands.
As for useless keys... well, don't buy a keyboard with those keys. They DO exist. Or, make those keys useful by binding them to something you find useful. Nobody said you had to keep the default keybindings.
And picking up whats on your co-workers fingers: are you a hypochondriac or what? Ever use public transportation? Christ, ever walk down the street ? Ever sit down in a chair in a restaurant? Take a chill pill.
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It's been pointed out before, but I'd just like to make the point that selling consoles at below cost is not a time-honored tradition of the console industry, nor does the most successful console maker (Sony) do any such thing. In fact, at this point in time, Sony makes a tidy profit of the sales of Playstation 2 consoles. Given the advances in manufacturing since it's release, it is estimated that they make in the range of $100 profit per console sold, even with the recent price drop.
I'll give you that Microsoft is selling the XBox below cost (estimated at around a $150 loss per console, although I'm not sure how that has changed since the price drop and since their manufacturing improvements). But seriously, what do you expect? This is the Microsoft way: if you want to get into a market, do whatever it takes, even if it means dumping billions down the drain. All that matters to MS is taking control of the console market, and they'll work on making a profit later (they've got plenty of profit from their other endeavours to keep the XBox afloat).
Anyways, my point is this: don't assume that just because Microsoft (and now, Nintendo as well, to a smaller degree) are stupid enough to fall into the same trap that Sega did with the Dreamcast, that this is how the console industry has always worked, or how the console industry will work in the future. Even now, Sony is still dominating the market, and they make a profit per console on top of that. Somehow, I think that MS is going to have trouble topping that, given that they have to sell around 15 games to a customer to make a profit (console = -$150, each game = roughly +$10 in licensing). Seriously, nobody wants 15 copies of Halo, and that's about the only worthwhile game the XBox has.
I have to disagree that using optical devices within cameras causes much of a problem, battery wise. I currently own a Sony CD Mavica CD200, which uses 3" CDRs and CDRWs, and my experience with it has been excellent.
To begin with, a fully charged battery lasts (IIRC) about 160 minutes. This may not sound like a lot, but this is 160 minutes of being left on. The camera itself powers down automatically after about 5 minutes of being idle, and it powers back up pretty damn fast, although about 1 in 10 power-ups takes a bit longer (perhaps initializing the CD reader is a variable-time operation). It has been my experience that I can go out for a day, and take 150-200 pictures on one battery, as well as a few video clips (up to 1 minute clips, although the new version of the CD Mavica can write clips as long as you can store them). I also keep 1 backup battery in my camera case, and so the battery life has never been an issue.
On top of this, you cannot beat the media for price per megabyte of storage. I can buy a 10-pack of the 3" CDRWs, each of which holds 156MB, for about $15.00 . If you don't care about rewriteability, you can get a 50-pack of 3" CDRs for about $25. In my camera case, I have a small CD wallet that is designed for this size CD (and GameCube games), and it has 10 of these CDRWs in it. For $15, I have at my disposal enough storage to take about 1800 pictures at 1600x1200@32bpp. Try that with flash or other media, and you'll find that you're going to have to spend upwards of $2000.
Optical media is perfect for digital cameras, IMHO. I really hope that this new media ends up in a camera in the future, because it will allow the cameras to be smaller, but still hold a great deal of information on (hopefully) cheap optical discs. Or, alternately, I'd love to see a larger form-factor (perhaps the 3" we have now) of these discs, which would allow for an incredible amount of storage, and hopefully would also help spur adoption of the format in the form of a replacement for CD and DVD drives in computers.
please, dear god, offer RING BOUND versions of your books! I really don't understand why this isn't a common thing, especially among technical references. Standard bindings do not hold up to the abuse that my books take, and are especially annoying if I am trying to work on a piece of code while keeping a reference book open at the same time. Ring bindings allow for books to lie flat on a desk, instead of flopping closed. To get the same effect from a normally bound book, you practically have to break the binding.
Just a thought. I'd probably own more books if they were just easier to use while doing actual work.
That most likely wouldn't help. It isn't just the cost of the licensing that makes porting expensive. It is the sheer manpower required. Loki has written a LOT of stuff to help porting (SDL, etc), but it still isn't a non-trivial task. It requires skilled programmers, and a lot of time. If they sold games for $15 a piece, even if that gave them a profit, it wouldn't be enough to recoup costs.
Games cost $50 a piece for a reason. Sure, the media and packaging only make up $1 or $2, but when you factor in manpower, licensing, marketing, and other things, they might be making $10 or $15 on that $50 game. No matter how good a deal they get from the original publishers, there is no way they could make selling patches a profitable endeavour.
This is a completely unreasonable request.
You do realize that Loki has to *pay* companies for the right to port games? And that they front all of the money for the porting? If Loki gave away patches, or sold them for $15, they would lose IMMENSE amounts of cash on every title they ported. The only way they can make money is to sell the game at the normal price.
It isn't their fault that you bought the Windows CD. Would you bitch and moan if you had migrated to a Mac, and needed a new CD?
The only reason Q3A for Linux could use the Windows CDs is because Id made the port themselves, and just contracted Loki to keep it updated and distributed. Loki didn't initially pay to port it.
TINSTAAFL. If you want Linux games, you have to buy Linux games, not buy Windows games with the hope that some company is benevolent enough to front the money to port it, and not get any profits back. Or, you need to convince game shops to make their products cross-platform to begin with, which would negate the need for other companies to port them.
At my university, the IT department is made up almost entirely of paid professionals. Not only that, the school makes it a point not to hire recent graduates into the IT department. There is a very good reason for this: with students running the IT department, there is far too much room for abuse.
... and this means that the potential for abuse is enormous. No matter how trustworthy you think they are, the temptation alone should be reason enough not to allow students to run the IT department.
I am a student myself, so don't start bitching that I'm underestimating students. The potential for abuse is there, and abuse DOES happen in student-run IT departments. What type of abuse, you ask? Well, lets take a look at an example:
Student A works for the IT department. He has root on various systems across the network, including the mail servers. Student A also has a severe dislike for Student B.
One day, Student B does something that really annoys Student A. So, Student A decides to get revenge. What does he do? He starts monitoring Student B's email, and starts sniffing packets to see what Student B has been looking at on the web. A few weeks later, he discovers Student B's darkest secret. It really doesn't matter what this secret is. Perhaps Student B is gay, but doesn't want anyone to know. Regardless of what this secret is, now Student A knows about it.
See the problem here? Students have far too much contact with the people who use the network. They know them. They are their friends, enemies, lovers, and ex-lovers
It is far better policy to hire outside professionals who have little or no connection to the school. They have virtually no contact with the users of the network, and have no reason to abuse their powers. This is not to say they won't abuse their powers; it is only to say that, assuming they aren't a person who abuses power in the first place, they won't abuse that power.
I will say, however, that having students involved in the IT department is fine. It simply needs to be limited. At my university, students work at the helpdesk and the shop, as well as occasionally help with physical hardware issues (router configuration, wiring, etc). However, no students have priveledged access to servers or the NOC.
This is as it should be. It is fine to use a university network as a training ground, but only if the proper precautions are taken.
"Only" 60 channels?
What kind of crack are you smoking? Tell me, when was the last time you strayed from the 5-10 channels you generally watch? I mean, christ, 90% of the channels out there suck so bad I can hardly believe they exist. And even the good channels generally have 1 or 2 good shows at most.
If "only" 60 channels is an issue for you, you have WAY too much free time on your hands.
I must offer a wholehearted agreement to this sentiment.
/. .
One of the things that annoys me more than anything in online communities is that invariably, they devolve into a group of people who can't handle any dissent amongst themselves. Everything must be happy and fun , and any discussion that might actually cause conflict is met with derision and fear.
To these people, I say this: what is wrong with arguing? People are human. People have disagreements. And quite frankly, how else can you test your own beliefs other than defending them?
I'd rather have my beliefs challenged so that I am forced to actually examine them, instead of just blindly believing whatever the group wants me to. Unfortunately, it seems that most people don't agree with me. They see arguments as evil.
Of course, these are the same people that vote for the same party every year, because after all, "my parents were [X], and therefore so am I". To them, actually having a unique thought or examining the ideals of their political party is crazy talk. So really, I guess I can't expect much of them.
Still, it would be nice to see a forum where people can actually discuss things in a civilized manner. K5 does a decent job of this at times, but even there it can be difficult to do so. But hey, who knows, it may work out eventually. One thing is for sure though: it sure as hell won't happen on
Half their possible audience? Hardly!
Try about 5% of the possible audience. 95% of the people out there who might buy something like a webpad are also the same people who can't figure out how to use AOL.
Hardware vendors aren't making them because there isn't enough of a market for them. And as I said before, although I'd like to see them, it isn't going to happen until it is economically viable, which it currently is NOT.
Why can't the hardware vendors make what we are all looking for...
The simple answer: because you are living in a fantasy land.
Who do you think you are referring to when you say "we" in that statement? The general populous? If so, you're sadly mistaken.
I would like to see devices such as the one you've described, and so would you. But guess what? J. Random Consumer DOES NOT. And quite frankly, the number of people who are willing to buy such devices is so low that it wouldn't make much economic sense for the company to make them.
What's that? You thought the company was making the products out of goodwill towards men? Oh, thats too bad... you see, companies exist for a purpose: to make money. They do not exist to supply you with whatever gadget strikes your fancy. Thus, they are not in the habit of making such devices just because a few tens of thousands of geeks want them.
I have to agree here.
I work at a company with about 10,000 users. We have 20 exchange servers. And even with this many, they are still fairly bogged down.
I work with another company that has 5,000 users. They have 2 DEC Unix machines running sendmail, and one of them is a backup that only takes over if the first has a hardware failure. So, in reality, those 5,000 users are all on 1 server.
What does this say about Exchange? To me, it says that Exchange is incapable of handling more than 1/10th of what Sendmail is capable of. And realize, the hardware on these machines isn't all that different. Also, the site with 5,000 users has roughly 1.5x the mail volume per user.
But he doesn't HAVE To. Al is a nice guy, and always asks, but if he wants to he could parody anything without permission.
Take a look at the case of "Amish Paradise". Al thought he had permission (his label lied to him and said they had asked), and was very sorry about it, but he still couldn't be sued over it.
Well, the writeup of this story insinuates that this deal makes the distribution of parody legal, which leads us to believe that it was illegal beforehand. So whats the deal?
Can somebody explain to me why LucasFilms has any right to say somebody cannot parody them? I was sort of under the impression that works of parody were protected, and couldn't be stopped just because the original author didn't like it.
Or have we just given up and bent over to take it up the ass from LucasFilms because they can pay lawyers more in a day than most people make in their lifetimes?
OK, I think you are not getting what I'm saying. We're comparing two things here:
1. Drinking : leads to impairment of judgement. Could possibly lead to harm to others.
2. Hypothetical Drug : leads to muderous rampages
Let me ask you something: do you think 1 in 2000 people who drink alcohol end up killing someone? If so, you need to think again. Think about how many people there are in america, and how many drink every night.
Now, think about how many deaths that are caused by this drinking. Does that number approach the 45,450 deaths PER DAY that would occur if use of this hypothetical drug was as widespread as Alcohol? [assuming 33% of the population used it, and of those, 1 in 2000 killed a single person, so we aren't even talking about a real rampage]
I didn't think so.
There is a big difference in my mind between alcohol, which cause impairment and MIGHT lead to harm, and a guaranteed 45,000+ deaths per day. And I think that would be a reason for me to want the drug to be illegal.
There are points where idealism HAS to take notice of reality. And yeah, this is a hypothetical situation, but hey, this is how I would respond to it. Quite honestly, if there were a drug that consistently caused people to go on murderous rampages, I'd be all for making it illegal.
Alcohol, on the other hand, while not exactly the greatest thing, can only cause people to make bad decisions. And most of the time [in my experience] these have been things like sleeping with somebody they shouldn't have, or simply drinking too much and throwing up. That is a far cry from 45,000+ murders each day.
I think that two things matter here:
1. Although I think it should be illegal, I don't think this should be mandated by the federal government. Let each state decide on its own.
2. My personal reason for saying it should be illegal is based on simple ratios. I could be mistaken, but I doubt that 1 in 2000 people who drink go on muderous rampages. In fact, I doubt many drunken people actively murder others PERIOD. Drunk driving is another story, and as I've said, that most certainly SHOULD be illegal, as the very act of it endangers others.
Also, taking it out of the public eye doesn't mean jack shit. If I take this drug in my home, unless I've locked myself in a room with no way out, what is to stop me from leaving home on a murderous rampage and killing 20 people? I hardly think your solution would work.
Any drug that only effects the person using should be completely legal. I don't care if it causes their intestines to dissolve. If they want to take it, it is their body, so more power to them.
However, a drug such as you are describing is , in many ways, similar to drinking and driving. Getting drunk is not, in and of itself, illegal. However, getting drunk and getting behind the wheel of a car IS illegal, and SHOULD be illegal, as you are endangering the lives of others.
Should this drug be illegal? Yes. The act of taking it seriously endangers the lives of others. And I feel that most other Libertarians would agree with me.
I think that you don't give Libertarians enough credit, and you have some bad preconceptions about them. Most of them seem to stem from experiences with people who are not Libertarian, but think they are.
It is fairly common to have people who don't like mainstream politics latch onto one group or another, and act as though they represent it. They take every opportunity to proclaim their views, and claim that everything they say is representative of the group. However, in most cases, fanatics are far from representative of a group. And in fact, most of them proclaim their allegiance to an outside party so loudly because they want to seem "cool" by "not conforming", and really don't know or care about the real beliefs of that party.
Anyways, my point is, try looking for the people who are actually DOING things in the name of the Libertarian Party, and stop listening to posers who want to be "cool".
Also, don't assume that everyone in a party completely agrees. Nothing pisses me off more than hearing someone say something like "I'm a [INSERT PARTY HERE], so of course I think [INSERT OPINION] about [INSERT ISSUE HERE]". They are just as bad as people who say "I was raised a [INSERT PARTY HERE], so I have to vote for [INSERT CANDIDATE HERE]."
Anyways, I'm ranting, and getting offtopic. The moral: you seem to know a lot of people who think they are libertarian, but are not. Or, they want to be, but haven't really thought about the issues, and just want a party other than the Republicrats to dictate ideals to them so that they don't have to think about it.
Let me take a guess: he was 18-25 years old, has never really looked into what a Libertarian is, and thinks that Libertarian means "gun toting nut" (and thus he fits right in)?
Whoever said that is not a Libertarian. I don't even know if I'd call it anarchism. I'd probably just call it "dumbass teenager who has no capacity for actual reasoning".
The main tenet of Libertarianism is that the only time the Government should use force is to prevent one person from harming or infringing upon the rights of another. In other words, you can do anything you want, so long as you do not infringe upon others rights.
Firing shots at you [even if I'm missing] most certainly infringes upon your rights.
Go and actually read some stuff about Libertarianism, and ignore anyone like the one person you have already mentioned. They don't even know what the word means.
And you're saying that the fact that the Libertarian party advocates violence only as an act of self-defense is a bad thing?
I run woody myself. you do realize, btw, that you broke tuxracer about a day ago, and it is still broken?
:)
You updated the data [which switched from using numbers to actual course names], but didn't update the binary.
Anyways, I hope it gets fixed soon
[ I've been a long time Tuxracer fan. I even dabble in the maps, which I think are ingeniously implemented ]
That IS what is happening. People who subscribe to certain magazines [such as Wired] were sent the :CueCat without any solicitation.
So anybody in that boat is perfectly within their legal rights to consider it a gift, and nothing in the EULA can change that.
The point of the minimum wage law is to prevent people being not able to earn enough money to live.
Example: say Bill is looking for a job. He wants $5.25 an hour. But all the employers will only give him $4/hr .
Bill can't do shit about this. If all the employers lower their wages, he has to either take the job, or go unemployed. Add in the fact that there is almost always somebody who will take the job, even at a low price, and suddenly Bill is unemployable. That, or he'll need 2 or 3 jobs just to live.
The difference between this and volunteerism is that in volunteerism, somebody is saying "I don't want a job, I want to do you a favor. If you want to do me a favor in return [like give me a new video card], thats fine." It isn't intended to be a way of making a living.
I have to just throw in an agreement on what you've said about STL.
Although it SHOULD be entirely portable, it isn't. I develop for CrystalSpace, and we can't use STL due to some of the ports not working at all with it. Kinda sucky having to reinvent the wheel, but unfortunately it has to be done.
First up, I have RARELY had keyboards break. I mean, GOOD keyboards are practically indestructible. I have an IBM keyboard right now that I've actually spilled an entire glass of water on, which I took apart and dried , and it still works fine.
If you have a wooden desk, get something to put your keyboard on. Try rubber feet, or just put down some sort of pad between the desk and your keyboard. You could say the same thing about a monitor, or the computer itself.
Cables... who cares? So its a cable. Most appliances use them. They aren't a big deal.
There are MANY different types of keyboards. You can probably find one that fits your hands.
As for useless keys... well, don't buy a keyboard with those keys. They DO exist. Or, make those keys useful by binding them to something you find useful. Nobody said you had to keep the default keybindings.
And picking up whats on your co-workers fingers: are you a hypochondriac or what? Ever use public transportation? Christ, ever walk down the street ? Ever sit down in a chair in a restaurant? Take a chill pill.
I mean, really, why do people want to do away with keyboards?
Keyboards are quick and efficient. This article says that you'll instead use a 3D interface, and simply touch with your hands what you want to do.
Is it me, or does that sound rather slow and clunky? Do I really want to be waving my arms around just to open a damn program?
Face it: keyboards are still around after all these years because THEY WORK. They might not look futuristic or uber-high tech, but THEY WORK.