What, repeating vintage 1969 American technology is beyond the reach of 2007 Japan, even though what it has to do to land a person on the Moon is now proven, and the equipment has 30 years of further development?
Or are they just feigning incompetence to get America to do the (literal) heavy lifting, and put Japanese space exploitation teams and gear up there?
Even more reason why MS should have switched to prioritize subscriptions, deprecating "releases" only as packages for marketing campaigns.
Why should MS users know anything about version numbers or other geeky stats? All they want to know is "are you up to date?", to which they can answer "my subscription is current", or "the 'subscribed' box is checked in the Desktop Settings dialog box". Then the solution will be "check the box to resubscribe and pay the fee".
I don't know why MS doesn't just skip these "major releases" and just charge everyone a subscription (quarterly, annual, quadrennial, "lifetime") to the online "Windows Update" service. The initial purchase would include security patches for, say, a decade, or the lifetime of the product (when MS can force most everyone to pay again). But nonsecurity bugfixes, new features, extra modules (new formats, GUI styles, interops) would require the subscription.
MS could still package "milestones" with their sizzlingest features to attract new subscribers, especially among the "legacy" users whose subscriptions have lapsed. With the huge marketing pushes at those milestones that are the current "upgrade" releases' biggest features. While offering new marketing kickoffs at any time they want to do it.
MS would lockin not just users using their standard tricks, but actually lockin their subscription money. Especially with enterprises, their main market, they'd get budgeted in perpetuity, a massive entitlement that would require executive action (thereby happen less often) to cancel, rather than have to do something every time an upgrade decision comes up.
I wouldn't like it. But that's never stopped MS from doing things before. Maybe this "why upgrade?" release of Office, and the similarly tepid reception as Vista arrives, is the MS way to get us to think we're smart for choosing subscriptions instead of upgrades, "outsmarting Microsoft".
What happens to "your" content after you've transferred it from iTunes for the last of (I think 5) times Apple "generously" allows you?
What happens when you want to transcode Apple's AAC files to the newest format that your (non-Apple, maybe) player plays?
What happens when you want to lend your friend your copy, which has always been fair use?
DRM is "Digital Rights Management". But it effectively protects more than the rights the distributor actually has. While interfering with many rights of the "owner" of the content. Apple puts a friendly face on its excessive authority, but that just masks the strictest ripoffs. Microsoft's Zune is typically hamfisted and imperial, but that just exposes the ripopff that's common to all DRM. Apple's concessions might paint over the most obvious hangups so most people won't notice for awhile. But if you look clearly, it's common to all, and the problems are inevitable.
Microsoft has now proved the most popular reason to dump DRM: the Zune player forces users to rebuy their legit content, because its DRM conflicts with the old DRM.
I bought Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_ on vinyl, on "audiophile" vinyl, on cassette, on CD, on "remastered" CD, and again a few times to replace worn-out copies of those (but never on 8-track, smartass - that was my copy of _The Wall_). But then I scanned my audiophile CD to HD/WAV, and have transferred it a dozen times: to backup CD in a closet, to mobile devices, to new HDs that aren't worn out, to SHN, then FLAC compression, to MP3 for streaming to my remote locations. I own that content, and I'll do whatever I want with it that's fair. If I want to prop up a wobbly table leg with the audiophile CD, I'll do it if I damn well please, even if the "license" I bought doesn't specify that use.
These record companies make most of their money from "catalog reissues". Records they made (usually cruelly unfair to artists) deals to sell decades ago, when they profited on their balance sheet. The biggest hits, that already paid for themselves many times over, are naturally the ones most desired to be played today. Because last generation's pop culture is this generations' folk culture - that's why we call our parents our "folks". The corrupt "copyright extension" monopoly laws are bad enough. "Enforcing" them beyond the publisher's rights, destroying rights and purchased privileges of the owner, and the public, is a culture-destroying crime.
And now, Microsoft has painted the picture for everyone to see. Make your player equal "Microsoft", and you'll pay for the privilege of using your own property as often as they "upgrade" their predictably buggy and inconvenient equipment.
Now is the time to make "DRM" as dirty a word as is "censorship". Kill it now, before it's permanently rooted, while people are still surprised to hear we have to dump our "old" content just to play it in some incrementally newer way.
Just make available drugs sold in units of kilometers and celsius. Americans already know grams from "private experience", mostly learned in college.
And get utility companies to sell service in real metric. What good is a "kilowatt-hour", when it's base 3600? How about just "megajoules"? Make car companies rate engines in kilowatts, not "horsepower" (probably the best example of America's imperial anachronism - how powerful is a horse, if not in watts?). After the kilometers have sunk in, with highway signs in both miles and Km for a while. Then just Km, first local roads then interstates, as public polls show we know the distance in each state. That's the time to switch car ratings over to Km:gallon. Then Km:liter - we already drink in liters, now that America's beverage industry is owned by global Europeans. Probably take 10-12 (er, 10-20) years.
Too bad, because celsius isn't as intuitive as fahrenheit (even if it's easier to spell). 100F is clearly too hot, 0F too cold. In the middle third, between freezing and air conditioning, we wear more clothes in its lower half, and less in the upper half - the extremes belong to the machines. Maybe we should switch to celsius below 33F/1C and above 66F/19C, and make the machines do the math. Eventually we'll get the feeling for the middle third, even if its 33C degrees are too big to precisely describe our most immediate condition.
The key is to introduce it gradually. Switching to the whole new system makes redneck Americans feel like Europeans are taking over. And since we buy ammo in powers of two, like the ancient British system we still worship, it's obvious that we'll shoot first and add 32, multiply by 9/5 later.
Gates' Microsoft invests billions in insecure software from which it makes billions in "securing" with consulting services, upgrades and "security" software.
Now Gates' foundation invests billions in broken communities from which it makes billions in exploiting through other multinationals in which it is part owner.
That guy really is as smart, privileged and evil as people say he is.
No, everyone knows it's the Martian vampires. That SW glitch pointed the solar collectors at the Martian surface, overpowering the thin layer of blood that protects the biters from the weak rays of the Sun. We need to find out how the vampires reached the MGS to destroy it. Probably they have moles at NASA or a contractor with access to the controllers. We have to fund deployment of my SOLASER Space Debt Inc (SDI) weapon to fry them before they fry us.
Maybe we're just seeing what kind of lawyers you get when all you can pay them with is stock in a company whose assets consist solely of a huge scam lawsuit against IBM.
One of the precedents that IBM should produce by seeing this travesty trial to its just conclusion is penalties for the SCO lawyers who have been wasting court time with this obviously frivolous lawsuit. Why should taxpayers subsidize those lawyers with free access to the courts for their stockmarket scam? The SEC should look at their brokers, too, to see whether they are in on the deal - almost certainly they are.
This case shouldn't end with only strong precedents clearing Linux developers and distributors from the FUD SCO has pumped into the market for years now. It should end with disbarred lawyers and delicensed brokers, and probably punitive damages (paid to the court, compensating taxpayers) exceeding the profit those professional crooks have made from the stock transactions their work has been the smoke and mirrors to produce.
No, you're just a clueless fanboy for Wii spewing gibberish when you couldn't even tell it was a joke after it was explained to you. Who cares what you think about hip hop?
No, I'm asking critical questions from what I do know, despite my ignorance, which I have expressly stated. That's "science".
I asked you to explain how recent demonstrations of QE are explainable despite the "No Communication" theory you offered. I don't think you've explained that, even in that last message, which just seems to deny that the QE was demonstrated. Which counters the reporting I've read, even though it's been in layman's terms.
If you don't want to talk to people who have some degree of ignorance, but want to understand what you claim to know, then you're not cut out for science. You should look into blogging.
Well, I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, which is why I was smart enough to make a joke that still blasts right over your head, even though I've explained it.
BTW, telling me that you're a day trader is a very bad choice for convincing me that you know what is going on around you.
Yet QE has been demonstrated to sync distant particles faster than lightspeed communication would allow. I'm illiterate in the math in that Wikipedia page, but how does it account for the measured results?
I don't know how it might relate to gravity, or that it in any way demonstrates "instantaneous gravity", but quantum entanglement suggests (even demonstrates) that some info is transmitted faster than lightspeed. That's one reason Einstein called it "Spooky Action at a Distance", and one reason he rejected all quantum mechanics as a fallacy. Even if its model has proven more accurately predictive of phenomena than relativity, AFAIK.
I'm not sure that the "gravitons" postulated to execute that lightspeed limited coupling have been proven to exist. I know it was a subject of much speculation late at night while I was in college in the late 1980s.
If gravity also travels at lightspeed, I wonder whether space would "unwarp" around the Sun instantly. Or whether there's some "viscosity", with the Sun's gravity well taking some time to "snap" into an undeformed, thereby gravityless, shape in 3D (4D) around the Sun. Probably it's instantaneous, but we don't know that much about the "void medium" in which these fundamental forces act. At least I don't know that much:).
It seems that most Canadians are not currently fingerprinted, though some already are. We don't know what's "planned" by Bush's simcurity state - and neither, very often, does the state. But increasing "security" requirements, like new passport requirements, show that we're headed for more wasteful theatrics. Fingerprints will be among the least of the ridiculous gestures with damaging consequences.
True, as I just learned, most Canadians are not yet fingerprinted by US-VISIT. Though the new passport rules cranking up show that Bush is driving a useless security wedge between us as hard as he can. Still, there are some Canadians required to leave fingerprints (forever) with US-VISIT (and with whoever it leaks them to):
Citizens of Canada applying for admission with a non-immigrant visa such as Canadian citizens with K visas (fiancés) and E visas (treaty trade investors).
Canadian permanent residents. Under U.S. regulations, Canadian permanent residents are identified by their citizenship (i.e., the nationality of the passport that they carry), not by the fact that they may be permanently residing in another country such as Canada.
Canadians with dual nationality who present a non-Canadian passport when seeking to enter the United States.
Others who are subject to the US-VISIT process include:
Current Canadian permanent residents who are participants in NEXUS and/or FAST who may be required to enroll in US-VISIT when they renew their multiple entry Form I-94s.
Visitors renewing their multiple-entry Form I-94. All current, valid Form I-94s remain in effect. US-VISIT biometric collection requirements will be either at the time of the next issuance of the Form I-94 or at the discretion of the Customs and Border Protection Officer.
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What, repeating vintage 1969 American technology is beyond the reach of 2007 Japan, even though what it has to do to land a person on the Moon is now proven, and the equipment has 30 years of further development?
Or are they just feigning incompetence to get America to do the (literal) heavy lifting, and put Japanese space exploitation teams and gear up there?
I know I would, if I could.
Even more reason why MS should have switched to prioritize subscriptions, deprecating "releases" only as packages for marketing campaigns.
Why should MS users know anything about version numbers or other geeky stats? All they want to know is "are you up to date?", to which they can answer "my subscription is current", or "the 'subscribed' box is checked in the Desktop Settings dialog box". Then the solution will be "check the box to resubscribe and pay the fee".
I don't know why MS doesn't just skip these "major releases" and just charge everyone a subscription (quarterly, annual, quadrennial, "lifetime") to the online "Windows Update" service. The initial purchase would include security patches for, say, a decade, or the lifetime of the product (when MS can force most everyone to pay again). But nonsecurity bugfixes, new features, extra modules (new formats, GUI styles, interops) would require the subscription.
MS could still package "milestones" with their sizzlingest features to attract new subscribers, especially among the "legacy" users whose subscriptions have lapsed. With the huge marketing pushes at those milestones that are the current "upgrade" releases' biggest features. While offering new marketing kickoffs at any time they want to do it.
MS would lockin not just users using their standard tricks, but actually lockin their subscription money. Especially with enterprises, their main market, they'd get budgeted in perpetuity, a massive entitlement that would require executive action (thereby happen less often) to cancel, rather than have to do something every time an upgrade decision comes up.
I wouldn't like it. But that's never stopped MS from doing things before. Maybe this "why upgrade?" release of Office, and the similarly tepid reception as Vista arrives, is the MS way to get us to think we're smart for choosing subscriptions instead of upgrades, "outsmarting Microsoft".
What happens to "your" content after you've transferred it from iTunes for the last of (I think 5) times Apple "generously" allows you?
What happens when you want to transcode Apple's AAC files to the newest format that your (non-Apple, maybe) player plays?
What happens when you want to lend your friend your copy, which has always been fair use?
DRM is "Digital Rights Management". But it effectively protects more than the rights the distributor actually has. While interfering with many rights of the "owner" of the content. Apple puts a friendly face on its excessive authority, but that just masks the strictest ripoffs. Microsoft's Zune is typically hamfisted and imperial, but that just exposes the ripopff that's common to all DRM. Apple's concessions might paint over the most obvious hangups so most people won't notice for awhile. But if you look clearly, it's common to all, and the problems are inevitable.
Microsoft has now proved the most popular reason to dump DRM: the Zune player forces users to rebuy their legit content, because its DRM conflicts with the old DRM.
I bought Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_ on vinyl, on "audiophile" vinyl, on cassette, on CD, on "remastered" CD, and again a few times to replace worn-out copies of those (but never on 8-track, smartass - that was my copy of _The Wall_). But then I scanned my audiophile CD to HD/WAV, and have transferred it a dozen times: to backup CD in a closet, to mobile devices, to new HDs that aren't worn out, to SHN, then FLAC compression, to MP3 for streaming to my remote locations. I own that content, and I'll do whatever I want with it that's fair. If I want to prop up a wobbly table leg with the audiophile CD, I'll do it if I damn well please, even if the "license" I bought doesn't specify that use.
These record companies make most of their money from "catalog reissues". Records they made (usually cruelly unfair to artists) deals to sell decades ago, when they profited on their balance sheet. The biggest hits, that already paid for themselves many times over, are naturally the ones most desired to be played today. Because last generation's pop culture is this generations' folk culture - that's why we call our parents our "folks". The corrupt "copyright extension" monopoly laws are bad enough. "Enforcing" them beyond the publisher's rights, destroying rights and purchased privileges of the owner, and the public, is a culture-destroying crime.
And now, Microsoft has painted the picture for everyone to see. Make your player equal "Microsoft", and you'll pay for the privilege of using your own property as often as they "upgrade" their predictably buggy and inconvenient equipment.
Now is the time to make "DRM" as dirty a word as is "censorship". Kill it now, before it's permanently rooted, while people are still surprised to hear we have to dump our "old" content just to play it in some incrementally newer way.
Just make available drugs sold in units of kilometers and celsius. Americans already know grams from "private experience", mostly learned in college.
And get utility companies to sell service in real metric. What good is a "kilowatt-hour", when it's base 3600? How about just "megajoules"? Make car companies rate engines in kilowatts, not "horsepower" (probably the best example of America's imperial anachronism - how powerful is a horse, if not in watts?). After the kilometers have sunk in, with highway signs in both miles and Km for a while. Then just Km, first local roads then interstates, as public polls show we know the distance in each state. That's the time to switch car ratings over to Km:gallon. Then Km:liter - we already drink in liters, now that America's beverage industry is owned by global Europeans. Probably take 10-12 (er, 10-20) years.
Too bad, because celsius isn't as intuitive as fahrenheit (even if it's easier to spell). 100F is clearly too hot, 0F too cold. In the middle third, between freezing and air conditioning, we wear more clothes in its lower half, and less in the upper half - the extremes belong to the machines. Maybe we should switch to celsius below 33F/1C and above 66F/19C, and make the machines do the math. Eventually we'll get the feeling for the middle third, even if its 33C degrees are too big to precisely describe our most immediate condition.
The key is to introduce it gradually. Switching to the whole new system makes redneck Americans feel like Europeans are taking over. And since we buy ammo in powers of two, like the ancient British system we still worship, it's obvious that we'll shoot first and add 32, multiply by 9/5 later.
Gates' Microsoft invests billions in insecure software from which it makes billions in "securing" with consulting services, upgrades and "security" software.
Now Gates' foundation invests billions in broken communities from which it makes billions in exploiting through other multinationals in which it is part owner.
That guy really is as smart, privileged and evil as people say he is.
No, everyone knows it's the Martian vampires. That SW glitch pointed the solar collectors at the Martian surface, overpowering the thin layer of blood that protects the biters from the weak rays of the Sun. We need to find out how the vampires reached the MGS to destroy it. Probably they have moles at NASA or a contractor with access to the controllers. We have to fund deployment of my SOLASER Space Debt Inc (SDI) weapon to fry them before they fry us.
Moderation +3
80% Insightful
20% Flamebait
SCO still has the money to pay asTrollMod'ers to anonymously flame Slashdot posts.
Gee, my favorite line from Syriana is "BOOM!!!" ;).
One of my favorite lines from living in New Orleans was "In Louisiana, people don't expect corruption. They demand it."
Er, not "copyright", trademark, which the Lanham Act covers.
Hmm, hadn't noticed the lawyers trading their stock compensation for "costs++" accounting.
How does the Lanham act make SCO liable for anything? Is this the "Unix" copyright argument with Novell?
Maybe we're just seeing what kind of lawyers you get when all you can pay them with is stock in a company whose assets consist solely of a huge scam lawsuit against IBM.
One of the precedents that IBM should produce by seeing this travesty trial to its just conclusion is penalties for the SCO lawyers who have been wasting court time with this obviously frivolous lawsuit. Why should taxpayers subsidize those lawyers with free access to the courts for their stockmarket scam? The SEC should look at their brokers, too, to see whether they are in on the deal - almost certainly they are.
This case shouldn't end with only strong precedents clearing Linux developers and distributors from the FUD SCO has pumped into the market for years now. It should end with disbarred lawyers and delicensed brokers, and probably punitive damages (paid to the court, compensating taxpayers) exceeding the profit those professional crooks have made from the stock transactions their work has been the smoke and mirrors to produce.
No, you're just a clueless fanboy for Wii spewing gibberish when you couldn't even tell it was a joke after it was explained to you. Who cares what you think about hip hop?
Shut it down and stop digging your hole.
No, I'm asking critical questions from what I do know, despite my ignorance, which I have expressly stated. That's "science".
I asked you to explain how recent demonstrations of QE are explainable despite the "No Communication" theory you offered. I don't think you've explained that, even in that last message, which just seems to deny that the QE was demonstrated. Which counters the reporting I've read, even though it's been in layman's terms.
If you don't want to talk to people who have some degree of ignorance, but want to understand what you claim to know, then you're not cut out for science. You should look into blogging.
Well, I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last night, which is why I was smart enough to make a joke that still blasts right over your head, even though I've explained it.
BTW, telling me that you're a day trader is a very bad choice for convincing me that you know what is going on around you.
Yet QE has been demonstrated to sync distant particles faster than lightspeed communication would allow. I'm illiterate in the math in that Wikipedia page, but how does it account for the measured results?
No, that's Anonymous Coward "quicquid mechanics", not the precisely predictive QM.
I don't know how it might relate to gravity, or that it in any way demonstrates "instantaneous gravity", but quantum entanglement suggests (even demonstrates) that some info is transmitted faster than lightspeed. That's one reason Einstein called it "Spooky Action at a Distance", and one reason he rejected all quantum mechanics as a fallacy. Even if its model has proven more accurately predictive of phenomena than relativity, AFAIK.
The title of my post was "Game Fanboy Logic". You have replied showing your own.
No, it's because the PS3 is twice as good as the Wii, so every PS3 sold is like 2 Wiis sold.
I'm not sure that the "gravitons" postulated to execute that lightspeed limited coupling have been proven to exist. I know it was a subject of much speculation late at night while I was in college in the late 1980s.
:).
If gravity also travels at lightspeed, I wonder whether space would "unwarp" around the Sun instantly. Or whether there's some "viscosity", with the Sun's gravity well taking some time to "snap" into an undeformed, thereby gravityless, shape in 3D (4D) around the Sun. Probably it's instantaneous, but we don't know that much about the "void medium" in which these fundamental forces act. At least I don't know that much
It seems that most Canadians are not currently fingerprinted, though some already are. We don't know what's "planned" by Bush's simcurity state - and neither, very often, does the state. But increasing "security" requirements, like new passport requirements, show that we're headed for more wasteful theatrics. Fingerprints will be among the least of the ridiculous gestures with damaging consequences.
Canadians who are subject to the US-VISIT process include:
Others who are subject to the US-VISIT process include:
Moderation -1
100% Troll
What kind of random trollMod is that?