Actually, Macs used ADB for their keyboard and mice, and IIRC a 9-pin proprietary serial connecter for printers, modems, Apple Talk, etc. These were both quickly dropped when Apple went to USB (first-gen B&W G3's has an ADB jack, but that was gone by the first iMac.)
At no time in Macintosh history did they have an industry-standard serial port, so you will need some kind of adapter to use a regular tty with any Macintosh.
Apart from failing to close an italics tag, I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. Kimagine. There were some errors in the message I was quoting and responding to, but the stuff I wrote seems fairly clear.
By the way, it's "grammar," not "grammer." Don't be embarrassed. Almost everybody who posts a nitpick about somebody else's spelling ends up with typos of their own when doing it. It's a time-honored/. tradition.:)
Based on Napster, Kazza, etc . . . that does not seem to be the case. emmnemm had probably the most downloaded album ever, yet he still went platinum.
The situations are not analogous, because 1. Not everyone is willing to steal music. 2. Nobody will pay twice. I don't buy CD's of albums I bought through iTMS, and never would.
Not true. IT is the way it is currently done, but it is not the only way. Point in fact, if it was the only way, music radio would never have started.
I said the only way most bands can get established is via record labels, not all. BTW, good luck getting played by one of the 5 remaining radio companies without a label pushing your stuff.
Music Radio stations need music. If big corpration stop providing it, they will go to the local talent. The raio station would need to pay a fee every time a song is paid. There is your money.
Radio receive payola, not pay it out. (Oh yea, nobody admits to doing that anymore. They just have "promotional concert tickets" and stuff.) Bands need radio more than radio needs bands, because there are only so many radio stations and thousands of working bands looking for exposure. No model will change that fact.
I would also like to note, if all new musician refused to sign the current contracts, the contract will get changed. Contrary to what music companies will tell you, they need to to survive.
We don't need a new business model for that to happen. We just need struggling, naive bands making their start in the world to pass up the allure of a fat album contract and a shot at fame for the greater good of all the BWAA-HA-Ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I tried to keep a strait face while talking like that could happen, sorry.
Get all the people who despise these money hungry fucks, spill out a couple bucks and become a shareholder, boom. You technically and financially have them by the balls.
You've never owned non-voting shares before, have you?
Well, for a start, you don't pay $20 per album anymore.
You obviously didn't read my post very closely. Once the record companies gain control of this model (and whoever produced the content will invariably have control), the price of $0.50 per download goes right out the window.
BINGO! you got it dude. Cringely's motivation is not to destroy the record companies, but to destroy their current fucked-up business model. Everyone is free to start its own snapster, and every artist is also free to do so (note, if you are distributing your own stuff, you do not need $2M like he says, just a puny server and some kind of authenticated BitTorrent;-)
So instead of owning CD's, which we have some "fair use" rights to, listeners interested in pop music will all be forced to become non-voting part-owners of music distributers, who might choose to allow us to copy music with far steeper restrictions. Meanwhile, indie artists will be putting their stuff on completely unnoticed servers and ignored by the masses, same as always. How exactly is that changing anything for the better?
Well, Cringley asked what we thought, so here is the e-mail I sent him:
Well, you asked, and after being slashdotted you probably are getting a lot of answers, but I do see a snag or two in your plan. Bear with me... I tried to be concise, but my response ended up being almost as long as your article.
Under the current system, artists depend on a big, evil record company to not only get their albums made, but to get them marketed. Okay, most artists get screwed by this deal, but the most popular acts eventually start making money when the big, evil record company sells enough CD's.
Under your proposal, any artist, with or without a label, would sell exactly one CD to, well, the entire world, because people would be crazy to not participate in "Snapster" if it exists.
So how in the heck does any artist make direct money off an album? A small percentage of 2 Million sales is certainly a better deal than 100% of one sale.
If such a company were to exist, recorded music would be released for the sole purpose of marketing the band, who hopes to make their cash via concerts. (Unless I'm mistaken, Phish pretty much already lives this way, cranking out lots of low-selling albums to drive ticket and t-shirt sales at their shows.)
So long as a CD costs $15, it's folly to think that lots of good albums will continue to be released in such an environment. What will probably happen is albums by established bands, such as U2 or Jewel will suddenly cost $10,000,000 per CD (or more), and albums by bands who are not established will be worth what Snapster is willing to pay (nothing).
Stay with me now, I don't think my conclusions are over-reaching just yet...
The only way to raise the price that Snapster will pay for your albums is by "getting established." The only way most bands will be able to do that is... big shock here... sign a contract with a big, evil record label (now a "marketing service") who is entitled by the contract terms to something like 95% of the sale (not sales, sale) of each CD the band releases under the contract.
Since these big, evil companies will be hungry (something like 40% of their business model is in back-catalog sales, which Snapster will have already erased.) They can then take the following steps to restore as much of their lost profits as they can:
1. Jack up the price of the individual album, including back-catalog disks.
2. Form their own Snapster.
3. Stop selling albums. Completely. If you are not a member of the big, evil labels' version of Snapster, you can't hear the new Avril CD. Instead of being a record sales company, or a music marketing company, they will be in the business of owning content which is not for sale, but is streamed exclusively to their shareholders for a fee.
4. Wait for your Snapster company to die on the vine.
5. Jack up the shareholder download price to the point that it's just as expensive to download as it was to buy CD's.
The only way to stop this would be to claim that Evil Snapster is in violation of anti-trust law. Apart from Standard Oil and Bell, how often does a company lose one of those!? Besides, what politician is going to want to bust up a company when it's partly owned by almost every single American who listens to music?
(having only two USB, knowing one was automatically subtracted by the keyboard always bugged me, on all models, til they got it right with the new iMac)
All Mac keyboards are equipped with 2-port USB hubs, so you are actually adding a port when plugging in the keyboard, not subtracting one.
It's not a pro machine because, while it used top-of-the-line components when it came out, it wasn't expandable enough to make pros happy.
If that were true, how is it that these guys are selling a dramatically-upgraded cube?
All the pissing and moaning about "pros need lots of PCI slots," has been made obsolete years ago by the built-in Gigabit ethernet, AGP video, and Firewire. Sure, old-school PC users (and people who worked in Mac-based editing shops) are accustomed to the belief that you need 1 PCI card for Ethernet, another for a modem, another for video, another for sound, another for SCSI, and even more if you are any kind of a "power user." Those days are gone, at least as far as the Mac world is concerned. Today's video demands require AGP. Built-in sound on the Mac is darn good. The built-in Ethernet on Macs continues to be far enough ahead of the curve that the motherboard will be obsolete before the Ethernet port is. (My old G3 tower, which I am thinking of selling off, used 100baseT, which is still faster than the hubs in my house, and the cards in my old Linux boxen.) The built in modem is certainly better than the WinModems that most PC users end up buying. Most SCSI needs have been made redundant by faster ATA standards and Firewire.
Want a RAID? Forget about a SCSI card. Stripe some Firewire drives. Want two monitors? There are AGP video cards which do that on one card. Need bluetooth to sync your phone with your old iMac? Belkin sells a perfectly good USB Bluetooth transmitter. Scanners, cameras, printers, audio signal processors, video feeds, unusual input devices, pretty much anything you can name can now be connected via USB or Firewire, no need to buy a card.
When Firewire and USB was new, I did need one (1) slot for a SCSI card on my G3 tower to support legacy hardware... but that was years ago. Today I do everything I did then with an iBook, and have no trouble finding devices that work with it.
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1
It is not. I was unaware that there was anybody out there with an actual last name of "Golias."
For the record, "Golias" was the name of a satirically made-up "Patron Saint" of wandering minstrels, who got their musical education from various monasteries, and paid for their passage between them by entertaining people in taverns by writing smart-assed verses about the clergy. It is where the word "goliard" (usually pronounced "GAL-ee-ard") comes from.
As a musician, I've used "golias" as a favorite on-line handle since the BBS days.
Holy crap, somebody who actually took the context of my post seriously. (Clue: It was modded as "Funny" by so many people because I was going for laughs, not to convince you that Mustangs get you laid.)
Since you seem to be hanging on my every word, I might as well heartily endorse your choice of the Nissan 350Z. Nissan makes under-rated vehicles with reliable engines, and their sports cars are very cool.
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1
Stock units have gotten a lot better over the past few years. I used to drive a 2001 Nissan pick-up truck which came with a 100W AM/FM/CD/Tape system that sounded fantastic, even with the stock speakers!
Not all car companies are stuck in the mold of "slap in a cheap AC/Delco stereo and charge $250 for it" that was so common in the 80's. Most of them have woken up to realize that a good-sounding radio helps sell cars.
Re:calling clueful car manufacturers
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 1
I use a cassette adapter in my '97 Ford Crown Victoria LS with my iPod and find that it sounds excellent. Far better than I expected it to.
On some cars, there's to much EM noise in the cab due to poor electrical shielding, which degrades the quality of anything you put through the tape player heads, but on most modern cars it should not be a problem.
The real advantage of the tape adapter? My dashboard has nothing but the Ford standard-equipment stock stereo on it, so when I slide my iPod into my back pocket, there's nothing in my car worth breaking in for. After having your window smashed once or twice by punks stealing your car CD player, you learn the value of not being a target.
Re:My iPod is super!
on
Pods Unite
·
· Score: 4, Funny
It is a male fallacy that girls are impressed by long, sleek rocket cars.
Most girls are not impressed, true. However, girls that want to have casual sex know that a guy in a Mustang or Porche is driving it because he's horny, lonely, and wants lots of sex, and acting as if they are impressed is an easy way to open conversation.
Girls who don't want to have casual sex do not interest guys who drive Mustangs. They will drive Astro vans or Volkswagons if and when they are ready to settle down and get married.
By the way, according to Car Talk, the Beetle is the second-gayest car in America.
So you want a government that has the power to outlaw something like Freenet, all based on the "you can't yell fire in a theatre, can you now?" argument.
No.
Fuck, you can't say anything on/. without somebody reading more into it than what you said.
Actually, rumor has it that the NBC version of Coupling is going to use the exact same scripts, just with American actors and accents. So, rather than a knock-off, it will be more like the difference between the London and Broadway casts of an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Kind of like how "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" on ABC is pretty much the same show, except with Drew Carey hosting instead of Clive.
If it succeeds, they might have to write some original scripts, because TV seasons appear to be a little longer in the US.
The expression of ideas, even by terrorist nut-jobs, must always be protected in a free society, but that's not what we are talking about here. In the case of terrorists, we are talking about the exchange of data, software, plans, designs, target information, etc. by groups who are actively making war on the western world.
In the case of pedophiles, we are talking about the sale of photos of children being abused for the sake of said sales.
Neither case could be considered "free speech" in any sense, except to an anarchist. None of this is what Voltaire was talking about.
You know your tax money is collected to be used for purposes that you don't even know about. You know that you would probably disagree with some of the uses for it, if you knew what all of them were. You don't. You can't. However, you still contribute your tax money, because overall, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives.
Actually, I contribute tax money because I would go to prison if I didn't. Also, I'm fairly confident that, in a representative democracy, my taxes are not likely to be used to finance kiddie porn. In the case of freenet, I could be fairly confident that the resources I contribute would be.
But does the threat of child porn mean that you should give your government regulatory powers over speech in order to stop it?
Yes.
The government should also prosecute those who use speech to incite a riot (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater), or amplify their speech over 80 db in a quiet neighborhood at 3:00 AM, or constantly sexually harass, over the telephone women who live by themselves.
You also do not have the right to commit slander or libel. You may not publish my credit card number or medical records. You may not redistribute copies of my novel, or bootlegs of my movie, or, as unpopular as it is to say here, an MP3 file of my musical performance.
If Freenet is at all helpful to those who distribute kiddie porn, then I do not wish to participate in it, because I don't want to help those people. As fun as it would be to be able to swap warez, bootleg music, fansub anime, etc. on an anonymous network, and as much as I would like to help people in places like China use the net for political expression, it's not worth promoting the harmful exploitation of children to do it. I'm sure I am not the only one who will arrive at this conclusion, which is why Freenet will not catch on with a lot of people unless something is done to keep the kiddie porn industry (oh yea, and terrorists) out of the network.
In all my years of playing Risk, I've never seen an "isolationist" strategy win the game, except in those cases where they first conquer North America, and then somehow manage to hold it while Africa and South America are locked in dispute and everybody else is in a futile struggle to hold Europe or Asia.
If you don't have a major continent to yourself, the isolationist strategy will never win you the game. Europe and Asia have too many open borders to hold defensively without expanding. By the time you succeed at holding either one in a six-player game, you are probably already strong enough that you can expect to win the game. Australia has only one border, but rewards you with so few armies that it's just a matter of time before somebody (whoever eventually conquers asia) decided to wipe you out. South America is worse. No more armies that Australia, but with two border states to defend. Africa has three border states to guard, and whoever is playing in South America has to go through you to get to most of the rest of the world.
North America is the sweetest plum. Put up a massive force on the panama canal, and then leave South America alone. They will decide fighting you is not worth it and go attack Africa. Then split the rest of your force between holding your two northern borders, and collect 5 bonus armies per turn while picking off easy, strategically unimportant countries in Europe and Asia to get your cards. Once you are strong enough to devour South America with lots of armies left over, do so, and you will then be collecting 7 bonus armies, again with only three borders to hold. The game is pretty much over at that point. Just about the only way for the other 5 players to beat that strategy is if somebody "takes one for the team" and badly weakens themselves to make sure that the person taking North America does not succeed at holding it. Whoever steps up to do so will not win, either, so there is little incentive to do so, unless you really hate that guy. Otherwise, somebody holding Europe early in the game (which requires real ineptitude on the part of the other players) can rival North American power. I have seen the game won many times by a "Europe and Africa" empire... but most of the time, victory eventually goes to North America.
This is one of the reasons why my circle of friends eventually stopped playing Risk and moved on to other games, like Diplomacy.
I think most people are too dumb to save their money. Thats why the government does it for people.
I'm not. Could they please stop, at least in my case?
What's that? I have to pay into this horrible retirement plan because the system would completely collapse overnight if we didn't force all Americans to participate? Gosh, what a great idea that was!
Except almost none of the things mentioned there were given away. They were sold as components of Microsoft's OS or applications. The fact that they were not included as part of earlier versions of Microsoft's products does not mean they are being "given away." It just means that Microsoft has often added features to their applications and operating systems by buying products or stealing ideas from other companies.
For that matter, a lot of millionaires got their start as sharecroppers. There's a lot to be said for starting a business without using your own money, which is essentially what sharecroppers are doing. If you want to learn about finances with very little education, sharecropping is a self-owned business method which has a very low barrier to entry.
They don't make much money when starting out, but if they are smart and pay attention, they learn how the game works, and work their way into more lucrative schemes. Sometimes a degree from the School of Hard Knocks can be more valuable than an MBA.
Slashdot Mirror
At no time in Macintosh history did they have an industry-standard serial port, so you will need some kind of adapter to use a regular tty with any Macintosh.
By the way, it's "grammar," not "grammer." Don't be embarrassed. Almost everybody who posts a nitpick about somebody else's spelling ends up with typos of their own when doing it. It's a time-honored /. tradition. :)
The situations are not analogous, because 1. Not everyone is willing to steal music. 2. Nobody will pay twice. I don't buy CD's of albums I bought through iTMS, and never would.
Not true. IT is the way it is currently done, but it is not the only way. Point in fact, if it was the only way, music radio would never have started.
I said the only way most bands can get established is via record labels, not all. BTW, good luck getting played by one of the 5 remaining radio companies without a label pushing your stuff.
Music Radio stations need music. If big corpration stop providing it, they will go to the local talent. The raio station would need to pay a fee every time a song is paid. There is your money.
Radio receive payola, not pay it out. (Oh yea, nobody admits to doing that anymore. They just have "promotional concert tickets" and stuff.) Bands need radio more than radio needs bands, because there are only so many radio stations and thousands of working bands looking for exposure. No model will change that fact.
I would also like to note, if all new musician refused to sign the current contracts, the contract will get changed. Contrary to what music companies will tell you, they need to to survive.
We don't need a new business model for that to happen. We just need struggling, naive bands making their start in the world to pass up the allure of a fat album contract and a shot at fame for the greater good of all the BWAA-HA-Ha-ha-ha-ha!!! I tried to keep a strait face while talking like that could happen, sorry.
You've never owned non-voting shares before, have you?
You obviously didn't read my post very closely. Once the record companies gain control of this model (and whoever produced the content will invariably have control), the price of $0.50 per download goes right out the window.
So instead of owning CD's, which we have some "fair use" rights to, listeners interested in pop music will all be forced to become non-voting part-owners of music distributers, who might choose to allow us to copy music with far steeper restrictions. Meanwhile, indie artists will be putting their stuff on completely unnoticed servers and ignored by the masses, same as always. How exactly is that changing anything for the better?
Well, you asked, and after being slashdotted you probably are getting a lot of answers, but I do see a snag or two in your plan. Bear with me... I tried to be concise, but my response ended up being almost as long as your article.
Under the current system, artists depend on a big, evil record company to not only get their albums made, but to get them marketed. Okay, most artists get screwed by this deal, but the most popular acts eventually start making money when the big, evil record company sells enough CD's.
Under your proposal, any artist, with or without a label, would sell exactly one CD to, well, the entire world, because people would be crazy to not participate in "Snapster" if it exists.
So how in the heck does any artist make direct money off an album? A small percentage of 2 Million sales is certainly a better deal than 100% of one sale.
If such a company were to exist, recorded music would be released for the sole purpose of marketing the band, who hopes to make their cash via concerts. (Unless I'm mistaken, Phish pretty much already lives this way, cranking out lots of low-selling albums to drive ticket and t-shirt sales at their shows.)
So long as a CD costs $15, it's folly to think that lots of good albums will continue to be released in such an environment. What will probably happen is albums by established bands, such as U2 or Jewel will suddenly cost $10,000,000 per CD (or more), and albums by bands who are not established will be worth what Snapster is willing to pay (nothing).
Stay with me now, I don't think my conclusions are over-reaching just yet...
The only way to raise the price that Snapster will pay for your albums is by "getting established." The only way most bands will be able to do that is... big shock here... sign a contract with a big, evil record label (now a "marketing service") who is entitled by the contract terms to something like 95% of the sale (not sales, sale) of each CD the band releases under the contract.
Since these big, evil companies will be hungry (something like 40% of their business model is in back-catalog sales, which Snapster will have already erased.) They can then take the following steps to restore as much of their lost profits as they can:
1. Jack up the price of the individual album, including back-catalog disks.
2. Form their own Snapster.
3. Stop selling albums. Completely. If you are not a member of the big, evil labels' version of Snapster, you can't hear the new Avril CD. Instead of being a record sales company, or a music marketing company, they will be in the business of owning content which is not for sale, but is streamed exclusively to their shareholders for a fee.
4. Wait for your Snapster company to die on the vine.
5. Jack up the shareholder download price to the point that it's just as expensive to download as it was to buy CD's.
The only way to stop this would be to claim that Evil Snapster is in violation of anti-trust law. Apart from Standard Oil and Bell, how often does a company lose one of those!? Besides, what politician is going to want to bust up a company when it's partly owned by almost every single American who listens to music?
All Mac keyboards are equipped with 2-port USB hubs, so you are actually adding a port when plugging in the keyboard, not subtracting one.
If that were true, how is it that these guys are selling a dramatically-upgraded cube?
All the pissing and moaning about "pros need lots of PCI slots," has been made obsolete years ago by the built-in Gigabit ethernet, AGP video, and Firewire. Sure, old-school PC users (and people who worked in Mac-based editing shops) are accustomed to the belief that you need 1 PCI card for Ethernet, another for a modem, another for video, another for sound, another for SCSI, and even more if you are any kind of a "power user." Those days are gone, at least as far as the Mac world is concerned. Today's video demands require AGP. Built-in sound on the Mac is darn good. The built-in Ethernet on Macs continues to be far enough ahead of the curve that the motherboard will be obsolete before the Ethernet port is. (My old G3 tower, which I am thinking of selling off, used 100baseT, which is still faster than the hubs in my house, and the cards in my old Linux boxen.) The built in modem is certainly better than the WinModems that most PC users end up buying. Most SCSI needs have been made redundant by faster ATA standards and Firewire.
Want a RAID? Forget about a SCSI card. Stripe some Firewire drives. Want two monitors? There are AGP video cards which do that on one card. Need bluetooth to sync your phone with your old iMac? Belkin sells a perfectly good USB Bluetooth transmitter. Scanners, cameras, printers, audio signal processors, video feeds, unusual input devices, pretty much anything you can name can now be connected via USB or Firewire, no need to buy a card.
When Firewire and USB was new, I did need one (1) slot for a SCSI card on my G3 tower to support legacy hardware... but that was years ago. Today I do everything I did then with an iBook, and have no trouble finding devices that work with it.
For the record, "Golias" was the name of a satirically made-up "Patron Saint" of wandering minstrels, who got their musical education from various monasteries, and paid for their passage between them by entertaining people in taverns by writing smart-assed verses about the clergy. It is where the word "goliard" (usually pronounced "GAL-ee-ard") comes from.
As a musician, I've used "golias" as a favorite on-line handle since the BBS days.
Since you seem to be hanging on my every word, I might as well heartily endorse your choice of the Nissan 350Z. Nissan makes under-rated vehicles with reliable engines, and their sports cars are very cool.
Not all car companies are stuck in the mold of "slap in a cheap AC/Delco stereo and charge $250 for it" that was so common in the 80's. Most of them have woken up to realize that a good-sounding radio helps sell cars.
On some cars, there's to much EM noise in the cab due to poor electrical shielding, which degrades the quality of anything you put through the tape player heads, but on most modern cars it should not be a problem.
The real advantage of the tape adapter? My dashboard has nothing but the Ford standard-equipment stock stereo on it, so when I slide my iPod into my back pocket, there's nothing in my car worth breaking in for. After having your window smashed once or twice by punks stealing your car CD player, you learn the value of not being a target.
Most girls are not impressed, true. However, girls that want to have casual sex know that a guy in a Mustang or Porche is driving it because he's horny, lonely, and wants lots of sex, and acting as if they are impressed is an easy way to open conversation.
Girls who don't want to have casual sex do not interest guys who drive Mustangs. They will drive Astro vans or Volkswagons if and when they are ready to settle down and get married.
By the way, according to Car Talk, the Beetle is the second-gayest car in America.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
No.
Fuck, you can't say anything on /. without somebody reading more into it than what you said.
If it succeeds, they might have to write some original scripts, because TV seasons appear to be a little longer in the US.
In the case of pedophiles, we are talking about the sale of photos of children being abused for the sake of said sales.
Neither case could be considered "free speech" in any sense, except to an anarchist. None of this is what Voltaire was talking about.
Actually, I contribute tax money because I would go to prison if I didn't. Also, I'm fairly confident that, in a representative democracy, my taxes are not likely to be used to finance kiddie porn. In the case of freenet, I could be fairly confident that the resources I contribute would be.
No, it's more like saying "I won't deliver a truck full of goods across state lines without knowing what's in it, who sent it, or who's buying it."
Yes.
The government should also prosecute those who use speech to incite a riot (yelling "fire" in a crowded theater), or amplify their speech over 80 db in a quiet neighborhood at 3:00 AM, or constantly sexually harass, over the telephone women who live by themselves.
You also do not have the right to commit slander or libel. You may not publish my credit card number or medical records. You may not redistribute copies of my novel, or bootlegs of my movie, or, as unpopular as it is to say here, an MP3 file of my musical performance.
Get over it.
If Freenet is at all helpful to those who distribute kiddie porn, then I do not wish to participate in it, because I don't want to help those people. As fun as it would be to be able to swap warez, bootleg music, fansub anime, etc. on an anonymous network, and as much as I would like to help people in places like China use the net for political expression, it's not worth promoting the harmful exploitation of children to do it. I'm sure I am not the only one who will arrive at this conclusion, which is why Freenet will not catch on with a lot of people unless something is done to keep the kiddie porn industry (oh yea, and terrorists) out of the network.
If you don't have a major continent to yourself, the isolationist strategy will never win you the game. Europe and Asia have too many open borders to hold defensively without expanding. By the time you succeed at holding either one in a six-player game, you are probably already strong enough that you can expect to win the game. Australia has only one border, but rewards you with so few armies that it's just a matter of time before somebody (whoever eventually conquers asia) decided to wipe you out. South America is worse. No more armies that Australia, but with two border states to defend. Africa has three border states to guard, and whoever is playing in South America has to go through you to get to most of the rest of the world.
North America is the sweetest plum. Put up a massive force on the panama canal, and then leave South America alone. They will decide fighting you is not worth it and go attack Africa. Then split the rest of your force between holding your two northern borders, and collect 5 bonus armies per turn while picking off easy, strategically unimportant countries in Europe and Asia to get your cards. Once you are strong enough to devour South America with lots of armies left over, do so, and you will then be collecting 7 bonus armies, again with only three borders to hold. The game is pretty much over at that point. Just about the only way for the other 5 players to beat that strategy is if somebody "takes one for the team" and badly weakens themselves to make sure that the person taking North America does not succeed at holding it. Whoever steps up to do so will not win, either, so there is little incentive to do so, unless you really hate that guy. Otherwise, somebody holding Europe early in the game (which requires real ineptitude on the part of the other players) can rival North American power. I have seen the game won many times by a "Europe and Africa" empire... but most of the time, victory eventually goes to North America.
This is one of the reasons why my circle of friends eventually stopped playing Risk and moved on to other games, like Diplomacy.
I'm not. Could they please stop, at least in my case?
What's that? I have to pay into this horrible retirement plan because the system would completely collapse overnight if we didn't force all Americans to participate? Gosh, what a great idea that was!
Except almost none of the things mentioned there were given away. They were sold as components of Microsoft's OS or applications. The fact that they were not included as part of earlier versions of Microsoft's products does not mean they are being "given away." It just means that Microsoft has often added features to their applications and operating systems by buying products or stealing ideas from other companies.
They don't make much money when starting out, but if they are smart and pay attention, they learn how the game works, and work their way into more lucrative schemes. Sometimes a degree from the School of Hard Knocks can be more valuable than an MBA.