The problem with your argument is that the consent is buried in the EULA. If you install the software, you are buying into the publisher's copyright protection scheme.
And you don't need a warrant. Warrants are for the state, not for people and businesses.
It is the ultimate irony that the people whose "privacy" rights many are defending here are the people who are illegally using copied software. They claim that the "private" data owned by the users has a greater dignity than the "published" data distributed by the software company. Here's my libertarian take on this: So what? In any case in equity, the Doctrine of Unclean Hands applies. And it's not as if the software copies the entire contents of the user's harddrive and gives it to the software publisher - it just distributes identifying information allowing the software publisher to act to protect its rights. If you want to protect that private information, either 1) don't use illegally duplicated software; or 2) don't allow your computer to be connected to the outside world.
Here's the legal definition of larceny, the common law source of theft crimes:
The taking and carrying away of the tangible personal property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive.
So you are correct, you can't "steal" music, because music isn't tangible. Unless you steal a CD from someone, because in that event you are taking a physical recording. However, as Congress has the power to regulate copyright, it can make copyright violation a crime, if it wants to. And it has, to a limited extent. Violation of copyright still isn't theft, but it can be a crime.
And just to quibble a bit, you don't have to have the item in your possession for it to be theft. The crime has been committed as soon as you "take and carry away" the item in question with the intent to permanently deprive. You can throw it away after that, and it's still theft. You can even return it after that, and it's still theft if you intended, at the time you took it, to not return it later.
You know, I may be a bit off-topic here, but your discussion of the historical basis of copyright reminded me of something.
I was having dinner outside at a restaurant across the alleyway from an Irish pub (in Sonoma, CA). There was a band at the pub. At one point in the evening they played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Only it wasn't the hymn. I was corrected by my friend, Susan, who's from Ireland, and who explained to me that the tune to the hymm was lifted from an Irish song.
I already knew that we stole the music to the Star Spangled Banner (an English pub song), America the Beautiful (God Save the Queen), and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (an anti-war English song). But the Battle Hymn of the Republic? That's beyond the pale.
My god, this nation was created on the basis of violations of copyright!
A trackball may work well for games, but it won't necessarily work as well for wide-format webpages, spreadsheets, etc. It's more difficult to move a trackball in only one direction (left/right/up/down). I think that a d-pad may be better than a trackball or tilting scroll wheel.
On the other hand, why not put a trackball onto a trackball? Just kidding.
Given that OS/400 is usually found on enterprise servers, and - with apologies to Al Yankovich - about as useful to gamers as JPEGs to Helen Keller, the project is never likely to make it out of the Rochester lab, but has been undertaken anyway as part of research associated with IBM's "CELL" project - jointly underway with Toshiba and Sony to develop processors for entertainment applications. (from the article).
Maybe the idea here is that IBM is working on a robust OS and networking system and maybe the hardware for use in future Sony platforms (PS3, anyone?) and has done this as a demonstration of what they can do. If they can make it work with the PSOne, they can make it work with anything.
It's kind of karmic, the PS3 also being the PS/3 and all.
Just to add to your point, both settlements and attorney fees in class action cases must be approved of by the trial court judge. There are controls to the system. And, without this system, MS users would be getting nothing at all, let alone vouchers.
Also, let's be honest here. How much did Joe Smith lose as the result of Microsoft's unfair business practices? Next to nothing. I cannot think of anything that MS has done to me that is as annoying as my having to pay $15.00 to be able to use my DVD player after I moved it from an older computer to a new one.
I'm serious. Most business users usually buy the most affordable hardware they can find that does what they need it to do. And they keep the hardware until it dies. The business trend in purchasing "bigger, faster, more" computers is the result of marketing, except for those business users who have a business need for bigger, faster, more. This may not be enough to drive technological improvement.
But that's not all. The Chinese aren't any different from the rest of us. If they can afford it, they want to be able to play the latest first-person shooters and other games. Many people in the technological west spend more time on the Internet than they do watching television. Recreational uses of the Internet and computer gaming are becomming a very significant portion of the economy, take the second Laura Croft movie for example. The Chinese are going to want this, the say way that we want to play the latest Japanese PS2 games not yet ported into English.
The problem with the Dragon is that it's a step away from the rest of the world. I certainly understand why the Chinese government is doing this - to help their own economy and to maintain control of their own population. But that won't stop the simple desire of Chinese home computer users to join the rest of the world playing Evercrack or any other game de jour.
My prediction - the Dragon processer will be a successful business product in China, which is certainly not signficant. But it won't be more than that.
The reason why Microsoft is still around is that the company is still taking risks. So what if there are a bunch of failed products in the Microsoft catalog? It's evidence of something that many people don't like to admit: Microsoft is innovative. Some of the innovations don't work, but many its efforts succeed and, at least to date, more than make up for its failures.
I agree. Other than when Windows Update tells me to, I reboot only once a week, because I shut down my computer Tuesday mornings prior to work so the cleaning ladies won't accidentally break my computer.
Even if all of the exaggerated problems with XP are true, it's still the most reliable OS I've ever used, and it still does everything that I want it to do.
And no, Windows Update hasn't managed to break my computer at all.
Why? What's fair use? Corporations aren't allowed to buy just one copy of commerical computer software for use on all of their machines. Why should they be allowed to buy one copy of a piece of music for simultaenous use by all.
One copy = one user at a time. And "fair use" doesn't mean you can make a copy of music and allow multiple people to access that copy at any one time.
Fair use? A library is fair use, but libraries don't photocopy their books for each person carrying a library card.
It's OK to nitpick. I agree that it's not extortion, in that it's not a crime - yet. But it's certainly a half-ass marketing model that doesn't sell any product whatsoever other than the absense of its own advertisements. That's got to be actionable in civil court.
Just last week I spent a week's vacation in San Diego, using my compuserve account (otherwise unused except for email) to access the Grand Internet. Interestingly enough, the only pop-up ad I received all week through CIS was an ad that said something to the effect of "click through to here to buy a product to prevent you from getting these pop-up ads again". It's a pop-up ad advertising a product that would prevent a specific pop-up ad from popping up. AOL users are getting the same pop-up ad. It seems to me (and I am a lawyer) that this is little more than extortion. It's a message that says nothing other than "pay me money, and I'll stop bothering you". I'm not a class action attorney (I do trusts and estates work), but it seems to me that this kind of advertisement is actionable, because it's not really advertising a product - it's not much more than "protection".
Not only that, but I also noticed that while using CIS software to access the Internet, Real Player added a framed advertisement to my IE windows requesting that I visit their website and pay them for an upgrade (before you knock IE, remember that most Windows users use IE and Real may just as easily be able to effect other browers - I wouldn't know, I'm not a programmer). I'm not sure this is actionable, as Real One gets installed when the Compuserve software is installed, but it is annoying as all hell, and I don't like it, and I'll be damned if I ever give them any money. Anyone out there running AOL or CIS should check out their IE brower as well. The software adds a real player icon to the IE toolbar.
Let's face it, there isn't a single Internet poll that hasn't already been warped by people trying to vote their hero to the top, Wil Wheaton, for example. But that's all fun and games, and anything that benefits CleverNickName is fine by me.
But in this age of rampant identity theft, I cannot imagine a fool-proof system for the very very simple fact that there isn't anyone checking the actual identity of the person above the keyboard. Forget PIN's, digital signatures, and anything else, there's not a damn thing to stop voter fraud on the Internet. It's worse than the motor-voter law, which allows people to register to vote without any actual proof of citizenship.
Maybe Internet voting will lead to a technocracy, because the party with the best hackers will win. Of course, since Bill Gates owns the OS, guess what's going to happen.
The Pythons and Cylon fighters were a lot faster than the Battlestar Gallactica. AND, Cylon fighters took out the rest of the Colonial Fleet. So BG canon would seem to indicate that the military reality was that fighters were necessary and militarily effective.
Think about it. The original concept of Battlestar Gallactica was great: Refugees struggling to escape annihalation and find a new home. But there were so many bad, bad things about BG that had nothing to do with the state of the art of special effects.
Here are some examples:
1. The damn robot dog. 2. The incredibly stupid plots - even in the TV movie. Remember the insect aliens running a casino to entrap humans into becoming larva food? The first half of the TV movie was great, but it went way down-hill from there. 3. The damn robot dog. 4. The damn robot dog. 5. Cheesy 70's hair. At least Boomer didn't have an afro, but that wasn't much help. 6. The overall plot turning into something that wasn't all that different from Space 1999 - each episode was either a throw-away event where the BG either meets aliens or suffers a cylon attack, and then escapes at the end - usually after being betrayed by the aliens or fighting off another cylon attack. The episodes dealing with the plot to find Earth were mostly "Gilligan and the Castaways almost, but not quite, make it off the island again" episodes.
The things I remember about BG that were cool was the tech - the whole idea of an aircraft carrier in space, the way-cool Cylon fighters and base-ships, the cylons themselves (except for the leader-bots, which were lame). Even the thinly-veiled Mormon philosophy was OK.
There's just one thing I'm hoping for: No damn robot dog. If they have to have a robot, it had better be Crow-T-Robot, Tom Servo, or Bender. Or a damn robot dog that's very quickly taken over by the Cylons.
Whenever I read the argument that Japan is a largely peaceful nation despite mass media violence I think back to the Rape of Nanking, in which the Imperial Army more or less raped and killed most of the people in the city. The Imperial Army also pushed Japanese civilians off the cliffs of Saipan to avoid the indignity of their capture by U.S. Forces. They also were responsible to the Death March to Bataan, and many other war atrocities.
I'm not saying that Japan is on the edge of violence today, but much of the history of Japan is as much an example of man's inhumanity to man as anything the US has ever done.
And why did the Rape of Nanking occur? It happened because the Imperial Army desensitized it's soldiers to such violence and portrayed the enemy as being subhuman animals not worthy of humane treatment - just the way that games such as GTA and Postal treat most people.
I declare myself to be a hypocrite, in that I've played Postal, and a large number of other violent games. But I think that there is a coorelation between violence in the media and violence in society. Remember when the Nixon Watergate tapes were released in the 70's? Remember the shock that recordings of conversations in the White House had to be redacted by replacing curse words with "expletive deleted"? Nowadays, few people would care about the language used in the White House, and we've got a President who says "Bring Em On" in response to questions concerning our soldiers getting killed in Iraq. I voted for the guy myself, but his statement disgusts me. Why on earth did Bush say that? My guess is that he thought it was cool, and perhaps funny, and he came to that conclusion based on the media programming that he's been exposed to his entire life.
Of course she and her publishers will fight un-authorized translations. Not only do un-authorized translations cost them money, they also dilute the product by disseminating amateur-hour translations of JKR's own story.
But there is also a tremendous amount of Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Try www.fanfiction.net and www.sugarquill.net for examples. JKR hasn't been suing any of these writers, so I don't think that she and her publishers have been acting in a heavy-handed manner. Children of all ages who want to express themselves creatively with Harry Potter have been allowed to do so, as long as they are not making money in the process. What's wrong with that?
This really isn't going to be a problem. The military operates stores on its military bases that sell a wide variety of stuff - it wouldn't be a problem stocking X-Box games from the US.
Just so you, know, the profit from the base stores goes to the base Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Department.
If by "thinking differently" you mean the same old method of lying through advertising, I agree.
Apple's response while prompt, was not frank. If it were frankly honest, Apple would have to admit that their brand new G5 would be slower than Dell's computer from last quarter under certain conditions. To be frankly honest, Apple shouldn't have claimed that their computer was the "fastest desktop" computer ever, based solely on their own cherry-picked benchmark.
And to be frankly honest, Apple shouldn't have claimed that their G5 is the first 64-bit desktop computer either.
This isn't nit-picking. Apple was caught with their pants down, just like nVidia. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy a G5, but it does mean that "thinking different" is just more of the same old shit.
If you want an honest benchmark, have Apple's system tweaked by Apple, Dell's system tweaked by Dell, and who gives a damn which complier is used? I'm a user, not a CPU. I don't care about the theoretical capacity of each computer, especially if the theory is tested using inefficient compliers. Let Apple and Dell pick their own compliers, or even write their own compliers just for this test.
No, because they likely could get better performance on the PPC with a different compiler, too. Think on.
Then why didn't they? Apple is free to use a less efficient complier if they want to on their machines. Deliberately crippling the computer you are competing against isn't a fair comparison no matter what you do to your own computer.
The honest truth is that no one is seriously interested in GCC complier performance unless they use only GCC to compile. Let Apple, Dell, and everyone else use their own systems, compliers, etc, tweaked out to the max, and then we'll see which computer is faster.
BTW, Dell sells a 3.2GHz machine now. The 3.06Ghz Dell tested by Apple is behind the times.
The only way that you can trust a benchmark, is if each manufacturer optimizes their system the way they want, using all of the capabilities of their hardware and software/complier/etc. and then run the benchmark tests.
Then you examine the results for cheating (ie, recent allegations against nVidia, etc).
...using a G5 that fell off the back of a truck and the latest computer from Dell. Borrowing Apple's technique of "tinkering" with the systems, I optimized the Dell system to it's highest level of performance. I made only a single modification to the Apple system: removing its power cord.
Interesting enough, the Dell system matched the numbers found on the SPEC website, but the G5 was unable to complete the benchmark.
I think that this test, which can be easily duplicated, shows conclusively that Apple's G5 marketing is a complete lie.
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The problem with your argument is that the consent is buried in the EULA. If you install the software, you are buying into the publisher's copyright protection scheme.
And you don't need a warrant. Warrants are for the state, not for people and businesses.
It is the ultimate irony that the people whose "privacy" rights many are defending here are the people who are illegally using copied software. They claim that the "private" data owned by the users has a greater dignity than the "published" data distributed by the software company. Here's my libertarian take on this: So what? In any case in equity, the Doctrine of Unclean Hands applies. And it's not as if the software copies the entire contents of the user's harddrive and gives it to the software publisher - it just distributes identifying information allowing the software publisher to act to protect its rights. If you want to protect that private information, either 1) don't use illegally duplicated software; or 2) don't allow your computer to be connected to the outside world.
Here's the legal definition of larceny, the common law source of theft crimes:
The taking and carrying away of the tangible personal property of another, with the intent to permanently deprive.
So you are correct, you can't "steal" music, because music isn't tangible. Unless you steal a CD from someone, because in that event you are taking a physical recording. However, as Congress has the power to regulate copyright, it can make copyright violation a crime, if it wants to. And it has, to a limited extent. Violation of copyright still isn't theft, but it can be a crime.
And just to quibble a bit, you don't have to have the item in your possession for it to be theft. The crime has been committed as soon as you "take and carry away" the item in question with the intent to permanently deprive. You can throw it away after that, and it's still theft. You can even return it after that, and it's still theft if you intended, at the time you took it, to not return it later.
You know, I may be a bit off-topic here, but your discussion of the historical basis of copyright reminded me of something.
I was having dinner outside at a restaurant across the alleyway from an Irish pub (in Sonoma, CA). There was a band at the pub. At one point in the evening they played "The Battle Hymn of the Republic". Only it wasn't the hymn. I was corrected by my friend, Susan, who's from Ireland, and who explained to me that the tune to the hymm was lifted from an Irish song.
I already knew that we stole the music to the Star Spangled Banner (an English pub song), America the Beautiful (God Save the Queen), and When Johnny Comes Marching Home (an anti-war English song). But the Battle Hymn of the Republic? That's beyond the pale.
My god, this nation was created on the basis of violations of copyright!
A trackball may work well for games, but it won't necessarily work as well for wide-format webpages, spreadsheets, etc. It's more difficult to move a trackball in only one direction (left/right/up/down). I think that a d-pad may be better than a trackball or tilting scroll wheel.
On the other hand, why not put a trackball onto a trackball? Just kidding.
Given that OS/400 is usually found on enterprise servers, and - with apologies to Al Yankovich - about as useful to gamers as JPEGs to Helen Keller, the project is never likely to make it out of the Rochester lab, but has been undertaken anyway as part of research associated with IBM's "CELL" project - jointly underway with Toshiba and Sony to develop processors for entertainment applications. (from the article).
Maybe the idea here is that IBM is working on a robust OS and networking system and maybe the hardware for use in future Sony platforms (PS3, anyone?) and has done this as a demonstration of what they can do. If they can make it work with the PSOne, they can make it work with anything.
It's kind of karmic, the PS3 also being the PS/3 and all.
Just to add to your point, both settlements and attorney fees in class action cases must be approved of by the trial court judge. There are controls to the system. And, without this system, MS users would be getting nothing at all, let alone vouchers.
Also, let's be honest here. How much did Joe Smith lose as the result of Microsoft's unfair business practices? Next to nothing. I cannot think of anything that MS has done to me that is as annoying as my having to pay $15.00 to be able to use my DVD player after I moved it from an older computer to a new one.
I want a t-shirt design released under the GPL.
Oh, wait. SCO will claim that the design belongs to them, or Apple will claim that it infringes on their look and feel.
I'm serious. Most business users usually buy the most affordable hardware they can find that does what they need it to do. And they keep the hardware until it dies. The business trend in purchasing "bigger, faster, more" computers is the result of marketing, except for those business users who have a business need for bigger, faster, more. This may not be enough to drive technological improvement.
But that's not all. The Chinese aren't any different from the rest of us. If they can afford it, they want to be able to play the latest first-person shooters and other games. Many people in the technological west spend more time on the Internet than they do watching television. Recreational uses of the Internet and computer gaming are becomming a very significant portion of the economy, take the second Laura Croft movie for example. The Chinese are going to want this, the say way that we want to play the latest Japanese PS2 games not yet ported into English.
The problem with the Dragon is that it's a step away from the rest of the world. I certainly understand why the Chinese government is doing this - to help their own economy and to maintain control of their own population. But that won't stop the simple desire of Chinese home computer users to join the rest of the world playing Evercrack or any other game de jour.
My prediction - the Dragon processer will be a successful business product in China, which is certainly not signficant. But it won't be more than that.
...a Dragon chip in the Year of the Ram? Dragon chips are so 4698. (Year 2000 for Gregorian Calendar fanatics out there)
I'd rather buy a Ram chip - at least that way I know I'm being current.
The reason why Microsoft is still around is that the company is still taking risks. So what if there are a bunch of failed products in the Microsoft catalog? It's evidence of something that many people don't like to admit: Microsoft is innovative. Some of the innovations don't work, but many its efforts succeed and, at least to date, more than make up for its failures.
I agree. Other than when Windows Update tells me to, I reboot only once a week, because I shut down my computer Tuesday mornings prior to work so the cleaning ladies won't accidentally break my computer.
Even if all of the exaggerated problems with XP are true, it's still the most reliable OS I've ever used, and it still does everything that I want it to do.
And no, Windows Update hasn't managed to break my computer at all.
Why? What's fair use? Corporations aren't allowed to buy just one copy of commerical computer software for use on all of their machines. Why should they be allowed to buy one copy of a piece of music for simultaenous use by all.
One copy = one user at a time. And "fair use" doesn't mean you can make a copy of music and allow multiple people to access that copy at any one time.
Fair use? A library is fair use, but libraries don't photocopy their books for each person carrying a library card.
It's OK to nitpick. I agree that it's not extortion, in that it's not a crime - yet. But it's certainly a half-ass marketing model that doesn't sell any product whatsoever other than the absense of its own advertisements. That's got to be actionable in civil court.
And yes, I am truly a lawyer.
I thought all the Apple freaks were supposed to buy Saturns. I guess I'm out of date.
Just last week I spent a week's vacation in San Diego, using my compuserve account (otherwise unused except for email) to access the Grand Internet. Interestingly enough, the only pop-up ad I received all week through CIS was an ad that said something to the effect of "click through to here to buy a product to prevent you from getting these pop-up ads again". It's a pop-up ad advertising a product that would prevent a specific pop-up ad from popping up. AOL users are getting the same pop-up ad. It seems to me (and I am a lawyer) that this is little more than extortion. It's a message that says nothing other than "pay me money, and I'll stop bothering you". I'm not a class action attorney (I do trusts and estates work), but it seems to me that this kind of advertisement is actionable, because it's not really advertising a product - it's not much more than "protection".
Not only that, but I also noticed that while using CIS software to access the Internet, Real Player added a framed advertisement to my IE windows requesting that I visit their website and pay them for an upgrade (before you knock IE, remember that most Windows users use IE and Real may just as easily be able to effect other browers - I wouldn't know, I'm not a programmer). I'm not sure this is actionable, as Real One gets installed when the Compuserve software is installed, but it is annoying as all hell, and I don't like it, and I'll be damned if I ever give them any money. Anyone out there running AOL or CIS should check out their IE brower as well. The software adds a real player icon to the IE toolbar.
Let's face it, there isn't a single Internet poll that hasn't already been warped by people trying to vote their hero to the top, Wil Wheaton, for example. But that's all fun and games, and anything that benefits CleverNickName is fine by me.
But in this age of rampant identity theft, I cannot imagine a fool-proof system for the very very simple fact that there isn't anyone checking the actual identity of the person above the keyboard. Forget PIN's, digital signatures, and anything else, there's not a damn thing to stop voter fraud on the Internet. It's worse than the motor-voter law, which allows people to register to vote without any actual proof of citizenship.
Maybe Internet voting will lead to a technocracy, because the party with the best hackers will win. Of course, since Bill Gates owns the OS, guess what's going to happen.
The Pythons and Cylon fighters were a lot faster than the Battlestar Gallactica. AND, Cylon fighters took out the rest of the Colonial Fleet. So BG canon would seem to indicate that the military reality was that fighters were necessary and militarily effective.
Think about it. The original concept of Battlestar Gallactica was great: Refugees struggling to escape annihalation and find a new home. But there were so many bad, bad things about BG that had nothing to do with the state of the art of special effects.
Here are some examples:
1. The damn robot dog.
2. The incredibly stupid plots - even in the TV movie. Remember the insect aliens running a casino to entrap humans into becoming larva food? The first half of the TV movie was great, but it went way down-hill from there.
3. The damn robot dog.
4. The damn robot dog.
5. Cheesy 70's hair. At least Boomer didn't have an afro, but that wasn't much help.
6. The overall plot turning into something that wasn't all that different from Space 1999 - each episode was either a throw-away event where the BG either meets aliens or suffers a cylon attack, and then escapes at the end - usually after being betrayed by the aliens or fighting off another cylon attack. The episodes dealing with the plot to find Earth were mostly "Gilligan and the Castaways almost, but not quite, make it off the island again" episodes.
The things I remember about BG that were cool was the tech - the whole idea of an aircraft carrier in space, the way-cool Cylon fighters and base-ships, the cylons themselves (except for the leader-bots, which were lame). Even the thinly-veiled Mormon philosophy was OK.
There's just one thing I'm hoping for: No damn robot dog. If they have to have a robot, it had better be Crow-T-Robot, Tom Servo, or Bender. Or a damn robot dog that's very quickly taken over by the Cylons.
Oh yeah, and make Starbuck a lesbian, too.
Whenever I read the argument that Japan is a largely peaceful nation despite mass media violence I think back to the Rape of Nanking, in which the Imperial Army more or less raped and killed most of the people in the city. The Imperial Army also pushed Japanese civilians off the cliffs of Saipan to avoid the indignity of their capture by U.S. Forces. They also were responsible to the Death March to Bataan, and many other war atrocities.
I'm not saying that Japan is on the edge of violence today, but much of the history of Japan is as much an example of man's inhumanity to man as anything the US has ever done.
And why did the Rape of Nanking occur? It happened because the Imperial Army desensitized it's soldiers to such violence and portrayed the enemy as being subhuman animals not worthy of humane treatment - just the way that games such as GTA and Postal treat most people.
I declare myself to be a hypocrite, in that I've played Postal, and a large number of other violent games. But I think that there is a coorelation between violence in the media and violence in society. Remember when the Nixon Watergate tapes were released in the 70's? Remember the shock that recordings of conversations in the White House had to be redacted by replacing curse words with "expletive deleted"? Nowadays, few people would care about the language used in the White House, and we've got a President who says "Bring Em On" in response to questions concerning our soldiers getting killed in Iraq. I voted for the guy myself, but his statement disgusts me. Why on earth did Bush say that? My guess is that he thought it was cool, and perhaps funny, and he came to that conclusion based on the media programming that he's been exposed to his entire life.
Of course she and her publishers will fight un-authorized translations. Not only do un-authorized translations cost them money, they also dilute the product by disseminating amateur-hour translations of JKR's own story.
But there is also a tremendous amount of Harry Potter fanfiction on the Internet. Try www.fanfiction.net and www.sugarquill.net for examples. JKR hasn't been suing any of these writers, so I don't think that she and her publishers have been acting in a heavy-handed manner. Children of all ages who want to express themselves creatively with Harry Potter have been allowed to do so, as long as they are not making money in the process. What's wrong with that?
This really isn't going to be a problem. The military operates stores on its military bases that sell a wide variety of stuff - it wouldn't be a problem stocking X-Box games from the US.
Just so you, know, the profit from the base stores goes to the base Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Department.
If by "thinking differently" you mean the same old method of lying through advertising, I agree.
Apple's response while prompt, was not frank. If it were frankly honest, Apple would have to admit that their brand new G5 would be slower than Dell's computer from last quarter under certain conditions. To be frankly honest, Apple shouldn't have claimed that their computer was the "fastest desktop" computer ever, based solely on their own cherry-picked benchmark.
And to be frankly honest, Apple shouldn't have claimed that their G5 is the first 64-bit desktop computer either.
This isn't nit-picking. Apple was caught with their pants down, just like nVidia. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy a G5, but it does mean that "thinking different" is just more of the same old shit.
If you want an honest benchmark, have Apple's system tweaked by Apple, Dell's system tweaked by Dell, and who gives a damn which complier is used? I'm a user, not a CPU. I don't care about the theoretical capacity of each computer, especially if the theory is tested using inefficient compliers. Let Apple and Dell pick their own compliers, or even write their own compliers just for this test.
No, because they likely could get better performance on the PPC with a different compiler, too. Think on.
Then why didn't they? Apple is free to use a less efficient complier if they want to on their machines. Deliberately crippling the computer you are competing against isn't a fair comparison no matter what you do to your own computer.
The honest truth is that no one is seriously interested in GCC complier performance unless they use only GCC to compile. Let Apple, Dell, and everyone else use their own systems, compliers, etc, tweaked out to the max, and then we'll see which computer is faster.
BTW, Dell sells a 3.2GHz machine now. The 3.06Ghz Dell tested by Apple is behind the times.
I call shenanigan.
The only way that you can trust a benchmark, is if each manufacturer optimizes their system the way they want, using all of the capabilities of their hardware and software/complier/etc. and then run the benchmark tests.
Then you examine the results for cheating (ie, recent allegations against nVidia, etc).
...using a G5 that fell off the back of a truck and the latest computer from Dell. Borrowing Apple's technique of "tinkering" with the systems, I optimized the Dell system to it's highest level of performance. I made only a single modification to the Apple system: removing its power cord.
Interesting enough, the Dell system matched the numbers found on the SPEC website, but the G5 was unable to complete the benchmark.
I think that this test, which can be easily duplicated, shows conclusively that Apple's G5 marketing is a complete lie.