Browsing the net on a phone is currently not a very good way to go (using WAP, anyway). The day North Americans can get phones like the Japanese do (with their huge-ass almost-pda sized screens and touch-screen dialing), then we can implement a different type of protocol. I mean, the web is not a text-area. Ever tried browsing the net with a text-only browser? Let me just say that it sucks. And you know what? Convenience is what drove every single one of the products you ridiculed to success, but let me just say that WAP is not convenient. Whereas we have "One-Click Access" to a lot of things, cell-phone owners don't. Surfing the net on the cell-phone isn't the way to go, but surfing the net with a PDA+Cell solution IS. I mean, typing an e-mail message on a cell-phone is ludicris (sp?), where writing on a pda is good enough.
I'm sorry, AC's, but you seem to have me mistaken. I remember reading, either in a thread or in the original article, about being able to produce a chemical similar to the one found in aspirin. If one can create pain-killers or pain-nullifiers for the body naturally, it would boost the effectiveness of an army. And about dependence - it doesn't matter. The body creates it naturally (once its been hacked in), so we would be as dependent on pain-killers as we would be on blood cells.
This has obvious military implications, and could very well be the "stim-packs" of science fiction, except it would be internally generated. Perhaps we'll hack into us abilities that we've only ever thought would be applied externally. Characters like Wolverine from the X-Men - a science-fictional character born with natural abilities, can now be recreated. Imagine a navy seal behind the enemy lines with a bullet-proof vest. Against non-armour piercing bullets, he'll be practically invincible (save for head-shots). He could endure bullet wounds which hit the chest without stopping for a beat (except from recoil). He could take the place of 10 men on the battle-field, and he wouldn't have to carry much technological gadgets (pain suppressors are all built into his organs). Great way to complement the Land Warrior program.
Now, imagine a team of 4 of these guys walking right into Saddam's house, taking out all his guards, then forcing him to swallow a timed grenade wrapped in a condom?:)
In related news: the dismissal of Kenny Baker as R2D2 from the cast of Star Wars has allowed him to persue other possibilities. Baker says, "If I can play R2D2 in Star Wars, I can play R2D2 in a soccer field! I'm going to enter the RoboCup and kick some ass. My strategy? I'm going to bump and bumble into all the robots and get them worked up like C3P0."
EV's will not stick around in their current form, nor do I think it will ever. There are other forms of car fuels like fuel cells which could potentially be much more convenient. Plugging in your car at home is nice, but what if you forget? Wake up in the morning to go to work and find that your car has no power. Can't "quick-charge" it in 10 minutes now, can you? You're screwed. Anyway, I love EV's, but I know they won't work. Unless you have EV's which could run off of removable batteries (I mean, for god sakes, people sometimes forget to charge their cell phones... what makes you think they'll charge their car?).
Cool, with one of these things I'll be able to play Counter-Strike on my way to school. Now, instead of laughed at just for being a geek, I can also be laughed at for being a freak! Just equip this thing with a Sidewinder Gamepad (the tilt enabled ones) and you'll see kids walking down the street tilting left and right, up and down, and screaming on the way "Die, BITCH! DIE! Fire in the hole, motherfucker!" That's what we REALLY like to see, right?:)
And can you imagine examinations where kids wear their Uber-UnderWare TM to school?:) Half the time they'll be looking down their pants to find their answers on the LCD attached to the bulge spot:) Soon, they'll have to strip-search kids before they're allowed to enter the exam room:)
I've been looking at the X-Box and the Indrema and I've found advantages and disadvantages of both systems. First, let's look at selection of titles - X-Box will provide titles for a premium. Games will probably cost as much as PS games, if not more. That'll be $40 or something. They are guaranteed to be practically bug-free, as with the tradition of console games. With Microsoft doing quality assurance, bugs will probably be stomped from X-Box games before they're allowed to be released (although Windoze will continue to be buggy). Now, with Indrema, the PSX type of marketing approach is showing. There will be up to a hundred (if not more) games to play on the Indrema within the first 3 months because coders will hack up their own games for free release on the Indrema (with a free license). The selection of games will be huge, and that's what will draw the crowd - wide selection (ala PSX). Now, the only problem is that those games released by amateur coders will be buggy, and sometimes buggy to the point where it's unenjoyable. But that point I won't complain (I mean, it's free). The only thing is - who will pay for a game if they can get other games for free? Unless it's an amazing game, 70% of the target audience will avoid it like a plague because you have to pay for it. I mean, when was the last time millions of people flooded to a store to buy a Linux game or program? I hope that I don't get sued for this, but the only computer game I've ever bought in my life is Starcraft (battlechest). It's amazing (as most of the nation will tell you), and it's extremely replayable, so I bought it. Have I bought any other games of late? No. Hell, have I replayed any old games of late? No. I don't want to buy a game that I'll stop playing in a month. A month of playing ain't worth $60, and if you can play other games (without copyright protection) for free, why the hell not? I mean, if there are free games that will be better, if not on par with commercial games released for Indrema, who the hell is going to pay for a game? The only reason half-life is selling so well is because of counter-strike. How many people will actually buy TF2 now that CS is LORD of Internet Teamplay. Sure, CS boosted the sales of HL, but it also crippled somewhat the future sales of TF2 (then again, I heard a rumour that they'll make a CS mod for TF2). Indrema games will likely not sell as well as had hoped, and the machines will probably need to cost a tad more than the X-Box (which, because of the Indrema, probably won't sell as well, either, although the tekkies will like it). Brings me to another point - The X-Box has plastered hardware specs all over the wall for the past year, and those claims have been demoed to be pretty solid. Now, this NV20 (or was it 25?) chip has been much-touted - can the Indrema's GPU compete? Not knowing anything about Indrema's GPU specs (or even who's making it) scares me away from it. The X-Box is going with the KING of all GPU's, who's Indrema going with? X-Box will be for a market of kids who use both PC and Console to game (it'll be their new console) while Indrema will be for a lower budgeted gamer (kinda, considering the software doesn't cost anything) or the Linux tekkies.
I'm speaking from a personal point of view as a 19 year old guy fresh out of highschool who was once a complete geek but now is much more sociable than before. My personal prejudices are my genuine opinions and not to be considered as troll or flame bait. Personally, I believe that a sense of "geekness" is cultivated at an early age (as are most things). At a young age (I'm thinking grade 6-8), girls are most popular if they start trying on make-up and bras, while the girls who sit under a tree and read novels are picked on and teased. Of course, attraction of boys is "addictive," and once you know that you can get a boy's attention, or the attention of your fellow classmates (the good kind of attention), you'll want more. Though, keep in mind, I'm no psychologist. Either way, there will be girls who act to please (and be popular), and there will be girls who don't feel the need to attract TOO much attention to themselves (and therefore become nice girls who read in their spare time). Now, I would say that even with that simple split, 75% of the girls have already headed down the early non-techie road to become prom-queens and wanna-be's in highschool (and thus, will never have time to cultivate "geekness"). What of the 25%, the secluded girls? Wouldn't they become geeks? The answer is, very unlikely. Those girls have been picked on from gradeschool, and will either want to become more sociable in highschool, or become more immersed in their books, hopefully using their smarts or their kindness of heart to win guys over (by highschool, almost every girl starts wanting to attract, just in different ways). Now, why not immerse themselves in computer books and the internet? Because it doesn't "change the world" the way they might want to. In a way, they want to fight for a different status quo and either become rich or famous (and show those prom-queens in high-school a thing or two). Think about the movie "Never Been Kissed" where Drew Barrymore tells the prom-queens that they'll never be much in life - she was right. The better-educated girls will be better off in life, having better, nicer, and guys to walk into a restaurant with, being driven to cocktails and balls in fancier cars and better dresses, or maybe one day changing the role of women in society or killing discrimination in itself. Now, what does this have to do with not being a geek? Simple. Who do you think gets more guys chasing after her, a coder girl whose job is staring at the code for Windows 2010 all day, or the banker woman/business woman/lawyer who will see people, meet people, talk with people, and deal with people everyday? Chances are, if I meet 10 people a day I will get someone faster than another person who meets 10 people a month or year. Just think about it. And besides, after reading the.plan files of people like Steve Gediken (sp?) and certain sentences which show how devoted geeks are to their work (read: "Slept at the office last night again") well... now you know that they don't let the llamas out much:) No offense, Steve, if you're reading this. Anyway, although slashdotters would probably love geekchics more than others, keep remembering that most people, and especially most businessmen and the like still pine for Cindy Crawford who has been seen on covers of enough magazines. Think about a song that is on the radio once, and a song that is on the radio about 10 times a day. You might not like the song to begin with, but you'll learn to tolerate it and even like it. Now, I must say that, being the semi-geek that I am, I would probably love a semi-geek-chic. Currently, my girlfriend is not very technically inclined, but likes to be very argumentative. Of course, being the "man" that I am, I might be a little over-bearing, also, so we argue. For instance, I would say that one can't buy a "decent" digital camera for less than $600 (you guys know what I mean by a decent digi-cam... I mean, anything under 1 megapixel isn't that great at all, and won't work for most purposes). Now, she would argue this and say that the $300 camera they have at school works fine and works really nicely. Of course, when the argument gets out of hand, she complains that I always have to throw my knowledge in her face and offer my opinion on why she's wrong when her opinion is supposed just as valid as mine. Then again, being more technically inclined, I'd like to think that my opinion on digi-cams and other technical equipment would be more valid than hers. Think about it, does David Grossman's opinion of the ever popular debate of Q3 vs UT vs HL:CS matter as much as, say, the staff of the OGL? Think deep, and thanks for reading:)
I believe that the most simplistic yet useful "language" to learn is Dark Basic http://www.darkbasic.com I mean, kids aren't going to want to code databases and word processors - they want GAMES! Dark Basic is VERY simple to work with, and is a step up from QuickBasic only because of functionality. I mean, give a kid a week (and some guidance) and he can probably code himself a fully 3D game utilizing Direct3D. And now that they've released source code to their demos (which took them only a day to code and look very good), you've got some resources to work with. Give it a look, it's great! Being the idiot that I am, I can't begin to code in C++ I mean... I can probably code OOP stuff, but I really haven't found a simple way to use direct 3D. How long do you think it'll take me to code a simple demo where I have a 3D tank created in 3DS or Milkshape rolling around on 3D terrain in C++? It'll take a day for me just to learn that. Took me 10 minutes in Dark Basic, including the time to read the docs on it.
Most certainly, if I went into home hardware and said that their screw-drivers were over-priced, I could not walk out that door with a bunch of screw-drivers which are unpaid for. Hell, it won't even be justified. But what if I brought a camera and took a picture of the screw-driver, then went home and made one myself? Who is going to come to my house to check whether or not I actually bought my screw-driver from a store, or infringed on some sort of tool patent by making it myself using someone else's design? The only way to stop that kind of infringement and return money to the "source" is to put a surplus on the materials used to make the screw-driver. At that point, a company would have to ensure that manufacturing costs will be covered by the sold price, but they won't have to pay any visible royalties to the designer of the tool because they've already invisibly paid when they bought the materials. Of course this wouldn't work for the manufacturing industry because steel can be used for millions of different purposes, but it easily applies to music (and even books) because CD-R media can only be used to infringe on 2 different types of copyrights - software and music. Mostly, we're afraid of people who simply copy full albums off the net and burn them onto CD. So, why not put a tax on it, then redistribute the tax back to everyone? Of course, the only problem is that you need to hire an entire council and staff to figure out how to redistribute the money, so at the end, no one gets money back (take, for example, the new tax imposed on photocopying in Hong Kong. Everytime more money comes in, they just hire a bigger staff and give everyone a raise. Writers don't even get back $2 a month!) Think about why you would rather buy a book than download and print it - it's more expensive. If there can be a compromise made so that original CD's could be sold for less (say $10) and music-quality CD-R's could be sold for more (say $8-$10 from the $2 that it is now), then I would MUCH rather buy the original CD. I mean, let the geeks (no offense)who like to be permanently attached to their computer to listen to music copy it onto their harddrives. Fact is - they can't bring it around everywhere and actually "have" the music to do as they please. MP3, as a technology, is not a bad thing. I remember when I used to actually copy the "good" songs from CD's into WAV's on my computer so that I can actually do playlists (those were the days...). My 800 MEG harddrive on my laptop was MUCH cheaper than a 10 disc changer. Another alternative would be to sell CD's and sell more MIX CD's. I mean, a record label should also be a manufacturer and sell customized CD's (customized and ordered via net or touch-tone phone) using all the artists under their label as the selection base. Have your fresh-new-artists' music as bonus tracks so that you spend less on advertising. Have banners across the top of your web-pages as advertising for yourself or others to fund your web-pages. Don't bitch about spending money on publicity! Christina Aguilera is doing a damned good job being featured on M$WMP website (did you see her SKIN? It's unreal!). Anyway... rant is over, nothing is flamebait, and trolls were all snipered by elven rangers. I digress, need coke (the black liquid kind).
As a 'doze user myself, I simply do not understand what the difference would be between "websurfers" of different o/s basis. From my understanding, a websurfer is probably a "web-tv" equivalent which can only surf the net (correct me please if I'm wrong). What's the difference between using a Linux or Windows websurfer box? Different browsers?
Slashdot Mirror
Browsing the net on a phone is currently not a very good way to go (using WAP, anyway). The day North Americans can get phones like the Japanese do (with their huge-ass almost-pda sized screens and touch-screen dialing), then we can implement a different type of protocol. I mean, the web is not a text-area. Ever tried browsing the net with a text-only browser? Let me just say that it sucks. And you know what? Convenience is what drove every single one of the products you ridiculed to success, but let me just say that WAP is not convenient. Whereas we have "One-Click Access" to a lot of things, cell-phone owners don't. Surfing the net on the cell-phone isn't the way to go, but surfing the net with a PDA+Cell solution IS. I mean, typing an e-mail message on a cell-phone is ludicris (sp?), where writing on a pda is good enough.
I'm sorry, AC's, but you seem to have me mistaken. I remember reading, either in a thread or in the original article, about being able to produce a chemical similar to the one found in aspirin. If one can create pain-killers or pain-nullifiers for the body naturally, it would boost the effectiveness of an army. And about dependence - it doesn't matter. The body creates it naturally (once its been hacked in), so we would be as dependent on pain-killers as we would be on blood cells.
This has obvious military implications, and could very well be the "stim-packs" of science fiction, except it would be internally generated. Perhaps we'll hack into us abilities that we've only ever thought would be applied externally. Characters like Wolverine from the X-Men - a science-fictional character born with natural abilities, can now be recreated. Imagine a navy seal behind the enemy lines with a bullet-proof vest. Against non-armour piercing bullets, he'll be practically invincible (save for head-shots). He could endure bullet wounds which hit the chest without stopping for a beat (except from recoil). He could take the place of 10 men on the battle-field, and he wouldn't have to carry much technological gadgets (pain suppressors are all built into his organs). Great way to complement the Land Warrior program.
:)
Now, imagine a team of 4 of these guys walking right into Saddam's house, taking out all his guards, then forcing him to swallow a timed grenade wrapped in a condom?
YEAH!
C3PO: R2, my protective silicon production cell just broke!
R2D2: Well... don't worry, I'll get you another one.
C3P0: NO! My protective silicon production cell just broke!
R2D2: Oh! Oh my! We'll have to rush you to the production factory!
(... 3 hours later...)
R2D2: Well?
C3P0: 3 Aggressive prototypes and 2 passive prototypes. The passives didn't make the fitness test, though, so I blt-bitted them to death.
In related news: the dismissal of Kenny Baker as R2D2 from the cast of Star Wars has allowed him to persue other possibilities. Baker says, "If I can play R2D2 in Star Wars, I can play R2D2 in a soccer field! I'm going to enter the RoboCup and kick some ass. My strategy? I'm going to bump and bumble into all the robots and get them worked up like C3P0."
EV's will not stick around in their current form, nor do I think it will ever. There are other forms of car fuels like fuel cells which could potentially be much more convenient. Plugging in your car at home is nice, but what if you forget? Wake up in the morning to go to work and find that your car has no power. Can't "quick-charge" it in 10 minutes now, can you? You're screwed. Anyway, I love EV's, but I know they won't work. Unless you have EV's which could run off of removable batteries (I mean, for god sakes, people sometimes forget to charge their cell phones... what makes you think they'll charge their car?).
Cool, with one of these things I'll be able to play Counter-Strike on my way to school. Now, instead of laughed at just for being a geek, I can also be laughed at for being a freak! Just equip this thing with a Sidewinder Gamepad (the tilt enabled ones) and you'll see kids walking down the street tilting left and right, up and down, and screaming on the way "Die, BITCH! DIE! Fire in the hole, motherfucker!" That's what we REALLY like to see, right? :)
And can you imagine examinations where kids wear their Uber-UnderWare TM to school? :) Half the time they'll be looking down their pants to find their answers on the LCD attached to the bulge spot :) Soon, they'll have to strip-search kids before they're allowed to enter the exam room :)
I've been looking at the X-Box and the Indrema and I've found advantages and disadvantages of both systems. First, let's look at selection of titles - X-Box will provide titles for a premium. Games will probably cost as much as PS games, if not more. That'll be $40 or something. They are guaranteed to be practically bug-free, as with the tradition of console games. With Microsoft doing quality assurance, bugs will probably be stomped from X-Box games before they're allowed to be released (although Windoze will continue to be buggy). Now, with Indrema, the PSX type of marketing approach is showing. There will be up to a hundred (if not more) games to play on the Indrema within the first 3 months because coders will hack up their own games for free release on the Indrema (with a free license). The selection of games will be huge, and that's what will draw the crowd - wide selection (ala PSX). Now, the only problem is that those games released by amateur coders will be buggy, and sometimes buggy to the point where it's unenjoyable. But that point I won't complain (I mean, it's free). The only thing is - who will pay for a game if they can get other games for free? Unless it's an amazing game, 70% of the target audience will avoid it like a plague because you have to pay for it. I mean, when was the last time millions of people flooded to a store to buy a Linux game or program? I hope that I don't get sued for this, but the only computer game I've ever bought in my life is Starcraft (battlechest). It's amazing (as most of the nation will tell you), and it's extremely replayable, so I bought it. Have I bought any other games of late? No. Hell, have I replayed any old games of late? No. I don't want to buy a game that I'll stop playing in a month. A month of playing ain't worth $60, and if you can play other games (without copyright protection) for free, why the hell not? I mean, if there are free games that will be better, if not on par with commercial games released for Indrema, who the hell is going to pay for a game? The only reason half-life is selling so well is because of counter-strike. How many people will actually buy TF2 now that CS is LORD of Internet Teamplay. Sure, CS boosted the sales of HL, but it also crippled somewhat the future sales of TF2 (then again, I heard a rumour that they'll make a CS mod for TF2). Indrema games will likely not sell as well as had hoped, and the machines will probably need to cost a tad more than the X-Box (which, because of the Indrema, probably won't sell as well, either, although the tekkies will like it). Brings me to another point - The X-Box has plastered hardware specs all over the wall for the past year, and those claims have been demoed to be pretty solid. Now, this NV20 (or was it 25?) chip has been much-touted - can the Indrema's GPU compete? Not knowing anything about Indrema's GPU specs (or even who's making it) scares me away from it. The X-Box is going with the KING of all GPU's, who's Indrema going with? X-Box will be for a market of kids who use both PC and Console to game (it'll be their new console) while Indrema will be for a lower budgeted gamer (kinda, considering the software doesn't cost anything) or the Linux tekkies.
I'm speaking from a personal point of view as a 19 year old guy fresh out of highschool who was once a complete geek but now is much more sociable than before. My personal prejudices are my genuine opinions and not to be considered as troll or flame bait. .plan files of people like Steve Gediken (sp?) and certain sentences which show how devoted geeks are to their work (read: "Slept at the office last night again") well... now you know that they don't let the llamas out much :) No offense, Steve, if you're reading this. Anyway, although slashdotters would probably love geekchics more than others, keep remembering that most people, and especially most businessmen and the like still pine for Cindy Crawford who has been seen on covers of enough magazines. Think about a song that is on the radio once, and a song that is on the radio about 10 times a day. You might not like the song to begin with, but you'll learn to tolerate it and even like it. :)
Personally, I believe that a sense of "geekness" is cultivated at an early age (as are most things). At a young age (I'm thinking grade 6-8), girls are most popular if they start trying on make-up and bras, while the girls who sit under a tree and read novels are picked on and teased. Of course, attraction of boys is "addictive," and once you know that you can get a boy's attention, or the attention of your fellow classmates (the good kind of attention), you'll want more. Though, keep in mind, I'm no psychologist. Either way, there will be girls who act to please (and be popular), and there will be girls who don't feel the need to attract TOO much attention to themselves (and therefore become nice girls who read in their spare time).
Now, I would say that even with that simple split, 75% of the girls have already headed down the early non-techie road to become prom-queens and wanna-be's in highschool (and thus, will never have time to cultivate "geekness"). What of the 25%, the secluded girls? Wouldn't they become geeks?
The answer is, very unlikely. Those girls have been picked on from gradeschool, and will either want to become more sociable in highschool, or become more immersed in their books, hopefully using their smarts or their kindness of heart to win guys over (by highschool, almost every girl starts wanting to attract, just in different ways). Now, why not immerse themselves in computer books and the internet? Because it doesn't "change the world" the way they might want to. In a way, they want to fight for a different status quo and either become rich or famous (and show those prom-queens in high-school a thing or two). Think about the movie "Never Been Kissed" where Drew Barrymore tells the prom-queens that they'll never be much in life - she was right. The better-educated girls will be better off in life, having better, nicer, and guys to walk into a restaurant with, being driven to cocktails and balls in fancier cars and better dresses, or maybe one day changing the role of women in society or killing discrimination in itself. Now, what does this have to do with not being a geek? Simple. Who do you think gets more guys chasing after her, a coder girl whose job is staring at the code for Windows 2010 all day, or the banker woman/business woman/lawyer who will see people, meet people, talk with people, and deal with people everyday? Chances are, if I meet 10 people a day I will get someone faster than another person who meets 10 people a month or year. Just think about it. And besides, after reading the
Now, I must say that, being the semi-geek that I am, I would probably love a semi-geek-chic. Currently, my girlfriend is not very technically inclined, but likes to be very argumentative. Of course, being the "man" that I am, I might be a little over-bearing, also, so we argue. For instance, I would say that one can't buy a "decent" digital camera for less than $600 (you guys know what I mean by a decent digi-cam... I mean, anything under 1 megapixel isn't that great at all, and won't work for most purposes). Now, she would argue this and say that the $300 camera they have at school works fine and works really nicely. Of course, when the argument gets out of hand, she complains that I always have to throw my knowledge in her face and offer my opinion on why she's wrong when her opinion is supposed just as valid as mine. Then again, being more technically inclined, I'd like to think that my opinion on digi-cams and other technical equipment would be more valid than hers. Think about it, does David Grossman's opinion of the ever popular debate of Q3 vs UT vs HL:CS matter as much as, say, the staff of the OGL? Think deep, and thanks for reading
i-Chaos
http://ichaos.tripod.com
I believe that the most simplistic yet useful "language" to learn is Dark Basic http://www.darkbasic.com I mean, kids aren't going to want to code databases and word processors - they want GAMES! Dark Basic is VERY simple to work with, and is a step up from QuickBasic only because of functionality. I mean, give a kid a week (and some guidance) and he can probably code himself a fully 3D game utilizing Direct3D. And now that they've released source code to their demos (which took them only a day to code and look very good), you've got some resources to work with. Give it a look, it's great! Being the idiot that I am, I can't begin to code in C++ I mean... I can probably code OOP stuff, but I really haven't found a simple way to use direct 3D. How long do you think it'll take me to code a simple demo where I have a 3D tank created in 3DS or Milkshape rolling around on 3D terrain in C++? It'll take a day for me just to learn that. Took me 10 minutes in Dark Basic, including the time to read the docs on it.
Most certainly, if I went into home hardware and said that their screw-drivers were over-priced, I could not walk out that door with a bunch of screw-drivers which are unpaid for. Hell, it won't even be justified. But what if I brought a camera and took a picture of the screw-driver, then went home and made one myself? Who is going to come to my house to check whether or not I actually bought my screw-driver from a store, or infringed on some sort of tool patent by making it myself using someone else's design? The only way to stop that kind of infringement and return money to the "source" is to put a surplus on the materials used to make the screw-driver. At that point, a company would have to ensure that manufacturing costs will be covered by the sold price, but they won't have to pay any visible royalties to the designer of the tool because they've already invisibly paid when they bought the materials. Of course this wouldn't work for the manufacturing industry because steel can be used for millions of different purposes, but it easily applies to music (and even books) because CD-R media can only be used to infringe on 2 different types of copyrights - software and music. Mostly, we're afraid of people who simply copy full albums off the net and burn them onto CD. So, why not put a tax on it, then redistribute the tax back to everyone? Of course, the only problem is that you need to hire an entire council and staff to figure out how to redistribute the money, so at the end, no one gets money back (take, for example, the new tax imposed on photocopying in Hong Kong. Everytime more money comes in, they just hire a bigger staff and give everyone a raise. Writers don't even get back $2 a month!) Think about why you would rather buy a book than download and print it - it's more expensive. If there can be a compromise made so that original CD's could be sold for less (say $10) and music-quality CD-R's could be sold for more (say $8-$10 from the $2 that it is now), then I would MUCH rather buy the original CD. I mean, let the geeks (no offense)who like to be permanently attached to their computer to listen to music copy it onto their harddrives. Fact is - they can't bring it around everywhere and actually "have" the music to do as they please. MP3, as a technology, is not a bad thing. I remember when I used to actually copy the "good" songs from CD's into WAV's on my computer so that I can actually do playlists (those were the days...). My 800 MEG harddrive on my laptop was MUCH cheaper than a 10 disc changer. Another alternative would be to sell CD's and sell more MIX CD's. I mean, a record label should also be a manufacturer and sell customized CD's (customized and ordered via net or touch-tone phone) using all the artists under their label as the selection base. Have your fresh-new-artists' music as bonus tracks so that you spend less on advertising. Have banners across the top of your web-pages as advertising for yourself or others to fund your web-pages. Don't bitch about spending money on publicity! Christina Aguilera is doing a damned good job being featured on M$WMP website (did you see her SKIN? It's unreal!). Anyway... rant is over, nothing is flamebait, and trolls were all snipered by elven rangers. I digress, need coke (the black liquid kind).
As a 'doze user myself, I simply do not understand what the difference would be between "websurfers" of different o/s basis. From my understanding, a websurfer is probably a "web-tv" equivalent which can only surf the net (correct me please if I'm wrong). What's the difference between using a Linux or Windows websurfer box? Different browsers?