It used to be possible for an expert with a magnetic probe to read overwritten data from a hard drive. I don't think it's possible today, due to vastly higher data density. Smaller bits, tighter tolerances.
There is a flaw in your reasoning, though. A monopoly (On duopoly, or cartel - they function the same way) is a very stable situation. No new competitors can enter the market, because the existing companies make sure the barrier to entry is extremally high - remember that laying new cables is very expensive. They also have the option of dirty economic tricks, such as offering service for a loss-making price in order to drive smaller local operators out of business. Once a stable monopoly is formed, the only way it can end is with regulation to force competition. Free markets are a game where everyone must play, but no-one may ever be allowed to win.
We've also had virtually no regulation of non-pharmacutical health products, which is why I could easily find a major high-street retailer selling tiny vials of pure water and claiming they have health benefits and will cure all sorts of diseases. Give me five minutes and I'll find you a company selling you magic healing crystals for $1000 each with the promise they will cure cancer.
Apple started to lose much of it's geek appeal when they turned from a computer company into a consumer electronics company, and embraced DRM and very restricted products in order to achieve this. That is the point when the geeks started to see them as turning to the dark side. It also made Apple a lot of money.
She was famous for being filthy stinking rich, and not earning any of it. Inherited wealth. Thus she became a target for all the resentment of the lower and middle classes - people who have spent their lives working hard, struggling to make money and worrying about finances, being assured constantly that anyone can become a success with hard work while facing the reality that no amount of hard work will do it without a great deal of luck too. Then they see Paris, who did fuck-all and yet can spend more money on breakfast than most people make in a year... is it any wonder that people started to resent her so much? The sex tape just enhanced this: Turning her from a filthy rich snob into a filthy rich whore snob.
The profits would be negligable to Apple. I can think of three more likely possibilities.
1. Jobs personally doesn't like this, and gave the order.
2. The legal department warned Jobs that failing to protect his image right now may weaken future legal cases, particually in regard to the Apple logo.
3. Apple are concerned that the product may be used to mock Jobs in public (eg, parody movies on youtube) and thus impact their reputation.
"When businesses go out of the country to manufacture products because it's cheaper, there is no price decrease to follow."
Except that the price decrease does follow, so long as sufficient competition exists. Do you think you'd be able to buy a laptop for £200 if it wasn't manufactured in low-cost China, using components from low-cost China and Taiwan?
I'm surprised cinemas are doing as well as they are. The experience really just isn't that good. Firstly you have the inconvenience of traveling, and sitting through the captive-audience ads and trailers. Secondly, you have a lot of other people around - all that expensive sound system doesn't help much when there are people moving, coughing, getting up for the toilet, and so on. Ten times worse in kid's movies, when there will be loud crying or laughing too. Thirdly, there is no social element. You can watch a movie with friends at home, and talk about it - express enjoyment, or riff the hell out of it when the movie is bad. You can't do that at the cinema, when politeness compels you remain silent.
I would expect that cinema may be killed off one day by the rise of more capable home entertainment equipment - big TVs and good speakers. Right now they are sustained by the staged release model and the impatience of moviegoers, and desperatly trying to make a grab for more 3D movies - the only thing they can offer that the home cannot. Not yet.
I would assume almost all those boxes have windows licences, because almost every PC sold comes *with* a windows licence. The only way you can actually pirate windows on one of those is to install a different edition without a licence, and most people are still quite happy with XP. For the same reason, even a lot of computers running linux are licenced for windows.
Which means that something like this could be done only when anonymous speech is available. And it has to be widely publicised. Internet cartoons of Mohammed were common before the Cartoon Riots, it was only when a real newspaper printed them that the fun started.
One problem with this, though: The actors and entire production team would have to face death threats, and with something like two billion muslims in the world there is a significent chance at least one of them is going to be so outraged as to go violent. Remember the Cartoon Riots? Quite a number of people were killed then.
I work in a school. Chances are I'll work in another school. I even used to work in a catholic school, and may do so again - finding work is hard, I won't turn down a position just because I don't agree with the school's religion.
I hate the catholic church, believe all religion is just a mixture of superstition and obsolete social codes, enjoy pornography and advocate for abortion rights and the use of contraception online.
I value my future employment, and know that employers like to google on candidates. I'll use my real name when that church's hell freezes over.
"If you have such disdain for the people with whom you work that you think they would abandon their business with you were they to hear what you have to say,"
This is called 'reality.' People are not rational. If they really don't like your position on some issue, they'll try to punish you however they can, even in ways completly unrelated to the issue at hand.
Doesn't have to be the government, even. Social stigma or private organisations can be oppressive too. Would you like to openly advocate for a cause, if it meant the risk of protestors setting up outside your house or harassing you and your family? Or your employer deeming you an embarassment to the company and fireing you?
VLC gets it's codec support from a selection of libraries, primarily libavcodec. There isn't much it won't play. I've thrown everything from old realmedia to quicktime to mpeg to x264 in mkv container with vorbis audio at VLC, and it's all worked.
The main difference seems to me to be economic. HFCS is really, really cheap. Thus food manufacturers throw in ridiculous quantities of it to sweeten products that would otherwise taste quite terrible. They can't do that with sucrose because it's so much more expensive.
Almost every food now has added sugar and salt, for they have a miraculous power. They can make almost anything, no matter how horrible it tasted before, somehow delicious.
If libraries were not already established and respected, I cannot imagine they would be allowed to start today. As soon as the first one opened it would be sued into oblivion.
I forget who said this, but there is quote floating around the internet: "A free market is a game where everyone must be made to play, but no-one may be allowed to win."
Slashdot Mirror
It used to be possible for an expert with a magnetic probe to read overwritten data from a hard drive. I don't think it's possible today, due to vastly higher data density. Smaller bits, tighter tolerances.
£200 is the price of the cheapest rubbish laptops with Celeron processors, new. You can get netbooks for a little less.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/240873
That one is £278, but I'm too lazy to shop around for a really cheap one.
There is a flaw in your reasoning, though. A monopoly (On duopoly, or cartel - they function the same way) is a very stable situation. No new competitors can enter the market, because the existing companies make sure the barrier to entry is extremally high - remember that laying new cables is very expensive. They also have the option of dirty economic tricks, such as offering service for a loss-making price in order to drive smaller local operators out of business. Once a stable monopoly is formed, the only way it can end is with regulation to force competition. Free markets are a game where everyone must play, but no-one may ever be allowed to win.
We've also had virtually no regulation of non-pharmacutical health products, which is why I could easily find a major high-street retailer selling tiny vials of pure water and claiming they have health benefits and will cure all sorts of diseases. Give me five minutes and I'll find you a company selling you magic healing crystals for $1000 each with the promise they will cure cancer.
There's a lot more money in content than in just moving packets around.
Apple started to lose much of it's geek appeal when they turned from a computer company into a consumer electronics company, and embraced DRM and very restricted products in order to achieve this. That is the point when the geeks started to see them as turning to the dark side. It also made Apple a lot of money.
She was famous for being filthy stinking rich, and not earning any of it. Inherited wealth. Thus she became a target for all the resentment of the lower and middle classes - people who have spent their lives working hard, struggling to make money and worrying about finances, being assured constantly that anyone can become a success with hard work while facing the reality that no amount of hard work will do it without a great deal of luck too. Then they see Paris, who did fuck-all and yet can spend more money on breakfast than most people make in a year... is it any wonder that people started to resent her so much? The sex tape just enhanced this: Turning her from a filthy rich snob into a filthy rich whore snob.
The profits would be negligable to Apple. I can think of three more likely possibilities.
1. Jobs personally doesn't like this, and gave the order.
2. The legal department warned Jobs that failing to protect his image right now may weaken future legal cases, particually in regard to the Apple logo.
3. Apple are concerned that the product may be used to mock Jobs in public (eg, parody movies on youtube) and thus impact their reputation.
"When businesses go out of the country to manufacture products because it's cheaper, there is no price decrease to follow."
Except that the price decrease does follow, so long as sufficient competition exists. Do you think you'd be able to buy a laptop for £200 if it wasn't manufactured in low-cost China, using components from low-cost China and Taiwan?
I'm surprised cinemas are doing as well as they are. The experience really just isn't that good. Firstly you have the inconvenience of traveling, and sitting through the captive-audience ads and trailers. Secondly, you have a lot of other people around - all that expensive sound system doesn't help much when there are people moving, coughing, getting up for the toilet, and so on. Ten times worse in kid's movies, when there will be loud crying or laughing too. Thirdly, there is no social element. You can watch a movie with friends at home, and talk about it - express enjoyment, or riff the hell out of it when the movie is bad. You can't do that at the cinema, when politeness compels you remain silent.
I would expect that cinema may be killed off one day by the rise of more capable home entertainment equipment - big TVs and good speakers. Right now they are sustained by the staged release model and the impatience of moviegoers, and desperatly trying to make a grab for more 3D movies - the only thing they can offer that the home cannot. Not yet.
I don't aim for a first. But, should I have something to say anyway, I won't pass up the chance to brag.
I would assume almost all those boxes have windows licences, because almost every PC sold comes *with* a windows licence. The only way you can actually pirate windows on one of those is to install a different edition without a licence, and most people are still quite happy with XP. For the same reason, even a lot of computers running linux are licenced for windows.
Which means that something like this could be done only when anonymous speech is available. And it has to be widely publicised. Internet cartoons of Mohammed were common before the Cartoon Riots, it was only when a real newspaper printed them that the fun started.
One problem with this, though: The actors and entire production team would have to face death threats, and with something like two billion muslims in the world there is a significent chance at least one of them is going to be so outraged as to go violent. Remember the Cartoon Riots? Quite a number of people were killed then.
I work in a school. Chances are I'll work in another school. I even used to work in a catholic school, and may do so again - finding work is hard, I won't turn down a position just because I don't agree with the school's religion.
I hate the catholic church, believe all religion is just a mixture of superstition and obsolete social codes, enjoy pornography and advocate for abortion rights and the use of contraception online.
I value my future employment, and know that employers like to google on candidates. I'll use my real name when that church's hell freezes over.
The only reason for even having slander/libel laws is that some people are so uneducated they'll believe anything they hear.
"If you have such disdain for the people with whom you work that you think they would abandon their business with you were they to hear what you have to say,"
This is called 'reality.' People are not rational. If they really don't like your position on some issue, they'll try to punish you however they can, even in ways completly unrelated to the issue at hand.
Doesn't have to be the government, even. Social stigma or private organisations can be oppressive too. Would you like to openly advocate for a cause, if it meant the risk of protestors setting up outside your house or harassing you and your family? Or your employer deeming you an embarassment to the company and fireing you?
VLC gets it's codec support from a selection of libraries, primarily libavcodec. There isn't much it won't play. I've thrown everything from old realmedia to quicktime to mpeg to x264 in mkv container with vorbis audio at VLC, and it's all worked.
It'd make the junk food more expensive, thus reducing consumption.
And the water, too. Electric pumps, and electronically-controlled switching to get it where it's needed.
The main difference seems to me to be economic. HFCS is really, really cheap. Thus food manufacturers throw in ridiculous quantities of it to sweeten products that would otherwise taste quite terrible. They can't do that with sucrose because it's so much more expensive.
Almost every food now has added sugar and salt, for they have a miraculous power. They can make almost anything, no matter how horrible it tasted before, somehow delicious.
If libraries were not already established and respected, I cannot imagine they would be allowed to start today. As soon as the first one opened it would be sued into oblivion.
I forget who said this, but there is quote floating around the internet: "A free market is a game where everyone must be made to play, but no-one may be allowed to win."