There is an inaccuracy in that Boston Globe article.
In the article, the author stated that Sun's cofounder, Vinod Khosla, said on 60 Minutes "that at Sun, people from India 'are favored over almost anybody else'." This quote has been taken out of context. The 60 Minutes piece in question was a report on a very prestigious technical college in India, the Indian equivalent of MIT. When Mr. Khosla said certain people were favored, he was referring specifically to graduates of that university, not to Indian people in general. If you read the transcript you will see this. His statement was no different than saying Harvard Law School graduates are favored at law firms.
What's a mystery to me is why we still bother with different storage formats - hard drives for files and mp3's, DVDs for movies, different hard drives for the PVR, and so on. What we really need are home entertainment components which don't have any storage of their own, but simply have ethernet jacks to connect to a centrailzed hom mass storage device (RAID/SAN/NAS/whatever). Rather than have 100GB in my PC, 40GB in my PVR, 5GB on a DVD, and so on, just have ONE storage device for the whole house that can hold your computer files, MP3s, PVR shows, and ripped DVD movies.
Talk about convergence! Buy one huge RAID box, put it in your basement, and hook everything up to it through a home metwork. It would be more expensive at first, but if the electronics industry started making devices to take advantage of it, costs would go down (no more local storage), and the convenience would be amazing - watch your PVR movies on your PC transparently, listen to your MP3s on your living room stereo instead of PC speakers, store a library of movies without changing DVDs, and so on.
Nonsense. Things that seem at first to be "too good to be true" have, in fact, sometimes turned out to be true. Hell, the microwave oven and pennicillin probably sounded "too good to be true" at first, too.
OK, if it seems too good to be true, we should certainly approach it with a lot of skepticism, but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It's certainly not an ironclad rule.
Yes, there are some good games. But there could be a lot MORE good games if the system for making them weren't so broken. Let's face it, for every really good game, there are 20 mediocre games and 10 really bad games.
In my opinion, the fault lies 90% with the publishers. Most games that get published *could* have been a lot better, and *would* have been a lot better, if it weren't for interference from the publishers in the development process.
The comparisons between the game business and the movie business are striking. Game publishers make exactly the same mistakes movie studios make:
1) Just about the only thing they ever want to make are tired retreads of genres that have been done to death. Bring a new, fresh idea to them, and they run in horror, screaming "No one's done it yet!!!" Game publishers and movie studios have a "dual personality" problem in that they are always looking for the smash hit, but refuse to fund anything that hasn't already been done ten times before because they don't want to take any risks.
2) In the game business and the movie business, the biggest hits are nearly always created by development studios and movie production companies that have the cash to go it alone, to make the thing themselves the way they want to make it and tell the publishers and studio where to stick their tired old crap. Take a look at the list of the top 10 bestselling games of all time and count how many of them are sequels or even fall in any genre that existed before - precious few. If anyone but Will Wright had suggested to a game publisher to make a game where all you do is make little computer people eat, sleep, and poop, he would have been laughed out of the office. And now The Sims is the best-selling game of all time.
3) Game publishers and movie studios are filled with middle managers who are nothing more than frustrated "wannabe" creative people. They didn't have the talent to make it in a creative field, so now that they have power over the creative people, they think that qualifies them to stick their grubby fingers into the creative process. In the movies, it's focus groups and script doctors. In the game industry, it's "producers" who have never designed a game in their lives but insist on making changes to the game design which the developer has to include if they want to get paid. They think they're qualified to "improve" a game design that's been created by a team of experienced game designers. If the "money people" would just step back and let the creative people do their jobs without second-guessing, the end product would be much higher quality and make a lot more money.
The most amazing thing about both businesses is that the people who own the big game publishers and movies studios are constantly having the above two point proven to them in very clear financial terms, and yet they still Just Don't Get It. Even though it's been proven time and time again - on the bottom line - that the more they interfere with the creative process, the less money they make, they still seem to think that since they are paying the bills, that makes them smarter than the creative people and thus they feel entitled to put their grubby paws all over the product.
In short, game publishers are just as stupid and shortsighted as movie studios. They constantly reject any idea that has the smallest amount of risk associated iwth it, and then they cry because people get tired of buying the same old games over and over again with different graphics. Then, when someone finally manages to make a new and unique game, and it sells millions of copies, do they learn from this? No, they go right on doing business the same way they always have, assuming that the successful game must have been a fluke. They figure "well, we are suits working in a big company with lots of money, so that makes us qualified to judge what will be a hit."
Most people assume that there aren't more good games because "it's all been done" or that there's some kind of shortage of great game ideas. Work in the industry for a while and you'll find that great game ideas are a dime a dozen - every designer has at least one, or maybe a dozen, ideas for games that would sell very well if done right. The game industry is busting at the seams with great ideas. But those ideas will most likely never see the light of day because game publishers simply reject any game proposal that does not start with the words "This game is just like..."
So thanks to the shortsightedness of the publishers, we're stuck in a Catch-22 situation where the only way to make a truly great game is to pay for it yourself, and the only way to be able to afford to pay for a game yourself is to make a truly great game.
Well, clearly the laws must be differenty in those two states. Try that with MA, and if you get a response at all it will be the sound of distant, riotous laughter from Boston.
Taxachusetts is living proof why taxes are bullshit. They tax everyone they possibly can for every cent they possibly can, and their budget is further in the toilet than just about any other state. They take perfectly good money, shave 80% off the top for administrative expenses, and then give the rest to someone else. It wouldbe FAR better for every state and country to take the tax money out of your paycheck and simply give it directly to private charities - not that I'm suggesting that, but at least SOME good would come out of it.
Last year, 48% of Massachusetts voters voted to end the income tax in the state. Every lazy tax-sucking politician and his pals got scared shitless and screamed about how horrible it would be, how there would be anarchy. Meanwhile in New Hampshire, a couple miles away, things were going just fine with NO income tax. No anarchy in sight.
In fact, any state can tax you, representation or not. For example, I live in New Hampshire but have to pay income tax in MA because I work there. The fact that I have no representation in MA doesn't make a damn bit of difference to them, they're happy to take my money without giveng me any say in how it's spent.
Sound unfair? Sound unamerian? It's legal, and it will never become illegal because the people being hurt... don't have any representation in the state that's stealing their money, so they can't put a stop to it!
If you're like me, you're thinking "Didn't we fight a war over taxtaion without representation?" Well, it's legal in the US.
As a (professional) game designer, my thoughts on reading the article were, first, "vaporware," and second, "a lot easier said than done."
It might just be that the article was written for a nontechnical audience, but it was very light on implementation detail. I'm pretty skeptical. People have been saying "this game is nonliner and allows you to do what you want" for years. Unless this new system can generate actual new content, which I doubt, it would always have to be some reorganization of the same game elements.
It's pretty simple. It says why right in the article: the less money their customers have to spend on an OS, the more they have to spend on hardware, applications, and consulting - all of which have a higher profit margin than AIX.
Operating systems are very expensive to develop, maintain, and support. Most proprietary UNIXes pretty much exist to keep customers tied to one hardware platform and promote hardware sales.
Yeah, the concepts are SO different. I mean, if someone learned to use the Maximize button on Linux, it would take weeks of retraining for them to figure out how to usethe Maximize button in Windows. And if they only knew OpenOffice, wow, they'd have to start all over again when using Word, because the "Bold" buttons work SO differently.
Puh-lease.
Re:Computer lab or vocational education?
on
Maine School & Linux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think the "everyone uses Widnows apps, so kids should learn to use Windows" is a silly bugaboo. I mean, take a look at the interface of Word next to the interface of OpenOffice. Same toolbar, same, editing screen, same drop-down menus. Ditto spreadsheets. If a person who knows OpenOffice pretty well sits down at a Windows machine, would it really take them very long to figure out how to write a letter in Word? It's not as if extensive retraining is required - the *concepts* are al the same.
I think a lot of businesses get hung up on this, too. "We can't use Linux, we'd have to re-train all our people to use new applications." How long do they really thing it would take someone that used to use IE, to use Mozilla? The "back" button works the same way. The "Bold" button in OpenOffice works the same way as in Word. Evolution has folders for mail just like outlook.
There's just not much of a learning curve at all for standard office apps. Once you learn to use one spreadsheet, it just ain't that hard to pick up another one. 95% of the concepts are the same.
While I agree 100% with the "consumers are stupid" point, and as much as I hate to reward manufacturers for making poor-quality products, in some areas I have started to buy the cheapest quilty I can find for one simple reason: the technology is changing so fast, you'll probablyneed a new one in a couple years anyway just because the standards have changed.
Sure, if you want a radio or CD Player, it can make sense to buy good quality - they're pretty much guaranteed to still be around in the same form ten years from now just due to the momentum of the formats. But would I buy an expensive DVD player, or a high-end CD burner? No. that stuff changes every ten minutes, it seems. get the cheaper one.
As more Mac systems get moved over to OSX, more game companies that want to support Mac will be porting to OSX. I'm guessing that would make it much easier to further port them to Linux. OSX != Linux, but it's a heck of a lot closer than it is to Windoze.
If I met with my representatives in Congress, I'd have just one question for them (about this issue:)
What, exactly, do we get for our money by spending $X billion on Micorsoft licenses that we couldn't get from Free-as-in-Beer Open Source software? File format compatibility? Feh! The government of the greatest and most technologically advanced nation on Earth is stymied by a few file formats into wasting billions? Puh-LEASE!
A very good point is made here: it would be a hell of a lot cheaper for the government to simply write their own office suite than to pay Microsoft's purchase and upgrade fees forever. Or, even better, simply use OpenOffice and spend a couple $Billion on making it work just like MS-Office and import/export MS-Office documents.
I mean, really, there is NO reason whatsoever for the government to continue to use expensive proprietary software when, with a fraction of what it costs them to line Microsoft's pockets, they could write and/or adapt Open Source software to do the same thing. The old "we ahve to use it to be compatible with everyone else" argumnt is just bullshit in this case. Everyone else needs to worry about being compatible with the government, not the other way around.
For the US government to consciously spend extra billions on expensive proprietary software when perfectly excellent free alternatives exist is irresponsible, wasteful, and may even violate some laws regarding competitiveness in government purchasing. In any case, here's a good way to save a ton of money when we really need it.
Go to college not to learn to be a sysadmin, but to go from young adult to adult slowly instead of rapidly. The most valuable things you learn in college aren't in any course. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It doesn't matter what you major in, it doesn't even really matter if you "screw around for four years" - the experiences, and friends you make, are worth it - assuming you make at least some effort to take advantage of the situation. There will be no other time in your life when you get four years to study things that interest you, and have fun. In fact, you'll be lucky to get more than a week at a time to do what you want between graduation and retirement, so take advantage of it.
Hmm, I bet some poor Peruvian legislators will be getting very nice campaign donation checks. Who's gonna squawk about it, or even know about it, in the US?
Hah, the thing won't dive lower than 1000 feet, anyway. Plus, it doesn't even have a deck gun. What kind of crappy submarine doesn't even have a deck gun?
Oh, say, a Los Angeles class 688 nuclear Attack Sub?:)
CDR Taco is simply displaying his appalling ignorance of what the word "libertarian"means - apparently someone told him once that a friend of a friend once heard "something bad about some group called 'librarytitians' or something..."
Of course, as usual, it's easier to write snide remarks in bully pulpits than it is to simply ask someone who knows what they're taking about, many of whom are regular/. readers, so that concepts can be explained in small, easy-to-understand words.
Why won't the credit card companies help us clean up?
Why? Because it's easier tomake their customers pay for the spam by simply passing the losses along to us in the form of higher credit card interest rates.
I've been through this. The credit card companies just don't care about abuse. They really don't. It would cost them money to make the system more secure, and why should they*spend* money when all they have to do is increase our rates and fees?
Legal action against the censorwaremakers is by far the best option to get them to clean up their acts. All other industries are petrified about legal actions and will bend over backwards to avoid it. Why shouldn't we put our overly-litigious society to work for us for a change?
If just one huge class-action lawsuit succeeded with large punitive damages, all the censorware companies would think three times about their cavalier policies in the future. Let's make them as terrified of being sued as every other company is. IANAL, but IMO there is plenty of damage done by these people which could be proven, with the plaintiff either being someone who is denied access to information, or an onrganizatin whose site is being blocked.
The airwaves may be public, but the content of what's carried on them is not. If you make a speech in public, does anyone have the right to record your words, type them up, and sell them as a book?
If you want to recieve the signal without paying for it, it's dishonest, but you can try. The sattellite company, however, also has every right to stop you from being able to *use* what you recieve. I say, good for them. This is what a free market is all about.
Slashdot Mirror
There is an inaccuracy in that Boston Globe article.
In the article, the author stated that Sun's cofounder, Vinod Khosla, said on 60 Minutes "that at Sun, people from India 'are favored over almost anybody else'." This quote has been taken out of context. The 60 Minutes piece in question was a report on a very prestigious technical college in India, the Indian equivalent of MIT. When Mr. Khosla said certain people were favored, he was referring specifically to graduates of that university, not to Indian people in general. If you read the transcript you will see this. His statement was no different than saying Harvard Law School graduates are favored at law firms.
It's a small but important point.
What's a mystery to me is why we still bother with different storage formats - hard drives for files and mp3's, DVDs for movies, different hard drives for the PVR, and so on. What we really need are home entertainment components which don't have any storage of their own, but simply have ethernet jacks to connect to a centrailzed hom mass storage device (RAID/SAN/NAS/whatever). Rather than have 100GB in my PC, 40GB in my PVR, 5GB on a DVD, and so on, just have ONE storage device for the whole house that can hold your computer files, MP3s, PVR shows, and ripped DVD movies.
Talk about convergence! Buy one huge RAID box, put it in your basement, and hook everything up to it through a home metwork. It would be more expensive at first, but if the electronics industry started making devices to take advantage of it, costs would go down (no more local storage), and the convenience would be amazing - watch your PVR movies on your PC transparently, listen to your MP3s on your living room stereo instead of PC speakers, store a library of movies without changing DVDs, and so on.
Nonsense. Things that seem at first to be "too good to be true" have, in fact, sometimes turned out to be true. Hell, the microwave oven and pennicillin probably sounded "too good to be true" at first, too.
OK, if it seems too good to be true, we should certainly approach it with a lot of skepticism, but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. It's certainly not an ironclad rule.
Yes, there are some good games. But there could be a lot MORE good games if the system for making them weren't so broken. Let's face it, for every really good game, there are 20 mediocre games and 10 really bad games.
..."
In my opinion, the fault lies 90% with the publishers. Most games that get published *could* have been a lot better, and *would* have been a lot better, if it weren't for interference from the publishers in the development process.
The comparisons between the game business and the movie business are striking. Game publishers make exactly the same mistakes movie studios make:
1) Just about the only thing they ever want to make are tired retreads of genres that have been done to death. Bring a new, fresh idea to them, and they run in horror, screaming "No one's done it yet!!!" Game publishers and movie studios have a "dual personality" problem in that they are always looking for the smash hit, but refuse to fund anything that hasn't already been done ten times before because they don't want to take any risks.
2) In the game business and the movie business, the biggest hits are nearly always created by development studios and movie production companies that have the cash to go it alone, to make the thing themselves the way they want to make it and tell the publishers and studio where to stick their tired old crap. Take a look at the list of the top 10 bestselling games of all time and count how many of them are sequels or even fall in any genre that existed before - precious few. If anyone but Will Wright had suggested to a game publisher to make a game where all you do is make little computer people eat, sleep, and poop, he would have been laughed out of the office. And now The Sims is the best-selling game of all time.
3) Game publishers and movie studios are filled with middle managers who are nothing more than frustrated "wannabe" creative people. They didn't have the talent to make it in a creative field, so now that they have power over the creative people, they think that qualifies them to stick their grubby fingers into the creative process. In the movies, it's focus groups and script doctors. In the game industry, it's "producers" who have never designed a game in their lives but insist on making changes to the game design which the developer has to include if they want to get paid. They think they're qualified to "improve" a game design that's been created by a team of experienced game designers. If the "money people" would just step back and let the creative people do their jobs without second-guessing, the end product would be much higher quality and make a lot more money.
The most amazing thing about both businesses is that the people who own the big game publishers and movies studios are constantly having the above two point proven to them in very clear financial terms, and yet they still Just Don't Get It. Even though it's been proven time and time again - on the bottom line - that the more they interfere with the creative process, the less money they make, they still seem to think that since they are paying the bills, that makes them smarter than the creative people and thus they feel entitled to put their grubby paws all over the product.
In short, game publishers are just as stupid and shortsighted as movie studios. They constantly reject any idea that has the smallest amount of risk associated iwth it, and then they cry because people get tired of buying the same old games over and over again with different graphics. Then, when someone finally manages to make a new and unique game, and it sells millions of copies, do they learn from this? No, they go right on doing business the same way they always have, assuming that the successful game must have been a fluke. They figure "well, we are suits working in a big company with lots of money, so that makes us qualified to judge what will be a hit."
Most people assume that there aren't more good games because "it's all been done" or that there's some kind of shortage of great game ideas. Work in the industry for a while and you'll find that great game ideas are a dime a dozen - every designer has at least one, or maybe a dozen, ideas for games that would sell very well if done right. The game industry is busting at the seams with great ideas. But those ideas will most likely never see the light of day because game publishers simply reject any game proposal that does not start with the words "This game is just like
So thanks to the shortsightedness of the publishers, we're stuck in a Catch-22 situation where the only way to make a truly great game is to pay for it yourself, and the only way to be able to afford to pay for a game yourself is to make a truly great game.
"All my gaming is done in Linux. UT, UT2003, all the id titles, Tribes 2, all have native Linux support."
That pretty much defines all the gaming done under Linux.
All of it? You forgot little games like Railroad Tycoon II, Heros of Might and Magic, Call to Power, the whole Quake series...
Well, clearly the laws must be differenty in those two states. Try that with MA, and if you get a response at all it will be the sound of distant, riotous laughter from Boston.
Taxachusetts is living proof why taxes are bullshit. They tax everyone they possibly can for every cent they possibly can, and their budget is further in the toilet than just about any other state. They take perfectly good money, shave 80% off the top for administrative expenses, and then give the rest to someone else. It wouldbe FAR better for every state and country to take the tax money out of your paycheck and simply give it directly to private charities - not that I'm suggesting that, but at least SOME good would come out of it.
Last year, 48% of Massachusetts voters voted to end the income tax in the state. Every lazy tax-sucking politician and his pals got scared shitless and screamed about how horrible it would be, how there would be anarchy. Meanwhile in New Hampshire, a couple miles away, things were going just fine with NO income tax. No anarchy in sight.
In fact, any state can tax you, representation or not. For example, I live in New Hampshire but have to pay income tax in MA because I work there. The fact that I have no representation in MA doesn't make a damn bit of difference to them, they're happy to take my money without giveng me any say in how it's spent.
Sound unfair? Sound unamerian? It's legal, and it will never become illegal because the people being hurt... don't have any representation in the state that's stealing their money, so they can't put a stop to it!
If you're like me, you're thinking "Didn't we fight a war over taxtaion without representation?" Well, it's legal in the US.
As a (professional) game designer, my thoughts on reading the article were, first, "vaporware," and second, "a lot easier said than done."
It might just be that the article was written for a nontechnical audience, but it was very light on implementation detail. I'm pretty skeptical. People have been saying "this game is nonliner and allows you to do what you want" for years. Unless this new system can generate actual new content, which I doubt, it would always have to be some reorganization of the same game elements.
It's pretty simple. It says why right in the article: the less money their customers have to spend on an OS, the more they have to spend on hardware, applications, and consulting - all of which have a higher profit margin than AIX.
Operating systems are very expensive to develop, maintain, and support. Most proprietary UNIXes pretty much exist to keep customers tied to one hardware platform and promote hardware sales.
Yeah, the concepts are SO different. I mean, if someone learned to use the Maximize button on Linux, it would take weeks of retraining for them to figure out how to usethe Maximize button in Windows. And if they only knew OpenOffice, wow, they'd have to start all over again when using Word, because the "Bold" buttons work SO differently.
Puh-lease.
I think the "everyone uses Widnows apps, so kids should learn to use Windows" is a silly bugaboo. I mean, take a look at the interface of Word next to the interface of OpenOffice. Same toolbar, same, editing screen, same drop-down menus. Ditto spreadsheets. If a person who knows OpenOffice pretty well sits down at a Windows machine, would it really take them very long to figure out how to write a letter in Word? It's not as if extensive retraining is required - the *concepts* are al the same.
I think a lot of businesses get hung up on this, too. "We can't use Linux, we'd have to re-train all our people to use new applications." How long do they really thing it would take someone that used to use IE, to use Mozilla? The "back" button works the same way. The "Bold" button in OpenOffice works the same way as in Word. Evolution has folders for mail just like outlook.
There's just not much of a learning curve at all for standard office apps. Once you learn to use one spreadsheet, it just ain't that hard to pick up another one. 95% of the concepts are the same.
Sure, if you want a radio or CD Player, it can make sense to buy good quality - they're pretty much guaranteed to still be around in the same form ten years from now just due to the momentum of the formats. But would I buy an expensive DVD player, or a high-end CD burner? No. that stuff changes every ten minutes, it seems. get the cheaper one.
Mad Doc Software is located in Lawrence, MA, not Beverly, as was stated in the article.
As more Mac systems get moved over to OSX, more game companies that want to support Mac will be porting to OSX. I'm guessing that would make it much easier to further port them to Linux. OSX != Linux, but it's a heck of a lot closer than it is to Windoze.
If I met with my representatives in Congress, I'd have just one question for them (about this issue :)
What, exactly, do we get for our money by spending $X billion on Micorsoft licenses that we couldn't get from Free-as-in-Beer Open Source software? File format compatibility? Feh! The government of the greatest and most technologically advanced nation on Earth is stymied by a few file formats into wasting billions? Puh-LEASE!
A very good point is made here: it would be a hell of a lot cheaper for the government to simply write their own office suite than to pay Microsoft's purchase and upgrade fees forever. Or, even better, simply use OpenOffice and spend a couple $Billion on making it work just like MS-Office and import/export MS-Office documents.
I mean, really, there is NO reason whatsoever for the government to continue to use expensive proprietary software when, with a fraction of what it costs them to line Microsoft's pockets, they could write and/or adapt Open Source software to do the same thing. The old "we ahve to use it to be compatible with everyone else" argumnt is just bullshit in this case. Everyone else needs to worry about being compatible with the government, not the other way around.
For the US government to consciously spend extra billions on expensive proprietary software when perfectly excellent free alternatives exist is irresponsible, wasteful, and may even violate some laws regarding competitiveness in government purchasing. In any case, here's a good way to save a ton of money when we really need it.
Go to college not to learn to be a sysadmin, but to go from young adult to adult slowly instead of rapidly. The most valuable things you learn in college aren't in any course. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It doesn't matter what you major in, it doesn't even really matter if you "screw around for four years" - the experiences, and friends you make, are worth it - assuming you make at least some effort to take advantage of the situation. There will be no other time in your life when you get four years to study things that interest you, and have fun. In fact, you'll be lucky to get more than a week at a time to do what you want between graduation and retirement, so take advantage of it.
Hmm, I bet some poor Peruvian legislators will be getting very nice campaign donation checks. Who's gonna squawk about it, or even know about it, in the US?
Hah, the thing won't dive lower than 1000 feet, anyway. Plus, it doesn't even have a deck gun. What kind of crappy submarine doesn't even have a deck gun? Oh, say, a Los Angeles class 688 nuclear Attack Sub? :)
They should call it "Jack-Valenti-In-A-Can".
CDR Taco is simply displaying his appalling ignorance of what the word "libertarian"means - apparently someone told him once that a friend of a friend once heard "something bad about some group called 'librarytitians' or something..."
/. readers, so that concepts can be explained in small, easy-to-understand words.
Of course, as usual, it's easier to write snide remarks in bully pulpits than it is to simply ask someone who knows what they're taking about, many of whom are regular
Why? Because it's easier tomake their customers pay for the spam by simply passing the losses along to us in the form of higher credit card interest rates.
I've been through this. The credit card companies just don't care about abuse. They really don't. It would cost them money to make the system more secure, and why should they*spend* money when all they have to do is increase our rates and fees?
Legal action against the censorwaremakers is by far the best option to get them to clean up their acts. All other industries are petrified about legal actions and will bend over backwards to avoid it. Why shouldn't we put our overly-litigious society to work for us for a change?
If just one huge class-action lawsuit succeeded with large punitive damages, all the censorware companies would think three times about their cavalier policies in the future. Let's make them as terrified of being sued as every other company is. IANAL, but IMO there is plenty of damage done by these people which could be proven, with the plaintiff either being someone who is denied access to information, or an onrganizatin whose site is being blocked.
Maybe this would be a Good Thing for Linux, as people get sick of having all the restrictions and want an OS that isn't Big Brotherware.
Also, since it's 100% in software, I estimate about two months before the patches start to come out to nullify the offending Windows code.
The airwaves may be public, but the content of what's carried on them is not. If you make a speech in public, does anyone have the right to record your words, type them up, and sell them as a book?
If you want to recieve the signal without paying for it, it's dishonest, but you can try. The sattellite company, however, also has every right to stop you from being able to *use* what you recieve. I say, good for them. This is what a free market is all about.