Disabling a feature on a motherboard is less difficult than writing drivers.
PCs these days are commodities and if you don't like the computers from one manufacturer, then you can get something with the exact same specs from another. Anything that is marketed towards the enthusiast will likely have a feature to disable Secure Boot, or else the users will go to the competitor.
Worst case is that the bargain PCs won't give that functionality. The reason OEMs would require Windows only is that they are afraid it will lead to more tech support and newbie users complaining, which I really don't think will be an issue in reality OEMs might also use it as a way to charge more to computer enthusiast.
I am willing to bet that some manufactures will still offer bargain PCs that you can disable Secure Boot because there will still be a market for it. It could harm the reputation of manufacturers who try to lock people into Windows and costs them in sales.
Whatever the case is, there will be enough market forces out there to make sure that there are plenty of dual boot capable PCs on the market. It could be a standard feature. All these fears are overblown
Amazon isn't competing on high end features and those users will go for the iPad.
Amazon's main advantage is the value it offers for the price. You can watch movies, look at magazines, play games and go on the Internet. Those who think it is worth the $300 extra for iPad's features will do so, but the new Kindle will take a good chunk of the low end $499 iPads sales.
I might buy cable mainly for ESPN and the Discovery Channel, but I also watch the other channels as an added benefit. A la carte pricing can dramatically reduce viewership and advertising revenue for many of these channels.
It could also reduce the discovery process in finding out about new TV channels. How do you know that something is worth paying for when you have never even watched it to begin with.
The problem is with the OEM's themselves, but they have little incentive to lock out all the systems. It would be safe to assume that any PC marketed towards enthusiast or enterprise will have the option to disable the Secure Boot in the bios. I don't use Linux but I wouldn't by a PC without the option to disable Secure Boot mode.
Worst case is that it will be an extra feature that OEM's could charge more to distinguish between value and enthusiast consumers.
Windows 8 competes with Windows 7 and they have to allow users to upgrade with an old PC. It would be stupid to implement an OS that requires a Secure Boot mode, because it would mean that mean that users would have to buy new hardware.
Even if they did, there will be anti-trust litigation in both the US or EU. Microsoft has been in trouble in the past for bundling software, which is a far less serious offense than actually locking out the competition. Any attempt would just be negative publicity and could potentially bar them from selling in a major market.
It would be a stupid business decision especially when over 95% of consumers prefer Windows over Linux anyways. There is little to gain for Microsoft and a lot to lose
Many professionals can get there work done with MacBooks that can use 8 gigs of ram. Laptops today are like desktops two years ago, and we weren't struggling in performance back then. The productivity gained by a more portable system can easily outweigh the marginal performance benefit of a desktop.
There are always going to be niche applications that will require full desktop performance, but that is group is getting smaller in time. If I had a task that the main bottleneck was costs and computer speed, then a desktop would be an obvious choice.
I switched from building custom PCs to an ultra thin laptop. Unless you are a heavy gamer, the current generation is good enough to provide enough power for most task, with the benefit of being able to take anywhere comfortably.
The older generation of laptops could not compete with desktops in performance without being very bulky with poor battery life. The new ones are powerful enough to do the same tasks as desktops, while being ultra portable with long battery life. The growth rate in processor speed has been slow enough that the laptop so you can have a system for many more years without upgrading. There just are fewer advantages to having a custom made PC compared to the past.
I would still use new egg to buy things like external monitors, keyboards, SSD drives and USB accessories.
A task as simple as getting a signature or writing notes on a document and giving it to a colleague becomes a complicated endeavor. Then you have to coordinate with other paper offices somehow to make your business operations smooth.
Someone has to support all these complicated tasks and it will costs a lot more money than the initial $400 purchase.
Find out what requirements you need to follow so that you won't be held liable for what an employee downloads on your connection.
IANAL, but I would assume that you won't be held liable if some rogue employee hacks to bypass your security measures to prevent p2p downloads. There will likely be certain requirements that must be met before you are held liable for what an employee does.
It is surprising that Warner took down open source software that has no relations to its copyright content.
I assume that other movie studios have similar agreements with Hotfile and they seem to be following the rules fine. If the allegations are true, it is a really dumb move on Warner's part.
There are more constructive ways of informing out security flaws then publicly releasing compromised data.
You can argue that the threat imposed by the group is relatively harmless, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. If a small group with questionable ethics can cause a big company to go broke by sabotaging their systems, they should be considered a potential security threat.
You can can agree with the scientific consensus that smoking causes lung cancer, but support someone's right to smoke if they choose.
You can agree with the scientific consensus on climate change and disagree with the proposed solutions to the problem. Maybe the costs of halting man made climate change aren't worth the benefits economically.
The politics should be centered around the solutions to the problem of man made climate change, not the actual science itself.
Copyrights last longer because they are not as important as inventions that can patented.
Copyrights apply to the realm of entertainment and there really isn't that much consequence to society if they are extended indefinitely. A patent on a Rolling Stones song is not going to hurt future creative endeavors by musicians.
Patents usually apply to things that are much more important to society. An indefinite patent on the transistor would have placed a huge burden on economic growth. This is why patent law is designed with the idea of making it long enough to give inventors profit incentives but not long enough to provide a huge burden on future economic growth and development.
So take the few remaining dollars from the poor and middle class and hand it to the rich to trickle back down? Liberals always claim to be for the poor but they don't realize that keynesian economics does the most damage to the poor and benefits the rich.
And NO that is not what got us out of the great depression. It certainly prolonged it though.
You are describing supply side economics which is a conservative idea.
Stimulus can be in the form of creating public works projects that create jobs for the poor. If the rich are sitting idle on their money, you can tax it and spend it on the poor who will spend the money on goods and services, which will create more jobs as businesses need to hire to keep up with demand.
That only works if there is demand in the private sector for jobs which occurs in a growing economy. During a recession, cutting public jobs will just increase unemployment which lowers economic activity.
The over extension of debt can be corrected by devaluing the the currency. You pump more money into the economy during the process, which creates jobs and stimulates economic activity. It will make your exports more attractive to other nations and while decreasing the demand of imports, which improves the trade balance.
This works and is how the US got out of the great depression with help from the New Deal and WW2.
Any mainstream economists will point out similar flaws with bit coin.
The supply of Bitcoins can't keep up with the demand which leads to deflation and hoarding, which will stagnant the economic activity. Countries used to have similar problems when they were on the gold standard, which is why all modern economies have a fiat money system.
But if you are really think the modern banking system is a scam, gold is a much better investment. Gold has thousands of years of tradition behind it and there will always be people who value it so the prices will be relatively more stable.
Your skills are only worth what someone is willing to pay for. If you think your are worth more, go work at another company or start your own business.
If you lost your job, you pay no income taxes, so it isn't any different than if a business loses money. You are taxing people who don't have the capability of paying taxes.
Taxing at the transaction level makes no economic sense. If I sell you something then buy it back for the same price, then both parties pay taxes with no economic gain. It will drive all businesses who can't make a high enough profit margin to pay taxes to go out of business.
You can keep the income tax and remove all tax deductions from it too which will be a lot easier to administer than the alternative forms of taxation.
Sales tax does not work for securities and investments.
If securities were taxed at 30% when you purchased it, it would mean that you have to get a 30% return on your money to break even. Stock traders would not exists because they would have to pay taxes every time the purchase something, even if they lose money. Commodity markets will fail for similar reasoning. If you are a middle man who can add 10% value to a product and resale it, you would still lose money.
Income tax is much more appropriate in these scenarios because you only are taxed on the money you gains. If you buy something at $100 and sell it at $110, you are only taxed on 10 dollars of income. With a sales tax, you make $10 in income but have to pay $30 in taxes resulting in a net loss of $20.
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Disabling a feature on a motherboard is less difficult than writing drivers.
PCs these days are commodities and if you don't like the computers from one manufacturer, then you can get something with the exact same specs from another. Anything that is marketed towards the enthusiast will likely have a feature to disable Secure Boot, or else the users will go to the competitor.
Worst case is that the bargain PCs won't give that functionality. The reason OEMs would require Windows only is that they are afraid it will lead to more tech support and newbie users complaining, which I really don't think will be an issue in reality OEMs might also use it as a way to charge more to computer enthusiast.
I am willing to bet that some manufactures will still offer bargain PCs that you can disable Secure Boot because there will still be a market for it. It could harm the reputation of manufacturers who try to lock people into Windows and costs them in sales.
Whatever the case is, there will be enough market forces out there to make sure that there are plenty of dual boot capable PCs on the market. It could be a standard feature. All these fears are overblown
Amazon isn't competing on high end features and those users will go for the iPad.
Amazon's main advantage is the value it offers for the price. You can watch movies, look at magazines, play games and go on the Internet. Those who think it is worth the $300 extra for iPad's features will do so, but the new Kindle will take a good chunk of the low end $499 iPads sales.
I might buy cable mainly for ESPN and the Discovery Channel, but I also watch the other channels as an added benefit. A la carte pricing can dramatically reduce viewership and advertising revenue for many of these channels.
It could also reduce the discovery process in finding out about new TV channels. How do you know that something is worth paying for when you have never even watched it to begin with.
If you had 10 year old PC with XP then you probably have to upgrade. Anyone who bought a PC with Windows Vista can probably upgrade to Windows 8.
A significant amount of Microsoft's sales is from upgrades, so they aren't going to ignore that market.
The problem is with the OEM's themselves, but they have little incentive to lock out all the systems. It would be safe to assume that any PC marketed towards enthusiast or enterprise will have the option to disable the Secure Boot in the bios. I don't use Linux but I wouldn't by a PC without the option to disable Secure Boot mode.
Worst case is that it will be an extra feature that OEM's could charge more to distinguish between value and enthusiast consumers.
You are just spreading FUD.
Windows 8 competes with Windows 7 and they have to allow users to upgrade with an old PC. It would be stupid to implement an OS that requires a Secure Boot mode, because it would mean that mean that users would have to buy new hardware.
Even if they did, there will be anti-trust litigation in both the US or EU. Microsoft has been in trouble in the past for bundling software, which is a far less serious offense than actually locking out the competition. Any attempt would just be negative publicity and could potentially bar them from selling in a major market.
It would be a stupid business decision especially when over 95% of consumers prefer Windows over Linux anyways. There is little to gain for Microsoft and a lot to lose
Many professionals can get there work done with MacBooks that can use 8 gigs of ram. Laptops today are like desktops two years ago, and we weren't struggling in performance back then. The productivity gained by a more portable system can easily outweigh the marginal performance benefit of a desktop.
There are always going to be niche applications that will require full desktop performance, but that is group is getting smaller in time. If I had a task that the main bottleneck was costs and computer speed, then a desktop would be an obvious choice.
I switched from building custom PCs to an ultra thin laptop. Unless you are a heavy gamer, the current generation is good enough to provide enough power for most task, with the benefit of being able to take anywhere comfortably.
The older generation of laptops could not compete with desktops in performance without being very bulky with poor battery life. The new ones are powerful enough to do the same tasks as desktops, while being ultra portable with long battery life. The growth rate in processor speed has been slow enough that the laptop so you can have a system for many more years without upgrading. There just are fewer advantages to having a custom made PC compared to the past.
I would still use new egg to buy things like external monitors, keyboards, SSD drives and USB accessories.
A task as simple as getting a signature or writing notes on a document and giving it to a colleague becomes a complicated endeavor. Then you have to coordinate with other paper offices somehow to make your business operations smooth.
Someone has to support all these complicated tasks and it will costs a lot more money than the initial $400 purchase.
Find out what requirements you need to follow so that you won't be held liable for what an employee downloads on your connection.
IANAL, but I would assume that you won't be held liable if some rogue employee hacks to bypass your security measures to prevent p2p downloads. There will likely be certain requirements that must be met before you are held liable for what an employee does.
It is surprising that Warner took down open source software that has no relations to its copyright content.
I assume that other movie studios have similar agreements with Hotfile and they seem to be following the rules fine. If the allegations are true, it is a really dumb move on Warner's part.
There are more constructive ways of informing out security flaws then publicly releasing compromised data.
You can argue that the threat imposed by the group is relatively harmless, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously. If a small group with questionable ethics can cause a big company to go broke by sabotaging their systems, they should be considered a potential security threat.
You can can agree with the scientific consensus that smoking causes lung cancer, but support someone's right to smoke if they choose.
You can agree with the scientific consensus on climate change and disagree with the proposed solutions to the problem. Maybe the costs of halting man made climate change aren't worth the benefits economically.
The politics should be centered around the solutions to the problem of man made climate change, not the actual science itself.
Copyrights last longer because they are not as important as inventions that can patented.
Copyrights apply to the realm of entertainment and there really isn't that much consequence to society if they are extended indefinitely. A patent on a Rolling Stones song is not going to hurt future creative endeavors by musicians.
Patents usually apply to things that are much more important to society. An indefinite patent on the transistor would have placed a huge burden on economic growth. This is why patent law is designed with the idea of making it long enough to give inventors profit incentives but not long enough to provide a huge burden on future economic growth and development.
So take the few remaining dollars from the poor and middle class and hand it to the rich to trickle back down? Liberals always claim to be for the poor but they don't realize that keynesian economics does the most damage to the poor and benefits the rich. And NO that is not what got us out of the great depression. It certainly prolonged it though.
You are describing supply side economics which is a conservative idea.
Stimulus can be in the form of creating public works projects that create jobs for the poor. If the rich are sitting idle on their money, you can tax it and spend it on the poor who will spend the money on goods and services, which will create more jobs as businesses need to hire to keep up with demand.
That only works if there is demand in the private sector for jobs which occurs in a growing economy. During a recession, cutting public jobs will just increase unemployment which lowers economic activity.
The over extension of debt can be corrected by devaluing the the currency. You pump more money into the economy during the process, which creates jobs and stimulates economic activity. It will make your exports more attractive to other nations and while decreasing the demand of imports, which improves the trade balance.
This works and is how the US got out of the great depression with help from the New Deal and WW2.
Any mainstream economists will point out similar flaws with bit coin.
The supply of Bitcoins can't keep up with the demand which leads to deflation and hoarding, which will stagnant the economic activity. Countries used to have similar problems when they were on the gold standard, which is why all modern economies have a fiat money system.
But if you are really think the modern banking system is a scam, gold is a much better investment. Gold has thousands of years of tradition behind it and there will always be people who value it so the prices will be relatively more stable.
Because Keynesian economics is the only model that explains the Great Depression and current financial crisis.
Your skills are only worth what someone is willing to pay for. If you think your are worth more, go work at another company or start your own business.
Well you can look at the log records to see.
Claiming that a trojan is responsible for such an activity is highly implausible, so you would need evidence to support your argument.
If you are accused of sending spam or getting porn pop ups, then it would be a plausible explanation because that is what trojans normally do.
If you lost your job, you pay no income taxes, so it isn't any different than if a business loses money. You are taxing people who don't have the capability of paying taxes.
Taxing at the transaction level makes no economic sense. If I sell you something then buy it back for the same price, then both parties pay taxes with no economic gain. It will drive all businesses who can't make a high enough profit margin to pay taxes to go out of business.
You can keep the income tax and remove all tax deductions from it too which will be a lot easier to administer than the alternative forms of taxation.
The income tax is the appropriate way to collect taxes in many circumstances which is why the constitution was legally amended to allow it.
If you think want to make the income tax unconstitutional, then you must pass an another amendment repealing it, like with the 18th amendment.
Claiming that a trojan unwillingly downloaded copyrighted content on your hard disk and seeded it via bit torrent is a weak defense.
If you want to claim that such a trojan exists, you better prove that it was on the system.
Sales tax does not work for securities and investments.
If securities were taxed at 30% when you purchased it, it would mean that you have to get a 30% return on your money to break even. Stock traders would not exists because they would have to pay taxes every time the purchase something, even if they lose money. Commodity markets will fail for similar reasoning. If you are a middle man who can add 10% value to a product and resale it, you would still lose money.
Income tax is much more appropriate in these scenarios because you only are taxed on the money you gains. If you buy something at $100 and sell it at $110, you are only taxed on 10 dollars of income. With a sales tax, you make $10 in income but have to pay $30 in taxes resulting in a net loss of $20.