Alright, I run a MYSQL database at home for my little crappy web server which no one visits because pictures of me visiting Mexico isn't exactly worth typing a number into your browser. All those details aside, why should I switch to either Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g or DB2?
You shouldn't. In fact, it's mildly surprising you're even bothering with a database.
You should download the big databases if you fit in any of the following categories:
1) You need to develop against or evalute the database. 2) You need to learn the database to increase your marketable skills. 3) You happen to run a high-traffic site and you need features not found in PostgreSQL. 4) You run a site that you expect to grow in traffic and want the option of upgrading to a more powerful version of the software at a later date.
I'm sure that others can find one or two more cases under which these DBs would be useful.
How does this differ from the "Free" version they used to give away? I think I still have the install files sitting around somewhere for the 7.1 UDB install that I got off IBM's website. Did they stop offering a free version for awhile, then restart, or is this licensed a bit differently?
NORMAL people, aren't interested in the "peer to peer" part of P2P they're interested in the "free stuff I don't have to pay for" part of P2P.
I don't necessarily agree. I think iTunes shows that people are willing to pay (for a reasonable price), but that they want the convenience of electronic distribution. The producers sort of get this, but they don't modify their business model to match. It just doesn't seem to occur to them that an electronic copy doesn't have as much intrinsic value as a physical reproduction that you can hold in your hand. Thus these online distribution methods often fail as consumers scream, "But I can get the same thing at Wal-mart and own something!"
Why would I want to help WB in the distribution if I'm PAYING them for the movie too?
Presumably for lower prices. Bandwidth is cheaper than ever, but is still expensive. Especially when you figure in the number of machines necessary to power a large multimedia network. By marginalizing the cost of the download across many machines, WB is (theoretically) obtaining savings that they can pass on to you, the consumer.
Whether consumers see it that way (or WB passes on the savings!) remains to be seen.
both Sol 9 and Sol 10 asks during intall what kind of directory server you want to use (they offer NIX, NIS+, DNS, LDAP...). if you choose DNS, the installer asks the addresses.
And still doesn't set them up. (Which peeved me off even more.) The last time I tried setting up Solaris 10, it asked me for the DNS and gateway info, but then failed to act upon it. Maybe it was a bug in the installer version, but it REALLY annoyed me. I had been hoping that Sun had finally taken care of the problem so that I wouldn't have to search through man pages AGAIN, trying to remember which files to edit.
I love Solaris as an OS, but is it really so much to ask that common configurations be automated? Sadly, Sun has never been too tremendously good at the whole "increasing usability" thing. They have great products, mind you, but they force you to learn a lot of stuff up front. While this is great for newbies who need to learn the system, it just annoys the heck out of the veterns.
Dell is also looking to set up a manufacturing center in India
Now that's the first smart thing I've seen anyone do with Indian outsourcing.
Outsourcing manufacturing is a tried and true method of cost saving. Since the work that needs to be done is mostly repetitive, it lends itself well to operating with minimal communication from the headquarters.
Computer Programming, OTOH, is inherently about collecting new requirements and developing new processes. When you have an office with an orthagonal time zone, working with completely separate operations from the one's they are trying to reduce to code, you're significantly reducing your ability to produce the results you need.
Managers need to get this through their heads: Coding is not a blue collar job. It inherently requires direct interaction with other professionals, and is core to making a business work. Bringing highly trained workers from other countries can work (putting aside cultural and language issues that sometimes cause problems), but you just can't be moving your core operations away from your headquarters unless you also move your headquarters. It's a recipe for disaster every time.
Ask a hacker a question, get a hacker answer
on
Mitnick on OSS
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Famous hacker says it's easier to find holes when they let you look at the source! News at 11!
Is this really all that suprising? If you've got a mentality of "how can I break this?" it's much easier to figure out how if you can look at how it's built. Unfortunately, having a hacker able to look at a system is not the same thing as having the original designers catch the issue. If you wait until hackers get ahold of it, they'll find ways to exploit the problem before the patch is in wide distribution. That's what makes this dangerous.
Thankfully, the majority of those who are looking at the code have less selfish reasons, and are happy to share any issues they see. Thus the "many-eyes" philosophy depends heavily on the good will of the common man. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.:-)
I read in a few/. posts that Solaris is likely the best 64bit OS available. On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.
You have to be careful here. Solaris used to be called Slowaris when run on Intel machines, because it was designed for much more powerful hardware. A lot of features that are hardware supported on a SPARC machine had to be reimplemented in software on Intel machines.
Another common vector for the "Slowaris" comments is the early days of the Sun framebuffers. Sun was one of the first vendors to do away with text mode all together, and emulate it entirely in software. The upshot is that Solaris SPARC machines have the best looking, smooth font, conole you will ever see. The downside is that the 100 MHz beasties that started this practice had a bit of trouble keeping up with the needs of the console rendering.
Neither of these issues has been significant for a very long time. I haven't heard anyone call the OS "Slowaris" in almost a decade. The complaint I hear today is that Solaris is unwieldy and not at all designed with user-friendly setup. Sun keeps trying to fix this with new, prettier installers. I don't think they have a clue though, because the first thing I have to do every time I install the OS is go into the config files and setup the DNS server and default gateway. You'd think it would kill them to ask this info during an install.:-/
Mu Security would not say whether the product will be hardware- or software-based, but more details will be revealed in March, Furgerson said.
That's not very helpful. If we're talking a tool to check for security flaws already patched against, what good is that? Just keep your systems up to date. On the other hand, if we're talking about things like buffer-overflow checkers, then why not use an existing product?
This thing is going to have to be pretty darn impressive to actually find a niche other than people who don't know any better.
I'm not questioning whether it's possible or not. Merely the accuracy of such a device. There are so many things we generalize about the brain, that to use brain scans to say with (even 90%!) certainty that someone is "lying" strikes me as a poor assumption to make.
A polygraph measures certain physiological signs of anxiety
Sort of. A polygraph measures the physiological, but determining the matter of whether someone is actually lying or not involves the operator. The operator attempts to "calibrate" the machine by placing the subject in the precise psychological state he wants. i.e. He's trying to unnerve the subject so that he will feel extreme stress in the case that he's lying. The final "yes/no" results are merely the operator's interpretation of the session. Thus it's very much a psychological test.
The only advantage I see to the fMRI is that it's looking for direct psychological signs rather than having an operator try to divine them from the physiological results of his psychological probes. IMHO, that still doesn't make the fMRI correct, just more precise.
I think this works better then a Polygraph because rather then look at symptoms and signs of lying this examines whether you are looking in your memory when recounting a story, or you are looking at your "creative" part of your brain.
Basically, you're looking for signs of psychological stress. The same things that polygraphs look for, except this is more exact. But what happens if someone has difficulty recalling events? Various thoughts, including unrelated memories, oddball thoughts, and stressful attempts to retreive the memory, can all occur in a short period of time. Is this sudden use of various brain facilities indicitive of lying, or is the person just trying to recall? When this is compared to brain patterns of a question that the person is sure of (e.g. Did you skip work yesterday?), then the scan of the person trying to remember would look suspicious in comparison.
I REALLY do not trust this technology. Let's hope it sees just as many blockades as regular lie detectors.
Lie detectors have always been more of a psychological test than an actual method of detecting lies. That's why they're not admissible in court, nor can an employer force you to take one. Now suddenly they can read your brain patterns (which they don't actually understand, just generalize) and tell if you're lying?
I don't buy it. I'll believe that they have a more accurate method of telling when you experience psychological stress from lying, but the actual act of lying is such an indistinct thing that I can't believe that you have a portion of your brain that says "turn this on when you lie".
The fact that they want to make this admissable in a court of law is just plain scary.
Sun's A5200s are cheap on eBay, and you can pick up something like a 420r or a 250 to drive the thing.
Even better is to check AnySystem.com for your needs. Their everyday prices are excellent, and their EBay prices are even better! (Often you can get an 8 way system loaded with fibre channel drives and GIGs of RAM for $2000-$3000.) I don't have any affiliation with them other than trying to get my boss to replace our expensive Windows servers with AnySystem servers.:-)
However, we would like to make something that would allow teachers and non-CS students to create their own applications. Can Slashdot readers suggest some kind of authoring system that would satisfy this?
No. There have been billions of research dollars and millions of man-hours spent on trying to develop methods whereby non-programmers can become programmers. While some of them have had application-specific uses, not a single one has suceeded. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
The key is that, it's not that hard to program. With a little bit of instruction, just about anyone can be taught to change the oil in their car. The same is true of programming. Many of the home computers purchased in the 80's were bought so that the users could develop straightforward programs in BASIC. If hundreds of thousands of owners could accomplish that back then, why can't they accomplish it today?
The answer is that they can. Anyone can still be taught to program. The problem that you're facing, however, is that the average program complexity has increased considerably. Which means that your average program is no longer like changing the oil, but is more like rebuilding a carburator. Still something that can be taught, but an order of maganitude more complex.
At the end of the day, what you need is a custom configuration file or scripting language that is targetted with the project-at-hand in mind. That way you can simplify it down to only the components that absolutely NEED to be exposed to the users. But consider this route carefully! You need to analyze how much the teachers really need to be doing this, and decide if the time you will save them significantly outweighs the amount of time it would take for you to just do the work yourself. Otherwise you're just wasting valuable project time that could be spent elsewhere.
Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. At the very least the other party of the transaction (the airline) has a right to know who you are. Privacy dictates that they be careful who they share it with. However, since most airlines are subject to government regulation, they are considered a public form of travel. If you want privacy, charter a plane who will keep your trip confidential. (At least until they're supeonaed.)
From the Website: "A decision is expected within the next few months. At stake is nothing less than the right of Americans to travel anonymously in their own countr"
I'm sorry, but case after case has shown that Anonymity is not constitutionally protected. If you can get someone to front for you (e.g. a newspaper), then they may choose to withhold your identity; possibly facing legal pentalities when they are court ordered to provide it. People seem to have this idea in their heads that Freedom of Speech == Freedom of Anonymity. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
My wild ass guess would be "yes". My wife told me about a fellow who followed around wolves for awhile. Apparently, they sleep in regular spurts of 15 minutes at a time. He was able to keep up the schedule during his studies (and even commented that it seemed to keep him more alert) but that it never became natural.
"Furthermore, it was alleged that Ford was aware of this design flaw, but they refused to pay the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. This discovery of Ford's apparent gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to major lawsuits, inconclusive criminal charges, and a costly recall of all affected Pintos. Ford lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue seating four.
[...]
More recently, it has been argued (in a well-known 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz [2] (PDF), among others) that the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. Only 27 people ever died in Pinto fires, which given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built) was no worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argues that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, and that the supposed 'smoking gun' document showing Ford's callousness actually referred to the auto industry in general rather than the Pinto specifically."
You're right, it's too late for Google to fix it. It was too late the day of the IPO.
It was too late the day that Google accepted the first investor. If they investors don't get what they want, they replace the company's execs. Considering that Google was started with VC funding, I'd say it was "too late" from day 1.
It's a bit like the scene in Fight Club when the narrator explains how his company issues recalls. If the court settlements are less than the cost of a recall, they aren't going to fix those cars.
The first rule of Fight Club is, YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!;-)
That being said, you need to remember that Fight Club is just a movie. Any sort of court settlement is likely to include a requirement that the defective vehicles get recalled. Thus it's usually cheaper and easier for a company to jump on the issue as soon as they learn about it, and pay for the $10 mass-produced replacement part + labor (the real expense).
Parent hit it spot on. We've seen this same problem in the Home Movie industry, the Book industry (remember the hub-bub over the Amazon used books?), the Music Industry, and many other entertainment outlets. Producers of content want 100% of the profits, even if the current situation is beneficial to them.
For more info, look up killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
No, your analogy is pretty much on target. Video games are a form of Real-Time system. Real Time Operating Systems are the origin of our modern, pre-emptable, multi-tasking environments. The only difference between game programming and most RTOSes is that game programmers tend to prefer to manage the task splits in a manual, calculated-time-to-execute fashion rather than a pre-emptable fashion as games don't lend themselves well to being pre-empted.
Slashdot Mirror
Alright, I run a MYSQL database at home for my little crappy web server which no one visits because pictures of me visiting Mexico isn't exactly worth typing a number into your browser. All those details aside, why should I switch to either Microsoft's SQL Server 2005, Oracle 10g or DB2?
You shouldn't. In fact, it's mildly surprising you're even bothering with a database.
You should download the big databases if you fit in any of the following categories:
1) You need to develop against or evalute the database.
2) You need to learn the database to increase your marketable skills.
3) You happen to run a high-traffic site and you need features not found in PostgreSQL.
4) You run a site that you expect to grow in traffic and want the option of upgrading to a more powerful version of the software at a later date.
I'm sure that others can find one or two more cases under which these DBs would be useful.
How does this differ from the "Free" version they used to give away? I think I still have the install files sitting around somewhere for the 7.1 UDB install that I got off IBM's website. Did they stop offering a free version for awhile, then restart, or is this licensed a bit differently?
NORMAL people, aren't interested in the "peer to peer" part of P2P they're interested in the "free stuff I don't have to pay for" part of P2P.
I don't necessarily agree. I think iTunes shows that people are willing to pay (for a reasonable price), but that they want the convenience of electronic distribution. The producers sort of get this, but they don't modify their business model to match. It just doesn't seem to occur to them that an electronic copy doesn't have as much intrinsic value as a physical reproduction that you can hold in your hand. Thus these online distribution methods often fail as consumers scream, "But I can get the same thing at Wal-mart and own something!"
No, I'm not serious.
Thank God. You were freaking me out. For a moment there I thought we'd have to revoke your geek license! =)
Why would I want to help WB in the distribution if I'm PAYING them for the movie too?
Presumably for lower prices. Bandwidth is cheaper than ever, but is still expensive. Especially when you figure in the number of machines necessary to power a large multimedia network. By marginalizing the cost of the download across many machines, WB is (theoretically) obtaining savings that they can pass on to you, the consumer.
Whether consumers see it that way (or WB passes on the savings!) remains to be seen.
both Sol 9 and Sol 10 asks during intall what kind of directory server you want to use (they offer NIX, NIS+, DNS, LDAP...). if you choose DNS, the installer asks the addresses.
And still doesn't set them up. (Which peeved me off even more.) The last time I tried setting up Solaris 10, it asked me for the DNS and gateway info, but then failed to act upon it. Maybe it was a bug in the installer version, but it REALLY annoyed me. I had been hoping that Sun had finally taken care of the problem so that I wouldn't have to search through man pages AGAIN, trying to remember which files to edit.
I love Solaris as an OS, but is it really so much to ask that common configurations be automated? Sadly, Sun has never been too tremendously good at the whole "increasing usability" thing. They have great products, mind you, but they force you to learn a lot of stuff up front. While this is great for newbies who need to learn the system, it just annoys the heck out of the veterns.
Dell is also looking to set up a manufacturing center in India
Now that's the first smart thing I've seen anyone do with Indian outsourcing.
Outsourcing manufacturing is a tried and true method of cost saving. Since the work that needs to be done is mostly repetitive, it lends itself well to operating with minimal communication from the headquarters.
Computer Programming, OTOH, is inherently about collecting new requirements and developing new processes. When you have an office with an orthagonal time zone, working with completely separate operations from the one's they are trying to reduce to code, you're significantly reducing your ability to produce the results you need.
Managers need to get this through their heads: Coding is not a blue collar job. It inherently requires direct interaction with other professionals, and is core to making a business work. Bringing highly trained workers from other countries can work (putting aside cultural and language issues that sometimes cause problems), but you just can't be moving your core operations away from your headquarters unless you also move your headquarters. It's a recipe for disaster every time.
Famous hacker says it's easier to find holes when they let you look at the source! News at 11!
:-)
Is this really all that suprising? If you've got a mentality of "how can I break this?" it's much easier to figure out how if you can look at how it's built. Unfortunately, having a hacker able to look at a system is not the same thing as having the original designers catch the issue. If you wait until hackers get ahold of it, they'll find ways to exploit the problem before the patch is in wide distribution. That's what makes this dangerous.
Thankfully, the majority of those who are looking at the code have less selfish reasons, and are happy to share any issues they see. Thus the "many-eyes" philosophy depends heavily on the good will of the common man. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.
I read in a few /. posts that Solaris is likely the best 64bit OS available. On other sites I've read Solaris referred to as Slowiris when run on a single CPU, but the Sun site suggests Solaris is no slower than Linux on a single CPU machine.
:-/
You have to be careful here. Solaris used to be called Slowaris when run on Intel machines, because it was designed for much more powerful hardware. A lot of features that are hardware supported on a SPARC machine had to be reimplemented in software on Intel machines.
Another common vector for the "Slowaris" comments is the early days of the Sun framebuffers. Sun was one of the first vendors to do away with text mode all together, and emulate it entirely in software. The upshot is that Solaris SPARC machines have the best looking, smooth font, conole you will ever see. The downside is that the 100 MHz beasties that started this practice had a bit of trouble keeping up with the needs of the console rendering.
Neither of these issues has been significant for a very long time. I haven't heard anyone call the OS "Slowaris" in almost a decade. The complaint I hear today is that Solaris is unwieldy and not at all designed with user-friendly setup. Sun keeps trying to fix this with new, prettier installers. I don't think they have a clue though, because the first thing I have to do every time I install the OS is go into the config files and setup the DNS server and default gateway. You'd think it would kill them to ask this info during an install.
Mu Security would not say whether the product will be hardware- or software-based, but more details will be revealed in March, Furgerson said.
That's not very helpful. If we're talking a tool to check for security flaws already patched against, what good is that? Just keep your systems up to date. On the other hand, if we're talking about things like buffer-overflow checkers, then why not use an existing product?
This thing is going to have to be pretty darn impressive to actually find a niche other than people who don't know any better.
I'm not questioning whether it's possible or not. Merely the accuracy of such a device. There are so many things we generalize about the brain, that to use brain scans to say with (even 90%!) certainty that someone is "lying" strikes me as a poor assumption to make.
A polygraph measures certain physiological signs of anxiety
Sort of. A polygraph measures the physiological, but determining the matter of whether someone is actually lying or not involves the operator. The operator attempts to "calibrate" the machine by placing the subject in the precise psychological state he wants. i.e. He's trying to unnerve the subject so that he will feel extreme stress in the case that he's lying. The final "yes/no" results are merely the operator's interpretation of the session. Thus it's very much a psychological test.
The only advantage I see to the fMRI is that it's looking for direct psychological signs rather than having an operator try to divine them from the physiological results of his psychological probes. IMHO, that still doesn't make the fMRI correct, just more precise.
I think this works better then a Polygraph because rather then look at symptoms and signs of lying this examines whether you are looking in your memory when recounting a story, or you are looking at your "creative" part of your brain.
Basically, you're looking for signs of psychological stress. The same things that polygraphs look for, except this is more exact. But what happens if someone has difficulty recalling events? Various thoughts, including unrelated memories, oddball thoughts, and stressful attempts to retreive the memory, can all occur in a short period of time. Is this sudden use of various brain facilities indicitive of lying, or is the person just trying to recall? When this is compared to brain patterns of a question that the person is sure of (e.g. Did you skip work yesterday?), then the scan of the person trying to remember would look suspicious in comparison.
I REALLY do not trust this technology. Let's hope it sees just as many blockades as regular lie detectors.
Lie detectors have always been more of a psychological test than an actual method of detecting lies. That's why they're not admissible in court, nor can an employer force you to take one. Now suddenly they can read your brain patterns (which they don't actually understand, just generalize) and tell if you're lying?
I don't buy it. I'll believe that they have a more accurate method of telling when you experience psychological stress from lying, but the actual act of lying is such an indistinct thing that I can't believe that you have a portion of your brain that says "turn this on when you lie".
The fact that they want to make this admissable in a court of law is just plain scary.
Sun's A5200s are cheap on eBay, and you can pick up something like a 420r or a 250 to drive the thing.
:-)
Even better is to check AnySystem.com for your needs. Their everyday prices are excellent, and their EBay prices are even better! (Often you can get an 8 way system loaded with fibre channel drives and GIGs of RAM for $2000-$3000.) I don't have any affiliation with them other than trying to get my boss to replace our expensive Windows servers with AnySystem servers.
Has anyone else used these guys?
However, we would like to make something that would allow teachers and non-CS students to create their own applications. Can Slashdot readers suggest some kind of authoring system that would satisfy this?
No. There have been billions of research dollars and millions of man-hours spent on trying to develop methods whereby non-programmers can become programmers. While some of them have had application-specific uses, not a single one has suceeded. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
The key is that, it's not that hard to program. With a little bit of instruction, just about anyone can be taught to change the oil in their car. The same is true of programming. Many of the home computers purchased in the 80's were bought so that the users could develop straightforward programs in BASIC. If hundreds of thousands of owners could accomplish that back then, why can't they accomplish it today?
The answer is that they can. Anyone can still be taught to program. The problem that you're facing, however, is that the average program complexity has increased considerably. Which means that your average program is no longer like changing the oil, but is more like rebuilding a carburator. Still something that can be taught, but an order of maganitude more complex.
At the end of the day, what you need is a custom configuration file or scripting language that is targetted with the project-at-hand in mind. That way you can simplify it down to only the components that absolutely NEED to be exposed to the users. But consider this route carefully! You need to analyze how much the teachers really need to be doing this, and decide if the time you will save them significantly outweighs the amount of time it would take for you to just do the work yourself. Otherwise you're just wasting valuable project time that could be spent elsewhere.
Good luck!
Privacy is not the same thing as anonymity. At the very least the other party of the transaction (the airline) has a right to know who you are. Privacy dictates that they be careful who they share it with. However, since most airlines are subject to government regulation, they are considered a public form of travel. If you want privacy, charter a plane who will keep your trip confidential. (At least until they're supeonaed.)
From the Website: "A decision is expected within the next few months. At stake is nothing less than the right of Americans to travel anonymously in their own countr"
I'm sorry, but case after case has shown that Anonymity is not constitutionally protected. If you can get someone to front for you (e.g. a newspaper), then they may choose to withhold your identity; possibly facing legal pentalities when they are court ordered to provide it. People seem to have this idea in their heads that Freedom of Speech == Freedom of Anonymity. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
My wild ass guess would be "yes". My wife told me about a fellow who followed around wolves for awhile. Apparently, they sleep in regular spurts of 15 minutes at a time. He was able to keep up the schedule during his studies (and even commented that it seemed to keep him more alert) but that it never became natural.
Allow me. From Wikipedia:
"Furthermore, it was alleged that Ford was aware of this design flaw, but they refused to pay the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. This discovery of Ford's apparent gross disregard for human lives in favor of profits led to major lawsuits, inconclusive criminal charges, and a costly recall of all affected Pintos. Ford lost several million dollars and gained a reputation for manufacturing "the barbecue seating four.
[...]
More recently, it has been argued (in a well-known 1991 law review paper by Gary Schwartz [2] (PDF), among others) that the case against the Pinto was less clear-cut than commonly supposed. Only 27 people ever died in Pinto fires, which given the Pinto's production figures (over 2 million built) was no worse than typical for the time. Schwartz argues that the car was no more fire-prone than other cars of the time, and that the supposed 'smoking gun' document showing Ford's callousness actually referred to the auto industry in general rather than the Pinto specifically."
Did you're mum ever read you Aesop's Fables?
You're right, it's too late for Google to fix it. It was too late the day of the IPO.
It was too late the day that Google accepted the first investor. If they investors don't get what they want, they replace the company's execs. Considering that Google was started with VC funding, I'd say it was "too late" from day 1.
It's a bit like the scene in Fight Club when the narrator explains how his company issues recalls. If the court settlements are less than the cost of a recall, they aren't going to fix those cars.
;-)
The first rule of Fight Club is, YOU DON'T TALK ABOUT FIGHT CLUB!
That being said, you need to remember that Fight Club is just a movie. Any sort of court settlement is likely to include a requirement that the defective vehicles get recalled. Thus it's usually cheaper and easier for a company to jump on the issue as soon as they learn about it, and pay for the $10 mass-produced replacement part + labor (the real expense).
Parent hit it spot on. We've seen this same problem in the Home Movie industry, the Book industry (remember the hub-bub over the Amazon used books?), the Music Industry, and many other entertainment outlets. Producers of content want 100% of the profits, even if the current situation is beneficial to them.
For more info, look up killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
No, your analogy is pretty much on target. Video games are a form of Real-Time system. Real Time Operating Systems are the origin of our modern, pre-emptable, multi-tasking environments. The only difference between game programming and most RTOSes is that game programmers tend to prefer to manage the task splits in a manual, calculated-time-to-execute fashion rather than a pre-emptable fashion as games don't lend themselves well to being pre-empted.