IIRC, the C64 was selling for $179 towards the end of its lifespan.
This is due to the volume of machines Commodore was stamping out. There's a reason everyone seems to have a C=64 in their closet. Commodore sold more than 33 million of the little buggers, more than ANY OTHER computer model ever made, even to this day. The only other machine that even comes close was the Apple II, which sold for 12 years continuously with only minor modifications.
The sad irony is that most books which talk about the home computer revolution in computing history concentrate on Apple/IBM/Microsoft, and conviently forget about the C=64, the home PC which truely changed the world, and one of the most popular machines ever created.
I thought anime was just a fad during ROBOTECH. I thought I was the only one who worshipped at the altar of Star Blazers.
And this is back in the day when you couldn't get anime at the local Blockbuster, when the only way to see anime was to have a friend (or a friend of a friend of friend) send you copies of tapes that originated in Japan.
We sat in darkended rooms watching 10th gen copies of tapes that were so blurry by that time you could barely see the characters or hear the sound. Just look up the history of the CFO (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) for that bit of madness.
Yeah, anime is just a fad, that has lasted 30+ years so far in this country alone, with no sign of abating. Anime is now glutting the animation market, you can barely find a cartoon on TV or in the video stores that *isn't* anime or anime-based, or anime looking.
Cartoon Network, to their credit, is producing a lot of animation with a variety of styles, and much of it is quite good. But, their action-oriented stuff is generally anime-looking (teen titans, justice league, etc. etc.)
Star Blazers will have it's 25th anniversary IN THIS COUNTRY (the USA), in September. That's Star Blazers, not Space Cruiser Yamato.
And, despite the crude looking animation, it's still one of my favorite shows, one of the hallmarks of anime everywhere, and still a fairly strong seller on DVD because of the power of its storyline and characters.
Yeah it's fad. A Fad might be the current hupla surrounding the re-release of GATCHAMAN, which you might have seen as Battle of the Planets (or Eagle Riders or G-Force). I saw the DVD preview for that recently, and jumped out of my seat.
But anime appears to be here to stay. Consider the fans of Astroboy, now aging into their 50's, who are still fans of Astroboy, or who, at least, can fondly remember the opening song.
And what would your childhood have been without Speed Racer, currently enjoying a breif stint doing Geico Commercials (because everyone remembers the show!).
Yeah, anime is a fad. It's a fad that has already lasted an entire generation, and kids who've been fed a steady diet of Pokemon are now turning to Love Hina (as my nephew is), and then soon Evangelion.
I'd dropped out of the anime scene until I came across something called "Big O" on Cartoon Network. That show was so friggin amazing that I became an anime fan again, practically overnight.
I'm in my 40's. Please, tell me this is a fad. Because so far, it's outlasted my entire wardrobe.
You would think smart people would be running the USA, but we invaded Iraq anyway... And yet these smart people continue to defend that stupid idea too.
Wouldn't a better example be a group-think by the board of directors that brings in a "rockstar" CEO to burn the company to the ground because usually, this CEO has no vision beyond the next quarter?
Consider the case of HP -- the company was basically dis-assembled in the name of trying to become more effecient.
Rare is the case where a bigwig actually DOES turn the company around and make a comeback (Steve Jobs is a good example here, but Steve is few and far between).
And yet, boards of directors make the same bad mistakes, again and again. Why is that?
The government will protect the consumer -- because the government wisely understands that the people need their bread and circuses without restrictions.
Imagine the problem Rome would have had with the populace in the last days of the empire, if they had restricted how and when and why you could see the Christians being eaten by the lion.
Frankly the MPAA doesn't realise what a huge problem they are creating for themselves. They think they are powerful, but ultimately, the public is more powerful -- all the money in the world can't stop a mob from over-running you, and, to put it in modern terms, the moment such restrictions would go into effect, the MPAA would be up to their eyeballs in class-action suits.
The minute joe average notices that he can no longer watch his recorded copy of "Survivor" Season 12, which he missed because he was on vacation, there will be action taken.
There's nothing worse than a lot of angry people all looking for their pound of flesh -- and if you're the cause of that anger, you will be taken out, regardless of law, money, power, or even soldiers.
The only thing keeping the general populace in its place is the TV pacifier -- which, if taken away, will signifigantly affect the ability of the government to keep the people where they are.
If the MPAA gets its way, the government may let the populace rise up and direct their riot toward the MPAA itself, -- replacing broadcasters and content providers with "government sponsered free TV".
If everything you say is insightful and you are saying you are insightful, then you are funny, but if everything you say is insightful, then you are being funny, but insightful... help help, Norman, Co-ordinate!!!
Star Wars is a 20 Billion Dollar industry, all told, between movies, DVD, toys, merchandising tie-ins, commercials for those tie-ins, etc., etc., -- Nobody connected with it wants the gravy train to end. It's buying them a new car, a new house and a new yacht, and a new trophy wife.
And when Lucas' kids inherit the franchise, and poor old George is dead, they will milk that cow until it dies. They will want a new Masteratti and mansion every year. People who are connected to the family will want to milk that cow to keep their incomes and lifestyles.
Trust me. There will be a new Star Wars movie every Summer, every year, until people stop going to them and they no longer generate profit.
Think about how long the Broccoli's have milked the James Bond franchise. The movies get worse and worse, but as long as people hand over money to see the latest crap-fest, they will keep making new crap-fests to take your money.
I guarantee we'll be chatting about Star Wars Episode 20 in a decade or so...
Actually I trhink we're in the middle of Brazil, not 1984, what, with all the nonsense about terrorists. But, 6 of 1, half dozen of the other. However, to correct you, there was *NO* hero to come in and save the day in 1984 (or Brazil), in the end of both, the protagonist loses.
I'm sure you're thinking of Harry Tuttle from Brazil, but, that was a dream sequence.
Simply make a film about an evil company that creates an OS add-in called "Doublespace", stealing the idea from a company that used to produce a product called "Stacker".
And maybe then, Microsoft may learn the meaning of the word "Irony".
But then again, this is Microsoft.
And have the people working for the evil company speak in 1984's "Newspeak" for an interesting effect, but that would assume a literacy level that's probably not ubiquitous.
After all, most people don't get the joke regarding the name of the publisher of 2600 magazine. Oy.
This would be the equivalent of forcing our phone system to continue to support the telegraph at the expense of voice communications because a few people still used it.
The phone system still supports rotary dial because a few people still use it.
The average person doesn't understand what digital TV or High Definition TV is. Most people who have digital cable or satelite think they have High Definition service.
Even worse is that the average person who just spent $2500 on a plasma TV thinks he has HDTV. Many, *MANY* plasma sets are not "HDTV", but are merketed as such, which has confused the consumer even more.
The electronics manufacturers have taken advantage of people's ignorance, the same way that car manufacturers sell 2-wheel-drive SUV's and market them as off-road vehicles.
What really sucks is that people who just spent $2500 on a plasma TV will again have to spend $5000 for a HDTV. $7500 over the course of a few years, all to watch "Survivor"...
Man, the networks should pay citizens to watch -- it's just not justifiable to spend that kind of money for shitty TV programs.
My brother only gets broadcast also, and he's a white suburbanite.
However, I can imagine the riots when poor urbanites call up their TV stations en masse to complian about the lack of TV service, only to find out they aren't being served anymore because they won't buy cable TV.
I can imagine also that a lot of Cars with built in TV sets are also going to have a problem (kinda hard to get cable TV in your car). Sure, they all have DVD players, but still.
There are people out there barely getting by - foodstamps, welfare, social security, etc. These people are not going to pony up extra cash for TV, they will resort to stealing some else's TV set first that works.
I see alot of busted up Circuit City's in the future.
As someone who has watched a Digital signal and an analog signal, I can say that Digital quality is WORSE than analog when viewed through a NTSC set. Things may be different under HDTV, but when viewed through "standard" TV sets, the digital signal is inferior.
Consider a scene that is mostly a single color, such as characters under moonlight (mostly blueish) or a submarine action movie where they are about in the murky depths (also mostly blueish scene).
In an analog signal, the light to dark blue is graduated evenly, while the digital signal shows banding and other digital artifacts, because there aren't enough "blue" colors in the digital compression scheme.
I've also watched many episodes of StarGate SG1 under digital where the Audio and Video were out of sync, and it wound up looking like a bad quicktime movie played on an underpowered computer and the characters lips flapped, but the voices were just a fraction of a second out of sync -- it still looked really weird.
Maybe it's just my shitty provider (comcast), but damn, digital is so bad, it makes me want to throw out my TV.
I dare every slashdotter who reads this to copy the story VERBATIM and resubmit it as a new story! That'll teach those editors (well, not really, who are we kidding, they are too stupid to know!)...
Isn't AOL considered a "Common Carrier" and therefore immune from prosecution because they claimed that they do not, will not and cannot monitor the content going through their "wires". This was back in the days when ISPs were getting shut down if they allowed child porn through their servers or something like that -- and the bill came through that said that ISPs were responsible for the content of their users, unless they were Common Carriers such as AT&T and AOL (and any other big company that could afford to buy a Senator).
Now here comes along AOL saying that they WILL monitor and so, I have to ask, if we send child porn through IM, doesn't this mean that if AOL lets it go through, AOL can be taken down for allowing trafficing of child porn because they have given up their common carrier status?
Actually, I recall reading in a book about industrial espionage that we sold off most of our aerospace machining equipment to the Chinese.
It's not the cost of building the product that's prohibitive, it's the cost of rebulding the factory to make the product that's prohibitive.
So basicaly, we "can't" make a Saturn V again simply because those factories no longer exist. Sure, the know-how is still here, but the fabrication plants are not.
We could all go back to Tube radios again as well, as they sound better than chip radios, but, there aren't enough factories making tubes anymore to enable a radio factory to produce those kinds of numbers.
This case seems to be coming down to what's a journalist and who's not, and journalists have 1st amendment rights and others don't.
May I say right now "WTF?"
2600 Magazine claims often that they are protected by the constitution because they print on PAPER. If they were a website or an electronically distrubuted newsletter (like the famous PHRACK case), they would have been shut down long ago by the government or by corporations that don't want them publishing how to break through security.
So the question you need to start asking yourself is, are you willing to take that first step towards all censorship to protect Apple's trade secrets?
Because once you do, security flaws in windows could be deemed trade secrets.
Is it okay for the Paparattzi (sorry for the spelling) to go through the trash of celebrities to find some juicy tidbit of information to publish in some rag like the Inquirer? I mean, that's for money too, so let's not knock Think Secret for trying to make a buck -- they are just like every other publication or "news organization" in that they want to get the salacious info first, because that's how they make money.
What's the difference between revealing that Apple's going to make a Mac Mini or that Michael Jackson has relations with little boys?
What's the difference between revealing that Apple's going to come out with a iPod flavor that you can taste, and revealing that Dick Cheney has stolen 12 Billion Dollars of your money by funnelling it through Halliburton?
Isn't all of this "news"? And therefore, isn't any organzation, no matter how fly-by-night, that REPORTS THE NEWS, a "news organzation"?
And who's going to deceide what is and isn't news?
Because if you're going to read about it, if you have a hunger to know, if you're going to visit the sites that tell you about Apple's upcoming products, Windows flaws, Michael Jackson's sexual orientation, Martha Stewart's jailtime, Dick Cheney's thefts, or how to break into Home Depot's mainframe, then publications, websites, booklets, and other printed and digital material will be created to meet that need.
If you don't like it, then stop reading.
But don't legislate the rest of us into not reading because that, my friend, is censorship, and that's a road you don't want to travel.
Forget it, the editors don't read the comments, hell the editors don't read SLASHDOT...
Just look at the number of story dupes, the opinion pieces submitted as news stories, and the "worse than awful" (if I may quote Starbuck), sentence structure, grammar, spelling and general mangling of the English language that comes FROM the so-called "editors".
You might as well ask a religious fanatic to have a logical and thoughtful discussion regarding the non-existence of God.
Why can't individuals copyright their own personal information (name, address, SS#, phone number) which all combined create a unique ID, and then sue any company holding that information with a violation of the DMCA?
Remember that under the provisions of the DMCA, they can't REVERSE ENGINEER, which is exactly how these credit reporting agencies gather information about you.
I think it's high time individuals treated themselves like corporations. Corp's are protected under the New America, people are not. Therefore, I advise you to incorporate yourself and then you'll gain new rights under this brave new world we are existing in.
Slashdot Mirror
IIRC, the C64 was selling for $179 towards the end of its lifespan.
This is due to the volume of machines Commodore was stamping out. There's a reason everyone seems to have a C=64 in their closet. Commodore sold more than 33 million of the little buggers, more than ANY OTHER computer model ever made, even to this day. The only other machine that even comes close was the Apple II, which sold for 12 years continuously with only minor modifications.
The sad irony is that most books which talk about the home computer revolution in computing history concentrate on Apple/IBM/Microsoft, and conviently forget about the C=64, the home PC which truely changed the world, and one of the most popular machines ever created.
And yes, I still have mine.
Will anime last? Will anime last?
Are you kidding?
I thought anime was just a fad during ROBOTECH. I thought I was the only one who worshipped at the altar of Star Blazers.
And this is back in the day when you couldn't get anime at the local Blockbuster, when the only way to see anime was to have a friend (or a friend of a friend of friend) send you copies of tapes that originated in Japan.
We sat in darkended rooms watching 10th gen copies of tapes that were so blurry by that time you could barely see the characters or hear the sound. Just look up the history of the CFO (Cartoon Fantasy Organization) for that bit of madness.
Yeah, anime is just a fad, that has lasted 30+ years so far in this country alone, with no sign of abating. Anime is now glutting the animation market, you can barely find a cartoon on TV or in the video stores that *isn't* anime or anime-based, or anime looking.
Cartoon Network, to their credit, is producing a lot of animation with a variety of styles, and much of it is quite good. But, their action-oriented stuff is generally anime-looking (teen titans, justice league, etc. etc.)
Star Blazers will have it's 25th anniversary IN THIS COUNTRY (the USA), in September. That's Star Blazers, not Space Cruiser Yamato.
And, despite the crude looking animation, it's still one of my favorite shows, one of the hallmarks of anime everywhere, and still a fairly strong seller on DVD because of the power of its storyline and characters.
Yeah it's fad. A Fad might be the current hupla surrounding the re-release of GATCHAMAN, which you might have seen as Battle of the Planets (or Eagle Riders or G-Force). I saw the DVD preview for that recently, and jumped out of my seat.
But anime appears to be here to stay. Consider the fans of Astroboy, now aging into their 50's, who are still fans of Astroboy, or who, at least, can fondly remember the opening song.
And what would your childhood have been without Speed Racer, currently enjoying a breif stint doing Geico Commercials (because everyone remembers the show!).
Yeah, anime is a fad. It's a fad that has already lasted an entire generation, and kids who've been fed a steady diet of Pokemon are now turning to Love Hina (as my nephew is), and then soon Evangelion.
I'd dropped out of the anime scene until I came across something called "Big O" on Cartoon Network. That show was so friggin amazing that I became an anime fan again, practically overnight.
I'm in my 40's. Please, tell me this is a fad. Because so far, it's outlasted my entire wardrobe.
Sounds like it should be one of those Tom Clancey videogames for the Xbox where you walk around with night-vision goggles and shoot people.
You would think smart people would be running the USA, but we invaded Iraq anyway... And yet these smart people continue to defend that stupid idea too.
Wouldn't a better example be a group-think by the board of directors that brings in a "rockstar" CEO to burn the company to the ground because usually, this CEO has no vision beyond the next quarter?
Consider the case of HP -- the company was basically dis-assembled in the name of trying to become more effecient.
Rare is the case where a bigwig actually DOES turn the company around and make a comeback (Steve Jobs is a good example here, but Steve is few and far between).
And yet, boards of directors make the same bad mistakes, again and again. Why is that?
The government will protect the consumer -- because the government wisely understands that the people need their bread and circuses without restrictions.
Imagine the problem Rome would have had with the populace in the last days of the empire, if they had restricted how and when and why you could see the Christians being eaten by the lion.
Frankly the MPAA doesn't realise what a huge problem they are creating for themselves. They think they are powerful, but ultimately, the public is more powerful -- all the money in the world can't stop a mob from over-running you, and, to put it in modern terms, the moment such restrictions would go into effect, the MPAA would be up to their eyeballs in class-action suits.
The minute joe average notices that he can no longer watch his recorded copy of "Survivor" Season 12, which he missed because he was on vacation, there will be action taken.
There's nothing worse than a lot of angry people all looking for their pound of flesh -- and if you're the cause of that anger, you will be taken out, regardless of law, money, power, or even soldiers.
The only thing keeping the general populace in its place is the TV pacifier -- which, if taken away, will signifigantly affect the ability of the government to keep the people where they are.
If the MPAA gets its way, the government may let the populace rise up and direct their riot toward the MPAA itself, -- replacing broadcasters and content providers with "government sponsered free TV".
If everything you say is insightful and you are saying you are insightful, then you are funny, but if everything you say is insightful, then you are being funny, but insightful... help help, Norman, Co-ordinate!!!
Guys, please... WAKE UP.
This is about MONEY... Lots and lots of money.
Star Wars is a 20 Billion Dollar industry, all told, between movies, DVD, toys, merchandising tie-ins, commercials for those tie-ins, etc., etc., -- Nobody connected with it wants the gravy train to end. It's buying them a new car, a new house and a new yacht, and a new trophy wife.
And when Lucas' kids inherit the franchise, and poor old George is dead, they will milk that cow until it dies. They will want a new Masteratti and mansion every year. People who are connected to the family will want to milk that cow to keep their incomes and lifestyles.
Trust me. There will be a new Star Wars movie every Summer, every year, until people stop going to them and they no longer generate profit.
Think about how long the Broccoli's have milked the James Bond franchise. The movies get worse and worse, but as long as people hand over money to see the latest crap-fest, they will keep making new crap-fests to take your money.
I guarantee we'll be chatting about Star Wars Episode 20 in a decade or so...
Actually I trhink we're in the middle of Brazil, not 1984, what, with all the nonsense about terrorists. But, 6 of 1, half dozen of the other. However, to correct you, there was *NO* hero to come in and save the day in 1984 (or Brazil), in the end of both, the protagonist loses.
I'm sure you're thinking of Harry Tuttle from Brazil, but, that was a dream sequence.
Simply make a film about an evil company that creates an OS add-in called "Doublespace", stealing the idea from a company that used to produce a product called "Stacker".
And maybe then, Microsoft may learn the meaning of the word "Irony".
But then again, this is Microsoft.
And have the people working for the evil company speak in 1984's "Newspeak" for an interesting effect, but that would assume a literacy level that's probably not ubiquitous.
After all, most people don't get the joke regarding the name of the publisher of 2600 magazine. Oy.
I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe. -- Arthur Dent.
This would be the equivalent of forcing our phone system to continue to support the telegraph at the expense of voice communications because a few people still used it.
The phone system still supports rotary dial because a few people still use it.
Or should everyone be forced to use Touch Tone?
The average person doesn't understand what digital TV or High Definition TV is. Most people who have digital cable or satelite think they have High Definition service.
Even worse is that the average person who just spent $2500 on a plasma TV thinks he has HDTV. Many, *MANY* plasma sets are not "HDTV", but are merketed as such, which has confused the consumer even more.
The electronics manufacturers have taken advantage of people's ignorance, the same way that car manufacturers sell 2-wheel-drive SUV's and market them as off-road vehicles.
What really sucks is that people who just spent $2500 on a plasma TV will again have to spend $5000 for a HDTV. $7500 over the course of a few years, all to watch "Survivor"...
Man, the networks should pay citizens to watch -- it's just not justifiable to spend that kind of money for shitty TV programs.
My brother only gets broadcast also, and he's a white suburbanite.
However, I can imagine the riots when poor urbanites call up their TV stations en masse to complian about the lack of TV service, only to find out they aren't being served anymore because they won't buy cable TV.
I can imagine also that a lot of Cars with built in TV sets are also going to have a problem (kinda hard to get cable TV in your car). Sure, they all have DVD players, but still.
There are people out there barely getting by - foodstamps, welfare, social security, etc. These people are not going to pony up extra cash for TV, they will resort to stealing some else's TV set first that works.
I see alot of busted up Circuit City's in the future.
As someone who has watched a Digital signal and an analog signal, I can say that Digital quality is WORSE than analog when viewed through a NTSC set. Things may be different under HDTV, but when viewed through "standard" TV sets, the digital signal is inferior.
Consider a scene that is mostly a single color, such as characters under moonlight (mostly blueish) or a submarine action movie where they are about in the murky depths (also mostly blueish scene).
In an analog signal, the light to dark blue is graduated evenly, while the digital signal shows banding and other digital artifacts, because there aren't enough "blue" colors in the digital compression scheme.
I've also watched many episodes of StarGate SG1 under digital where the Audio and Video were out of sync, and it wound up looking like a bad quicktime movie played on an underpowered computer and the characters lips flapped, but the voices were just a fraction of a second out of sync -- it still looked really weird.
Maybe it's just my shitty provider (comcast), but damn, digital is so bad, it makes me want to throw out my TV.
I dare every slashdotter who reads this to copy the story VERBATIM and resubmit it as a new story! That'll teach those editors (well, not really, who are we kidding, they are too stupid to know!)...
THIS STORY IS A DUPE.....
Why do you people waste our time?
Do you slashdot editors really get PAID to be this stupid!!!!? WHY CAN'T I GET A JOB LIKE THAT?
Dear Mr. Protocol;
It is unfortunate that most slashdotters don't remember SUNExpert Magazine, and those that do, probably never read it.
However, those articles were pretty funny, although sometimes it took forever to get to the punchline.
Keep on Truckin' Dude!
OMG! That was the best thing I've seen in weeks! Firstly, that took some time to come up with and it really works to explain the whole thing.
It was done with humor, decent music and good animation -- in short, Schoolhouse Rock style and it works!
How do I get that on tape to show other people?
Wasn't that a Punk Rock Band from the 80's with Wendy O'Williams?
Isn't AOL considered a "Common Carrier" and therefore immune from prosecution because they claimed that they do not, will not and cannot monitor the content going through their "wires". This was back in the days when ISPs were getting shut down if they allowed child porn through their servers or something like that -- and the bill came through that said that ISPs were responsible for the content of their users, unless they were Common Carriers such as AT&T and AOL (and any other big company that could afford to buy a Senator).
Now here comes along AOL saying that they WILL monitor and so, I have to ask, if we send child porn through IM, doesn't this mean that if AOL lets it go through, AOL can be taken down for allowing trafficing of child porn because they have given up their common carrier status?
Actually, I recall reading in a book about industrial espionage that we sold off most of our aerospace machining equipment to the Chinese.
It's not the cost of building the product that's prohibitive, it's the cost of rebulding the factory to make the product that's prohibitive.
So basicaly, we "can't" make a Saturn V again simply because those factories no longer exist. Sure, the know-how is still here, but the fabrication plants are not.
We could all go back to Tube radios again as well, as they sound better than chip radios, but, there aren't enough factories making tubes anymore to enable a radio factory to produce those kinds of numbers.
This case seems to be coming down to what's a journalist and who's not, and journalists have 1st amendment rights and others don't.
May I say right now "WTF?"
2600 Magazine claims often that they are protected by the constitution because they print on PAPER. If they were a website or an electronically distrubuted newsletter (like the famous PHRACK case), they would have been shut down long ago by the government or by corporations that don't want them publishing how to break through security.
So the question you need to start asking yourself is, are you willing to take that first step towards all censorship to protect Apple's trade secrets?
Because once you do, security flaws in windows could be deemed trade secrets.
Is it okay for the Paparattzi (sorry for the spelling) to go through the trash of celebrities to find some juicy tidbit of information to publish in some rag like the Inquirer? I mean, that's for money too, so let's not knock Think Secret for trying to make a buck -- they are just like every other publication or "news organization" in that they want to get the salacious info first, because that's how they make money.
What's the difference between revealing that Apple's going to make a Mac Mini or that Michael Jackson has relations with little boys?
What's the difference between revealing that Apple's going to come out with a iPod flavor that you can taste, and revealing that Dick Cheney has stolen 12 Billion Dollars of your money by funnelling it through Halliburton?
Isn't all of this "news"? And therefore, isn't any organzation, no matter how fly-by-night, that REPORTS THE NEWS, a "news organzation"?
And who's going to deceide what is and isn't news?
Because if you're going to read about it, if you have a hunger to know, if you're going to visit the sites that tell you about Apple's upcoming products, Windows flaws, Michael Jackson's sexual orientation, Martha Stewart's jailtime, Dick Cheney's thefts, or how to break into Home Depot's mainframe, then publications, websites, booklets, and other printed and digital material will be created to meet that need.
If you don't like it, then stop reading.
But don't legislate the rest of us into not reading because that, my friend, is censorship, and that's a road you don't want to travel.
Forget it, the editors don't read the comments, hell the editors don't read SLASHDOT...
Just look at the number of story dupes, the opinion pieces submitted as news stories, and the "worse than awful" (if I may quote Starbuck), sentence structure, grammar, spelling and general mangling of the English language that comes FROM the so-called "editors".
You might as well ask a religious fanatic to have a logical and thoughtful discussion regarding the non-existence of God.
Why can't individuals copyright their own personal information (name, address, SS#, phone number) which all combined create a unique ID, and then sue any company holding that information with a violation of the DMCA?
Remember that under the provisions of the DMCA, they can't REVERSE ENGINEER, which is exactly how these credit reporting agencies gather information about you.
I think it's high time individuals treated themselves like corporations. Corp's are protected under the New America, people are not. Therefore, I advise you to incorporate yourself and then you'll gain new rights under this brave new world we are existing in.
TTYL
(name withheld to prevent identity theft)