Every customer I have seen using Notes is switching to Exchange+Sharepoint.
The entire Fortune 1000 is shifting to Exchange+Sharepoint.
The biggest argument for open sourcing Lotus Notes is that it isn't selling anymore so IBM has a strong incentive to drop product support, despite the large install base.
I haven't heard anyone complaining that Fallout 3 isn't true enough to the original. In fact, one of my big criticisms with the game is how slavishly it follows the conventions of the original games, to the point where it feels like a 3D version of Fallout 2. The plot, monsters, equipment, etc. are pretty much all straight from Fallout 2. Combat is a little bit different. And many of the levels are different (mainly due to 2D vs. 3D conventions). That's about it.
OTOH, many people considered Fallout 2 to be the best PC RPG of all time. Making a 3D version of that game would make a lot of fans happy.
I'd love to see a Planescape: Torment remake (the best PC RPG IMHO). I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There are no "story rankings" on/. stories and never have been. Nor have you even been able to organize comments from highest-ranked to lowest ranked.
You can still open a new tab with all the comments if you use the old comment system. Ditto your complain about the mods. It sounds like you should quit whining and switch back to the old comment system.
I still use/. because the comments on this site are pretty good relative to what I've seen on other popular sites like Digg. If you've got a site to recommend that is as good as/. in terms of comments AND (this is really important) is as popular or nearly as popular as/. I'd love to hear it. I've been looking for a LONG time and I haven't found anything better. I used to use Usenet until the spam got too much. Then I switched to eGroups until Yahoo! ran them into the ground by slathering everything with advertising and breaking the UI. Since then I've been using/. because nothing has emerged to beat it. "New" discussion forums like digg and YouTube are crude and incredibly awful. From my perspective, it looks like everyone has given up and their sites are collections of vanity pages news listings, not discussion sites.
My website is basically an aggregation of local news sources from all over our area and encompasses some 15 different local news sources.
So you're a thief.
People seem to want that and while I wish I wasn't leeching I just don't have the budget, time or staff (I'm one person doing this in 1.5 hours a day) to "report" on stuff.
Exactly, you're a thief. The real work that newspapers do is REPORTING, actually calling or talking to principals in question, doing investigations etc. EVERYTHING else the newspaper does from classifieds to comics to sports scores is intended to support those tasks. If you're reprinting the actual work (the reporting) without reprinting the advertising and additional bullshit YOU ARE STEALING and YOU, and you personally, are going to put them out of business.
I'm looking at the front page of your site right now and it's about beer and stories ripped out of the local police blotter, hardly incisive journalism there. OTHO, when you venture into original reporting (as you did with the superintendent story) the site becomes non-crappy.
Is any of this sinking in? If you want to run a news site you have to do your own reporting, PERIOD, otherwise you're at least as bad as the Pirate Bay or similar sites. If you don't have time to do much original reporting, ONLY do the original reporting. There is no rule saying that your site has to be updated every day. If you want to drive more traffic to your site see if you can get your stories LINKED on other local news sources.
Personally, I would STOP and join a larger news organization like IndyMedia. If there's no IndyMedia site in your area you can start one.
I should point out that Apple's gains are very impressive. It's just that Windows Mobile has been around a LOT longer than the iPhone and has a much larger install base because of that. Currently the market is dominated by Nokia, not Microsoft, and certainly not Apple who has little impact outside the US. The previous smartphone OS leader, Palm, has almost fallen off the map.
First, just because Gardner says it doesn't make it gospel. Gardner DOES blackmail companies to include them in their surveys and they have a bias towards US companies. I suspect this survey basically excludes the Asian market. So the results are highly suspect.
Second, the article on Edible Apple is highly misleading in implying the marketshare of the iPhone is greater than that of Windows Mobile. It is not. The marketshare of PHONES SOLD IN Q308 ONLY is 12.9% vs. MS' 11.1% in a quarter when Apple introduced the 3G and Windows Mobile had no significant product launches. Many people were waiting for the HTC Touch Pro.
It is a fantasy to suppose that you can successfully perform Sisyphus-like task of systematically recopying your data to new media and formats.
Um, no.
I transferred data from my Commodore 64 (mostly txt files and images) on 3.5" floppies to my old XT's RLL and the MFM hard drive and from there to a SCSI hard drive on my 386 and so forth right up to the Dual-Core system I have today.
In recent years I've got a ton of archived software and other crap, but that's not personal data. My personal data is a lot smaller and so could easily transition across these formats. This guy says he's got 500 GB of personal data so I suspect most of that must be home movies because I can't imagine much else would eat up that kid of space.
And there are a lot bigger problems than hardware compatibility. I've got original Quicken and TurboTax files. Think you can open them in modern versions? Think again. That's WHY I have all that archived software and (increasingly) VMs to run it in.
Umm... no, they aren't. Some level of emotional turmoil is normal for teenagers, but depression - actual depression! - and suicide attempts aren't.
Bullshit. Virtually everyone I've ever met has reported suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide or violence or both. Read biographies. Of anyone. Virtually everyone reports depression, frustration, etc. Read some ancient literature sometime. You'll find a lot of teenagers doing a lot of crazy stuff.
Teenagers have ALWAYS been associated with emotional turmoil which VERY OFTEN leads to violence and bad behavior. If you didn't do something crazy that nearly got you killed as a teenager, YOU'RE the unusual one.
However, if you are basing your statements off the fact that antidepressants are carelessly over-prescribed in some cases, and completely unnecessary in other cases, without knowing for fact that this was actually the case in Megan's case, then I postulate that you don't actually know enough about what was going on to blame the parents for anything.
No. His statement was a lot more profound. He was questioning the wisdom of EVER perscribing powerful psychotropic drugs to teenagers who are acting normally (depression, violent behavior, and suicide attempts are normal for teenagers) given their brains are not yet fully developed.
Many people do not realize that not only were most antidepressants not tested on teenagers, but many of them weren't even tested for depression. They were developed to treat other, more severe, mental issues and depression is an off-label use. Many people are stunned to hear that drugs like Paxil and Zoloft were not clinically tested for depression. And there is a huge difference between clinical depression (crying uncontrollably 24/7) and the very mild depression these drugs are generally prescribed to treat. They only tested them on people with serious depression.
This is not to say long term studies haven't been done. A few have (you can count them on the fingers of one hand, I think there's 4 now). And the results aren't promising. Most importantly, they tend to show that taking antidepressansts does not have to seem have much of a positive impact on behavior when compared to doing nothing.
I think associating SSRIs with suicide as a side effect is a bit of a red herring. I think the bigger problem is that parents have a child with serious depression, pump them up with drugs, and consider that "doing something" instead of dealing with actual issues. Like the fact that you're a lousy parent.
No it's not, there are significant architectural changes.
I'm amazed at the willful ignorance here. You know better than this Chris.
In the past, new console generations have seen MASSIVE architectural changes with the goal of dramatically increasing CPU and graphical power. PS1, PS2, and PS3 aren't even remotely similar. XBOX and XBOX360 are dramatically different. So was NES, SNES, N64, GameCube. And that's the POINT.
The wii does not represent a major improvement over the GameCube in terms of CPU time or graphical features. It uses a virtually identical motherboard to the GameCube with a faster CPU and a new GPU with (only) 2 new rendering pipelines and the same features. These are the kinds of differences we see between a high-end card and a mid-range card in the GPU market. And nobody would claim those represent different architectures.
Sorry, the wii isn't simply NOT a significant hardware upgrade over the GameCube. Not compared to EVERY PREVIOUS CONSOLE GENERATION. It IS fairly accurate to say the wii is 8-year-old hardware because it has capabilities similar to game consoles released at that time (it's basically a wash with the original XBOX).
I know that in certain states, they are largely unenforceable when it comes to individual end users.
Virtually every novel provision of every EULA that has been legislated has been tossed out. Corporations do not get to create new law at a whim in EULAs.
This is just silly, no contract is required to be invalidated just because one paragraph is invalid.
I'm arguing that the INSTRUMENT of "pack-in licenses" exists solely for fraudulent purposes and should be banned outright. All "pack-in licenses" should be banned and all proper contracts should require written informed consent.
I'd also argue it represents an unreasonable burden on consumers to have to individually legislate complex legal contracts for every purchase. The purpose of the government (in part) is to moderate the transactions between consumers and business using common regulations and pack-in licenses are an attempted end-run around that.
And you're wrong. If certain provisions of a contract are found to be illegal and the terms of the contract cannot be met without those provisions than then entire contract is void. Pack-in licenses are written as seas of sub-claims, paragraphs are written in such a way as they don't refer to other paragraphs, specifically to make them resistant to the court rulings that invalidate individual provisions.
They are selling computers with the Mac OS preinstalled in direct violation of the license on the box.
That's a "pack-in license". "Pack-in licenses" are only valid to the extent they are consistent with existing law. Any novel provisions are generally invalid. So, at best, most pack-in licenses are simply a restatement of applicable law.
Also, Pystar has to hack the installer in order to get it to run.... While fairly simple, it's still a Hack and what Pystar is doing to get the OS installed.
Are you arguing this counts as "circumventing copy protection" i.e. a DMCA violation? Because that's the only applicable law here. I think Apple has a (weak) DMCA case here, but that's all they've really got.
Also, I didn't used the word "Pirate" so I don't know why you brought it up.
I brought it up because violating imaginary laws isn't "illegal". Pirating software is illegal. Companies do not get to create new law just by writing it down in the license. I'm sure they really wish this was true, and corporate lawyers often argue it's true because they'd argue the sky was green if it made them money.
IN the same reply you pointed out that it IS possible to restrict the growing and manufacturing of drugs and then say it is impossible.
There's no reason to believe their program would have lasted without aid from the USA. The United States PAID the Tailban cash money to destroy poppy fields. The moment the US stopped paying they would have increased cultivation. Everybody needs money and Afghanistan has no other exports.
Look at South America. We paid the Columbian government billions to eliminate the FARC, a communist group producing much of the cocaine in Columbia, and they've been largely successful. The FARC is dying. Has cocaine production go down? Hell no! It's gone UP. And that's because the FARC drug producers have been replaced with right-wing government-backed drug producers (the same people were paid your tax dollars to eliminate the FARC).
No, it was the OEMs. The OEMs said that they were going to flat-out ignore the Vista badge rules unless Microsoft provided branding for non-Areo systems. In other words, they were just going to put the "Vista Ready" badge on all their systems whether or not they could run Aero. If they could install Vista they considered that system "ready to run Vista". The OEMs were very worried that with Vista available nobody would want to buy ANY system, even a $500 entry-level box, running the "old" XP operating system. Especially if that box couldn't ever be upgraded to Vista.
The logos morphed from one "Vista Ready" badge which meant the PC could run Aero to a "Vista Capable" badge which meant it couldn't run Aero and the "Vista Home Premium Ready" badge for those PCs that COULD run Aero. The two badges are virtually identical and this both confused and disappointed users.
So MS really don't have a choice on this one other than discarding the certification system.
Just like the issue with drivers, this isn't MS' fault. OEMs had the driver kits over 5 years before Vista launched. They had FIVE YEARS, in some cases as many as EIGHT, to update their drivers. This often amounted to adding exactly one line of code to the XP driver. Of course, they'd still have to QA the new driver and many OEMs were too lazy to do that so they just left the device "unsupported".
No one is forced to enter into the contract with Apple, but if they want to use Apple's software they will be legally obligated to abide by that contract.
No, they're not. EULAs and pack-in licenses are generally invalid. Once you're bought it, you can do what you want with it within the restrictions of VALID law:
You can't sell or give away copies, only the original (copyright).
You can't remove the copy-protection features (DMCA, huge gray area).
You can't use the branding of the software in other products (trademark).
Other than that, you can do whatever the hell you want.
You might notice there's nothing in there about contract law. That's because EULAs really aren't valid contracts. Every EULA that has been substantially legislated has had ALL of it's novel provisions tossed out. IOW, a EULA is only valid if it's provisions are completely redundant with existing law which makes the EULA itself completely redundant and meaningless.
The only reason they exist at all is because stupid American judges refuse to follow the law and instead of invalidating the entirety of contracts when some terms are found to be illegal, they only invalidate those specific terms, even if those terms make up the ENTIRETY of the contract. In fact, the ONLY purpose of EULAs is to try to sneak in these illegal terms.
This is hideously annoying because it means plaintiffs have to legislate the same terms over and over again instead of the courts just invalidating EULAs as the scam that they are.
Apple gets bad rep and no financial recompense from Psystar's business model. Why is this something that should be allowed?
Psystar isn't at fault for user stupidity.
Every computer, including those from Apple, is a collection of components from different manufacturers.
You buy a Dell computer. That computer contains a MSI video card with a chipset made by Nvidia running on a Microsoft operating system. When the video card has a problem, who do you call?
DELL.
In the same way you call Apple for problems with your Nvidia video card.
So these users are supposed to call Psystar. It's not Psystar's fault of their users call Apple, any more that it's Dell's fault it's users call Microsoft.
And Apple CAN get financial recompense from Psystar's model. Psystar pays retail for the copies of OSX they include and Apple COULD charge Psystar users for additional support in the same way they charge Apple users for additional support.
And I'm not sure how much "You're not supported at all, fuck off." really costs Apple. That's they're current support model for Psystar users. If anything they're saving a bit of money because they provide no support of the copies of OSX Psystar provides.
The REAL "cost" to Apple is the loss of a potential sale to a competitor. That's it.
Apple is suing Pystar for selling hardware with a "Hacked version of Apples OS"
This is not accurate and is why the lawsuit raises interesting questions.
Psystar is NOT illegally reselling Apple software or hardware, which is what YOU (and Apple) claimed.
What Psystar is selling is hardware that has the ABILITY to install MacOS (or Linux, or Windows) because they have disabled the security features Apple has implemented in THEIR hardware. They still purchase and install MacOS. Repeat: Psystar IS NOT pirating Apple hardware or software in any sense of the word "pirate".
The closest analogy is probably console "mod chips". Mod chips allow you to play "backed up" (read: duplicate or pirated) game discs and foreign game discs (Japanese vs. North America vs. Europe) on game consoles. IOW, it's a hardware modification that allows you to bypass SOFTWARE restrictions.
They are in pretty clear violation of Apple's trademark by calling their product "Mac". Other than that, the legal issues are murky. Apple isn't arguing under DMCA "circumvention", but that is almost certainly their only legal avenue here.
It is worth noting that Apple is NOT arguing based on the EULA. EULAa are almost certainly not valid in US courts, and Apple isn't going to have their EULA invalidated by trying to defend it.
This would be akin to Microsoft having said Windows only on Intel, using another processor violates the EULA. How far would have that gone?
In fact, the Windows XP EULA says exactly this. Attempting to port Windows XP to another platform (not that you could without the source and lots of help from Microsoft) violates the TOS. Low-level hacking on the kernel is also banned, but I don't think MS has ever sued anyone for shimming the kernel (they'll say "That's a really bad idea." though).
More importantly, Microsoft has strict limitations on running Windows in VMs. Basically, it violates the TOS unless you have an additional license.
That's one reason why we should bring back massive (i.e. 90%) inheritance taxes. We need to force rich aging people to recognize their own finality.
It's a nice idea, but there would be strong (i.e. armed) resistance to the government seizing family homes, so that's not happening. And the really rich can find ways to avoid such a tax. For example but moving most of their assets outside of the United States into a trust that will ignore US tax claims. So you would also basically have to end all foreign investment. Good luck with that.
A much better way at helping the poor is targeted tax cuts at the taxes that affect THEM, notably sales taxes, alcohol and cigarette taxes, and service fees of all kinds. What to help poor people? Cut their DMV registration from $100 to $50. Cut parking and speeding fines 50%. Eliminate toll roads. Eliminate fees on national parks, etc.
A better bet is to raise property taxes, they're a LOT harder to dodge.
The hardware could be used as a very good, inexpensive general purpose computer.
No it wouldn't. The weird architecture means you'd have to recompile every app you wanted to use and very few applications would have the Power4-based CPU as a target, so anything you compiled would be buggy unless you modified lots of source yourself. I've done this, it's a major PITA and isn't worth it. You CAN get entry-level PCs for $350.
The only console that was ever useful as a general purpose computer was the original XBOX, which was architecturally an Intel PC. You could easily run several Linux distributions or Windows on it, and the excellent XBox Media Center, was developed to give hacked Xboxes a real use (as a front end to a MythTV or Windows Media based PVR). Also being based on Intel means a wide range of stable emulators were available. The emulation of Nintendo games on my Xbox is dramatically superior to the emulation offered on the wii, for example.
Our recent meltdown is due to regulations that encouraged bad loans.
Not really. The primary cause of the current meltdown is the changes made to the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 to allow the merging of commercial and investment banks. Until then Glass-Steagall specifically separated them so in case the investment banks became overextended the government would not have to bail them out because home loans and other vital banking services fell on FDIC-insured commercial banks who were BARRED from investment.
The 1999 changes allowed banks to leverage investments against FDIC insured deposits. This allowed them to leverage MUCH more that they could previously, the 30 to 1 rates we see were only possible because of this change to Glass-Steagall. Otherwise it would have been literally impossible for the investment banks to become so heavily leveraged, be it with real estate securities or anything else.
Without this change the financial crisis would not have happened.
The basic premise is that, once you offer money for something, it becomes all about the money and any original reasons you may have had for doing it become moot.
This is obviously false. It precludes the notion of someone being paid to do something they already love doing. Let's say you're a sex addict and you really enjoy sex with strangers (these people are out there), do those feelings magically disappear just because you decide to start getting paid for sex with strangers?
Most well-paid people ENJOY the work they do, that's a big part of WHY they're well-paid.
Hell, go out on a limb and say that being paid for something you love doing will probably INCREASE your love of that thing because it will increase your sense of accomplishment. Getting paid for something is positive feedback.
I challenge you to show me an unregulated market where the government doesn't have its hands in it in some way.
It doesn't exist. What libertarians don't grasp is that it CANNOT exist. Libertarianism is utopianism similar to anarchism (in practice, it's nearly identical) and equally foolish.
Slashdot Mirror
You're the only one that thinks that.
Every customer I have seen using Notes is switching to Exchange+Sharepoint.
The entire Fortune 1000 is shifting to Exchange+Sharepoint.
The biggest argument for open sourcing Lotus Notes is that it isn't selling anymore so IBM has a strong incentive to drop product support, despite the large install base.
I haven't heard anyone complaining that Fallout 3 isn't true enough to the original. In fact, one of my big criticisms with the game is how slavishly it follows the conventions of the original games, to the point where it feels like a 3D version of Fallout 2. The plot, monsters, equipment, etc. are pretty much all straight from Fallout 2. Combat is a little bit different. And many of the levels are different (mainly due to 2D vs. 3D conventions). That's about it.
OTOH, many people considered Fallout 2 to be the best PC RPG of all time. Making a 3D version of that game would make a lot of fans happy.
I'd love to see a Planescape: Torment remake (the best PC RPG IMHO). I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. There are no "story rankings" on /. stories and never have been. Nor have you even been able to organize comments from highest-ranked to lowest ranked.
You can still open a new tab with all the comments if you use the old comment system. Ditto your complain about the mods. It sounds like you should quit whining and switch back to the old comment system.
I still use /. because the comments on this site are pretty good relative to what I've seen on other popular sites like Digg. If you've got a site to recommend that is as good as /. in terms of comments AND (this is really important) is as popular or nearly as popular as /. I'd love to hear it. I've been looking for a LONG time and I haven't found anything better. I used to use Usenet until the spam got too much. Then I switched to eGroups until Yahoo! ran them into the ground by slathering everything with advertising and breaking the UI. Since then I've been using /. because nothing has emerged to beat it. "New" discussion forums like digg and YouTube are crude and incredibly awful. From my perspective, it looks like everyone has given up and their sites are collections of vanity pages news listings, not discussion sites.
My website is basically an aggregation of local news sources from all over our area and encompasses some 15 different local news sources.
So you're a thief.
People seem to want that and while I wish I wasn't leeching I just don't have the budget, time or staff (I'm one person doing this in 1.5 hours a day) to "report" on stuff.
Exactly, you're a thief. The real work that newspapers do is REPORTING, actually calling or talking to principals in question, doing investigations etc. EVERYTHING else the newspaper does from classifieds to comics to sports scores is intended to support those tasks. If you're reprinting the actual work (the reporting) without reprinting the advertising and additional bullshit YOU ARE STEALING and YOU, and you personally, are going to put them out of business.
I'm looking at the front page of your site right now and it's about beer and stories ripped out of the local police blotter, hardly incisive journalism there. OTHO, when you venture into original reporting (as you did with the superintendent story) the site becomes non-crappy.
Is any of this sinking in? If you want to run a news site you have to do your own reporting, PERIOD, otherwise you're at least as bad as the Pirate Bay or similar sites. If you don't have time to do much original reporting, ONLY do the original reporting. There is no rule saying that your site has to be updated every day. If you want to drive more traffic to your site see if you can get your stories LINKED on other local news sources.
Personally, I would STOP and join a larger news organization like IndyMedia. If there's no IndyMedia site in your area you can start one.
I should point out that Apple's gains are very impressive. It's just that Windows Mobile has been around a LOT longer than the iPhone and has a much larger install base because of that. Currently the market is dominated by Nokia, not Microsoft, and certainly not Apple who has little impact outside the US. The previous smartphone OS leader, Palm, has almost fallen off the map.
First, just because Gardner says it doesn't make it gospel. Gardner DOES blackmail companies to include them in their surveys and they have a bias towards US companies. I suspect this survey basically excludes the Asian market. So the results are highly suspect.
Second, the article on Edible Apple is highly misleading in implying the marketshare of the iPhone is greater than that of Windows Mobile. It is not. The marketshare of PHONES SOLD IN Q308 ONLY is 12.9% vs. MS' 11.1% in a quarter when Apple introduced the 3G and Windows Mobile had no significant product launches. Many people were waiting for the HTC Touch Pro.
It is a fantasy to suppose that you can successfully perform Sisyphus-like task of systematically recopying your data to new media and formats.
Um, no.
I transferred data from my Commodore 64 (mostly txt files and images) on 3.5" floppies to my old XT's RLL and the MFM hard drive and from there to a SCSI hard drive on my 386 and so forth right up to the Dual-Core system I have today.
In recent years I've got a ton of archived software and other crap, but that's not personal data. My personal data is a lot smaller and so could easily transition across these formats. This guy says he's got 500 GB of personal data so I suspect most of that must be home movies because I can't imagine much else would eat up that kid of space.
And there are a lot bigger problems than hardware compatibility. I've got original Quicken and TurboTax files. Think you can open them in modern versions? Think again. That's WHY I have all that archived software and (increasingly) VMs to run it in.
If it becomes a problem we have this thing called "rent control".
Umm... no, they aren't. Some level of emotional turmoil is normal for teenagers, but depression - actual depression! - and suicide attempts aren't.
Bullshit. Virtually everyone I've ever met has reported suicide attempts or thoughts of suicide or violence or both. Read biographies. Of anyone. Virtually everyone reports depression, frustration, etc. Read some ancient literature sometime. You'll find a lot of teenagers doing a lot of crazy stuff.
Teenagers have ALWAYS been associated with emotional turmoil which VERY OFTEN leads to violence and bad behavior. If you didn't do something crazy that nearly got you killed as a teenager, YOU'RE the unusual one.
However, if you are basing your statements off the fact that antidepressants are carelessly over-prescribed in some cases, and completely unnecessary in other cases, without knowing for fact that this was actually the case in Megan's case, then I postulate that you don't actually know enough about what was going on to blame the parents for anything.
No. His statement was a lot more profound. He was questioning the wisdom of EVER perscribing powerful psychotropic drugs to teenagers who are acting normally (depression, violent behavior, and suicide attempts are normal for teenagers) given their brains are not yet fully developed.
Many people do not realize that not only were most antidepressants not tested on teenagers, but many of them weren't even tested for depression. They were developed to treat other, more severe, mental issues and depression is an off-label use. Many people are stunned to hear that drugs like Paxil and Zoloft were not clinically tested for depression. And there is a huge difference between clinical depression (crying uncontrollably 24/7) and the very mild depression these drugs are generally prescribed to treat. They only tested them on people with serious depression.
This is not to say long term studies haven't been done. A few have (you can count them on the fingers of one hand, I think there's 4 now). And the results aren't promising. Most importantly, they tend to show that taking antidepressansts does not have to seem have much of a positive impact on behavior when compared to doing nothing.
I think associating SSRIs with suicide as a side effect is a bit of a red herring. I think the bigger problem is that parents have a child with serious depression, pump them up with drugs, and consider that "doing something" instead of dealing with actual issues. Like the fact that you're a lousy parent.
Phenom is an upgraded and overclocked Athlon
No it's not, there are significant architectural changes.
I'm amazed at the willful ignorance here. You know better than this Chris.
In the past, new console generations have seen MASSIVE architectural changes with the goal of dramatically increasing CPU and graphical power. PS1, PS2, and PS3 aren't even remotely similar. XBOX and XBOX360 are dramatically different. So was NES, SNES, N64, GameCube. And that's the POINT.
The wii does not represent a major improvement over the GameCube in terms of CPU time or graphical features. It uses a virtually identical motherboard to the GameCube with a faster CPU and a new GPU with (only) 2 new rendering pipelines and the same features. These are the kinds of differences we see between a high-end card and a mid-range card in the GPU market. And nobody would claim those represent different architectures.
Sorry, the wii isn't simply NOT a significant hardware upgrade over the GameCube. Not compared to EVERY PREVIOUS CONSOLE GENERATION. It IS fairly accurate to say the wii is 8-year-old hardware because it has capabilities similar to game consoles released at that time (it's basically a wash with the original XBOX).
I know that in certain states, they are largely unenforceable when it comes to individual end users.
Virtually every novel provision of every EULA that has been legislated has been tossed out. Corporations do not get to create new law at a whim in EULAs.
This is just silly, no contract is required to be invalidated just because one paragraph is invalid.
I'm arguing that the INSTRUMENT of "pack-in licenses" exists solely for fraudulent purposes and should be banned outright. All "pack-in licenses" should be banned and all proper contracts should require written informed consent.
I'd also argue it represents an unreasonable burden on consumers to have to individually legislate complex legal contracts for every purchase. The purpose of the government (in part) is to moderate the transactions between consumers and business using common regulations and pack-in licenses are an attempted end-run around that.
And you're wrong. If certain provisions of a contract are found to be illegal and the terms of the contract cannot be met without those provisions than then entire contract is void. Pack-in licenses are written as seas of sub-claims, paragraphs are written in such a way as they don't refer to other paragraphs, specifically to make them resistant to the court rulings that invalidate individual provisions.
They are selling computers with the Mac OS preinstalled in direct violation of the license on the box.
That's a "pack-in license". "Pack-in licenses" are only valid to the extent they are consistent with existing law. Any novel provisions are generally invalid. So, at best, most pack-in licenses are simply a restatement of applicable law.
Also, Pystar has to hack the installer in order to get it to run. ... While fairly simple, it's still a Hack and what Pystar is doing to get the OS installed.
Are you arguing this counts as "circumventing copy protection" i.e. a DMCA violation? Because that's the only applicable law here. I think Apple has a (weak) DMCA case here, but that's all they've really got.
Also, I didn't used the word "Pirate" so I don't know why you brought it up.
I brought it up because violating imaginary laws isn't "illegal". Pirating software is illegal. Companies do not get to create new law just by writing it down in the license. I'm sure they really wish this was true, and corporate lawyers often argue it's true because they'd argue the sky was green if it made them money.
IN the same reply you pointed out that it IS possible to restrict the growing and manufacturing of drugs and then say it is impossible.
There's no reason to believe their program would have lasted without aid from the USA. The United States PAID the Tailban cash money to destroy poppy fields. The moment the US stopped paying they would have increased cultivation. Everybody needs money and Afghanistan has no other exports.
Look at South America. We paid the Columbian government billions to eliminate the FARC, a communist group producing much of the cocaine in Columbia, and they've been largely successful. The FARC is dying. Has cocaine production go down? Hell no! It's gone UP. And that's because the FARC drug producers have been replaced with right-wing government-backed drug producers (the same people were paid your tax dollars to eliminate the FARC).
It's a scam.
"Vista Capable" without Aero is tremendously misleading.
It was crammed down their throat by the OEMs, but MS knew from day 1 that "Vista Capable" would cause problems.
And whose fault is that? I'll tell you who, MSFT!
No, it was the OEMs. The OEMs said that they were going to flat-out ignore the Vista badge rules unless Microsoft provided branding for non-Areo systems. In other words, they were just going to put the "Vista Ready" badge on all their systems whether or not they could run Aero. If they could install Vista they considered that system "ready to run Vista". The OEMs were very worried that with Vista available nobody would want to buy ANY system, even a $500 entry-level box, running the "old" XP operating system. Especially if that box couldn't ever be upgraded to Vista.
The logos morphed from one "Vista Ready" badge which meant the PC could run Aero to a "Vista Capable" badge which meant it couldn't run Aero and the "Vista Home Premium Ready" badge for those PCs that COULD run Aero. The two badges are virtually identical and this both confused and disappointed users.
So MS really don't have a choice on this one other than discarding the certification system.
Just like the issue with drivers, this isn't MS' fault. OEMs had the driver kits over 5 years before Vista launched. They had FIVE YEARS, in some cases as many as EIGHT, to update their drivers. This often amounted to adding exactly one line of code to the XP driver. Of course, they'd still have to QA the new driver and many OEMs were too lazy to do that so they just left the device "unsupported".
No one is forced to enter into the contract with Apple, but if they want to use Apple's software they will be legally obligated to abide by that contract.
No, they're not. EULAs and pack-in licenses are generally invalid. Once you're bought it, you can do what you want with it within the restrictions of VALID law:
You can't sell or give away copies, only the original (copyright).
You can't remove the copy-protection features (DMCA, huge gray area).
You can't use the branding of the software in other products (trademark).
Other than that, you can do whatever the hell you want.
You might notice there's nothing in there about contract law. That's because EULAs really aren't valid contracts. Every EULA that has been substantially legislated has had ALL of it's novel provisions tossed out. IOW, a EULA is only valid if it's provisions are completely redundant with existing law which makes the EULA itself completely redundant and meaningless.
The only reason they exist at all is because stupid American judges refuse to follow the law and instead of invalidating the entirety of contracts when some terms are found to be illegal, they only invalidate those specific terms, even if those terms make up the ENTIRETY of the contract. In fact, the ONLY purpose of EULAs is to try to sneak in these illegal terms.
This is hideously annoying because it means plaintiffs have to legislate the same terms over and over again instead of the courts just invalidating EULAs as the scam that they are.
Apple gets bad rep and no financial recompense from Psystar's business model. Why is this something that should be allowed?
Psystar isn't at fault for user stupidity.
Every computer, including those from Apple, is a collection of components from different manufacturers.
You buy a Dell computer. That computer contains a MSI video card with a chipset made by Nvidia running on a Microsoft operating system. When the video card has a problem, who do you call?
DELL.
In the same way you call Apple for problems with your Nvidia video card.
So these users are supposed to call Psystar. It's not Psystar's fault of their users call Apple, any more that it's Dell's fault it's users call Microsoft.
And Apple CAN get financial recompense from Psystar's model. Psystar pays retail for the copies of OSX they include and Apple COULD charge Psystar users for additional support in the same way they charge Apple users for additional support.
And I'm not sure how much "You're not supported at all, fuck off." really costs Apple. That's they're current support model for Psystar users. If anything they're saving a bit of money because they provide no support of the copies of OSX Psystar provides.
The REAL "cost" to Apple is the loss of a potential sale to a competitor. That's it.
Apple is suing Pystar for selling hardware with a "Hacked version of Apples OS"
This is not accurate and is why the lawsuit raises interesting questions.
Psystar is NOT illegally reselling Apple software or hardware, which is what YOU (and Apple) claimed.
What Psystar is selling is hardware that has the ABILITY to install MacOS (or Linux, or Windows) because they have disabled the security features Apple has implemented in THEIR hardware. They still purchase and install MacOS. Repeat: Psystar IS NOT pirating Apple hardware or software in any sense of the word "pirate".
The closest analogy is probably console "mod chips". Mod chips allow you to play "backed up" (read: duplicate or pirated) game discs and foreign game discs (Japanese vs. North America vs. Europe) on game consoles. IOW, it's a hardware modification that allows you to bypass SOFTWARE restrictions.
They are in pretty clear violation of Apple's trademark by calling their product "Mac". Other than that, the legal issues are murky. Apple isn't arguing under DMCA "circumvention", but that is almost certainly their only legal avenue here.
It is worth noting that Apple is NOT arguing based on the EULA. EULAa are almost certainly not valid in US courts, and Apple isn't going to have their EULA invalidated by trying to defend it.
This would be akin to Microsoft having said Windows only on Intel, using another processor violates the EULA. How far would have that gone?
In fact, the Windows XP EULA says exactly this. Attempting to port Windows XP to another platform (not that you could without the source and lots of help from Microsoft) violates the TOS. Low-level hacking on the kernel is also banned, but I don't think MS has ever sued anyone for shimming the kernel (they'll say "That's a really bad idea." though).
More importantly, Microsoft has strict limitations on running Windows in VMs. Basically, it violates the TOS unless you have an additional license.
That's one reason why we should bring back massive (i.e. 90%) inheritance taxes. We need to force rich aging people to recognize their own finality.
It's a nice idea, but there would be strong (i.e. armed) resistance to the government seizing family homes, so that's not happening. And the really rich can find ways to avoid such a tax. For example but moving most of their assets outside of the United States into a trust that will ignore US tax claims. So you would also basically have to end all foreign investment. Good luck with that.
A much better way at helping the poor is targeted tax cuts at the taxes that affect THEM, notably sales taxes, alcohol and cigarette taxes, and service fees of all kinds. What to help poor people? Cut their DMV registration from $100 to $50. Cut parking and speeding fines 50%. Eliminate toll roads. Eliminate fees on national parks, etc.
A better bet is to raise property taxes, they're a LOT harder to dodge.
The hardware could be used as a very good, inexpensive general purpose computer.
No it wouldn't. The weird architecture means you'd have to recompile every app you wanted to use and very few applications would have the Power4-based CPU as a target, so anything you compiled would be buggy unless you modified lots of source yourself. I've done this, it's a major PITA and isn't worth it. You CAN get entry-level PCs for $350.
The only console that was ever useful as a general purpose computer was the original XBOX, which was architecturally an Intel PC. You could easily run several Linux distributions or Windows on it, and the excellent XBox Media Center, was developed to give hacked Xboxes a real use (as a front end to a MythTV or Windows Media based PVR). Also being based on Intel means a wide range of stable emulators were available. The emulation of Nintendo games on my Xbox is dramatically superior to the emulation offered on the wii, for example.
Our recent meltdown is due to regulations that encouraged bad loans.
Not really. The primary cause of the current meltdown is the changes made to the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 to allow the merging of commercial and investment banks. Until then Glass-Steagall specifically separated them so in case the investment banks became overextended the government would not have to bail them out because home loans and other vital banking services fell on FDIC-insured commercial banks who were BARRED from investment.
The 1999 changes allowed banks to leverage investments against FDIC insured deposits. This allowed them to leverage MUCH more that they could previously, the 30 to 1 rates we see were only possible because of this change to Glass-Steagall. Otherwise it would have been literally impossible for the investment banks to become so heavily leveraged, be it with real estate securities or anything else.
Without this change the financial crisis would not have happened.
The basic premise is that, once you offer money for something, it becomes all about the money and any original reasons you may have had for doing it become moot.
This is obviously false. It precludes the notion of someone being paid to do something they already love doing. Let's say you're a sex addict and you really enjoy sex with strangers (these people are out there), do those feelings magically disappear just because you decide to start getting paid for sex with strangers?
Most well-paid people ENJOY the work they do, that's a big part of WHY they're well-paid.
Hell, go out on a limb and say that being paid for something you love doing will probably INCREASE your love of that thing because it will increase your sense of accomplishment. Getting paid for something is positive feedback.
I challenge you to show me an unregulated market where the government doesn't have its hands in it in some way.
It doesn't exist. What libertarians don't grasp is that it CANNOT exist. Libertarianism is utopianism similar to anarchism (in practice, it's nearly identical) and equally foolish.
I used to be a libertarian. I grew out of it.