You will almost never convince someone who has not used an HP in a job what you wrote - TI's worked fine in school so they should everywhere else.
My father is a land surveyor, he and the engineers he works with have lamented for ages about the lack of good calculators. They treasure their hp48's and 41's like a child. Most have several stockpiled. Many also grew up using TI's, but once they found the "older" HP's none ever looked back. I prefer my old 48 over my 49, but I sacrificed it to my father's business since I mostly use it for calculating stats in video games now (while I use plenty of math, as a software engineer it tends more towards stuff that isn't calculator based and the 49 does just as good there).
TI's break from field usage, the keys wear out fast, and the software available is almost 100% geared towards high school and universities - not the real world. Sadly the newer HP's do also - although I understand that they are trying to make good calculators again. A person who has spent time with an HP will run rings around someone with a TI on almost any calculations - in the real world you do what is fastest/best even if it needs a learning curve, not that that which is easiest. Especially true in the engineering world. Over a 30 year career that makes WAY WAY more money, "long term" in a university setting is a semester.
There is no realistic way that a PC can be too small. As long as it so small it is easily lost it is just fine - I would *love* one that could hang on my key chain.
What *can* be too small is the interface. I do not like a tiny screen nor do I like a tiny keyboard (or other input device). I have quite large hands, even the smaller "full size" keyboards are uncomfortable and only useful as a portable device, not my main one.
I have seen keyboard solutions that are OK - some project a keyboard on a flat surface and optically(? I do not think the descriptions said and I have never used one and that seems about the only feasible way) sense where you fingers hit. Other than some RSI problems with my finger hitting a hard surface (and that is fixable for a permanent station) that can be made to be any size or layout.
I also prefer small text, but I prefer that on a larger screen. I am currently using a 15" LCD and that is about as small as I comfortably go. I do not like writing much code in it either, my 21" monitor went kaput and this is all I could currently get. A 17" screen is the smallest "normal" lcd I like and I prefer a 19". I know of no current technology to fix this one, but there is no reason it can not be fixed.
Of course, that is for what I would call everyday use. If your computing power is in a small package there is no reason you can not have a docking station for full size stuff and quite small for carry around. I *can* hit some very small keys with a stylus and use a very small screen (lets face it, many of us currently do - or did - with the palm tops). That is nice for something I pull out of my pocket and use for a few minutes. Add in a few larger keys to mash and I can even game, navigate for MP3's, use a cell phone, add something to a calendar, or other typical small device things with large easy to use buttons. At that point I would consider the size my finger can reliably hit and the number of buttons to be the limit (small could use a stylus, but I do not like that idea for simple frequently used functions).
You do not even need know it to create one - I have written a small high level language that "compiled" to python. There was no need at all to learn assembly, only to know python and language design. It isn't terribly uncommon for obscure or in house languages to compile to ANSI C, both because that is quite portable and the compilers do an extremely great job of optimizing code. For a language creation Formal Language is MUCH more useful and you pretty much never touch assembly in that and you may not even touch it in compiler theory. I know there are compilers out there that compile to an intermediate internal language that is then sent to the "real" compile part. It is only useful if you are compiling direct to assembly and then good knowledge of it is only useful if you want to optimize the binary.
Though, I do agree that Assembly is useful to know and I do not care about what microprocessor you use. In fact, it is also good do have some idea of micro-code. When I was in college (not that long ago) we used a processor simulator and wrote our own assembly language in micro-code. We then wrote a small assembly program that ran on top of that processor. For the students who didn't know any of this stuff you could see a few light bulbs go off - "Ahhh, so *that's* why I have to do it this way".
Unfortunately I got into "technology" in the early 90's and have a very good THAC0. However, being into technology instead of something more specific I moved around in college for about 7.5 years, That leaves me as person that not only have a low THAC0 but also has a low armor class, unfortunately there are so many rolls that tons are left unscathed even with a -2 needed simply because there are tons of natural 1's.
While I am one that survives I am still one of many due to the fact that, even today, a roll of 2 still leaves 50% of the field alive and unharmed. Ah well, another few years and we will finally be back to balanced.
"But if there's a market for half-tinned ass-hattery, then I'm set!"
I know of a market for tinned half-ass hattery, but that doesn't help you too much I guess. Even better if you know of some gilded full-ass hattery, but that is an entirely other story.
Depends on several things - what do you meant by separation of church and state and what is your goal with producing software.
The classical definition is that the state did not dabble in religion, but religion is free to dabble in politics. The letter that this is from was based on a group (Danbury Baptist) that wanted their "religious freedom" (read - religious practices) as a specifically national right (stronger than simply freedom of religion, essentially the federal govt declaring Baptist above and beyond). Jefferson told them to screw off. Interestingly enough, he only addressed it at a national level and, due to the letter he was responding too, never addresses what a *state* can do and at the time the first amendment was considered to mainly apply to the *federal* govt. There is also the issue of what you mean by religion - originally the state was intended as agnostic, currently some fairly vocal people want it to be atheist.
So, in short, do you meant an analogy with the initial meaning - that software should stay out of politics but politics can interfere with software, or do you mean they should be 100% independent?
There is also the issue of what are your goals? Personally I use software as a tool and produce it as a tool (as far as my personal life goes, my employer decides how they want to use what they pay me to produce and I produce it to feed, clothe, house, and buy toys for myself). If so - then yes, the more they can be separated the better. If you do something political there is always one group you are going to tick off and will always hamper adoption of your product.
If your goal is to affect social change then they *must* be intertwined. As to how effective this tactic is, well I doubt outside of the geek/tech fields GPL isn't going to be a rallying cry of social change. I also think that some of the newer FOSS licenses coming out are going to really hurt some good software as far as number of people using it, but if your goal is social change (or type of protest) then that is mostly irrelevant.
Because most "right side" people do not really consider software as a political tool but simply as a tool. As such, many of us (myself included) choose based on which allows me to do my work the best. My guess is that the lefties mostly do the same thing and Apple is the trendy thing in many of those circles right now. Over time I rather suspect it shifts around.
For home, that is currently a windows XP system because of gaming and "free" software for nearly everything else. At work, Linux for real work (being able to access source has *really* helped in many cases) and windows when I have to interface with something like the secretaries end of the world.
My guess is that is a fairly common attitude once people know the technical ends. I know quite a few people who use firefox/thunderbird, gimp, and other "free license" software that have absolutely no idea that it has a political side. They are just happy to get great software, even better for no cost.
Those that feel Linux is the path to socialism are, well, gonna be quite disappointed as few people even think of software as a political tool (and both Microsoft defenders and many Open Source advocates feel that way). People generally choose tools based on how well the solve their problems, not to make a political statement. Thus it is nearly as impossible for software to pave the way for socialism as it is for a screwdriver to sway minds - if licensing gets too restrictive it - and software that uses it - just will not be used and that is true for *both* sides (closed source and GPL type licenses)
It is not really that hard to figure out - it is called "market forces".
We use something called "supply and demand" to determine prices and such, not just on consumer goods but on jobs and salaries also. Some jobs are just low pay or go away, 95% of the time this is better for society (though it may really suck for an individual).
Like it or not, a "webmaster" never was one of the really tough jobs that took a lot of talent and ability. Yes, there were - and definitely still are - sites that require such, but the title of "webmaster" includes a lot less. When a current high school student can do the job, chances are that 50,000+ a year isn't going to last once the market figure it out. It never should have been that high to begin with.
The real talent isn't called a webmaster anymore, they have moved into the software development team. What used to be a "webmaster" job is now just a sideline of one of the developer's job. Such is the way of creating a job that doesn't require much knowledge, skill, or time outside of one of the jobs that does - it goes away (especially when said job applicants demand a salary on par with those that not only do their job but much more).
We do not live in the late 90's where no one knows what "the web" is or what it is capable of. We can longer demand really strange things - welcome to the real world (by now, most of us have figured it out, haven't seen on of these "questions" in quite a long time). Once business figures out anyone and their brother/sister can do the job it's salary drops to nothing or is rolled into another. To expect otherwise is silly - how many complaining would pay someone what they are wanting for those services?
"or maybe all the conservatives have moved on to other sites"
Most of us gave up ages ago. I know I did - I still read nearly all the places I have in the past (websites, magazines, journals, etc) but I simply filter the information through a lens. This article has nothing to do with global warming and before the "initiative" was announced Slashdot was full of stories about how a Mars mission should be a priority. Pretty much nothing has changed (hence the quotes on the initiative) yet the rhetoric has made a 180 degree shift and we are now all DOOMED for totally different reasons (even though nothing has changed).
It is sad the state science is in now. It shouldn't be conservative or liberal (and in fact I find them both to be wrong more often than not when they seek to prove something instead of seeing where the evidence leads). However, if one can do what I call a "Throw a dog a bone" then it is OK. That is - if you can not disprove it and find an expert someplace that says it then it must be true. It used to be that one needed to, you know, look at the evidence and follow it. Now if you can find enough to support your hypothesis it must be true regardless of how much says you are wrong.
I can not say if things like global warming occur. However I can say there is something wrong with a theory that the earth is warming is correct if the world warms, cools, or stays the same (after all, all are to expected and is why the current wording is shifting towards "Global Climate Change" to reflect this new "discovery"). I have issue with theories that are correct no matter the evidence acquired - why even bother gather evidence? I can not say correct or incorrect - the studies are so flawed who knows (and this leaves us to divide along partisan lines)?
*sigh* Tis the state of "science" in general these days. It appalls me to see what passes for real research in pretty much every field out there today. Studies 50 years ago were vastly superior in process - "garbage in garbage out" is still true. Though ultimately it has more to do with our funding process than anything, the system supports those that fit into the current political climate (liberal under the dems, conservative under the repubs).
I still do not really get it. One can purchase several things that can seriously burn or hurt you yet we do not attempt to store it held between our legs. *That* is stupid. People complain about stove tops burning them when they touch one that is on - we do not try and have a campaign to only allow them to go to 140F (or some other temperature that will not burn you). Well tell you not to touch the hot surface.
Even lets assume it was boiling hot - so? Did the person in question know it was really hot - yes, wasn't the very first cup of coffee she had. Did the person in question choose to store it in an (unapproved) and dangerous way - yes, most of even know not to hold cold soft drinks in such a fashion, let alone something that will hurt.
We know all sorts of things on this planet are dangerous and can be not so (generally at the cost of losing a market - the temp change has really hurt McDonald's coffee sales). At some point we have to look and give some personal responsibility. Had the cup failed and spilled the coffee, had they dropped it in her lap, or it failed in what is normally safe usage I would tend to agree. However, holding a really hot cup of coffee between you legs while riding in a car isn't really "normally safe usage" - in fact it is "normally dangerous usage" and - as such, I don't care how hot the coffee was. The failure was in the storage method chosen by the woman and thus her fault.
It is because studies have shown the probability of a societies demise is related to their access to porn, the easier the more likely they are to die.
Currently western society is right near the limit where a society stays stable. An increase in 30% will definitely put us over the top, the sheer amount of porn downloaded would result in widespread danger. Birth rates are already abysmally low, add in that we can totally stay in house, be as fat/lazy/repulsive as we want and still see hot women nekkid will lead to not only a severe decrease in human interaction, but no one will ever want to leave their house to even work. In just a few short years - death of all of western civilization.
Hurry now, write your govt official in whatever country you are in. Lets make bandwidth restrictions so that this will never come about. Studies such as this should never reach the light of day.
We also know that speeding up light is bad - that causes the signal to go back in time. That would also allow MUCH more porn to be downloaded. You could get several hours worth instantly as long as you remembered to start it later on.
Other than that, I couldn't really figure out why either. Maybe the writer owns stock in copper wiring companies or something.
Partly it is going to depend on how long you consider "short term" and "long term".
As of right now, and (in my opinion) another decade or two, there will be a VERY high dollar fight the industry will put on. Both legally and Technically, personally I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of what they are going to end up trying to do. Legally I do not know how far it will go, so far the industry sponsored bills pass near unanimously, so while many here like to blame one side the reality is that there is nothing close to a winner on each side (one talks good, but when it comes time to vote doesn't follow through).
During that time period I expect prices to continue to rise (compare the HD disks to DVD's) and quality to degrade (can not take the risk given the cost) and the burden on the consumer to become fairly high (see current state of HD - will my player work with my TV or not?). In the long term (decades) not good. The industry is already starting to see it in declining profits. From what I can tell, you call this "long term" and I call it "short term".
There has to be some case where things are going to stabilize. It is impossible to create something people can view and keep it secretly encrypted where it can not be copied. So, at some point that *has* to become accepted reality. Will they eventually understand this and adapt, or will they be replaced by something that does? Dunno, my money is on eventually adapting, or at the least when the Next Great Thing comes along immediately get absorbed (see video rental stores).
Of course, given that I am part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (or, rather, if there really was one I would want to be a part given my political ideals) I'm not really one you are interested in hearing from. But, I will answer anyway. It may also tell you where you do not want to go (even though my list is similar to left wingers).
My first choice would be Canada. While there have been places there I detested there are also places I've felt more at home than most places in the US (I'm from East Tennessee). It was true in both geography and culture - plus there is some *great* hunting and fishing in the more remote areas that would be open to me. Canada is more like us than not (and is, thus, a really bad place to move is you decide you hate the US - you have a VERY similar split based on geography and the right wingers will one day take over - just as the left wingers will one day get power back in the US).
I suppose next would be Australia. Having never been there I can only go by what I have seen on TV and there is a lot to like. Nice people and enough technology to be happy with a lot of wilderness to have fun in.
I've known quite a few Italians and they were almost all people I liked. I like the food and what I know of the culture. Though I would most likely choose the more rural parts than the cities - though I would choose one of their large cities over ours.
Next would be much of the Netherlands. It's just looks like a nice place to live. Again, almost no experience to speak of - just what I have seen on TV.
After that - dunno. Germany, Britain, Spain, and other major western countries I either do not like or know next to nothing about (though, since I have not been in most of the countries I can not say definitively - I have to go by TV and that is a horrid source for information). South American and African countries fall into the same category - I see places I would love to be and places I would hate and they are in the same state so I can not make an accurate estimation. Eastern countries are still mostly not nice places to live.
The far east (like Japan) are so different culturally I do not know what to think or how I would fit in but I suspect many would be places I would like.
1: get a bunch of people together 2: do OSS democratically controlled software 3: PROFIT!!!
The problem is that doing OSS and having a democratically controlled software process has little to do with making money. In fact, I would say that even if you have a popular software project this "plan" has little to do with making profit. It's nothing really new - it is simply a description of how most OSS projects are ran. At least pretty much any I've ever dealt with.
As far as I can tell money in an OSS project is either made through (to a lesser extent) distribution or (mostly) from support. I think this can work well - see RedHat and I expect IBM is putting what it is in OSS projects for this reason. However, this plan addresses neither one of them and assumes you will make some profit from someplace (who knows where). It deals with administration issues.
Eh, it's like the difference between academic and industry software. Academics can ignore startup and clean-up time, industry can not ignore any of it. There is some validity to both aspects - academics are not looking to achieve the same thing as industry and that is a good thing. Ignoring some things has eventually led to some really useful discoveries (essentially finding a global maxima instead of a local one by allowing a temporary reduction).
"The only, ONLY thing holding AOL still together are people who are less internet savvy"
My uncle swears that AOL's browser is WAY better than MSIE, Netscape, or Opera (I've had him use all of them over trying to find one he can use). AOL works and the others never do - including allowing him to login to e-bay and page rendering. I wouldn't say "internet savvy" as much as "computer savvy".
He dropped DSL to go back to dial up because it was too "hard" to add a new e-mail through the browser - he needed AOL. I'm not real sure how he is taking the change. I know he is happy to be back in the fold, but I still hear him say he is going to go do something tonight that I know dial-up will never do (for instance, download and burn a DVD - good luck getting that done in a few hours on dial-up even though he swears it works fine). I think there is a certain amount of pride that will not allow him to say I am correct - I know he didn't download a 200+ meg file in the last 15 minutes on dial-up regardless of what he tells me.
*shrug*. I can not really understand being that clueless on anything. While there are many many many things I know nothing about I tend to either a) trust those that are experts and do as they say (and not argue with them) or b) learn enough to do it myself. Option A isn't a big deal - there are too many things out there to know enough about (for instance, I depend on a car mechanic even though I *could* learn to do it on my own - I just do not have the time to do so and I do not enjoy working on a vehicle). Though even then I try and learn *something* about any thing I use daily/weekly, enough so that I can somewhat tell if someone is trying to rip me off or enough so that I can converse/understand what the experts tell me is wrong.
There is obviously a market for those types of people. While my uncle is one of the worst I know, he still is not that unique. And I do not think they will ever really advance, they do not want too.
One of the other issues is that revenue is not a standard term. If it were then you could negotiate that you garner a specific percentage of that revenue.
The problem is that no one will do gross. That is reasonable - there are many places where a real gross is really really high and the real net is zero or a loss. Take advertising for instance - pretty much all a loss (and this is where the OP is talking about). While it is purely a cost, it still increases net revenue by quite a bit.
If you do net then the studios play with costs - every thing becomes one and non-solid costs are greatly inflated. Say, for instance, one could say the five minutes by the studio exec to read over a document and sign it cost the company 5 million, to be deducted from the gross (and since it grossed 4 million that is a loss). Therefore you get no money. This occurs quite often.
If the studios were somewhat honest this wouldn't be such an issue. You could simply do a percentage of net income (or maybe even gross income). However the powers that be try and actively screw people out of money and are in a position to do so easily. Do all of them do it? I do not know - I suspect there are honest players out there who figure a happy well compensated employee makes you MUCH more than a screwed one (which is very true). However from my view it seems pretty much all the big players do not do this - including trying hard line DRM initiatives that screw customers (read - the RIAA and MPAA).
Eh, this is what a union is for. I've seen many cases where unions demand unreasonable ideas (it has resulted in more than one company moving labor out of country). Yet, this is precisely what they are intended to fix. If nearly everyone decides to do this there is no choice, if enough choose to go around the union then maybe it isn't that harsh on you and you need to re-evaluate your complaints. That's a free market for you.
It is? It seems pretty much par for the course to me. Apparently you do not pay that much attention to the business end of your industry. This is what occurs when you fail to do so.
To a large extent - that is my point. Defining "space" as to be the tallest mountain is - well - stupid. Lets face it - given enough fuel an airplane is able to maintain an "orbit" of a fairly low altitude (given how you define "orbit"). At the very least I do not think the summit of the tallest mountain should be "space" as the defintion I qouted defines (however, most lawmakers being so scientifically ignorant they see it at a different point - however the definition still stands).
That's why I state I prefer a definition that defines space as "mesospere and beyond" (or whatever 'sphere you choose). Does it make perfect sense? No - but then nothing does. However this makes more sense than the majority of legal definitions.
It's not terribly clear where "space" begins but international treaties/law states that no one owns it. It's widely adopted enough that it is as good as enforced. The Wiki article gives the one I found most often - the lowest altitude that one can place an object in a stable orbit (personally I would have gone with one of the 'spheres and a harder altitude - personally I see "space" as a lack of atmosphere not ability to orbit the planet).
Generally speaking it is more like international waters. Regardless of what people here who have an inability to rationally think when it comes to the US say, other countries routinely fly spy satellites (along with many other ones - some of which I am sure are "dual purpose") over us. Though since most are "friendly" no one seems to really care. Not to mention we are pretty good about hiding things from airiel phtography by now. As of right now the number of countries that can field a satellite is pretty low, especially one with the technology to be a "spy satellite".
Though as time goes on it will get to be more important. For one thing orbital space isn't really that big and a small handfull of countries have most of it now. I suspect that will be a much larger issue - too much is done underground and in highly distributed places now. Not that the intel is worthless, but as we saw in Iraq it's not as cut and dry as it used to be (it becomes much more useful in war - great ability to see troop buildup and movement).
This is being treated just as international waters would be - anything goes that you can politically get away with. Even the article doesn't have much of a reaction from the US govt over it. The article's author assumes the part about not angering China because of trade relations and dealing with NK and Iran (much as some highly modded posts here are ranting about the US calling are interjecting thier own ideas as to the US govt's motivation) - all the govt has said is silence.
The worse part is how much of that people believe.
It's not uncoommon to find people who's signifigant other has died leaving behind a handgun. The surviving member knows nothing about them, "unloads" it be removing the clip, and then forgets it. I know my cousing was going around with one pointing it at people saying "bang bang". My father (I was barely old enough to recollect it at all, let alone know much of what was going on) had a fit, he was then told "I unloaded it, it's safe". After explaining you *never* treat a gun as a toy, always loaded, he took the gun away and immediatly made it safe (lock open the slide), it had a bullet in the chamber. They assumed that hollywood removal of the clip was actually unloaded. I can irritate people when I fuss at the cops in the movie having criminals take clips out to "unload" thier guns.
It's gotten bad enough that too many real videos are considered fake because it "doesn't look real" and people make real decisions that can impact many people based on it. In nearly 100% of the cases you can eventually track it down to "It doesn't look like in the movies". Just in firearms alone it is amazing what people think a gun can do and want to legislate against it (sometimes proposed legislation is *detrimental* to safety), and then not know it is horridly dangerous in others and just not care.
Even those of us that are jaded about the whole thing find from time to time where hollywood has colored our ideas (for example, I know something of how several cultures fought with swords, yet I still imagine the classic hollywood edge on edge fighting). It is such a large part of our lives that it can be hard to seperate when you have no references to compare too - even if you do not like to watch too much you still see it everywhere and so much of our society believes it.
Ok, to begin with I am definatly not one to nitpick spelling (see my sig), but I am one that finds mispellings amusing. For example, in grade school I would consistently mispell "ship" as "shit" - which led to some *really* amusing fiction they forced us to write (given that I have always like science fiction and stories based in outer space). So do not take any of the following personal, I'm sure I have more than one mistake in this post, if not then it is a miracle. That being said:
"a long time ago I was a radio negineer"
I'm not sure what a "negineer" is, but I tend to think it is a racial slur and being relegated to just radio in the modern world makes it even worse. Please use a different one next time.
"If you convert it to % profit margins and consider the fact that bandwidth costs are minimal, they're making a profit margin in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of percents."
Umm, how much do you want them to charge?
If they are charging 200,000% (minimum to be hundreds of thousands, let alone million percent) too much what would you be happy with (Given how profit margins are calculated I'm going to assume you don't mean that)?
Not to mention there are MANY more costs than simply bandwidth, and I would say that is probably one of the smallest costs in there.
Plus, 5-10 dollars for a game is pretty low. It's thoughts like this that are stalling acceptance of downloaded older material (games, movies, etc). Much less than that and it's not worth thier time to fool with, especially given the small amount of games available (music can get away with sub dollar because many of us may want 5000+ songs, games and such do not enjoy that).
Sometime in the mid 80's I was diagnosed with several "learning disabilities". The only one I still carry to this day is Dyslexia (see my sig). Another one was reaction and hand eye co-ordination.
For the latter the doctor told my parents to get me to play video games. They, at first, purchased me an (expensive at the time - nearly 3000 dollars) 8086. Unfortunatly for me (and thier money - it wasn't until my senior year in high school - '93 - that I became interested in computers) I never really got interested in it and picked up an Atari which I wore out. I've played video games constantly since then - it worked in my case. I'm sure they wished they had just bought the atari to begin with, but where happy I had something that I wanted to use that was also therapy for my problems.
I sometimes wonder if the same treatment would be prescribed today given the current attitude towards games.
The saddest part is that they had to hack the system to do this. I don't really know why they didn't use a PC and one of the free dev kits around - some are quite good (and many of the pay ones are free for research). Maybe they couldn't really find a replacement for the glove, but then it would seem easier to hack it into a joystick port than what they did. Ahh well, at least the research was done.
To a large extent I think there is some truth to having an issue with making money by selling the virtual parts. It becomes even truer the more that is what you are selling.
However there is something to be said for convenience. I'm willing to pay some premium for always high quality recordings, no viruses, good selection, and other things that file swapping has a great deal of difficulty with. This depends on what you time is worth and how much is charged. Itunes has made pretty good with this even though many still do not use it (I don't - I don't like enough music to bother).
The other is many people (especially myself) like physical copies and the extra's that go with them. Nice jacket insets, quality backup (though this is much less the case now - most are skimping on quality control), hard copy manuals, all sorts of things. Just stuff I can not get by downloading.
And, lastly, support. For consumer items this may not be such a big deal - what support on downloaded MP3's? But for software with a business that can mean a whole lot. Really, what most businesses are paying Microsoft is thier support. This comes in several forms - large list of supported hardware, listening to important demands, and other types of things (little to none is getting phone support, you have your IT staff or another company to deal with that). For most businesses that switch to linux this also tends to be the case - Microsoft didn't listen to the demands, found some peice of hardware didn't really work well (for instance you need real time data encoding and you can not set the Kernel to the modes you need), or maybe need to dink with the code.
In short, there are lots of things to sell. In some markets it may not be that great, in others it may be where all the money is. It also depends on what you are viewing as your product - if it is only the string of bits being copied then you are screwed - DRM or not (it *will* be broken and once it is then back to unlimited supply, and probably broken quickly and much cheaper than the DRM that you produced). In the end, that is reality and you can not fight it succesfully. You can debate if it will end up good or not, but it will not stop it from occuring.
I'm from Knoxville, we toured it fairly regularly.
The have touristy places to go like fake cutaway life size reactor cores (the graphite reactor is especially nice). We got to see things that glowed VERY bright from radioactivity as they came out of some reactor core. And quite a few other things.
The have a "science museum" that you don't even need permission to go to - anyone can. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibit is especially good (from discussion and pictures on radiation poisoning to life size models of Fat Boy and Little Man). I wouldn't make a trip to Oak Ridge for it - you can go through the whole thing in an afternoon, however if you are passing through or are a school kid there is unique stuff there.
After college I worked there for a few years in the HPC department (not quite the same one with the Crays, worked on COTS clusters), they still have whirring tape machines and we can make the switches have nice flashy lights. I would go watch the tape robots occasionally - for some of the users storage needs it's still really the only way to go and the HPSS could be quite interesting if it was being hit hard.
Not to mention there is still a lot of Manhattan project era stuff around to view. To any kid interested in science that's got to be neat.
I know they still give the tours post-9/11 as it was not uncommon to have a bunch of kids watch me replace a hard drive or something in one of the machines. The city also co-ordinates tours for adults, I think they also go into Y-12 and K-25 (the two original enrichment plants) still but I am not sure (Y-12 does weapons research and is mostly off limits - at the point of a machine gun - and k-25 is being turned into an industrial park).
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You will almost never convince someone who has not used an HP in a job what you wrote - TI's worked fine in school so they should everywhere else.
My father is a land surveyor, he and the engineers he works with have lamented for ages about the lack of good calculators. They treasure their hp48's and 41's like a child. Most have several stockpiled. Many also grew up using TI's, but once they found the "older" HP's none ever looked back. I prefer my old 48 over my 49, but I sacrificed it to my father's business since I mostly use it for calculating stats in video games now (while I use plenty of math, as a software engineer it tends more towards stuff that isn't calculator based and the 49 does just as good there).
TI's break from field usage, the keys wear out fast, and the software available is almost 100% geared towards high school and universities - not the real world. Sadly the newer HP's do also - although I understand that they are trying to make good calculators again. A person who has spent time with an HP will run rings around someone with a TI on almost any calculations - in the real world you do what is fastest/best even if it needs a learning curve, not that that which is easiest. Especially true in the engineering world. Over a 30 year career that makes WAY WAY more money, "long term" in a university setting is a semester.
There is no realistic way that a PC can be too small. As long as it so small it is easily lost it is just fine - I would *love* one that could hang on my key chain.
What *can* be too small is the interface. I do not like a tiny screen nor do I like a tiny keyboard (or other input device). I have quite large hands, even the smaller "full size" keyboards are uncomfortable and only useful as a portable device, not my main one.
I have seen keyboard solutions that are OK - some project a keyboard on a flat surface and optically(? I do not think the descriptions said and I have never used one and that seems about the only feasible way) sense where you fingers hit. Other than some RSI problems with my finger hitting a hard surface (and that is fixable for a permanent station) that can be made to be any size or layout.
I also prefer small text, but I prefer that on a larger screen. I am currently using a 15" LCD and that is about as small as I comfortably go. I do not like writing much code in it either, my 21" monitor went kaput and this is all I could currently get. A 17" screen is the smallest "normal" lcd I like and I prefer a 19". I know of no current technology to fix this one, but there is no reason it can not be fixed.
Of course, that is for what I would call everyday use. If your computing power is in a small package there is no reason you can not have a docking station for full size stuff and quite small for carry around. I *can* hit some very small keys with a stylus and use a very small screen (lets face it, many of us currently do - or did - with the palm tops). That is nice for something I pull out of my pocket and use for a few minutes. Add in a few larger keys to mash and I can even game, navigate for MP3's, use a cell phone, add something to a calendar, or other typical small device things with large easy to use buttons. At that point I would consider the size my finger can reliably hit and the number of buttons to be the limit (small could use a stylus, but I do not like that idea for simple frequently used functions).
You do not even need know it to create one - I have written a small high level language that "compiled" to python. There was no need at all to learn assembly, only to know python and language design. It isn't terribly uncommon for obscure or in house languages to compile to ANSI C, both because that is quite portable and the compilers do an extremely great job of optimizing code. For a language creation Formal Language is MUCH more useful and you pretty much never touch assembly in that and you may not even touch it in compiler theory. I know there are compilers out there that compile to an intermediate internal language that is then sent to the "real" compile part. It is only useful if you are compiling direct to assembly and then good knowledge of it is only useful if you want to optimize the binary.
Though, I do agree that Assembly is useful to know and I do not care about what microprocessor you use. In fact, it is also good do have some idea of micro-code. When I was in college (not that long ago) we used a processor simulator and wrote our own assembly language in micro-code. We then wrote a small assembly program that ran on top of that processor. For the students who didn't know any of this stuff you could see a few light bulbs go off - "Ahhh, so *that's* why I have to do it this way".
Unfortunately I got into "technology" in the early 90's and have a very good THAC0. However, being into technology instead of something more specific I moved around in college for about 7.5 years, That leaves me as person that not only have a low THAC0 but also has a low armor class, unfortunately there are so many rolls that tons are left unscathed even with a -2 needed simply because there are tons of natural 1's.
While I am one that survives I am still one of many due to the fact that, even today, a roll of 2 still leaves 50% of the field alive and unharmed. Ah well, another few years and we will finally be back to balanced.
"But if there's a market for half-tinned ass-hattery, then I'm set!"
I know of a market for tinned half-ass hattery, but that doesn't help you too much I guess. Even better if you know of some gilded full-ass hattery, but that is an entirely other story.
Depends on several things - what do you meant by separation of church and state and what is your goal with producing software.
The classical definition is that the state did not dabble in religion, but religion is free to dabble in politics. The letter that this is from was based on a group (Danbury Baptist) that wanted their "religious freedom" (read - religious practices) as a specifically national right (stronger than simply freedom of religion, essentially the federal govt declaring Baptist above and beyond). Jefferson told them to screw off. Interestingly enough, he only addressed it at a national level and, due to the letter he was responding too, never addresses what a *state* can do and at the time the first amendment was considered to mainly apply to the *federal* govt. There is also the issue of what you mean by religion - originally the state was intended as agnostic, currently some fairly vocal people want it to be atheist.
So, in short, do you meant an analogy with the initial meaning - that software should stay out of politics but politics can interfere with software, or do you mean they should be 100% independent?
There is also the issue of what are your goals? Personally I use software as a tool and produce it as a tool (as far as my personal life goes, my employer decides how they want to use what they pay me to produce and I produce it to feed, clothe, house, and buy toys for myself). If so - then yes, the more they can be separated the better. If you do something political there is always one group you are going to tick off and will always hamper adoption of your product.
If your goal is to affect social change then they *must* be intertwined. As to how effective this tactic is, well I doubt outside of the geek/tech fields GPL isn't going to be a rallying cry of social change. I also think that some of the newer FOSS licenses coming out are going to really hurt some good software as far as number of people using it, but if your goal is social change (or type of protest) then that is mostly irrelevant.
Because most "right side" people do not really consider software as a political tool but simply as a tool. As such, many of us (myself included) choose based on which allows me to do my work the best. My guess is that the lefties mostly do the same thing and Apple is the trendy thing in many of those circles right now. Over time I rather suspect it shifts around.
For home, that is currently a windows XP system because of gaming and "free" software for nearly everything else. At work, Linux for real work (being able to access source has *really* helped in many cases) and windows when I have to interface with something like the secretaries end of the world.
My guess is that is a fairly common attitude once people know the technical ends. I know quite a few people who use firefox/thunderbird, gimp, and other "free license" software that have absolutely no idea that it has a political side. They are just happy to get great software, even better for no cost.
Those that feel Linux is the path to socialism are, well, gonna be quite disappointed as few people even think of software as a political tool (and both Microsoft defenders and many Open Source advocates feel that way). People generally choose tools based on how well the solve their problems, not to make a political statement. Thus it is nearly as impossible for software to pave the way for socialism as it is for a screwdriver to sway minds - if licensing gets too restrictive it - and software that uses it - just will not be used and that is true for *both* sides (closed source and GPL type licenses)
It is not really that hard to figure out - it is called "market forces".
We use something called "supply and demand" to determine prices and such, not just on consumer goods but on jobs and salaries also. Some jobs are just low pay or go away, 95% of the time this is better for society (though it may really suck for an individual).
Like it or not, a "webmaster" never was one of the really tough jobs that took a lot of talent and ability. Yes, there were - and definitely still are - sites that require such, but the title of "webmaster" includes a lot less. When a current high school student can do the job, chances are that 50,000+ a year isn't going to last once the market figure it out. It never should have been that high to begin with.
The real talent isn't called a webmaster anymore, they have moved into the software development team. What used to be a "webmaster" job is now just a sideline of one of the developer's job. Such is the way of creating a job that doesn't require much knowledge, skill, or time outside of one of the jobs that does - it goes away (especially when said job applicants demand a salary on par with those that not only do their job but much more).
We do not live in the late 90's where no one knows what "the web" is or what it is capable of. We can longer demand really strange things - welcome to the real world (by now, most of us have figured it out, haven't seen on of these "questions" in quite a long time). Once business figures out anyone and their brother/sister can do the job it's salary drops to nothing or is rolled into another. To expect otherwise is silly - how many complaining would pay someone what they are wanting for those services?
"or maybe all the conservatives have moved on to other sites"
Most of us gave up ages ago. I know I did - I still read nearly all the places I have in the past (websites, magazines, journals, etc) but I simply filter the information through a lens. This article has nothing to do with global warming and before the "initiative" was announced Slashdot was full of stories about how a Mars mission should be a priority. Pretty much nothing has changed (hence the quotes on the initiative) yet the rhetoric has made a 180 degree shift and we are now all DOOMED for totally different reasons (even though nothing has changed).
It is sad the state science is in now. It shouldn't be conservative or liberal (and in fact I find them both to be wrong more often than not when they seek to prove something instead of seeing where the evidence leads). However, if one can do what I call a "Throw a dog a bone" then it is OK. That is - if you can not disprove it and find an expert someplace that says it then it must be true. It used to be that one needed to, you know, look at the evidence and follow it. Now if you can find enough to support your hypothesis it must be true regardless of how much says you are wrong.
I can not say if things like global warming occur. However I can say there is something wrong with a theory that the earth is warming is correct if the world warms, cools, or stays the same (after all, all are to expected and is why the current wording is shifting towards "Global Climate Change" to reflect this new "discovery"). I have issue with theories that are correct no matter the evidence acquired - why even bother gather evidence? I can not say correct or incorrect - the studies are so flawed who knows (and this leaves us to divide along partisan lines)?
*sigh* Tis the state of "science" in general these days. It appalls me to see what passes for real research in pretty much every field out there today. Studies 50 years ago were vastly superior in process - "garbage in garbage out" is still true. Though ultimately it has more to do with our funding process than anything, the system supports those that fit into the current political climate (liberal under the dems, conservative under the repubs).
I still do not really get it. One can purchase several things that can seriously burn or hurt you yet we do not attempt to store it held between our legs. *That* is stupid. People complain about stove tops burning them when they touch one that is on - we do not try and have a campaign to only allow them to go to 140F (or some other temperature that will not burn you). Well tell you not to touch the hot surface.
Even lets assume it was boiling hot - so? Did the person in question know it was really hot - yes, wasn't the very first cup of coffee she had. Did the person in question choose to store it in an (unapproved) and dangerous way - yes, most of even know not to hold cold soft drinks in such a fashion, let alone something that will hurt.
We know all sorts of things on this planet are dangerous and can be not so (generally at the cost of losing a market - the temp change has really hurt McDonald's coffee sales). At some point we have to look and give some personal responsibility. Had the cup failed and spilled the coffee, had they dropped it in her lap, or it failed in what is normally safe usage I would tend to agree. However, holding a really hot cup of coffee between you legs while riding in a car isn't really "normally safe usage" - in fact it is "normally dangerous usage" and - as such, I don't care how hot the coffee was. The failure was in the storage method chosen by the woman and thus her fault.
It is because studies have shown the probability of a societies demise is related to their access to porn, the easier the more likely they are to die.
Currently western society is right near the limit where a society stays stable. An increase in 30% will definitely put us over the top, the sheer amount of porn downloaded would result in widespread danger. Birth rates are already abysmally low, add in that we can totally stay in house, be as fat/lazy/repulsive as we want and still see hot women nekkid will lead to not only a severe decrease in human interaction, but no one will ever want to leave their house to even work. In just a few short years - death of all of western civilization.
Hurry now, write your govt official in whatever country you are in. Lets make bandwidth restrictions so that this will never come about. Studies such as this should never reach the light of day.
We also know that speeding up light is bad - that causes the signal to go back in time. That would also allow MUCH more porn to be downloaded. You could get several hours worth instantly as long as you remembered to start it later on.
Other than that, I couldn't really figure out why either. Maybe the writer owns stock in copper wiring companies or something.
Partly it is going to depend on how long you consider "short term" and "long term".
As of right now, and (in my opinion) another decade or two, there will be a VERY high dollar fight the industry will put on. Both legally and Technically, personally I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of what they are going to end up trying to do. Legally I do not know how far it will go, so far the industry sponsored bills pass near unanimously, so while many here like to blame one side the reality is that there is nothing close to a winner on each side (one talks good, but when it comes time to vote doesn't follow through).
During that time period I expect prices to continue to rise (compare the HD disks to DVD's) and quality to degrade (can not take the risk given the cost) and the burden on the consumer to become fairly high (see current state of HD - will my player work with my TV or not?). In the long term (decades) not good. The industry is already starting to see it in declining profits. From what I can tell, you call this "long term" and I call it "short term".
There has to be some case where things are going to stabilize. It is impossible to create something people can view and keep it secretly encrypted where it can not be copied. So, at some point that *has* to become accepted reality. Will they eventually understand this and adapt, or will they be replaced by something that does? Dunno, my money is on eventually adapting, or at the least when the Next Great Thing comes along immediately get absorbed (see video rental stores).
Of course, given that I am part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (or, rather, if there really was one I would want to be a part given my political ideals) I'm not really one you are interested in hearing from. But, I will answer anyway. It may also tell you where you do not want to go (even though my list is similar to left wingers).
My first choice would be Canada. While there have been places there I detested there are also places I've felt more at home than most places in the US (I'm from East Tennessee). It was true in both geography and culture - plus there is some *great* hunting and fishing in the more remote areas that would be open to me. Canada is more like us than not (and is, thus, a really bad place to move is you decide you hate the US - you have a VERY similar split based on geography and the right wingers will one day take over - just as the left wingers will one day get power back in the US).
I suppose next would be Australia. Having never been there I can only go by what I have seen on TV and there is a lot to like. Nice people and enough technology to be happy with a lot of wilderness to have fun in.
I've known quite a few Italians and they were almost all people I liked. I like the food and what I know of the culture. Though I would most likely choose the more rural parts than the cities - though I would choose one of their large cities over ours.
Next would be much of the Netherlands. It's just looks like a nice place to live. Again, almost no experience to speak of - just what I have seen on TV.
After that - dunno. Germany, Britain, Spain, and other major western countries I either do not like or know next to nothing about (though, since I have not been in most of the countries I can not say definitively - I have to go by TV and that is a horrid source for information). South American and African countries fall into the same category - I see places I would love to be and places I would hate and they are in the same state so I can not make an accurate estimation. Eastern countries are still mostly not nice places to live.
The far east (like Japan) are so different culturally I do not know what to think or how I would fit in but I suspect many would be places I would like.
It goes like this:
1: get a bunch of people together
2: do OSS democratically controlled software
3: PROFIT!!!
The problem is that doing OSS and having a democratically controlled software process has little to do with making money. In fact, I would say that even if you have a popular software project this "plan" has little to do with making profit. It's nothing really new - it is simply a description of how most OSS projects are ran. At least pretty much any I've ever dealt with.
As far as I can tell money in an OSS project is either made through (to a lesser extent) distribution or (mostly) from support. I think this can work well - see RedHat and I expect IBM is putting what it is in OSS projects for this reason. However, this plan addresses neither one of them and assumes you will make some profit from someplace (who knows where). It deals with administration issues.
Eh, it's like the difference between academic and industry software. Academics can ignore startup and clean-up time, industry can not ignore any of it. There is some validity to both aspects - academics are not looking to achieve the same thing as industry and that is a good thing. Ignoring some things has eventually led to some really useful discoveries (essentially finding a global maxima instead of a local one by allowing a temporary reduction).
"The only, ONLY thing holding AOL still together are people who are less internet savvy"
My uncle swears that AOL's browser is WAY better than MSIE, Netscape, or Opera (I've had him use all of them over trying to find one he can use). AOL works and the others never do - including allowing him to login to e-bay and page rendering. I wouldn't say "internet savvy" as much as "computer savvy".
He dropped DSL to go back to dial up because it was too "hard" to add a new e-mail through the browser - he needed AOL. I'm not real sure how he is taking the change. I know he is happy to be back in the fold, but I still hear him say he is going to go do something tonight that I know dial-up will never do (for instance, download and burn a DVD - good luck getting that done in a few hours on dial-up even though he swears it works fine). I think there is a certain amount of pride that will not allow him to say I am correct - I know he didn't download a 200+ meg file in the last 15 minutes on dial-up regardless of what he tells me.
*shrug*. I can not really understand being that clueless on anything. While there are many many many things I know nothing about I tend to either a) trust those that are experts and do as they say (and not argue with them) or b) learn enough to do it myself. Option A isn't a big deal - there are too many things out there to know enough about (for instance, I depend on a car mechanic even though I *could* learn to do it on my own - I just do not have the time to do so and I do not enjoy working on a vehicle). Though even then I try and learn *something* about any thing I use daily/weekly, enough so that I can somewhat tell if someone is trying to rip me off or enough so that I can converse/understand what the experts tell me is wrong.
There is obviously a market for those types of people. While my uncle is one of the worst I know, he still is not that unique. And I do not think they will ever really advance, they do not want too.
One of the other issues is that revenue is not a standard term. If it were then you could negotiate that you garner a specific percentage of that revenue.
The problem is that no one will do gross. That is reasonable - there are many places where a real gross is really really high and the real net is zero or a loss. Take advertising for instance - pretty much all a loss (and this is where the OP is talking about). While it is purely a cost, it still increases net revenue by quite a bit.
If you do net then the studios play with costs - every thing becomes one and non-solid costs are greatly inflated. Say, for instance, one could say the five minutes by the studio exec to read over a document and sign it cost the company 5 million, to be deducted from the gross (and since it grossed 4 million that is a loss). Therefore you get no money. This occurs quite often.
If the studios were somewhat honest this wouldn't be such an issue. You could simply do a percentage of net income (or maybe even gross income). However the powers that be try and actively screw people out of money and are in a position to do so easily. Do all of them do it? I do not know - I suspect there are honest players out there who figure a happy well compensated employee makes you MUCH more than a screwed one (which is very true). However from my view it seems pretty much all the big players do not do this - including trying hard line DRM initiatives that screw customers (read - the RIAA and MPAA).
Eh, this is what a union is for. I've seen many cases where unions demand unreasonable ideas (it has resulted in more than one company moving labor out of country). Yet, this is precisely what they are intended to fix. If nearly everyone decides to do this there is no choice, if enough choose to go around the union then maybe it isn't that harsh on you and you need to re-evaluate your complaints. That's a free market for you.
"It's amazing really."
It is? It seems pretty much par for the course to me. Apparently you do not pay that much attention to the business end of your industry. This is what occurs when you fail to do so.
To a large extent - that is my point. Defining "space" as to be the tallest mountain is - well - stupid. Lets face it - given enough fuel an airplane is able to maintain an "orbit" of a fairly low altitude (given how you define "orbit"). At the very least I do not think the summit of the tallest mountain should be "space" as the defintion I qouted defines (however, most lawmakers being so scientifically ignorant they see it at a different point - however the definition still stands).
That's why I state I prefer a definition that defines space as "mesospere and beyond" (or whatever 'sphere you choose). Does it make perfect sense? No - but then nothing does. However this makes more sense than the majority of legal definitions.
It's not terribly clear where "space" begins but international treaties/law states that no one owns it. It's widely adopted enough that it is as good as enforced. The Wiki article gives the one I found most often - the lowest altitude that one can place an object in a stable orbit (personally I would have gone with one of the 'spheres and a harder altitude - personally I see "space" as a lack of atmosphere not ability to orbit the planet).
Generally speaking it is more like international waters. Regardless of what people here who have an inability to rationally think when it comes to the US say, other countries routinely fly spy satellites (along with many other ones - some of which I am sure are "dual purpose") over us. Though since most are "friendly" no one seems to really care. Not to mention we are pretty good about hiding things from airiel phtography by now. As of right now the number of countries that can field a satellite is pretty low, especially one with the technology to be a "spy satellite".
Though as time goes on it will get to be more important. For one thing orbital space isn't really that big and a small handfull of countries have most of it now. I suspect that will be a much larger issue - too much is done underground and in highly distributed places now. Not that the intel is worthless, but as we saw in Iraq it's not as cut and dry as it used to be (it becomes much more useful in war - great ability to see troop buildup and movement).
This is being treated just as international waters would be - anything goes that you can politically get away with. Even the article doesn't have much of a reaction from the US govt over it. The article's author assumes the part about not angering China because of trade relations and dealing with NK and Iran (much as some highly modded posts here are ranting about the US calling are interjecting thier own ideas as to the US govt's motivation) - all the govt has said is silence.
The worse part is how much of that people believe.
It's not uncoommon to find people who's signifigant other has died leaving behind a handgun. The surviving member knows nothing about them, "unloads" it be removing the clip, and then forgets it. I know my cousing was going around with one pointing it at people saying "bang bang". My father (I was barely old enough to recollect it at all, let alone know much of what was going on) had a fit, he was then told "I unloaded it, it's safe". After explaining you *never* treat a gun as a toy, always loaded, he took the gun away and immediatly made it safe (lock open the slide), it had a bullet in the chamber. They assumed that hollywood removal of the clip was actually unloaded. I can irritate people when I fuss at the cops in the movie having criminals take clips out to "unload" thier guns.
It's gotten bad enough that too many real videos are considered fake because it "doesn't look real" and people make real decisions that can impact many people based on it. In nearly 100% of the cases you can eventually track it down to "It doesn't look like in the movies". Just in firearms alone it is amazing what people think a gun can do and want to legislate against it (sometimes proposed legislation is *detrimental* to safety), and then not know it is horridly dangerous in others and just not care.
Even those of us that are jaded about the whole thing find from time to time where hollywood has colored our ideas (for example, I know something of how several cultures fought with swords, yet I still imagine the classic hollywood edge on edge fighting). It is such a large part of our lives that it can be hard to seperate when you have no references to compare too - even if you do not like to watch too much you still see it everywhere and so much of our society believes it.
Ok, to begin with I am definatly not one to nitpick spelling (see my sig), but I am one that finds mispellings amusing. For example, in grade school I would consistently mispell "ship" as "shit" - which led to some *really* amusing fiction they forced us to write (given that I have always like science fiction and stories based in outer space). So do not take any of the following personal, I'm sure I have more than one mistake in this post, if not then it is a miracle. That being said:
"a long time ago I was a radio negineer"
I'm not sure what a "negineer" is, but I tend to think it is a racial slur and being relegated to just radio in the modern world makes it even worse. Please use a different one next time.
"If you convert it to % profit margins and consider the fact that bandwidth costs are minimal, they're making a profit margin in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of percents."
Umm, how much do you want them to charge?
If they are charging 200,000% (minimum to be hundreds of thousands, let alone million percent) too much what would you be happy with (Given how profit margins are calculated I'm going to assume you don't mean that)?
Not to mention there are MANY more costs than simply bandwidth, and I would say that is probably one of the smallest costs in there.
Plus, 5-10 dollars for a game is pretty low. It's thoughts like this that are stalling acceptance of downloaded older material (games, movies, etc). Much less than that and it's not worth thier time to fool with, especially given the small amount of games available (music can get away with sub dollar because many of us may want 5000+ songs, games and such do not enjoy that).
Sometime in the mid 80's I was diagnosed with several "learning disabilities". The only one I still carry to this day is Dyslexia (see my sig). Another one was reaction and hand eye co-ordination.
For the latter the doctor told my parents to get me to play video games. They, at first, purchased me an (expensive at the time - nearly 3000 dollars) 8086. Unfortunatly for me (and thier money - it wasn't until my senior year in high school - '93 - that I became interested in computers) I never really got interested in it and picked up an Atari which I wore out. I've played video games constantly since then - it worked in my case. I'm sure they wished they had just bought the atari to begin with, but where happy I had something that I wanted to use that was also therapy for my problems.
I sometimes wonder if the same treatment would be prescribed today given the current attitude towards games.
The saddest part is that they had to hack the system to do this. I don't really know why they didn't use a PC and one of the free dev kits around - some are quite good (and many of the pay ones are free for research). Maybe they couldn't really find a replacement for the glove, but then it would seem easier to hack it into a joystick port than what they did. Ahh well, at least the research was done.
To a large extent I think there is some truth to having an issue with making money by selling the virtual parts. It becomes even truer the more that is what you are selling.
However there is something to be said for convenience. I'm willing to pay some premium for always high quality recordings, no viruses, good selection, and other things that file swapping has a great deal of difficulty with. This depends on what you time is worth and how much is charged. Itunes has made pretty good with this even though many still do not use it (I don't - I don't like enough music to bother).
The other is many people (especially myself) like physical copies and the extra's that go with them. Nice jacket insets, quality backup (though this is much less the case now - most are skimping on quality control), hard copy manuals, all sorts of things. Just stuff I can not get by downloading.
And, lastly, support. For consumer items this may not be such a big deal - what support on downloaded MP3's? But for software with a business that can mean a whole lot. Really, what most businesses are paying Microsoft is thier support. This comes in several forms - large list of supported hardware, listening to important demands, and other types of things (little to none is getting phone support, you have your IT staff or another company to deal with that). For most businesses that switch to linux this also tends to be the case - Microsoft didn't listen to the demands, found some peice of hardware didn't really work well (for instance you need real time data encoding and you can not set the Kernel to the modes you need), or maybe need to dink with the code.
In short, there are lots of things to sell. In some markets it may not be that great, in others it may be where all the money is. It also depends on what you are viewing as your product - if it is only the string of bits being copied then you are screwed - DRM or not (it *will* be broken and once it is then back to unlimited supply, and probably broken quickly and much cheaper than the DRM that you produced). In the end, that is reality and you can not fight it succesfully. You can debate if it will end up good or not, but it will not stop it from occuring.
I'm from Knoxville, we toured it fairly regularly.
The have touristy places to go like fake cutaway life size reactor cores (the graphite reactor is especially nice). We got to see things that glowed VERY bright from radioactivity as they came out of some reactor core. And quite a few other things.
The have a "science museum" that you don't even need permission to go to - anyone can. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki exhibit is especially good (from discussion and pictures on radiation poisoning to life size models of Fat Boy and Little Man). I wouldn't make a trip to Oak Ridge for it - you can go through the whole thing in an afternoon, however if you are passing through or are a school kid there is unique stuff there.
After college I worked there for a few years in the HPC department (not quite the same one with the Crays, worked on COTS clusters), they still have whirring tape machines and we can make the switches have nice flashy lights. I would go watch the tape robots occasionally - for some of the users storage needs it's still really the only way to go and the HPSS could be quite interesting if it was being hit hard.
Not to mention there is still a lot of Manhattan project era stuff around to view. To any kid interested in science that's got to be neat.
I know they still give the tours post-9/11 as it was not uncommon to have a bunch of kids watch me replace a hard drive or something in one of the machines. The city also co-ordinates tours for adults, I think they also go into Y-12 and K-25 (the two original enrichment plants) still but I am not sure (Y-12 does weapons research and is mostly off limits - at the point of a machine gun - and k-25 is being turned into an industrial park).