Hi MR AC! Allow me to explain how that can be bad, a little thing called 'unforeseen consequences'. For example CAFE...once upon a time there was a thing called a station wagon. Now this thing was just about perfect for your average soccer mom who needed to haul the kids to practice, but then along came CAFE which listed them as cars and put crazy MPG ratings on them.
" Why" said the auto manufacturers "We can keep making these and make underpowered POS station wagons that the public doesn't buy, or we can build them on a truck chassis and forget the CAFE crap!" and the SUV was born. The same thing happened to those great little car/trucks, like the El Camino and Ranchero, which were perfect for just hauling a little lumber or moving some furniture. Nope instead thanks to CAFE you got full sized trucks instead!
I've just taken a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy and I think the current MPG ratings are far from crazy. For instance, my Audi A4 (European model) from 2002 is rated at about 35 mpg and has 130hp. It certainly does not feel underpowered. According to Wikipedia, CAFE only demands 30 mpg for the model year 2011. So it is clearly doable. Granted, the 39 mph for 2016 may be a bit harder to obtain;-)
Not entirely true. Despite patent law saying otherwise, European patent offices often grant patents for "computer implemented inventions".
But even so, the vast majority of these patent lawsuits seems to happen in the USA. So I wonder: If companies like Bedrock make life difficult enough for Linux use and development in the USA, will we eventually have European Linux developers who say "fuck this, we make our own version that ignores all US patents"?
Also, Oracle has not released the brand yet. They have merely announced a move in that direction, without giving details.
If Oracle actually donates the OpenOffice trademark to the Document Foundation, it would be substantial proof of their goodwill. But so far, they can still turn around and withhold any real concessions.
And otherwise, wait and observe which form the "give it back" takes. If Oracle does something that is not easily reversed, like giving the Open Office trademark to an independent foundation, we may assume they are sincere. If they only make promises without substance, stay wary.
Socket 478 means the old "Northwood" Pentium 4. A good CPU back when it was new, and if you happen to have matching motherboards, RAM and other things as well, it may be worthwhile to assemble the whole bunch into an "oldie" PC. But I wouldn't bother buying any new boards for a P4, even if those were still available. Even a real cheap AMD for $40-$50 will clearly beat the P4 on performance, and modern DDR3 RAM is cheaper per GB than the DDR(1) RAM that was common in the Socket 478 age. Overall, going with modern parts will get you much better performance at marginally (if at all) higher costs;-)
I have a 4 year old Athlon64 X2 system which is generally just fine - but I also still have its predecessor, a 7 year old Pentium 4 in a pretty nice Thermaltake case. So when I'll treat myself to an upgrade later this year, it is the old P4 that will get most of its components swapped out. The Athlon64 will make a nice secondary PC at my parents' place (where the P4 currently sits).
I'm sure lots of geeks have more than one computer from different generations, and could do something similar.
Read the original article on bloomberg.com. It says
Apple and RIM denied infringing the patent and argued it was invalid. ITC Judge Paul Luckern on Jan. 24 agreed with the companies on both issues.
So it seems that the "ruling" was just an earlier finding of the same agency (and the Slashdot summary was misleading). Maybe Apple and RIM need to sue in regular court, then your question would apply.
Unfortunately, these days it seems that "inventors" can get away with giving only the most vague description of their invention and receive a patent anyway. In several online discussions where patent numbers were given, I have looked at the patent application and thought "Huh? How is this implemented? The patent application does not tell you much about how to actually do it!"
And this is one big point where the system is broken. The inventor is supposed to give a reasonably clear description of how the invention is manufactured, so others can use it to reproduce the invention after the patent runs out. But all too often, the patent examiners seem to neglect this. Another is that the USPTO seems to hand out patents for really small inventive steps, again allowing patent holders to get a monopoly without giving society much in return.
Unless these two points can be fixed (and it seems unlikely to me), we might be better off abolishing patents completely.
...and I agree that our politicians have fucked up by agreeing to the treaty. But then again, European Conservatives have a long tradition of kissing US ass, so this was hardly surprising. One of the reasons I'm politically drifting towards the left in my middle years, which is usually an age where people become more conservative.
The second fuckup (according to the article on Spiegel.de) is that Europol is not doing its job of filtering the requests from the US. That filtering should prevent thet US authorities from pulling excessive amounts of data, but it seems not to happen.
But finally, I also think the USA are not really a friend of Germany if they try to push through such invasive treaties. It is time for Europe to distance itself from the USA.
GP actually wrote (quoting in snippets, but I don't think I'm falsifying his arguments):
Moving on to the unofficial reasons, we find three of them: making an example of rogue states, setting off a democratic domino, and hydrocarbons. I don't think I need to waste my bit-breath on making an example. Let's just say it worked, and it was a major reason Libya returned into the international community (until recently, that is).
Here GP concedes that access to Iraqi oil was a reason for the war. It becomes more explicit later on:
As for hydrocarbons, the thing is, there's really no telling how much is there actually, but it might be more than Saudi Arabia. The problem here was that around the turn of the millennium, US corporations were forced out of Iraq, which necessitated a change of regime. The fact that this change of regime happened to coincide with the deposition of a dictator was just an added bonus.
A less generous interpretation of these words is "yes, we invaded Iraq for the oil". A rather piratical act, and so I don't see where GP and you really disagree.
Since I've started this post, I might as well comment on the other two unofficial reasons: -Making an example: Yes, the US have demonstrated that they can beat a second-rate middle east power. I doubt if it was really worth the cost, because I think the deterrence effect is offset by the USA damaging its reputation. -Starting a democratic domino: Sorry GP, but I doubt the invasion of Iraq has started the recent uprisings in North Africa. Because I don't see the connection between a superior invader toppling one dictator and the people in other countries being encouraged to do the same. Feel free to enlighten me though.
Where compression MAY still matter in the future isn't with storage, but transfer.
Then the lossy formats will still reign supreme.
There's just no real market for FLAC. It doesn't save enough space to make the hassle worth it for storage, and the lossy formats do better when you do need to save space. Raw is more future-proof than FLAC.
First, I disagree that raw (which might be.wav in this case) is more future-proof than FLAC. Because you can convert from FLAC back into an identical.wav. I tried this before I started coverting everything to FLAC.
While working for the German subsidiary of a US company (being German myself), I got the impression that management was more interested in quick solutions and new things than gradual improvement of existing technology. If this is typical for US companies, it may be the downside of the frontier and pioneering spirit: Once a technology works reasonably well, people lose interest in refining it. Which allows other, more patient competitors to catch up and eventually become better.
Asians seem to be the other extreme: Not so good at inventing new stuff, but very tenacious at improving it.
It may happen eventually, but it requires the rise of some new device category or "killer application" that cannot be handled well by x86 chips and Windows.
We got close with netbooks, where the price of Windows made enough of a difference to matter and Vista was too heavyweight to run well on this device category. Short term, Microsoft managed to counter this one with an extra cheap "starter edition" of XP. Meanwhile, cheap RAM and Windows 7 being faster than Vista made things easier for Microsoft.
IMHO, the next hurdle for Windows/x86 will be tablet PCs. Not so much because of computing power or Windows prices, but because of the user interface, especially in applications. That takes a lot of redesigning, because applications that require much typing are definitely not fun to use on a tablet. This makes a lot of older applications unattractive for tablets, which means the advantage of Windows having lots of existing software is much smaller on a tablet.
Plenty of good arguments so far, but I think China's primary goal in this is neither money nor prestige. I think it is a version of "national security", where the Chinese are trying to create an independent computer industry so they don't have to rely on western technology with possible back doors and kill switches.
The first conversion is generally inaudibly different from CD quality. But if a new codec shows up 10 years from now you want to/need to use for some reason, re-converting from AAC to.wav to $NEW_CODEC, the compression artifacts may no longer be so inaudible.
So for me, FLAC is the format of choice. I'm currently ripping my brother's CD collection to FLAC, and my own will follow after that.
China's own 64 bit MIPS-compatible 65nm 8-core 1GHz version of the Godsen (Longsoon family) processors I don't think this one will overrun the world wide chip markets anytime soon, Intel and AMD chips are a bit more advanced.
I just wondered if this might have further consequences for Experts-Exchange.
As a Google algorithm developer, I would now think about ways to make use of those blocking requests as a sort of negative influence on page rank. As in "if lots of people block this, it must be really crap". Needs some careful thought to prevent abuse, but the idea of Experts-Exchange and similar sites getting hammered sounds sweet;-)
Another difference is that there is no "skill point limit" and fixed specialization for EVE characters. It is like being able to learn all the skills from all classes in a traditional MMORPG. Of course you can fly only one ship at a time, which counts as a temporary specialization. But the "re-spec" is only a flight to your hangar away. So an EVE character is never permanently gimped because of investing in the wrong skills. At worst, it takes extra time to learn the other skills too.
I still have an old Pentium 4 "Northwood" based system from that time (as second computer), with a Radeon 9600 Pro GPU. That was a nice mid-range gaming system at the time (high end would have been a 9800, but that was too expensive for my taste). Power consumption is -80W idle, according to my (cheap) wattmeter -120W when only loading the CPU (I did not have a graphics benchmark tool at hand to stress the GPU too). -and an estimated 140W if you really stress both CPU and GPU, as the Radeon 9600 does not use much power either way. Based on the tiny original cooler, its TDP cannot be much over 20W. Monitor not included in these numbers.
My newer and main computer from around 2007 has an Athlon X2 4600EE, that is the energy-efficient version with 65W TDP ("standard" Athlon X2 CPUs had 95W TDP at the time). GPU is a NVidia 8600GT. This system counted as mid-range gaming system at the time too, but I already made compromises on performance to keep power usage low. Not so much on price, as this system was actually cheaper than the old Pentium4 system. Power consumption as measured is the same as in the old Pentium 4. Maybe a bit more when the GPU gets loaded.
Today, I'm looking for suitable parts to upgrade the old P4. For other reasons the CPU has to be AMD. If I don't want to increase power usage in the CPU I could get either -an Athlon II X2 "e"model, 2x3GHz, 45W TDP -or an Athlon II X4 "e"model, 4x2.4GHz, 45W TDP -a Phenom quad core "e"model, 4x2.6GHz, 65W TDP -or wait for Llano/Bulldozer this summer and hope they offer more bang for the watt.
Choosing a GPU with good performance/watt also means going AMD. I'm thinking of something like a HD 6570 or HD 6670 once they become available. We'll see how much that power that system uses, but if it runs on 50W idle I'll be quite pleased.
Now if I was willing to go back to Pentium 4 levels in performance, something like the ASUS AT5IONT-I might be the way to go. This little mini-ITX board comes with a dual core Atom and integrated graphics, maximum power consumption 13W. Add another 10W for a harddisk and assume a power supply with 80%+ efficiency, and the entire system will run on less than 30 Watt.
The good news is that as the installed base of five-year-old PCs and netbooks increases, publishers of commercial software may finally realize that the common practice of increasing published system requirements rather than the efficiency of algorithms, commonly called Wirth's law, is costing them customers.
Ahem. A slight correction: Increasing the efficiency of algorithms is in most cases neither possible nor necessary. Because a) mature and efficient algorithms for the problem at hand are known, and it would take a major breakthrough to improve them. b) merely keeping the existing level of software optimization would lead to faster sytems (system meaning hardware and software) because the hardware improves.
Actually, Wirth's law as quoted by Wikipedia is "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."
And that is actually what happens: Instead of investing into developer time to implement the known best algorithms, many companies settle for a quick solution that does the job but not necessarily in the fastest way. The customer is told to get a faster machine.
In some cases, that actually makes sense. For custom software that runs only on a handful of computers, the extra developer time may be waaay more expensive than buying a faster machine. In other cases, publishers of commercial software are just trying to shift their costs to the customer. I agree those publishers need a kick in the pants;-)
I agree that everyday software has reached a level of maturity that makes frequent updates less urgent. Or maybe it is a lack of innovation. Either way, Windows XP from 2001 does not look much inferior to Windows 7. I'll grant Microsoft that they have improved somewhat, but it is less than I'd expect from the eight years of development between XP and 7.
Maybe as a side effect, the race to more performance and memory is not as urgent anymore. For most tasks, a typical PC from 2007 is still perfectly satisfying (your laptop for instance). Exceptions are -Games (some titles seem to require a better graphics card than my 2007 Geforce 8600GT now, even if you are willing to turn down detail levels) -Video editing/encoding, which was always demanding and a modern PC just can handle it better. On top of that, it seems to me that the increase in performance has actually slowed down a little. So it makes perfect sense to keep your PC longer.
Same for TV: HDTV is nice but at least in Germany the TV stations are far from offering everything in HD. So shelling out big bucks for that new TV set is somewhat questionable...
If Geohot vs. Sony goes to court, I guess we will find out which concept of ownership the law actually supports. Because not all business models are actually protected by law, even if Sony would very much like that. Granted, Sony probably have a good chance at winning, but they are not automatically in the right.
Slashdot Mirror
Hi MR AC! Allow me to explain how that can be bad, a little thing called 'unforeseen consequences'. For example CAFE...once upon a time there was a thing called a station wagon. Now this thing was just about perfect for your average soccer mom who needed to haul the kids to practice, but then along came CAFE which listed them as cars and put crazy MPG ratings on them.
" Why" said the auto manufacturers "We can keep making these and make underpowered POS station wagons that the public doesn't buy, or we can build them on a truck chassis and forget the CAFE crap!" and the SUV was born. The same thing happened to those great little car/trucks, like the El Camino and Ranchero, which were perfect for just hauling a little lumber or moving some furniture. Nope instead thanks to CAFE you got full sized trucks instead!
I've just taken a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Average_Fuel_Economy and I think the current MPG ratings are far from crazy. ;-)
For instance, my Audi A4 (European model) from 2002 is rated at about 35 mpg and has 130hp. It certainly does not feel underpowered. According to Wikipedia, CAFE only demands 30 mpg for the model year 2011. So it is clearly doable. Granted, the 39 mph for 2016 may be a bit harder to obtain
We dont have software patents in the real world.
Not entirely true. Despite patent law saying otherwise, European patent offices often grant patents for "computer implemented inventions".
But even so, the vast majority of these patent lawsuits seems to happen in the USA. So I wonder:
If companies like Bedrock make life difficult enough for Linux use and development in the USA, will we eventually have European Linux developers who say "fuck this, we make our own version that ignores all US patents"?
Also, Oracle has not released the brand yet. They have merely announced a move in that direction, without giving details.
If Oracle actually donates the OpenOffice trademark to the Document Foundation, it would be substantial proof of their goodwill. But so far, they can still turn around and withhold any real concessions.
And otherwise, wait and observe which form the "give it back" takes. If Oracle does something that is not easily reversed, like giving the Open Office trademark to an independent foundation, we may assume they are sincere. If they only make promises without substance, stay wary.
If the "recovered" password hashes to the same hash, it should allow you to log in, and thus appear to be the original password.
Socket 478 means the old "Northwood" Pentium 4. A good CPU back when it was new, and if you happen to have matching motherboards, RAM and other things as well, it may be worthwhile to assemble the whole bunch into an "oldie" PC. ;-)
But I wouldn't bother buying any new boards for a P4, even if those were still available. Even a real cheap AMD for $40-$50 will clearly beat the P4 on performance, and modern DDR3 RAM is cheaper per GB than the DDR(1) RAM that was common in the Socket 478 age. Overall, going with modern parts will get you much better performance at marginally (if at all) higher costs
I have a 4 year old Athlon64 X2 system which is generally just fine - but I also still have its predecessor, a 7 year old Pentium 4 in a pretty nice Thermaltake case. So when I'll treat myself to an upgrade later this year, it is the old P4 that will get most of its components swapped out. The Athlon64 will make a nice secondary PC at my parents' place (where the P4 currently sits).
I'm sure lots of geeks have more than one computer from different generations, and could do something similar.
Read the original article on bloomberg.com. It says
Apple and RIM denied infringing the patent and argued it was invalid. ITC Judge Paul Luckern on Jan. 24 agreed with the companies on both issues.
So it seems that the "ruling" was just an earlier finding of the same agency (and the Slashdot summary was misleading). Maybe Apple and RIM need to sue in regular court, then your question would apply.
Unfortunately, these days it seems that "inventors" can get away with giving only the most vague description of their invention and receive a patent anyway. In several online discussions where patent numbers were given, I have looked at the patent application and thought
"Huh? How is this implemented? The patent application does not tell you much about how to actually do it!"
And this is one big point where the system is broken. The inventor is supposed to give a reasonably clear description of how the invention is manufactured, so others can use it to reproduce the invention after the patent runs out. But all too often, the patent examiners seem to neglect this. Another is that the USPTO seems to hand out patents for really small inventive steps, again allowing patent holders to get a monopoly without giving society much in return.
Unless these two points can be fixed (and it seems unlikely to me), we might be better off abolishing patents completely.
...and I agree that our politicians have fucked up by agreeing to the treaty. But then again, European Conservatives have a long tradition of kissing US ass, so this was hardly surprising. One of the reasons I'm politically drifting towards the left in my middle years, which is usually an age where people become more conservative.
The second fuckup (according to the article on Spiegel.de) is that Europol is not doing its job of filtering the requests from the US. That filtering should prevent thet US authorities from pulling excessive amounts of data, but it seems not to happen.
But finally, I also think the USA are not really a friend of Germany if they try to push through such invasive treaties. It is time for Europe to distance itself from the USA.
GP actually wrote (quoting in snippets, but I don't think I'm falsifying his arguments):
Moving on to the unofficial reasons, we find three of them: making an example of rogue states, setting off a democratic domino, and hydrocarbons.
I don't think I need to waste my bit-breath on making an example. Let's just say it worked, and it was a major reason Libya returned into the international community (until recently, that is).
Here GP concedes that access to Iraqi oil was a reason for the war. It becomes more explicit later on:
As for hydrocarbons, the thing is, there's really no telling how much is there actually, but it might be more than Saudi Arabia. The problem here was that around the turn of the millennium, US corporations were forced out of Iraq, which necessitated a change of regime. The fact that this change of regime happened to coincide with the deposition of a dictator was just an added bonus.
A less generous interpretation of these words is "yes, we invaded Iraq for the oil". A rather piratical act, and so I don't see where GP and you really disagree.
Since I've started this post, I might as well comment on the other two unofficial reasons:
-Making an example: Yes, the US have demonstrated that they can beat a second-rate middle east power. I doubt if it was really worth the cost, because I think the deterrence effect is offset by the USA damaging its reputation.
-Starting a democratic domino: Sorry GP, but I doubt the invasion of Iraq has started the recent uprisings in North Africa. Because I don't see the connection between a superior invader toppling one dictator and the people in other countries being encouraged to do the same. Feel free to enlighten me though.
Where compression MAY still matter in the future isn't with storage, but transfer.
Then the lossy formats will still reign supreme.
There's just no real market for FLAC. It doesn't save enough space to make the hassle worth it for storage, and the lossy formats do better when you do need to save space. Raw is more future-proof than FLAC.
First, I disagree that raw (which might be .wav in this case) is more future-proof than FLAC. Because you can convert from FLAC back into an identical .wav. I tried this before I started coverting everything to FLAC.
Second, FLAC has one nice feature over .wav files:
Replay gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replay_Gain).
I hope every player will eventually support that, because it would help to make the loudness wars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war) pointless
While working for the German subsidiary of a US company (being German myself), I got the impression that management was more interested in quick solutions and new things than gradual improvement of existing technology. If this is typical for US companies, it may be the downside of the frontier and pioneering spirit:
Once a technology works reasonably well, people lose interest in refining it. Which allows other, more patient competitors to catch up and eventually become better.
Asians seem to be the other extreme:
Not so good at inventing new stuff, but very tenacious at improving it.
It may happen eventually, but it requires the rise of some new device category or "killer application" that cannot be handled well by x86 chips and Windows.
We got close with netbooks, where the price of Windows made enough of a difference to matter and Vista was too heavyweight to run well on this device category. Short term, Microsoft managed to counter this one with an extra cheap "starter edition" of XP. Meanwhile, cheap RAM and Windows 7 being faster than Vista made things easier for Microsoft.
IMHO, the next hurdle for Windows/x86 will be tablet PCs. Not so much because of computing power or Windows prices, but because of the user interface, especially in applications. That takes a lot of redesigning, because applications that require much typing are definitely not fun to use on a tablet. This makes a lot of older applications unattractive for tablets, which means the advantage of Windows having lots of existing software is much smaller on a tablet.
Plenty of good arguments so far, but I think China's primary goal in this is neither money nor prestige. I think it is a version of "national security", where the Chinese are trying to create an independent computer industry so they don't have to rely on western technology with possible back doors and kill switches.
The first conversion is generally inaudibly different from CD quality. But if a new codec shows up 10 years from now you want to/need to use for some reason, re-converting from AAC to .wav to $NEW_CODEC, the compression artifacts may no longer be so inaudible.
So for me, FLAC is the format of choice. I'm currently ripping my brother's CD collection to FLAC, and my own will follow after that.
China's own 64 bit MIPS-compatible 65nm 8-core 1GHz version of the Godsen (Longsoon family) processors
I don't think this one will overrun the world wide chip markets anytime soon, Intel and AMD chips are a bit more advanced.
I just wondered if this might have further consequences for Experts-Exchange.
As a Google algorithm developer, I would now think about ways to make use of those blocking requests as a sort of negative influence on page rank. As in "if lots of people block this, it must be really crap". Needs some careful thought to prevent abuse, but the idea of Experts-Exchange and similar sites getting hammered sounds sweet ;-)
Another difference is that there is no "skill point limit" and fixed specialization for EVE characters. It is like being able to learn all the skills from all classes in a traditional MMORPG.
Of course you can fly only one ship at a time, which counts as a temporary specialization. But the "re-spec" is only a flight to your hangar away. So an EVE character is never permanently gimped because of investing in the wrong skills. At worst, it takes extra time to learn the other skills too.
I still have an old Pentium 4 "Northwood" based system from that time (as second computer), with a Radeon 9600 Pro GPU. That was a nice mid-range gaming system at the time (high end would have been a 9800, but that was too expensive for my taste). Power consumption is
-80W idle, according to my (cheap) wattmeter
-120W when only loading the CPU (I did not have a graphics benchmark tool at hand to stress the GPU too).
-and an estimated 140W if you really stress both CPU and GPU, as the Radeon 9600 does not use much power either way. Based on the tiny original cooler, its TDP cannot be much over 20W.
Monitor not included in these numbers.
My newer and main computer from around 2007 has an Athlon X2 4600EE, that is the energy-efficient version with 65W TDP ("standard" Athlon X2 CPUs had 95W TDP at the time). GPU is a NVidia 8600GT. This system counted as mid-range gaming system at the time too, but I already made compromises on performance to keep power usage low. Not so much on price, as this system was actually cheaper than the old Pentium4 system. Power consumption as measured is the same as in the old Pentium 4. Maybe a bit more when the GPU gets loaded.
Today, I'm looking for suitable parts to upgrade the old P4. For other reasons the CPU has to be AMD. If I don't want to increase power usage in the CPU I could get either
-an Athlon II X2 "e"model, 2x3GHz, 45W TDP
-or an Athlon II X4 "e"model, 4x2.4GHz, 45W TDP
-a Phenom quad core "e"model, 4x2.6GHz, 65W TDP
-or wait for Llano/Bulldozer this summer and hope they offer more bang for the watt.
Choosing a GPU with good performance/watt also means going AMD. I'm thinking of something like a HD 6570 or HD 6670 once they become available.
We'll see how much that power that system uses, but if it runs on 50W idle I'll be quite pleased.
Now if I was willing to go back to Pentium 4 levels in performance, something like the ASUS AT5IONT-I might be the way to go. This little mini-ITX board comes with a dual core Atom and integrated graphics, maximum power consumption 13W. Add another 10W for a harddisk and assume a power supply with 80%+ efficiency, and the entire system will run on less than 30 Watt.
The good news is that as the installed base of five-year-old PCs and netbooks increases, publishers of commercial software may finally realize that the common practice of increasing published system requirements rather than the efficiency of algorithms, commonly called Wirth's law, is costing them customers.
Ahem. A slight correction:
Increasing the efficiency of algorithms is in most cases neither possible nor necessary. Because
a) mature and efficient algorithms for the problem at hand are known, and it would take a major breakthrough to improve them.
b) merely keeping the existing level of software optimization would lead to faster sytems (system meaning hardware and software) because the hardware improves.
Actually, Wirth's law as quoted by Wikipedia is "Software is getting slower more rapidly than hardware becomes faster."
And that is actually what happens:
Instead of investing into developer time to implement the known best algorithms, many companies settle for a quick solution that does the job but not necessarily in the fastest way. The customer is told to get a faster machine.
In some cases, that actually makes sense. For custom software that runs only on a handful of computers, the extra developer time may be waaay more expensive than buying a faster machine. In other cases, publishers of commercial software are just trying to shift their costs to the customer. I agree those publishers need a kick in the pants ;-)
I agree that everyday software has reached a level of maturity that makes frequent updates less urgent. Or maybe it is a lack of innovation. Either way, Windows XP from 2001 does not look much inferior to Windows 7. I'll grant Microsoft that they have improved somewhat, but it is less than I'd expect from the eight years of development between XP and 7.
Maybe as a side effect, the race to more performance and memory is not as urgent anymore. For most tasks, a typical PC from 2007 is still perfectly satisfying (your laptop for instance). Exceptions are
-Games (some titles seem to require a better graphics card than my 2007 Geforce 8600GT now, even if you are willing to turn down detail levels)
-Video editing/encoding, which was always demanding and a modern PC just can handle it better.
On top of that, it seems to me that the increase in performance has actually slowed down a little. So it makes perfect sense to keep your PC longer.
Same for TV: HDTV is nice but at least in Germany the TV stations are far from offering everything in HD. So shelling out big bucks for that new TV set is somewhat questionable...
Well, if you want to get nasty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement. The lawsuit might actually pay for itself...
Depends under which license the pictures were released. I did not dig that deep, but yes, the images could become expensive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_damages_for_copyright_infringement.
If Geohot vs. Sony goes to court, I guess we will find out which concept of ownership the law actually supports.
Because not all business models are actually protected by law, even if Sony would very much like that. Granted, Sony probably have a good chance at winning, but they are not automatically in the right.