Ego. That's what's going on here. And the powers that be in Russia are willing to risk a complete throwback to the cold war era.
I'm not convinced it is necessarily Russia's fault. Every American president since the wall came down (Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser, Obama) has at best ignored Russia and at worse treated them as children to be chided or acted as if the cold war was on going.
None of the presidents have acted like anything changed since the wall came down; none of them have treated them as equal partners on the world stage; none of them have acted like they are potential friends; none have given them have given any respect -- and by "respect" I mean the common decency of acknowledging that they have a right to an opinion. Hell, that they might be useful allies. The Russian experience and insight with Islamic countries could have proved useful over the last 10 years.
Treat anyone as poorly as we've treated Russia and eventually they'll get belligerent as well.
Is it too late to change the relationship? Who knows. Lost opportunities are always easier to spot than emerging ones.
To be fair, outside of their nuclear arsenal Russia really isn't all that significant - and that's probably the real thing that drives them. Without the Soviet Union, they're hovering around the 10th largest economy in the world (about even with Canada, depending on what source you look at), and the 8th largest by population. They are trying to maintain their inflated political influence through the only means they have - their large military and especially massive nuclear arsenal. Outside of their weapons, there is really no reason for them to occupy a significant position in world politics. Now, they do have significant natural resources and they are the largest nation by land area, so they should be able to grow their economy and become a more significant world player, but their leadership (Putin) doesn't actually seem to have any interest in addressing the rampant corruption and growing the economy. Instead, they continuously rattle their saber in an attempt to remain relevant.
Not trying to put Russia down here, it is an amazing place with incredible people. But their leadership is more interested in trying to hold on to the trappings of the Soviet Union than actually investing in their country and working to improve their citizens' lot. But the fact is, if the U.N. security council was being reconstituted today (one of the things that gives Russia the relevance it has), aside from their enormous nuclear arsenal there is no reason to think that Russia would be included in it.
They call it a threat because it neutralizes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" balance that has thus far prevented thermonuclear war from being a viable option. If they can't shoot missiles at us, but we can shoot missiles at them, then there's nothing preventing us from just nuking them out of existence next time we have a disagreement.
The cold war is still pretty fresh in some people's minds...
Except, of course, it doesn't actually break MAD and the Russians know it. A base in Poland would likely only be effective against missiles launched from well south and west of Moscow. A missile attack on the U.S. from Russia would be going over the Arctic, and missile defense bases in Poland would be useless. Russia knows this, they just don't want the U.S. strengthening ties with Poland - they consider it to be their own playground.
Well, if we take the US government's claim at face value, it's because missiles launched from Iran at the US would fly by Central Europe (they would -- check an azimuthal map).
Yeah, I'm not sure why so many people apparently can't manage to check a map. The shortest path from Iran to the eastern U.S. goes directly over Poland. A more southerly country like the Czech Republic or Austria would actually make more sense for defending Western Europe. Missiles fired from Russia, depending on the part, would likely be going over the pole and bases in Poland would be useless. This is simply a matter of Russia not wanting a stronger NATO presence in Poland, and has nothing to do with an actual threat to MAD - Russian missiles are largely not in the westernmost part of Russia, the only part that might be affected by missile defense installations in Poland. If we start sticking missile defense bases on Svalbard (in addition to the radar installations we already have there), then the Russians might have a legitimate concern.
I've played most of the Elder Scrolls games, but honestly the overall setting and lore has never really been the strong point to me - without the focus on single player achievement and freedom to do as you will to the populace, I'm not sure how interested I'd be in an MMO just because it is Elder Scrolls. Probably about as interested as I've been in every other MMO which has come out, which is to say I might play a little bit during a free trial period but that's it.
So good luck, I guess - I just hope it doesn't distract Bethesda from continuing to make "proper" Elder Scrolls games.
Wow what a load of fantasy. 1. They have not even built the prototype yet. 2. 300 mile range on battery? Not a chance. Until they fly it at Oshkosh or Sebring and get FAA certified it is pure fantasy. Rule one of general aviation is never get excited over a rendering or illustration of a new plane. 9 times out of 10 it will never see the light of day.
Yeah, that was my favorite part of this article. "Ready for production, and here's an artist's impression to prove it!" Sorry, but "Ready for production" does not mean you have a drawing and a dream; it means you have built a prototype and proven the systems and performance.
Do you not understand what "as close to the original as possible" means? Clearly that means they are aware there are parts of the original design that would not be possible to reproduce. Any parts of the original design which are no longer allowed for whatever reason would among them.
Yeah, I'm guessing "as close to the original as possible" means it will have four raked funnels and be painted black about 4-6 stories above the waterline; should be close enough to fool most cruise-goers.
Pricing is - eBooks should be lower priced (although not to the pennies on the pound level, I find that argument ridiculous) and currently they rarely are.
Neal Asher books - Gridlinked as an example, his earliest Agent Cormac book, first published in 2001, now published by Tor: £7.99 on the iPad, £5.11 paperback on Amazon, £4.75 Kindle edition.
Will the removal of DRM flatten out those pricing peaks and troughs? Will the eBook version go up or down? That will determine if piracy goes up or down.
The pricing is really strange. Neal Asher is a great example, although here on Amazon Gridlinked is $7.99 for either the mass market or Kindle version, pretty standard price for a paperback. But what if you want to get the second book, Line of Polity? Unavailable in paperback or hardback (I guess Asher doesn't have a big following here in the U.S.; for years the only way to get it was to pay $20+ for an import version), $9.99 for the Kindle version. Why does the e-book cost more than a normal paperback? This isn't a new book where the electronic version would be competing with hardback sales; it was published in 2003 and if it ever had a U.S. run it was many years ago and very brief. So why the high price on an e-book?
Until they get pricing figured out, I really don't care that much whether books are DRM'ed because I'm not going to be buying them anyway - I'll stick with using my Kindle to carry around a library of classics that I can get from Gutenberg and others for free (which is actually not a bad thing - forces me to read many books I've meant to read for years but never gotten around to, currently Les Miserables). I still prefer dead-tree versions most of the time anyway; ideally one would get a free e-book when purchasing the dead tree version, but that idea seems to be a complete non-starter with the possible exception of Baen; which reminds me, I need to get all my Vorkosigan books onto my Kindle at some point - good thing Cryoburn (or was it Diplomatic Immunity?) came with a CD with all of them on it.
>>> I have forever heard publishers whine about printing (especially setting up a run) and shipping being a significant part of the cost of the book.
Link please. I've never heard that.
The U.S. DOJ is currently suing the publishers. It will be interesting to see what kind of evidence they manufacture to justify why e-books should cost as much as print books.
In fact MacMillan, the parent company of Tor/Forge, is one of the publishers that refused to settle with DoJ. Kind of makes me wonder whether MacMIllan finally gave Tor/Forge the go-ahead to drop DRM as the start of a campaign to show how wonderful the agency model is that it allows such things.
No, of course I don't have any evidence - I just find the timing suspicious. They finally decide to remove DRM a week or two after being sued by the DoJ, after refusing to do so for many years. Perhaps we will see some more consumer-friendly moves as the publishers attempt to show that their cartel is a good thing for the buying public.
I say iTunes in its current iteration runs just fine on my PC (i5, 6GB ram, win7 x64). It no longer installs or requires quicktime so no idea what "bloat" people are still complaining about.
I generally agree, although I do wonder why it needs 2 different processes going at all times just to let me plug in my iPod - every other USB device I have manages the same task with zero extra processes (though I do have to pick which program I want to run when I plug them in - horror of horrors). Not that it matters a lot, they use up a pretty insignificant amount of memory these days, it's just an annoyance. My only other complaint is that it constantly tries to get me to install things I don't want - iCloud, Quicktime, Safari; here's an idea, how about just updating iTunes with the updater instead of trying to trick users into installing crap they don't want or need.
That said I only use it to play music, rip CDs, and manage an iPod, so I don't exactly use it for anything as complicated as managing calendars or contacts (does it really do that? Weird - I hope it at least interfaces nicely with Outloook or some other calendar/contact software people might actually use?).
I also fail to see why this would get any good amount of users even if Google did advertise it correctly - unlike their search engine, gmail and youtube, cloud storage is nothing new. There are tons of companies offering their services with ridiculously low profit margins. Hell, most of them are free for home users, and I really wouldn't trust Google with my company or work data [...] Lastly, but even more so importantly, putting everything for Google to datamine and crawl is just stupid. They
Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.
Speaking of Gmail, currently it says I have 7.7 GB of free storage there. Can't they at least match this with their new Cloud drive? I already use Gmail for temporary storage all the time - just attach files to draft emails and I can access them from anywhere.
Two minutes before I saw this article, I saw the one about Tim Cook being spotted visiting Valve headquarters...
So how long until the joint Apple-Valve console is announced?
I think that would make a lot more sense than Valve going it alone to make a new console, though I'm still not sure it is likely. I suppose Valve would get access to Apple's experience working with Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers, which would make the hardware part much more reasonable, but I'm not too sure what Apple would get out of it - they already have experience with various other types of online stores, so the only thing they would really get is the Valve/Steam brand. I guess that is pretty powerful among gamers, it just doesn't seem like something Apple would be chasing.
How am I supposed to blip the throttle for a downshift under braking if applying the brakes automatically cuts out the accelerator? These things are important! My lap times^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h grocery runs might be seconds slower!
(Off topic - why can't I apply a strike-through tag? Slashdot has been going down hill ever since the day Taco started it.)
> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.
No. Not really.
The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.
Totally. PC users plug their mice into their monitor's USB ports, not those filthy keyboard USB ports. Only an animal would do that.
I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.
That's the real head scratcher. Apple, the king of "you won't see a port that isn't absolutely essential" is the one championing Thunderbolt despite it being far less useful than one of the many display options they have thrown away in recent years (no VGA, use DVI-mini!, no DVI-mini, use DVI-micro!, no DVI-micro, use Mini-displayport!) As many others have noted, it is basically the second coming of Firewire; it tries to out-do something that is widely accepted with something that is slightly superior but much more expensive. While you would think that Apple of all companies would be able to pull that off, it just doesn't feel like it has any legs.
Yeah, that drove me crazy. In grad school we had a rather Apple-friendly IT guy for the department, so he went out of his way to support Apple hardware (and actually ran our email servers etc. on Apple hardware). It was a little obnoxious having 5 different adapters attached to every projector, though - especially when you realize that at Apple prices it meant something like a $200 investment for each projector just to make it so you could hook your Apple laptop up versus zero cost for pretty much any PC laptop (because they all stayed in the dark ages and used plain old VGA adapters long past the time they should have moved to DVI or HDMI or something). Now I suppose they've probably added Thunderbolt adapters to the mix at some insane cost (of course, my newest PC laptop has finally ditched VGA and only offers mini-DP and HDMI).
Yes, although the article sucks and isn't worth reading. Microsoft does get more than its share of bashing, but then Microsoft has been at the top of the game for a longer time than any of the other companies mentioned. Google and post-iPod Apple have been seen as the trendy upstarts among those only skin deep in the tech world (which seems to describe the tech reporters/editors for most news outlets), and haven't been subject to the same amount of abuse - though this is changing.
Of course, Microsoft generally deserves the bashing it gets, so the real problem is that the other companies aren't bashed enough, not that MS is bashed too much.
The fact that the local police or FBI can subpoena records held by your ISP to find out what you have been doing online and that Google will disclose that you have been researching poisons if your spouse suddenly dies of some rare and obscure poison is irrelevent to most people. Most people more or less figure that if you have been researching poisons and your spouse dies from one that you probably did it and deserve what is coming.
That, or most people will realize the fact that it is circumstantial evidence and it won't get you convicted unless there is abundant additional evidence that ties you to the crime (or you base your defense on ignorance of poisons and your search history proves you are lying).
But I agree with the larger point, that people mostly don't care if the authorities can get access to their search histories and that it is unlikely this company would find more than a niche market.
I'm trying to figure this post out - did you put it up ironically, like, "Hey, look how completely uninformed this Russian guy is about the U.S., isn't this funny?" Or were you actually serious? The cluelessness meter is off the charts, but I can't tell if it is a joke or not...
But DVDs had DRM too, so that doesn't really answer the question of why Blu-Ray is garbage but DVD is okay. For that matter HD-DVD had DRM as well (optional, but it's optional on Blu-Ray too - it's just that every media company uses it), so it really makes no sense that so many people seem to loathe Blu-Ray and wish that HD-DVD had won when Blu-Ray is technically better (by nearly all measures) and both included DRM. You can still rip them if you want (generally considered illegal, but the same is true of ripping DVDs - though fortunately I don't believe there is a single case of a media company actually going after someone for ripping media, only distributing it).
Yes, It would have been preferable if there was no DRM, but I don't believe there are any widely-available alternatives without this "feature" (the only real alternative I can think of is streaming, which doesn't approach the quality and certainly comes with all of the drawbacks of DRM). So saying DRM is the problem when the alternatives also have DRM just doesn't make sense - so why all the hate?
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I predict a 33% performance increase going from DDR3 to DDR4 based on my own super-secret analysis of the press release.
Ego. That's what's going on here. And the powers that be in Russia are willing to risk a complete throwback to the cold war era.
I'm not convinced it is necessarily Russia's fault. Every American president since the wall came down (Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser, Obama) has at best ignored Russia and at worse treated them as children to be chided or acted as if the cold war was on going.
None of the presidents have acted like anything changed since the wall came down; none of them have treated them as equal partners on the world stage; none of them have acted like they are potential friends; none have given them have given any respect -- and by "respect" I mean the common decency of acknowledging that they have a right to an opinion. Hell, that they might be useful allies. The Russian experience and insight with Islamic countries could have proved useful over the last 10 years.
Treat anyone as poorly as we've treated Russia and eventually they'll get belligerent as well.
Is it too late to change the relationship? Who knows. Lost opportunities are always easier to spot than emerging ones.
To be fair, outside of their nuclear arsenal Russia really isn't all that significant - and that's probably the real thing that drives them. Without the Soviet Union, they're hovering around the 10th largest economy in the world (about even with Canada, depending on what source you look at), and the 8th largest by population. They are trying to maintain their inflated political influence through the only means they have - their large military and especially massive nuclear arsenal. Outside of their weapons, there is really no reason for them to occupy a significant position in world politics. Now, they do have significant natural resources and they are the largest nation by land area, so they should be able to grow their economy and become a more significant world player, but their leadership (Putin) doesn't actually seem to have any interest in addressing the rampant corruption and growing the economy. Instead, they continuously rattle their saber in an attempt to remain relevant.
Not trying to put Russia down here, it is an amazing place with incredible people. But their leadership is more interested in trying to hold on to the trappings of the Soviet Union than actually investing in their country and working to improve their citizens' lot. But the fact is, if the U.N. security council was being reconstituted today (one of the things that gives Russia the relevance it has), aside from their enormous nuclear arsenal there is no reason to think that Russia would be included in it.
They call it a threat because it neutralizes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" balance that has thus far prevented thermonuclear war from being a viable option. If they can't shoot missiles at us, but we can shoot missiles at them, then there's nothing preventing us from just nuking them out of existence next time we have a disagreement.
The cold war is still pretty fresh in some people's minds...
Except, of course, it doesn't actually break MAD and the Russians know it. A base in Poland would likely only be effective against missiles launched from well south and west of Moscow. A missile attack on the U.S. from Russia would be going over the Arctic, and missile defense bases in Poland would be useless. Russia knows this, they just don't want the U.S. strengthening ties with Poland - they consider it to be their own playground.
Well, if we take the US government's claim at face value, it's because missiles launched from Iran at the US would fly by Central Europe (they would -- check an azimuthal map).
Yeah, I'm not sure why so many people apparently can't manage to check a map. The shortest path from Iran to the eastern U.S. goes directly over Poland. A more southerly country like the Czech Republic or Austria would actually make more sense for defending Western Europe. Missiles fired from Russia, depending on the part, would likely be going over the pole and bases in Poland would be useless. This is simply a matter of Russia not wanting a stronger NATO presence in Poland, and has nothing to do with an actual threat to MAD - Russian missiles are largely not in the westernmost part of Russia, the only part that might be affected by missile defense installations in Poland. If we start sticking missile defense bases on Svalbard (in addition to the radar installations we already have there), then the Russians might have a legitimate concern.
I've played most of the Elder Scrolls games, but honestly the overall setting and lore has never really been the strong point to me - without the focus on single player achievement and freedom to do as you will to the populace, I'm not sure how interested I'd be in an MMO just because it is Elder Scrolls. Probably about as interested as I've been in every other MMO which has come out, which is to say I might play a little bit during a free trial period but that's it.
So good luck, I guess - I just hope it doesn't distract Bethesda from continuing to make "proper" Elder Scrolls games.
I think we can all agree, the bigger the rack the better.
(Obvious joke is Obvious)
We should call it
New
Internet
Graphics
Generator
Editor &
Retoucher
that way no one who doesn't feel a deep seated need to be offended will object
Yeah, but then it will just come in at #1 on every list of "Programs That Annoy You".
Wow what a load of fantasy.
1. They have not even built the prototype yet.
2. 300 mile range on battery? Not a chance.
Until they fly it at Oshkosh or Sebring and get FAA certified it is pure fantasy.
Rule one of general aviation is never get excited over a rendering or illustration of a new plane. 9 times out of 10 it will never see the light of day.
Yeah, that was my favorite part of this article. "Ready for production, and here's an artist's impression to prove it!" Sorry, but "Ready for production" does not mean you have a drawing and a dream; it means you have built a prototype and proven the systems and performance.
Do you not understand what "as close to the original as possible" means? Clearly that means they are aware there are parts of the original design that would not be possible to reproduce. Any parts of the original design which are no longer allowed for whatever reason would among them.
Yeah, I'm guessing "as close to the original as possible" means it will have four raked funnels and be painted black about 4-6 stories above the waterline; should be close enough to fool most cruise-goers.
Pricing is - eBooks should be lower priced (although not to the pennies on the pound level, I find that argument ridiculous) and currently they rarely are.
Neal Asher books - Gridlinked as an example, his earliest Agent Cormac book, first published in 2001, now published by Tor: £7.99 on the iPad, £5.11 paperback on Amazon, £4.75 Kindle edition.
Will the removal of DRM flatten out those pricing peaks and troughs? Will the eBook version go up or down? That will determine if piracy goes up or down.
The pricing is really strange. Neal Asher is a great example, although here on Amazon Gridlinked is $7.99 for either the mass market or Kindle version, pretty standard price for a paperback. But what if you want to get the second book, Line of Polity? Unavailable in paperback or hardback (I guess Asher doesn't have a big following here in the U.S.; for years the only way to get it was to pay $20+ for an import version), $9.99 for the Kindle version. Why does the e-book cost more than a normal paperback? This isn't a new book where the electronic version would be competing with hardback sales; it was published in 2003 and if it ever had a U.S. run it was many years ago and very brief. So why the high price on an e-book?
Until they get pricing figured out, I really don't care that much whether books are DRM'ed because I'm not going to be buying them anyway - I'll stick with using my Kindle to carry around a library of classics that I can get from Gutenberg and others for free (which is actually not a bad thing - forces me to read many books I've meant to read for years but never gotten around to, currently Les Miserables). I still prefer dead-tree versions most of the time anyway; ideally one would get a free e-book when purchasing the dead tree version, but that idea seems to be a complete non-starter with the possible exception of Baen; which reminds me, I need to get all my Vorkosigan books onto my Kindle at some point - good thing Cryoburn (or was it Diplomatic Immunity?) came with a CD with all of them on it.
>>> I have forever heard publishers whine about printing (especially setting up a run) and shipping being a significant part of the cost of the book.
Link please.
I've never heard that.
The U.S. DOJ is currently suing the publishers. It will be interesting to see what kind of evidence they manufacture to justify why e-books should cost as much as print books.
In fact MacMillan, the parent company of Tor/Forge, is one of the publishers that refused to settle with DoJ. Kind of makes me wonder whether MacMIllan finally gave Tor/Forge the go-ahead to drop DRM as the start of a campaign to show how wonderful the agency model is that it allows such things.
No, of course I don't have any evidence - I just find the timing suspicious. They finally decide to remove DRM a week or two after being sued by the DoJ, after refusing to do so for many years. Perhaps we will see some more consumer-friendly moves as the publishers attempt to show that their cartel is a good thing for the buying public.
They only need to achieve 39 more minutes of flight time and they'll match the range of a 787!
While the Mississippi and Missouri rivers often flood, that doesn't meant that the entire state is prone to flooding.
And really, river floods are one of the easier natural disasters to account for.
Yeah, just ask the hard drive manufacturers.
I say iTunes in its current iteration runs just fine on my PC (i5, 6GB ram, win7 x64). It no longer installs or requires quicktime so no idea what "bloat" people are still complaining about.
The app is snappy and apart from some wifi sync trouble ( https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3390119?start=0&tstart=0 ) has no other significant issues. A solid 4/5 for a media/phone manager suite.
I generally agree, although I do wonder why it needs 2 different processes going at all times just to let me plug in my iPod - every other USB device I have manages the same task with zero extra processes (though I do have to pick which program I want to run when I plug them in - horror of horrors). Not that it matters a lot, they use up a pretty insignificant amount of memory these days, it's just an annoyance. My only other complaint is that it constantly tries to get me to install things I don't want - iCloud, Quicktime, Safari; here's an idea, how about just updating iTunes with the updater instead of trying to trick users into installing crap they don't want or need.
That said I only use it to play music, rip CDs, and manage an iPod, so I don't exactly use it for anything as complicated as managing calendars or contacts (does it really do that? Weird - I hope it at least interfaces nicely with Outloook or some other calendar/contact software people might actually use?).
Yeah, and for the same reasons their e-mail service never caught on.
Speaking of Gmail, currently it says I have 7.7 GB of free storage there. Can't they at least match this with their new Cloud drive? I already use Gmail for temporary storage all the time - just attach files to draft emails and I can access them from anywhere.
Two minutes before I saw this article, I saw the one about Tim Cook being spotted visiting Valve headquarters...
So how long until the joint Apple-Valve console is announced?
I think that would make a lot more sense than Valve going it alone to make a new console, though I'm still not sure it is likely. I suppose Valve would get access to Apple's experience working with Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers, which would make the hardware part much more reasonable, but I'm not too sure what Apple would get out of it - they already have experience with various other types of online stores, so the only thing they would really get is the Valve/Steam brand. I guess that is pretty powerful among gamers, it just doesn't seem like something Apple would be chasing.
How am I supposed to blip the throttle for a downshift under braking if applying the brakes automatically cuts out the accelerator? These things are important! My lap times^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h grocery runs might be seconds slower!
(Off topic - why can't I apply a strike-through tag? Slashdot has been going down hill ever since the day Taco started it.)
> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.
No. Not really.
The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.
Totally. PC users plug their mice into their monitor's USB ports, not those filthy keyboard USB ports. Only an animal would do that.
I understand it's just another port to plug things in. Just what we need, laptops with fifteen different input and output ports. VGA, DVI, HDMI, DP, USB3, whatever thunderbolt is, FW, eSATA, unique docking connector, Ethernet, unique power socket, and a card reader for eighteen different cards. I'm sure I've missed a few.
That's the real head scratcher. Apple, the king of "you won't see a port that isn't absolutely essential" is the one championing Thunderbolt despite it being far less useful than one of the many display options they have thrown away in recent years (no VGA, use DVI-mini!, no DVI-mini, use DVI-micro!, no DVI-micro, use Mini-displayport!) As many others have noted, it is basically the second coming of Firewire; it tries to out-do something that is widely accepted with something that is slightly superior but much more expensive. While you would think that Apple of all companies would be able to pull that off, it just doesn't feel like it has any legs.
Yeah, that drove me crazy. In grad school we had a rather Apple-friendly IT guy for the department, so he went out of his way to support Apple hardware (and actually ran our email servers etc. on Apple hardware). It was a little obnoxious having 5 different adapters attached to every projector, though - especially when you realize that at Apple prices it meant something like a $200 investment for each projector just to make it so you could hook your Apple laptop up versus zero cost for pretty much any PC laptop (because they all stayed in the dark ages and used plain old VGA adapters long past the time they should have moved to DVI or HDMI or something). Now I suppose they've probably added Thunderbolt adapters to the mix at some insane cost (of course, my newest PC laptop has finally ditched VGA and only offers mini-DP and HDMI).
For IT workers? Can't they just install some sort of automated system to try turning it off and then on again?
Yes, although the article sucks and isn't worth reading. Microsoft does get more than its share of bashing, but then Microsoft has been at the top of the game for a longer time than any of the other companies mentioned. Google and post-iPod Apple have been seen as the trendy upstarts among those only skin deep in the tech world (which seems to describe the tech reporters/editors for most news outlets), and haven't been subject to the same amount of abuse - though this is changing.
Of course, Microsoft generally deserves the bashing it gets, so the real problem is that the other companies aren't bashed enough, not that MS is bashed too much.
The fact that the local police or FBI can subpoena records held by your ISP to find out what you have been doing online and that Google will disclose that you have been researching poisons if your spouse suddenly dies of some rare and obscure poison is irrelevent to most people. Most people more or less figure that if you have been researching poisons and your spouse dies from one that you probably did it and deserve what is coming.
That, or most people will realize the fact that it is circumstantial evidence and it won't get you convicted unless there is abundant additional evidence that ties you to the crime (or you base your defense on ignorance of poisons and your search history proves you are lying).
But I agree with the larger point, that people mostly don't care if the authorities can get access to their search histories and that it is unlikely this company would find more than a niche market.
I'm trying to figure this post out - did you put it up ironically, like, "Hey, look how completely uninformed this Russian guy is about the U.S., isn't this funny?" Or were you actually serious? The cluelessness meter is off the charts, but I can't tell if it is a joke or not...
Buy... disks for movies? How retro-chic.
Pay to rent low-quality streams that require an internet connection to view? How... sad.
What's the downside again?
D fucking R fucking M....
But DVDs had DRM too, so that doesn't really answer the question of why Blu-Ray is garbage but DVD is okay. For that matter HD-DVD had DRM as well (optional, but it's optional on Blu-Ray too - it's just that every media company uses it), so it really makes no sense that so many people seem to loathe Blu-Ray and wish that HD-DVD had won when Blu-Ray is technically better (by nearly all measures) and both included DRM. You can still rip them if you want (generally considered illegal, but the same is true of ripping DVDs - though fortunately I don't believe there is a single case of a media company actually going after someone for ripping media, only distributing it).
Yes, It would have been preferable if there was no DRM, but I don't believe there are any widely-available alternatives without this "feature" (the only real alternative I can think of is streaming, which doesn't approach the quality and certainly comes with all of the drawbacks of DRM). So saying DRM is the problem when the alternatives also have DRM just doesn't make sense - so why all the hate?