Are we honestly still to believe that current copyright law is driving innovation?
Copyright is different from patent... but, it's hard to believe patents are spurring any innovation. They have quite the opposite result since only the big players can get into the game as they've all cross licensed a bazillion stupid patents.
These patents sounds like all the ones we joke are "system for doing something well known, but on a computer"... instead, it's "but on a camera". And, as has been pointed out in this thread, nowadays a camera is a subset of computer, really.
I'm sure there are some technologies in this... but transferring an image via email? well, that's MIME. And image preview? My god, nobody ever thought of that!!
The worst thing is that apparently a bunch of companies have already licensed these patents. The patent system is so horribly broken as to be a joke... unfortunately, we're stuck with it for now.
I am not sure of the name of the package.. but it has a web interface that you can use to check how many days you have available and to apply for time off. I can use that to not just request a 1/2 day, but also to request just a few hours.
Our time entry system at work (again, no idea what the name is) allows us to simply enter a number of hours.
We can enter decimals, so I've taken "1.25" hours of flex time before... and I can separately access how much vacation and flex time I have. At a previous job, we accounted for our time in as little as 15 minute increments, and we could do that with our time tracking software as well... this isn't new, or even novel.
Seriously? A patent on accounting for time in less than one day increments?
This is stupid, obvious, and has likely been done elsewhere countless times... whatever moron at the patent office granted this should be forced to eat a stack of patent filings; staples, bindings, and all. I mean, really, what is it, "A system for accounting for actual hours worked and taken off in sub-hour increments... with a computer".
This is why software patents are incredibly stupid... so many of them are "take well known solved problem, do it on a computer, profit" it's not even funny any more.
For two reasons. 1, the NFL are nothing but a bunch of scumbags. the claim yearly they lose a lot of money from people STEALING the superbowl by inviting friends over and having a party. Yes, having more than 10 friends over is ILLEGAL as far as the NFL is concerned.
Which is a bit of reasoning I've never gotten... if 2 people watch the Superbowl in 5 different houses, or 10 people watch the Superbowl in the same house... the NFL makes the exact same amount of additional money... zero. Because I've already paid my cable bill, and it doesn't cost me any more to watch the Superbowl.
The NFL can think anything they want, but I've not signed a contract with them, and as long as my cable service delivers the Superbowl to me in my living room without me having to pay extra, or register with the central authority... well, they have no control over it, and no say in the matter.
Hell, I suspect the game is broadcast over-the-air in a lot of places... are they going to claim to be losing money to that?
What exactly is the revenue stream the NFL claims I might be stealing from? Because they sure as hell don't make any from me watching it now.
Without easy PVR functionality, then these devices are just extra devices duplicating my already includes services in my big old stupid DVR/Cable box.
See, my PVR functionality is my DVR/Cable box, so I don't need my additional device to do that for me. I guess, being able to record shows off the 'net sounds good, but with bandwidth caps and the like, I don't do such things over my internet connection.
For me, being able to stream my entire media collection that I already have (including the Digital Copy of movies I've been buying) through my TV on demand. Between DVDs I've ripped from the ones I own, and the Digital Copies, I've got well over a hundred movies on-line, as well as my entire music library.
My AppleTV basically made my 25 disc CD changer completely obsolete, and it also turns my TV into a huge digital picture frame, as well as being able to play my movies.
If it had storage, and had the hardware needed to do recording, it likely would have cost me a lot more than what it did, and I might have been less inclined to buy it. My computer already has a huge amount of storage.
So, YMMV, but for me, the AppleTV filled a gap and gave me exactly what I was looking for. I don't need to get more stuff off the internet, I want to access the stuff I already have.
Only if these aliens use the same light spectrum as we do, and use the same photo standard as we do.....and if and only if they actually SEE with the same organs as we do.
Um, no... since you clearly didn't read TFA, here you go:
STIS covers visible wavelengths, and HD209458 is bright enough that the precision of the spectrum is sufficient for a precise translation into colours perceived by the human eye
So, the article is showing what this would look like to human eyes.
This in no way attempts to talk about what this would look like to aliens who have different sensory organs and see in different wavelengths.
Shockingly, somehow one of the major factors in me being derided as a nerd in HS has turned me into "the cool dad" now that my kid's in HS.
Well, for the record, you're likely still a nerd.;-)
And, I fear your kid is now a nerd as well... so him and his friends calling you a cool dad is just nerd worship. I'm sure they're still nerds in school.
I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that the fact that your kid plays D&D with you now doesn't lessen any of the nerd-ness you exhibited in high-school.;-)
Similarly, it's difficult to imagine a rag large enough to be useful but small enough to be left in a fuel line.
How many satellites have you assembled? For me, it's zero.
But, I've seen people clean the fuel line on RC helicopters... we're talking about something about 1 inch square on the end of a little metal doo-hickey.
It is not inconceivable that we're not talking about a big old smelly rag here.
Why has Slashdot suddenly fallen into the trap of "I've never seen one so it can't possibly exist"? Seriously, I have no idea what is involved in putting a satellite together, but I usually think of dust-free chambers and people in fancy white suits; which means we're already well out of the mundane here.
There are no car engines with enough displacement for a wrench to fit.
What if someone made a smaller wrench? You seem to be assuming there is a fixed size of 'wrench', and a lower bound on it.
Since I'm betting neither of us has helped to assemble a satellite, I'm betting neither of us has any idea of the specialized tools involved. How do you know it's not one of these?
I seem to remember wrenches from my mechano set when I was a kid which would fit into the cylinder of most car engines
you said wrench, so it's impossible for a wrench to ruin the engine from being left in the Cylinder because you cant get one in there to begin with
Not even close to impossible. Maybe not probable or likely based on the sizes of wrenches used on cars. Impossible in this case is hyperbole at best.
Ex post facto is not quite what you're looking for here.
The fact remains that you can't retroactively change a license. Ex post facto doesn't mean they've passed a law merely that they're trying to make a new license retroactive.
Much like I can't now say that anybody who read my previous post owes me $50.
Now, of course, IANAL... but that doesn't mean any lawyer who told them they could retroactively change a contract isn't a complete idiot. Even EULAs say "by continuing to use this service you agree to the terms"... even they know you can't say something like "and you owe us back fees for this service which is no longer free".
To give ScientiaMobile the benefit of the doubt, it is possible they simply don't know how the licensing system works and don't realize that changing the license later on doesn't restrict uses of earlier versions that had been distributed under GPL
Well, that makes them ignorant of some basic legal principles, and if they received any legal advice which suggested you could retroactively change something like that, their lawyer is incompetent.
In many places it's illegal to pass a law that is ex post facto, and licenses are no different.
There is no 'benefit of the doubt' to believe they simply didn't know this was the case -- this is either gross lack of knowledge about the legal system, or a blatant abuse of it. It's a pity the DMCA doesn't really have redress for abuses like this. Because I fail to see how this can be classified as an honest mistake.
And, I don't see why they have to be either idiots or assholes -- in my opinion, they can be both, and if they sent a DMCA takedown, they likely are.
Ah, an insufferable, condescending ass with poor reading comprehension as usual... Happy New Year!
Did I say nobody would ever buy one or that they don't exist? Or did I merely enumerate the list of reasons why I won't buy one -- and, since I just bought a new TV just before Christmas, it will be several years before I'm in the market again, I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat.
The overwhelming majority of people I know who have seen 3D movies have pretty consistently said they won't see one again for many of the reasons I listed... so, based on the people I know, one of the reasons 3D TV isn't doing well, is because a lot of people simply can't stand 3D TV and movies. And those that like it have newer TVs they're not looking to replace.
Now, go fuck yourself and stop acting like a dick if you can manage it.~
You are a small minority. "No one is buying this because I get headaches" is the worst reply ever.
Not really... I'm not saying anything other than "not everyone likes 3D", which is the title of my post. At no point did I assert that the reasons why I don't like 3D were universal, merely anecdotal and apropos. But, I can tell you why I wouldn't spend money on it.
If the number sold is low it's because people already have new TVs they have no intention of replacing for some time, or because they don't want 3D -- or, any number of reasons that aren't obvious (like they've been foreclosed on and luxury goods are the last thing on their mind).
It's a non-starter, and I wish more people would avoid it so I get a cheaper 3D TV.
So, you expect me and other people who don't like 3D to buy 3D so the cost of 3D comes down and you can have cheap 3D -- or are you just hoping the technology fails so you can buy it cheap? You didn't help pay for my TV, so WTF do I care about the cost of yours?;-)
In all the same ways you pointed out, "you" are a small percentage of the market, and maybe what "you" want has no bearing on how many other people want it.
You are a small majority too -- only it remains to be seen if there are more people who want 3D than don't. And, quite frankly, I don't think anybody actually has that statistic -- but people clearly aren't rushing out to buy them.
Sometimes, you don't want to "look" like a photographer. A high quality EVIL camera allows you to be a little more inconspicuous and still get away with great shots.
Depends on what you need and what you're doing.
Sometimes I'll just bring my point and shoot camera. Sometimes I'll bring my DSLR with the lens I bought it with and a case that just fits that. Sometimes I'll bring my DSLR in my full on carry bag that has all of my lenses in it.
By the time I'm at option 3, I'm carrying 15+ pounds of camera gear, and it's quite obvious I'm there to take pictures... but that's only for certain kinds of vacation where I want to cover all possible scenarios.
My Nikon D80 with an 18-70mm lens isn't all that conspicuous -- and it covers the vast majority of scenarios I'm likely to be in. I'm sort of the de-facto photographer for my wife's family events since I'm the only one who brings (and remembers to use) my camera.:-P
I want a camera that's better than my phone, but I don't have the technical knowledge to fully appreciate a DSLR.
Look, if you can post a submission to Slashdot to ask this, you can use a modern DSLR.
They've got so much automation built into them that the camera can be operated in one or two modes without a lot of deep knowledge of the fiddly bits. As you use it, you can opt to try some of the new features, but they've still got some pretty good automated modes.
I occasionally do use some of the advanced features, but for the most part the auto modes cover my needs. But, if I want to delve into it, it's all there. You can run that as point and shoot cameras, or you can run them in full-on "stand back, I'm a professional" mode.
If you really want to get better quality pictures, the lens quality of a DSLR gets you to an awfully good level as long as you're buying a good quality lens instead of some of the cheaper lenses that come with the kits. Those are sometimes a compromise which makes for something which is OK most of the time... I did a little more reading and bought my camera body and lens separate, because the lens I bought was better quality and more versatile than the ones which came bundled.
If you want to be able to change lenses, go with the DSLR and work up to it... the lenses from the major companies will carry through their models for years. (I still use the old lenses from my film camera on my current Nikon DSLR.)
If you buy something in between, it might not cover all of your needs, and in a few years you might need to replace it all over again.
You have a license sticker. What keeps you from downloading a DVD image?
Quite possibly stupidity on my behalf.
I'm never clear on if I could download a DVD of the actual Win 7 installer and use that with an OEM license... I've been under the impression they were essentially very different things and that it wouldn't work with a clean install of the official copy.
That, and I've seen more than a few laptops that you can't actually track down the drivers for upon reinstall, and I'm not willing to hose my wife's laptop to find out. I have better things to do than start that row.:-P
You can reinstall on the same hardware as many times as you like. You can change everything but the motherboard freely.
If they don't give you the disc, and the recovery feature in the OEM crap doesn't work... none of what you say is true. And I've seen far too many computers which came with absolutely no media for the OS.
Besides, the amount of shit that is usually in an OEM install often makes it almost unusable. On my mother-in-law's Toshiba laptop I had to strip out all of their crap to make the machine usable. It was full of wizards, and other tools designed to hand hold you so much that the computer had no CPU and memory left to actually do anything... the retail copy has none of that shit.
In short, the retail versions are for suckers with too much money to burn, they're priced so that no rational person would buy them.
*shrug* That's your opinion and experience. I bought a single machine, which I intended to run Vista on. If the machine became corrupted, I intended to install Vista back onto it. I did the same with my previous XP box, and I'll do the same with my next box for whatever version of Windows is de-rigeur by then.
For me, paying the retail price for the OS means I don't have to go through some of the bullshit I have had to go through by not having the install media, which has left me stranded without being able to reinstall unless I was going to get a pirated copy.
As I said, my wife's shitty HP laptop came with no install media for Win 7, and the process of creating the restore disk failed and couldn't be retried. So, if anything goes wrong, it's cheaper to buy a new laptop than to try to fix it. Or, just say fuck it and pirate Windows.
From what I've experienced, only the full retail copy lets me do a reinstall from scratch -- anything else leaves you with a half assed solution that takes far more of my time than I'm willing to invest.
I've seen two movies in 3D (well, the same one twice)... both times it gave me a splitting headache that lasted for hours.
I don't like 3D. I don't want 3D. I'm not willing to pay for 3D. To me, 3D is a pointless failed technology I don't want.
Granted, everyone else is free to choose to have it, and I may actually be in the minority. But I'm not willing to spend a single penny on it. Not now, not ever.
I just view it as yet another reason why new TVs are a moving target. The HD spec has changed half a dozen times since about 99 when I bought my DVD player... HDMI, HDCP, and now 3D. Do they really think people are going to buy a fresh new TV for another moving target spec every 2-3 years?
Used to be that you could buy a TV and have it last a decade or more... now it's just baubles and doo-dads they try to change every year,
I finally just replaced my ten year old rear-projection TV with an LCD TV... and I have no intention of replacing this for at least another 5+ years. As always, 3D is a gimmick that will attract some people, but the rest will simply watch it pass by and fade away.
Next step is to have Windows 8.5 just auto-refresh every few months since Microsoft seems to assume you'll be doing it any how.
Good, because MS has been making it increasingly difficult to be able to do a reinstall even if you have a licensed copy.
Between "upgrade" disks which only work if you have a working install, and the trend to get rid of recovery disks... it's about time Microsoft realized that the only way to maintain a system over a period of time is to rebuild the OS periodically.
Microsoft recently sued a computer reseller for piracy because they made recovery disks available to users.
In my experience, the recovery software installed by OEMs is complete shit.. the process for creating it on my wife's HP laptop failed, and then said you were only allowed to do it once, leaving us without one. So, Microsoft hopes when your system crashes you'll go buy a new copy... but if you've already paid for a copy, you might as well pirate it.
I know the last few PCs I've bought I've insisted I receive a full boxed install media... not the OEM, but the retail one, and I pay for it. Because if you don't have this, when your Windows system needs to be rebuilt, you're probably hosed.
The trend to not give people install media (in order to prevent piracy) has largely left people with systems they can't repair, and an incentive to pirate what they've already bought.
If a crashed/hosed computer means you lose your data and you'll have to spend as much money as a new computer costs... something has gone seriously wrong.
It would seem anyone running around painted this way would attract more police attention than just wearing a slouch hat
Oh? Judging by the first picture in the series, I could probably find someone not unlike that in the downtown of many large cities -- or a mall.
It isn't yet illegal to be eccentric compared to the rest of society.
Hell, I can think of some people I've met at tattoo/piercing places who might fool facial recognition. By the time you've got some extra piercings/implants, it can change quite a bit -- and those people often are already wearing theatrical contacts.
Not to nitpick (and because I'm curious), have these just been announced, or have they actually been discovered in 2012? It's not entirely clear from TFA.
Man, this stuff used to be practically sci-fi, now it seems to happen all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Copyright is different from patent ... but, it's hard to believe patents are spurring any innovation. They have quite the opposite result since only the big players can get into the game as they've all cross licensed a bazillion stupid patents.
These patents sounds like all the ones we joke are "system for doing something well known, but on a computer" ... instead, it's "but on a camera". And, as has been pointed out in this thread, nowadays a camera is a subset of computer, really.
I'm sure there are some technologies in this ... but transferring an image via email? well, that's MIME. And image preview? My god, nobody ever thought of that!!
The worst thing is that apparently a bunch of companies have already licensed these patents. The patent system is so horribly broken as to be a joke ... unfortunately, we're stuck with it for now.
So, when do the tachyons come into play again? There's always tachyons it seems.
Our time entry system at work (again, no idea what the name is) allows us to simply enter a number of hours.
We can enter decimals, so I've taken "1.25" hours of flex time before ... and I can separately access how much vacation and flex time I have. At a previous job, we accounted for our time in as little as 15 minute increments, and we could do that with our time tracking software as well ... this isn't new, or even novel.
Seriously? A patent on accounting for time in less than one day increments?
This is stupid, obvious, and has likely been done elsewhere countless times ... whatever moron at the patent office granted this should be forced to eat a stack of patent filings; staples, bindings, and all. I mean, really, what is it, "A system for accounting for actual hours worked and taken off in sub-hour increments ... with a computer".
This is why software patents are incredibly stupid ... so many of them are "take well known solved problem, do it on a computer, profit" it's not even funny any more.
Which is a bit of reasoning I've never gotten ... if 2 people watch the Superbowl in 5 different houses, or 10 people watch the Superbowl in the same house ... the NFL makes the exact same amount of additional money ... zero. Because I've already paid my cable bill, and it doesn't cost me any more to watch the Superbowl.
The NFL can think anything they want, but I've not signed a contract with them, and as long as my cable service delivers the Superbowl to me in my living room without me having to pay extra, or register with the central authority ... well, they have no control over it, and no say in the matter.
Hell, I suspect the game is broadcast over-the-air in a lot of places ... are they going to claim to be losing money to that?
What exactly is the revenue stream the NFL claims I might be stealing from? Because they sure as hell don't make any from me watching it now.
See, my PVR functionality is my DVR/Cable box, so I don't need my additional device to do that for me. I guess, being able to record shows off the 'net sounds good, but with bandwidth caps and the like, I don't do such things over my internet connection.
For me, being able to stream my entire media collection that I already have (including the Digital Copy of movies I've been buying) through my TV on demand. Between DVDs I've ripped from the ones I own, and the Digital Copies, I've got well over a hundred movies on-line, as well as my entire music library.
My AppleTV basically made my 25 disc CD changer completely obsolete, and it also turns my TV into a huge digital picture frame, as well as being able to play my movies.
If it had storage, and had the hardware needed to do recording, it likely would have cost me a lot more than what it did, and I might have been less inclined to buy it. My computer already has a huge amount of storage.
So, YMMV, but for me, the AppleTV filled a gap and gave me exactly what I was looking for. I don't need to get more stuff off the internet, I want to access the stuff I already have.
LOL, enjoy it while it lasts ... that can be fickle as I understand.
But, I guess congrats: kids in high-school rarely think their parents are cool. :-P
Um, no ... since you clearly didn't read TFA, here you go:
So, the article is showing what this would look like to human eyes.
This in no way attempts to talk about what this would look like to aliens who have different sensory organs and see in different wavelengths.
Well, for the record, you're likely still a nerd. ;-)
And, I fear your kid is now a nerd as well ... so him and his friends calling you a cool dad is just nerd worship. I'm sure they're still nerds in school.
I'm not saying that's bad, I'm just saying that the fact that your kid plays D&D with you now doesn't lessen any of the nerd-ness you exhibited in high-school. ;-)
How many satellites have you assembled? For me, it's zero.
But, I've seen people clean the fuel line on RC helicopters ... we're talking about something about 1 inch square on the end of a little metal doo-hickey.
It is not inconceivable that we're not talking about a big old smelly rag here.
Why has Slashdot suddenly fallen into the trap of "I've never seen one so it can't possibly exist"? Seriously, I have no idea what is involved in putting a satellite together, but I usually think of dust-free chambers and people in fancy white suits; which means we're already well out of the mundane here.
What if someone made a smaller wrench? You seem to be assuming there is a fixed size of 'wrench', and a lower bound on it.
Since I'm betting neither of us has helped to assemble a satellite, I'm betting neither of us has any idea of the specialized tools involved. How do you know it's not one of these?
I seem to remember wrenches from my mechano set when I was a kid which would fit into the cylinder of most car engines
Not even close to impossible. Maybe not probable or likely based on the sizes of wrenches used on cars. Impossible in this case is hyperbole at best.
The fact remains that you can't retroactively change a license. Ex post facto doesn't mean they've passed a law merely that they're trying to make a new license retroactive.
Much like I can't now say that anybody who read my previous post owes me $50.
Now, of course, IANAL ... but that doesn't mean any lawyer who told them they could retroactively change a contract isn't a complete idiot. Even EULAs say "by continuing to use this service you agree to the terms" ... even they know you can't say something like "and you owe us back fees for this service which is no longer free".
Well, that makes them ignorant of some basic legal principles, and if they received any legal advice which suggested you could retroactively change something like that, their lawyer is incompetent.
In many places it's illegal to pass a law that is ex post facto, and licenses are no different.
There is no 'benefit of the doubt' to believe they simply didn't know this was the case -- this is either gross lack of knowledge about the legal system, or a blatant abuse of it. It's a pity the DMCA doesn't really have redress for abuses like this. Because I fail to see how this can be classified as an honest mistake.
And, I don't see why they have to be either idiots or assholes -- in my opinion, they can be both, and if they sent a DMCA takedown, they likely are.
Probably a sign of cognitive decline. ;-)
Ah, an insufferable, condescending ass with poor reading comprehension as usual ... Happy New Year!
Did I say nobody would ever buy one or that they don't exist? Or did I merely enumerate the list of reasons why I won't buy one -- and, since I just bought a new TV just before Christmas, it will be several years before I'm in the market again, I suspect a lot of people are in the same boat.
The overwhelming majority of people I know who have seen 3D movies have pretty consistently said they won't see one again for many of the reasons I listed ... so, based on the people I know, one of the reasons 3D TV isn't doing well, is because a lot of people simply can't stand 3D TV and movies. And those that like it have newer TVs they're not looking to replace.
Now, go fuck yourself and stop acting like a dick if you can manage it.~
You're thinking of truck stops. ;-)
Not really ... I'm not saying anything other than "not everyone likes 3D", which is the title of my post. At no point did I assert that the reasons why I don't like 3D were universal, merely anecdotal and apropos. But, I can tell you why I wouldn't spend money on it.
If the number sold is low it's because people already have new TVs they have no intention of replacing for some time, or because they don't want 3D -- or, any number of reasons that aren't obvious (like they've been foreclosed on and luxury goods are the last thing on their mind).
So, you expect me and other people who don't like 3D to buy 3D so the cost of 3D comes down and you can have cheap 3D -- or are you just hoping the technology fails so you can buy it cheap? You didn't help pay for my TV, so WTF do I care about the cost of yours? ;-)
In all the same ways you pointed out, "you" are a small percentage of the market, and maybe what "you" want has no bearing on how many other people want it.
You are a small majority too -- only it remains to be seen if there are more people who want 3D than don't. And, quite frankly, I don't think anybody actually has that statistic -- but people clearly aren't rushing out to buy them.
Depends on what you need and what you're doing.
Sometimes I'll just bring my point and shoot camera. Sometimes I'll bring my DSLR with the lens I bought it with and a case that just fits that. Sometimes I'll bring my DSLR in my full on carry bag that has all of my lenses in it.
By the time I'm at option 3, I'm carrying 15+ pounds of camera gear, and it's quite obvious I'm there to take pictures ... but that's only for certain kinds of vacation where I want to cover all possible scenarios.
My Nikon D80 with an 18-70mm lens isn't all that conspicuous -- and it covers the vast majority of scenarios I'm likely to be in. I'm sort of the de-facto photographer for my wife's family events since I'm the only one who brings (and remembers to use) my camera. :-P
Look, if you can post a submission to Slashdot to ask this, you can use a modern DSLR.
They've got so much automation built into them that the camera can be operated in one or two modes without a lot of deep knowledge of the fiddly bits. As you use it, you can opt to try some of the new features, but they've still got some pretty good automated modes.
I occasionally do use some of the advanced features, but for the most part the auto modes cover my needs. But, if I want to delve into it, it's all there. You can run that as point and shoot cameras, or you can run them in full-on "stand back, I'm a professional" mode.
If you really want to get better quality pictures, the lens quality of a DSLR gets you to an awfully good level as long as you're buying a good quality lens instead of some of the cheaper lenses that come with the kits. Those are sometimes a compromise which makes for something which is OK most of the time ... I did a little more reading and bought my camera body and lens separate, because the lens I bought was better quality and more versatile than the ones which came bundled.
If you want to be able to change lenses, go with the DSLR and work up to it ... the lenses from the major companies will carry through their models for years. (I still use the old lenses from my film camera on my current Nikon DSLR.)
If you buy something in between, it might not cover all of your needs, and in a few years you might need to replace it all over again.
Quite possibly stupidity on my behalf.
I'm never clear on if I could download a DVD of the actual Win 7 installer and use that with an OEM license ... I've been under the impression they were essentially very different things and that it wouldn't work with a clean install of the official copy.
That, and I've seen more than a few laptops that you can't actually track down the drivers for upon reinstall, and I'm not willing to hose my wife's laptop to find out. I have better things to do than start that row. :-P
If they don't give you the disc, and the recovery feature in the OEM crap doesn't work ... none of what you say is true. And I've seen far too many computers which came with absolutely no media for the OS.
Besides, the amount of shit that is usually in an OEM install often makes it almost unusable. On my mother-in-law's Toshiba laptop I had to strip out all of their crap to make the machine usable. It was full of wizards, and other tools designed to hand hold you so much that the computer had no CPU and memory left to actually do anything ... the retail copy has none of that shit.
*shrug* That's your opinion and experience. I bought a single machine, which I intended to run Vista on. If the machine became corrupted, I intended to install Vista back onto it. I did the same with my previous XP box, and I'll do the same with my next box for whatever version of Windows is de-rigeur by then.
For me, paying the retail price for the OS means I don't have to go through some of the bullshit I have had to go through by not having the install media, which has left me stranded without being able to reinstall unless I was going to get a pirated copy.
As I said, my wife's shitty HP laptop came with no install media for Win 7, and the process of creating the restore disk failed and couldn't be retried. So, if anything goes wrong, it's cheaper to buy a new laptop than to try to fix it. Or, just say fuck it and pirate Windows.
From what I've experienced, only the full retail copy lets me do a reinstall from scratch -- anything else leaves you with a half assed solution that takes far more of my time than I'm willing to invest.
I've seen two movies in 3D (well, the same one twice) ... both times it gave me a splitting headache that lasted for hours.
I don't like 3D. I don't want 3D. I'm not willing to pay for 3D. To me, 3D is a pointless failed technology I don't want.
Granted, everyone else is free to choose to have it, and I may actually be in the minority. But I'm not willing to spend a single penny on it. Not now, not ever.
I just view it as yet another reason why new TVs are a moving target. The HD spec has changed half a dozen times since about 99 when I bought my DVD player ... HDMI, HDCP, and now 3D. Do they really think people are going to buy a fresh new TV for another moving target spec every 2-3 years?
Used to be that you could buy a TV and have it last a decade or more ... now it's just baubles and doo-dads they try to change every year,
I finally just replaced my ten year old rear-projection TV with an LCD TV ... and I have no intention of replacing this for at least another 5+ years. As always, 3D is a gimmick that will attract some people, but the rest will simply watch it pass by and fade away.
Good, because MS has been making it increasingly difficult to be able to do a reinstall even if you have a licensed copy.
Between "upgrade" disks which only work if you have a working install, and the trend to get rid of recovery disks ... it's about time Microsoft realized that the only way to maintain a system over a period of time is to rebuild the OS periodically.
Microsoft recently sued a computer reseller for piracy because they made recovery disks available to users.
In my experience, the recovery software installed by OEMs is complete shit .. the process for creating it on my wife's HP laptop failed, and then said you were only allowed to do it once, leaving us without one. So, Microsoft hopes when your system crashes you'll go buy a new copy ... but if you've already paid for a copy, you might as well pirate it.
I know the last few PCs I've bought I've insisted I receive a full boxed install media ... not the OEM, but the retail one, and I pay for it. Because if you don't have this, when your Windows system needs to be rebuilt, you're probably hosed.
The trend to not give people install media (in order to prevent piracy) has largely left people with systems they can't repair, and an incentive to pirate what they've already bought.
If a crashed/hosed computer means you lose your data and you'll have to spend as much money as a new computer costs ... something has gone seriously wrong.
Oh? Judging by the first picture in the series, I could probably find someone not unlike that in the downtown of many large cities -- or a mall.
It isn't yet illegal to be eccentric compared to the rest of society.
Hell, I can think of some people I've met at tattoo/piercing places who might fool facial recognition. By the time you've got some extra piercings/implants, it can change quite a bit -- and those people often are already wearing theatrical contacts.
Well, that makes at least two of us. :-P
Not to nitpick (and because I'm curious), have these just been announced, or have they actually been discovered in 2012? It's not entirely clear from TFA.
Man, this stuff used to be practically sci-fi, now it seems to happen all the time.