Trusted Computing: noun The act of trusting that any possible attack vector against a computers expected behavior will be done so by those that have nothing better to do than to game the system.
People obviously do log and renew in many countries around the world. Don't put a retarded straw man into your argument. Many countries also unfortunately heavily clear cut because its a lot cheaper; though, its a lot more damaging to the land and ecosystems. Living in BC, one can see the remains of clear cutting and the slow regrowth that it takes. Trees planted when I was born barely support animal habitats at all. Clear cutting can also effect the geographical features of the land that they're cutting in to. Isn't it true that clear cutting causes higher incidents of flooding and mudslides?
Forgetting all that though, the original complaint about tree cutting wasn't about abolishing the practice, an earlier poster was complaining that the US didn't want accountability of where a tree came from. If I was buying timber harvested illegally from a national park / reserve, I probably wouldn't be doing business with them. Would you?
Actually it is your problem. If you'd like to admit it or not its the truth. These devices have to be upgradeable in order to support a moving standard that can invalidate its current form with future updates. That is what all new player formats are telling you to buy into. If you are unaware or incapable to update your firmware, you are not using the hardware as intended and things will no longer work as intended. If firmware updates are too complicated for the early adopters being hit with the issue, then the HD formats will fail. I don't own an HD player so I don't know how they describe updating the firmware to customers. Maybe it is really confusing and maybe its never even mentioned. That would be a mistake with the implementing vendor, not the content distributor for supporting the latest iteration of the standard.
If you don't like how the new DRM systems work you always have the choice to:
- Do what the rest of Slashdot seems to be doing and pirate them (which solves nothing but your own greed)
- Write letters to demand HD protections to be removed and boycott until that time
- Do some other daring way to get your message through to the GENERAL populace
- Come up with a way so that studios can make money off their properties and still allow you your fair rights
I hear way too much bitching and whining on Slashdot about how the content providers are making defective by design products. I'm angry because I've never heard a single viable solution that will allow these people to make money while appeasing those that want absolute freedom of use in their products. If you want to blame someone, blame the internet. It is so ubiquitous that piracy becomes so large scale that millions of copies could be reproduced off a single source. At least back in the old days of piracy, the pirate (who had to supply media) generally had a small umbrella of people to sell their wares too. I don't like DRM and I wish it was a dead as the next person, but until someone finds a way for content creators to get paid, I think *gulp* it should remain in place.
From my recollection, PS2 was the first console to be sold at a loss for launch. After maybe the first year they started making profits on the unit. The xbox units have never made a profit off just the hardware. Maybe the make it up in Live, which could arguably be considered a part of the hardware depending on your mindset. For Nintendo, I was under the impression that they make it their mission to not sell consoles at a loss. I don't know specifically if they've ever had first year losses like the PS2 did.
If Sony and other media co's were smart with their advertising, they'd release their BluRay / HD-DVD versions of movies 2 weeks before the DVD counterparts. Consumers would get pissed, but in the end if they cared enough they'd go out and buy a player just to be able to rent something the first week its out.
I could release my game on a single DVD by compressing every file gzip or equiv. compression schemes, or I could release a bluray disk with all the assets uncompressed. This would lower CPU usage substantially while asset loading, but it incurs the overhead of aprox. 2x I/O read times. So, the question is which is the biggest slowdown (remembering that the seek times are identical in this case)?
What this means to me is that developers could just get rid of compressed assets from their software in order to boost the speed of games with no side effects. I'm not going to say this speedup is worth $200, thats a personal value judgment and has no place in an technical discussion.
Just because I think the BluRay has merit, I'm not a flipping PS3 fan. I don't and will not be buying a PS3, not because it doesn't have impressive hardware, but because the game genres represented most don't seem interesting.
I did some Google video. I think it wasn't instant-play like my regular PC is, but it was still quite usable for video watching. It isn't a replacement for my home theater PC, but for those looking for a cheap and easy to setup browser for the living room, this will fulfill that need.
Re:How well would they hold up in the outdoors?
on
Can CDs Be Recycled?
·
· Score: 1
I don't know if new discs use gold, but the old ones did. Basically, the gold is what the laser was manipulating in order to make pits. Since gold is so mailable, i imagine that was the design reasoning for choosing it.
From an outsiders perspective, both are doomed to end in failure.
Bio fuels are a political solution, not an environmental one. I can't see us replacing all diesel with bio alternatives unless there is a revolutionary breakthrough which isn't even on the horizon. In the best case it will supply a piece of the energy sector which will reduce demand on 'foreign oil'. In the worst case its a poor tool to 'encourage' OPEC to keep prices down.
Iceland can make hydrogen efficient because they have large reservoirs of easily trappable hydrogen. Most countries cannot make that same claim, so the price rises and the environmental effectiveness of the solution diminishes.
What a chillingly absolute response. I'm glad you have an open mind about your conversation topics.
Topic at hand, using 'poverty' (being unable to live with a minimum living standard) to describe your dooms day solution is both misleading and misguided. Poverty assumes a set standard of living which most would base on current conditions. One could say that there are 0.0001% of the world as impoverished at 1321 standards, but it doesn't mean anything. Neither does saying that n years from now we'll all be impoverished because simply the words mean different things at different times.
I'm so glad your a sociologist because your analysis of humanity is so spot on, I don't know where to being in approaching how accurate your logic stands. Seemingly unlimited power availability thats practically free from all environmental and political issues? Of course nobody would use it!... moron!
I really hate to sling such vile barbs at you, but your entire basis contradicts human nature and is so half baked that whatever valid solution you may have had is now lost in your rhetoric.
Valve has always been 'pro-MS'. Since they're based in greater-Seattle area, is it really that surprising?
What was a real kick in the ass was them completely dumping OGL from their now current-generation games making them unable to play on anything non-Microsoft.
Now that they are in the UniPlaf world of windows, the incentive to support -any- other platform is probably a heavy one. I can't speak about their architecture in particular, but unless a system is written from the ground up as modular, its difficult to shove it in later without showing some serious scars.
"but doesn't create a hugely cutthroat competition in the upper echelons of a class"
Maybe I missed something, but I thought we were trying to teach our children something positive. Do we really want to raise our kids to be even more confrontational, aggressive, mean spirited and anti-social? I would say no.
As an aside to this, I went to a polytechnic that involved a large number of randomly assigned group projects. Basically this threw the successful and underachievers into the same bucket. This whole exercise was basically meant to neutralize a self performance based metric into a group based success role. Teams that did well with each-other would always do better than mavericks, no matter how talented they were. The team working really gave a reflective picture of how you deal with people after those years of school are long over with. You have some who slack off and bring the group down. You have others that push hard to get their work done. Now the onus was on group members to either lift or tear apart each other.
And isn't that whats really important? We plagiarize through life, most of the time we never even think of the backs we're standing on. I would rather deal with solving the problem in a more creative way (like heavy group projects) instead of using technological means to force you to succeed. Some people will never 'succeed' in the way that society places on them. Are they worthless? If so, then we're not making very good use of our resources now, are we?
I you just can't implement something like the above and plagiarism is 'rampant', I see nothing wrong with an anti-plagiarism system as long as there are processes to deal with false positives and that everyone involved knows that it exists.
I'm sorry, where was the link to the SDK? Thats right. The latest and greatest SDK for the most bleeding edge hardware isn't even released yet. This puts your post well into the FUD category. Thanks for playing!
Quoting Wikipedia's 'Directx' topic:
* Direct3D 9Ex (previously known as 9.0L): allows full access to the new capabilities of WDDM while maintaining compatibility for existing Direct3D applications by putting it in a separate API. The transparency ("Glass") effects in Windows Aero rely on the D3D 9Ex code path. When 9Ex was still codenamed 9.0L, there were rumors that this would be Direct3D 10 for Windows XP.[3] It was quickly pointed out that this was not the case, mainly due to lack of support for WDDM in Windows XP.[4]
* Direct3D 10
Currently, the only graphics hardware compatible with Direct3D 10 is the NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series which has thus far limited the advent of Direct3D 10-capable applications. Contrary to rumors surrounding the issue, Direct3D 10 will not be released on the Xbox 360 via a firmware update due to incompatibilities with its graphics hardware.[5]
1. Even if Microsoft 'claims' that their API's are proprietary, Isn't there still legal ambiguity as to if API's can be considered copyrighted at all?
2. There are 'proper procedures' that have been followed for decades that involve developers describing how they reverse engineer. As long as the developer claims that they didn't use the specs, I believe its Microsoft's onus that the developer did use the specs. The only effective way to prove the claim is if the developers 'spontaneously' created a compatible API which would be near to impossible if reverse engineered. The other way would be to find API documentation defects which were implemented in the offender's product.
As a large TV owner the calibration problem does have an impact, but by in large it hasn't degraded my play enough to ever stop playing. As for the lineups, you can accept the fact that Nintendo doesn't have a one-big-xbox-live type system out of the box, but I would've hoped that they had the basic networking stuff taken care of. This 'after-thought' will be the largest barrier to fully accepting the Wii as a regular gamer rig. Even casual players would love to see this done right. Imagine playing animal farm and being able to visit your friends farms when they're off line! Party at Bob's Wii! Not my thing, but it does have novelty and the potential for something great.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this technology as long as it only resides on an ATSC/DVB receiver. Here's why:
1. The technology doesn't impede fair use
2. The technology doesn't degrade ability to use the content for whatever purpose you like
3. The technology does help copyright owners know exactly who (legally / illegally depending on country) distributed their copyright protected content.
The only thing that I can see as being a problem is the potential 'DSL gateway' concept that isn't mentioned in the article with enough depth. If they are marking 'ALL' content leaving a home cable/DSL router, this is a unique ID that could be used not for piracy prevention but for identity tracking. I don't really see the benefit to content providers having that code since any worm zombie can be a re-transmitter. The only time that the watermark is meaningful would be for when the content is ripped from the source.
And the bill for the cost of the bandwidth incurred? If Google remains in the 'user supplied content' market with the burden of heavy auditing and loss of all ill-be-gotten profits, how do you see anyone making money in user contributed content markets?
Firstly, if you believe that Google 'must' police themselves to keep things straight, exactly how would you suppose they do that while remaining profitable? If they can't be profitable, would you like to see them and every other form of 'user submitted' data to disappear from the internet? Text forums gone. Image galleries gone, video sites gone, social collaboration sites gone. The hidden potential of being sued by content owners would be an unacceptable burden to most web sites (this applies to legitimate and illegitimate sites alike). In the end you'd end up with a few 'in the fold' sites that paid the riaa/mpaa tax and the rest get sued into oblivion or flee to countries with more lax laws.
As an aside, if politicians want to 'save the children' from social sites this would be the most devastating way to do it!
Like any other sane engine, they'll have multiple code paths depending on what system you're using. I can't imagine that Valve will keep DX8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1 support much into the future, but they'd be a bunch of idiots to dump DX9 any time soon.
19:9 having black bars is completely normal when you're watching 2:1 movies. Plus, a decent TV can turn letterbox 4:3's into 'full' screen though you do loose a lot of detail over regular 16:9 transfers.
The really bad movies are pan-scan. There's no reason that I'd ever want to watch a pan-scan piece of garbage again. Thats one good reason why I just canceled my cable (Didn't want to spend $400 + $20/mo for 10 Hi-Def channels).
Not that I don't believe at least partially that you're point has merit, but look at people who:
1. Violate any socially unacceptable act. Do you say, as long as they're having fun who cares? Or the more libertarian: As long as they have fun without causing anyone else to not have fun then who cares?
2. People who abuse chemicals in any way are generally using them to go to a happier place (at least those that aren't long term abusers), so the question is, are narcotics an ill upon society even though they make some people happy? Ditto with Alchohol, cigarettes, television, hot dogs, mac-muffins, etc..
Just because someone's happy with doing something doesn't mean its in the best interests of society as a whole that they're doing it. I heard recently that only 1 in 100 people actually produce a change upon society. I can't give a quote on the note, so excuse me for that. If so, it means that the other 99 are merely the support network or filler for the truly inspiring. You can look at this stat and say the masses need TV to help quell the unrest their inability to meaningfully contribute causes, or you could say that television is a crutch that encourages such a large number of people to simply not aspire to something greater with their own limited scope lives, or you could say that television has absolutely no impact on the potential success of an individual positively or negatively. I can't ascribe to the last point, but both the later points have merit.
Even if TV was the society killer, don't expect anything revolutionary to happen soon because the hit new reality TV show "revolution" is way more entertaining than actually doing something about it!
As an old-school Windows tweaker, I can say there are a ton of on-by-default services that will never used by the 'typical' desktop user. It only takes me around 1 hour to get everything setup from scratch. Its finding the changes that make a difference that takes a long time. Once you have it, there's no need to tweak endlessly. Now the only thing I don't worry about is video card tweaks. Many of the third party tweaking tools makes that quite a large job.
As for Linux, I used to tweak around quite a bit with GNOME back in the 1.x days. When they bumped it up to 2.0 series, I found that there just wasn't anything annoying enough to worry about (Except for window roll-ups earlier on).
I think one of the reasons is that Windows throws most of its things in without asking, making the user hunt out things they don't need. Most distros give options as to what they want installed from the get-go so if I don't want something, I can just choose not to install it.
Realistically, any decent sized organization will have the exact same policy written or not. The one thing that makes them special is that people found out about it. Give a few years, they'll have a migration strategy laid out and away they go.
Hopefully, that migration strategy won't be to Vista. One can dream...
No no, you're not getting the issue. All someone needs is one unpatched version of the OS to generate everyone else's generated keys. If it really is as easy as Slashdot users say it is, they'd have to write a new authorization algorithm, release a patch for it, support a limited time frame where the un-new patched authorization isn't reauthorized, then then reissue keys to everyone who has a valid license (Most likely through mail order or at retail outlets).
OR
They loose the ability to 'effectively' stifle piracy on their newest platform.
I can't justify piracy as a solution but lets look at how some people interpret this:
Point (1) 1. Windows retail would cost a 1/3 of the cost of the whole computer 2. Windows OEM forces a user to buy a new computer
So if you want a current generation supported operating system, you pay a couple hundred dollars for an upgrade or half a grand for a new PC. There is no -low cost- solution introduced. This is business economy maximizes hardware manufacturers' and Microsoft's profits.
Point (2) Some people hate that the software that they -have- to run for work, business, etc.. is locked into one corporation that in some cases they hate. Personally, I will never buy a Microsoft product again because of their predatory business ethics but instead of pirating I just find complete alternatives. Some people will 'screw Microsoft' by pirating their software.
I don't consider pirating putting the screws to MS at all. I think it actually helps maintain their monopoly by keeping people in their umbrella of influence.
Slashdot Mirror
We're seeing Trusted Computing at its finest.
Trusted Computing: noun
The act of trusting that any possible attack vector against a computers expected behavior will be done so by those that have nothing better to do than to game the system.
People obviously do log and renew in many countries around the world. Don't put a retarded straw man into your argument. Many countries also unfortunately heavily clear cut because its a lot cheaper; though, its a lot more damaging to the land and ecosystems. Living in BC, one can see the remains of clear cutting and the slow regrowth that it takes. Trees planted when I was born barely support animal habitats at all. Clear cutting can also effect the geographical features of the land that they're cutting in to. Isn't it true that clear cutting causes higher incidents of flooding and mudslides?
Forgetting all that though, the original complaint about tree cutting wasn't about abolishing the practice, an earlier poster was complaining that the US didn't want accountability of where a tree came from. If I was buying timber harvested illegally from a national park / reserve, I probably wouldn't be doing business with them. Would you?
Agreed. The game crosses from entertainment to asset when you sell something for real money.
Actually it is your problem. If you'd like to admit it or not its the truth. These devices have to be upgradeable in order to support a moving standard that can invalidate its current form with future updates. That is what all new player formats are telling you to buy into. If you are unaware or incapable to update your firmware, you are not using the hardware as intended and things will no longer work as intended. If firmware updates are too complicated for the early adopters being hit with the issue, then the HD formats will fail. I don't own an HD player so I don't know how they describe updating the firmware to customers. Maybe it is really confusing and maybe its never even mentioned. That would be a mistake with the implementing vendor, not the content distributor for supporting the latest iteration of the standard.
If you don't like how the new DRM systems work you always have the choice to:
- Do what the rest of Slashdot seems to be doing and pirate them (which solves nothing but your own greed)
- Write letters to demand HD protections to be removed and boycott until that time
- Do some other daring way to get your message through to the GENERAL populace
- Come up with a way so that studios can make money off their properties and still allow you your fair rights
I hear way too much bitching and whining on Slashdot about how the content providers are making defective by design products. I'm angry because I've never heard a single viable solution that will allow these people to make money while appeasing those that want absolute freedom of use in their products. If you want to blame someone, blame the internet. It is so ubiquitous that piracy becomes so large scale that millions of copies could be reproduced off a single source. At least back in the old days of piracy, the pirate (who had to supply media) generally had a small umbrella of people to sell their wares too. I don't like DRM and I wish it was a dead as the next person, but until someone finds a way for content creators to get paid, I think *gulp* it should remain in place.
From my recollection, PS2 was the first console to be sold at a loss for launch. After maybe the first year they started making profits on the unit. The xbox units have never made a profit off just the hardware. Maybe the make it up in Live, which could arguably be considered a part of the hardware depending on your mindset. For Nintendo, I was under the impression that they make it their mission to not sell consoles at a loss. I don't know specifically if they've ever had first year losses like the PS2 did.
If Sony and other media co's were smart with their advertising, they'd release their BluRay / HD-DVD versions of movies 2 weeks before the DVD counterparts. Consumers would get pissed, but in the end if they cared enough they'd go out and buy a player just to be able to rent something the first week its out.
Think about it this way:
n try.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek it seems that the drive's disc read rate is quite favorable against DVD's read speed.
I could release my game on a single DVD by compressing every file gzip or equiv. compression schemes, or I could release a bluray disk with all the assets uncompressed. This would lower CPU usage substantially while asset loading, but it incurs the overhead of aprox. 2x I/O read times. So, the question is which is the biggest slowdown (remembering that the seek times are identical in this case)?
Seeing just briefly from http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_e
What this means to me is that developers could just get rid of compressed assets from their software in order to boost the speed of games with no side effects. I'm not going to say this speedup is worth $200, thats a personal value judgment and has no place in an technical discussion.
Just because I think the BluRay has merit, I'm not a flipping PS3 fan. I don't and will not be buying a PS3, not because it doesn't have impressive hardware, but because the game genres represented most don't seem interesting.
I did some Google video. I think it wasn't instant-play like my regular PC is, but it was still quite usable for video watching. It isn't a replacement for my home theater PC, but for those looking for a cheap and easy to setup browser for the living room, this will fulfill that need.
I don't know if new discs use gold, but the old ones did. Basically, the gold is what the laser was manipulating in order to make pits. Since gold is so mailable, i imagine that was the design reasoning for choosing it.
From an outsiders perspective, both are doomed to end in failure.
Bio fuels are a political solution, not an environmental one. I can't see us replacing all diesel with bio alternatives unless there is a revolutionary breakthrough which isn't even on the horizon. In the best case it will supply a piece of the energy sector which will reduce demand on 'foreign oil'. In the worst case its a poor tool to 'encourage' OPEC to keep prices down.
Iceland can make hydrogen efficient because they have large reservoirs of easily trappable hydrogen. Most countries cannot make that same claim, so the price rises and the environmental effectiveness of the solution diminishes.
What a chillingly absolute response. I'm glad you have an open mind about your conversation topics.
Topic at hand, using 'poverty' (being unable to live with a minimum living standard) to describe your dooms day solution is both misleading and misguided. Poverty assumes a set standard of living which most would base on current conditions. One could say that there are 0.0001% of the world as impoverished at 1321 standards, but it doesn't mean anything. Neither does saying that n years from now we'll all be impoverished because simply the words mean different things at different times.
I'm so glad your a sociologist because your analysis of humanity is so spot on, I don't know where to being in approaching how accurate your logic stands. Seemingly unlimited power availability thats practically free from all environmental and political issues? Of course nobody would use it!... moron!
I really hate to sling such vile barbs at you, but your entire basis contradicts human nature and is so half baked that whatever valid solution you may have had is now lost in your rhetoric.
Valve has always been 'pro-MS'. Since they're based in greater-Seattle area, is it really that surprising?
What was a real kick in the ass was them completely dumping OGL from their now current-generation games making them unable to play on anything non-Microsoft.
Now that they are in the UniPlaf world of windows, the incentive to support -any- other platform is probably a heavy one. I can't speak about their architecture in particular, but unless a system is written from the ground up as modular, its difficult to shove it in later without showing some serious scars.
"but doesn't create a hugely cutthroat competition in the upper echelons of a class"
Maybe I missed something, but I thought we were trying to teach our children something positive. Do we really want to raise our kids to be even more confrontational, aggressive, mean spirited and anti-social? I would say no.
As an aside to this, I went to a polytechnic that involved a large number of randomly assigned group projects. Basically this threw the successful and underachievers into the same bucket. This whole exercise was basically meant to neutralize a self performance based metric into a group based success role. Teams that did well with each-other would always do better than mavericks, no matter how talented they were. The team working really gave a reflective picture of how you deal with people after those years of school are long over with. You have some who slack off and bring the group down. You have others that push hard to get their work done. Now the onus was on group members to either lift or tear apart each other.
And isn't that whats really important? We plagiarize through life, most of the time we never even think of the backs we're standing on. I would rather deal with solving the problem in a more creative way (like heavy group projects) instead of using technological means to force you to succeed. Some people will never 'succeed' in the way that society places on them. Are they worthless? If so, then we're not making very good use of our resources now, are we?
I you just can't implement something like the above and plagiarism is 'rampant', I see nothing wrong with an anti-plagiarism system as long as there are processes to deal with false positives and that everyone involved knows that it exists.
"DirectX 9L (available for both XP and Vista"
I'm sorry, where was the link to the SDK? Thats right. The latest and greatest SDK for the most bleeding edge hardware isn't even released yet. This puts your post well into the FUD category. Thanks for playing!
Quoting Wikipedia's 'Directx' topic:
* Direct3D 9Ex (previously known as 9.0L): allows full access to the new capabilities of WDDM while maintaining compatibility for existing Direct3D applications by putting it in a separate API. The transparency ("Glass") effects in Windows Aero rely on the D3D 9Ex code path. When 9Ex was still codenamed 9.0L, there were rumors that this would be Direct3D 10 for Windows XP.[3] It was quickly pointed out that this was not the case, mainly due to lack of support for WDDM in Windows XP.[4]
* Direct3D 10
Currently, the only graphics hardware compatible with Direct3D 10 is the NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series which has thus far limited the advent of Direct3D 10-capable applications. Contrary to rumors surrounding the issue, Direct3D 10 will not be released on the Xbox 360 via a firmware update due to incompatibilities with its graphics hardware.[5]
1. Even if Microsoft 'claims' that their API's are proprietary, Isn't there still legal ambiguity as to if API's can be considered copyrighted at all?
2. There are 'proper procedures' that have been followed for decades that involve developers describing how they reverse engineer. As long as the developer claims that they didn't use the specs, I believe its Microsoft's onus that the developer did use the specs. The only effective way to prove the claim is if the developers 'spontaneously' created a compatible API which would be near to impossible if reverse engineered. The other way would be to find API documentation defects which were implemented in the offender's product.
As a large TV owner the calibration problem does have an impact, but by in large it hasn't degraded my play enough to ever stop playing. As for the lineups, you can accept the fact that Nintendo doesn't have a one-big-xbox-live type system out of the box, but I would've hoped that they had the basic networking stuff taken care of. This 'after-thought' will be the largest barrier to fully accepting the Wii as a regular gamer rig. Even casual players would love to see this done right. Imagine playing animal farm and being able to visit your friends farms when they're off line! Party at Bob's Wii! Not my thing, but it does have novelty and the potential for something great.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this technology as long as it only resides on an ATSC/DVB receiver.
Here's why:
1. The technology doesn't impede fair use
2. The technology doesn't degrade ability to use the content for whatever purpose you like
3. The technology does help copyright owners know exactly who (legally / illegally depending on country) distributed their copyright protected content.
The only thing that I can see as being a problem is the potential 'DSL gateway' concept that isn't mentioned in the article with enough depth. If they are marking 'ALL' content leaving a home cable/DSL router, this is a unique ID that could be used not for piracy prevention but for identity tracking. I don't really see the benefit to content providers having that code since any worm zombie can be a re-transmitter. The only time that the watermark is meaningful would be for when the content is ripped from the source.
And the bill for the cost of the bandwidth incurred? If Google remains in the 'user supplied content' market with the burden of heavy auditing and loss of all ill-be-gotten profits, how do you see anyone making money in user contributed content markets?
Firstly, if you believe that Google 'must' police themselves to keep things straight, exactly how would you suppose they do that while remaining profitable? If they can't be profitable, would you like to see them and every other form of 'user submitted' data to disappear from the internet? Text forums gone. Image galleries gone, video sites gone, social collaboration sites gone. The hidden potential of being sued by content owners would be an unacceptable burden to most web sites (this applies to legitimate and illegitimate sites alike). In the end you'd end up with a few 'in the fold' sites that paid the riaa/mpaa tax and the rest get sued into oblivion or flee to countries with more lax laws.
As an aside, if politicians want to 'save the children' from social sites this would be the most devastating way to do it!
Like any other sane engine, they'll have multiple code paths depending on what system you're using. I can't imagine that Valve will keep DX8/7/6/5/4/3/2/1 support much into the future, but they'd be a bunch of idiots to dump DX9 any time soon.
19:9 having black bars is completely normal when you're watching 2:1 movies. Plus, a decent TV can turn letterbox 4:3's into 'full' screen though you do loose a lot of detail over regular 16:9 transfers.
The really bad movies are pan-scan. There's no reason that I'd ever want to watch a pan-scan piece of garbage again. Thats one good reason why I just canceled my cable (Didn't want to spend $400 + $20/mo for 10 Hi-Def channels).
Not that I don't believe at least partially that you're point has merit, but look at people who:
1. Violate any socially unacceptable act. Do you say, as long as they're having fun who cares? Or the more libertarian: As long as they have fun without causing anyone else to not have fun then who cares?
2. People who abuse chemicals in any way are generally using them to go to a happier place (at least those that aren't long term abusers), so the question is, are narcotics an ill upon society even though they make some people happy? Ditto with Alchohol, cigarettes, television, hot dogs, mac-muffins, etc..
Just because someone's happy with doing something doesn't mean its in the best interests of society as a whole that they're doing it. I heard recently that only 1 in 100 people actually produce a change upon society. I can't give a quote on the note, so excuse me for that. If so, it means that the other 99 are merely the support network or filler for the truly inspiring. You can look at this stat and say the masses need TV to help quell the unrest their inability to meaningfully contribute causes, or you could say that television is a crutch that encourages such a large number of people to simply not aspire to something greater with their own limited scope lives, or you could say that television has absolutely no impact on the potential success of an individual positively or negatively. I can't ascribe to the last point, but both the later points have merit.
Even if TV was the society killer, don't expect anything revolutionary to happen soon because the hit new reality TV show "revolution" is way more entertaining than actually doing something about it!
As an old-school Windows tweaker, I can say there are a ton of on-by-default services that will never used by the 'typical' desktop user. It only takes me around 1 hour to get everything setup from scratch. Its finding the changes that make a difference that takes a long time. Once you have it, there's no need to tweak endlessly. Now the only thing I don't worry about is video card tweaks. Many of the third party tweaking tools makes that quite a large job.
As for Linux, I used to tweak around quite a bit with GNOME back in the 1.x days. When they bumped it up to 2.0 series, I found that there just wasn't anything annoying enough to worry about (Except for window roll-ups earlier on).
I think one of the reasons is that Windows throws most of its things in without asking, making the user hunt out things they don't need. Most distros give options as to what they want installed from the get-go so if I don't want something, I can just choose not to install it.
Realistically, any decent sized organization will have the exact same policy written or not. The one thing that makes them special is that people found out about it. Give a few years, they'll have a migration strategy laid out and away they go.
Hopefully, that migration strategy won't be to Vista. One can dream...
No no, you're not getting the issue. All someone needs is one unpatched version of the OS to generate everyone else's generated keys. If it really is as easy as Slashdot users say it is, they'd have to write a new authorization algorithm, release a patch for it, support a limited time frame where the un-new patched authorization isn't reauthorized, then then reissue keys to everyone who has a valid license (Most likely through mail order or at retail outlets).
OR
They loose the ability to 'effectively' stifle piracy on their newest platform.
I can't justify piracy as a solution but lets look at how some people interpret this:
Point (1)
1. Windows retail would cost a 1/3 of the cost of the whole computer
2. Windows OEM forces a user to buy a new computer
So if you want a current generation supported operating system, you pay a couple hundred dollars for an upgrade or half a grand for a new PC. There is no -low cost- solution introduced. This is business economy maximizes hardware manufacturers' and Microsoft's profits.
Point (2)
Some people hate that the software that they -have- to run for work, business, etc.. is locked into one corporation that in some cases they hate. Personally, I will never buy a Microsoft product again because of their predatory business ethics but instead of pirating I just find complete alternatives. Some people will 'screw Microsoft' by pirating their software.
I don't consider pirating putting the screws to MS at all. I think it actually helps maintain their monopoly by keeping people in their umbrella of influence.