b) those kids don't have to pay at all. If they can't afford it, they are propably qualified for a exemption. If your PC's video card has an TV tuner, you have to pay anyway. There is no change.
And you know this because you know people so much better then they know themselves? Because you cannot live without TV and you are the epitomy of greatness, it cannot be possible that somebody else could? Because it is your place to tell people how to live their lives?
Or is it simply that the minority of people who simply don't want to TV is so small they should be ignored? (*)
I don't live in Germany but in a neighboring country that is sure to follow suit soon enough. I do not have a TV, and my computers do not have a TV tuner card. I don't stream a TV signal from anywhere, and I never watch TV. Not because I cannot afford it, but because I do not want it.
I never watch the public propaganda channels. I never visit their website, read their news service, or get anything from them at all. But yes, I do own computer, several of them. Why the hell should I have to pay for something I don't use because I belong to a minority that by your reconning is too small to count? (But apparently big enough to rob.)
(*) Once again showing why socialism is so close to fascism.
I recently sent this to their "suggest-source" address:
I suggest that you add the following news source:
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
to Google news. It is the official news service of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
If not, I am wondering how this is different from Xinhua, another propaganda organization of a dictorial government, whose articles are often featured highly on Google news?
Obviously there is a plan here, and it is very simple. Google are simply going to let the service run as beta, until it has enough users (and it is getting there) that the shoe is on the other foot: and the news providers will WANT to be screen scraped.
I mean, when news pages start seeing that 90% of their article reads are referred from news.google.com, or that do reader research and find that Google News is the number one way that people learn to read their site, then Google can start gladly removing anybody who asks. I have started reading several newssites regularly that I first found via Google News.
It is funny how like ten people replied like this, but nobody bothered to look up that stat. It was hard with google: there are 100 bicycles bicycles in the USA, and 6 million in Sweden.
So the number of thefts in the USA is approx 300,000,000 * 0.027 = 8,100,000 per year.
The number of thefts in Sweden is approx 9,000,000 * 0.094 = 846,000.
Thefts / bicycle and year:
USA = 0.081 Sweden = 0.141
So clearly, Swedish bicycle owners have absolutely no need to worry about theft!
Jesus, I am so sick of the patronizing American mythology that crime is something only you have and that Europe is some lala land where everybody is nice to one another. In fact, crime rates are higher in most of Europe than in the US, and yes, that include the mythical land of Sweden.
Yes, up here in Scandinavia all we do is where clogs and dance in circle, and nobody ever takes anything. Why the hell does bullshit like this even get moderated up?
If you leave a bicycle unlocked in Sweden, it will get stolen. If you don't believe me, I suggest you come here and try.
For the record: the number of bicycle thefts per 100 people in America in the year 2000: 2.7. In Sweden: 9.4.
Having the music on for more than 12 hours a day, it takes about 40 days run the whole cycle, so I doubt there is any music there I haven't heard in years.
For instance, in France, it is illegal to state publicly that the gas chambers did not exist.
Which is so idiotic it almost requires no comment. If something is true, than fair, open discussion will bair that out. All such laws do is fuel the fires of those wóuld be inclined to believe otherwise.
Even though I don't have any doubt that the holocaust is real, such laws smell like "It is heresy to claim the world is round" to me. The truth does not require censorship!
You may disagree with this strategy, but you may at least agree with their goal.
And Hitler's goal was to make the world a perfect place. So what?
I love it when people consider the cost per stock as an indicator of whether a company is overvalued. It is people like you who create arbitrage in the market for the rest of us to exploit...
Different companies have different number of stocks you know. $85 gives Google a total value of $23 Billion (market capitalization), while Cisco is still worth around $150 billion...
But what SCO has done is not to take IBMs (and all other Linux contributors) code and distributed it under the GPL relying the contributors statement that the GPL is valid. What SCO has done, by claiming that distributing Linux requires a license from them (because purportingly it contains some IP they have rights to) is to VIOLATE the GPL.
So what are the options:
1) The GPL is valid and SCO violated it. The GPL states very clearly that the GPL cannot be combined with other contractual obligations (like "SCOsource"). If you have something that contains GPLed code, but contractually can't be distributed under the GPL, then the license states explicitely that you cannot distribute the resulting code at all. So you can say: "This guy stole my code and combined it with GPL code to make a product, nobody can distribute that," but you can never say "This guy stole my code and combined it with GPL code, so you must pay me to distribute the result," which is what SCO tried to do.
2) The GPL is invalid and SCO tried to license under "SCOsource" lots of stuff it had no valid license to even redistribute. Now, you can claim promisary estoppel for following the letter of the GPL even if it doesn't hold water - but you can't claim promisary estoppel for doing something that violated the GPL when it held no water. That is just nonsense.
They release OS upgrades for free that make their OS faster.
Ah, thank god for Apple with their free $129 upgrades, compared to those super expensive $0 service packs that MS release, not to speak of those Linux updates that are so expensive they not only cost nothing, but you can do whatever you want with them.
Inside the RDF, the above sentence made sense, I promise!
What you are trying to say is "early adopters". You know 'adopt' to take on, not 'adapt' to change.
Thanks. I knew that of course, but...
In truth it was really just regular old consumers. From your fiery rhetoric of the past I'm sure you will spit on those advertising-manipulated sheep as being just as worthless as "Mac zealots". The point you have to recognize, however, is that the mass market is what drives the success or failure of new technology.
There is no doubt that Apple were a lot smarter about how to get people into using DRM than previous vendors. They learned the lesson about how to boil a frog: make sure he doesn't jump out when first put in the kettle. By making sure that right now, normal consumers can do the things they were doing before, Apple made sure that people who don't question the consequences of these things would accept the new regime of control over their files and computers. This leaves the oh-so-mentioned circumvention of burning to disk wide open for now, but I have no doubt they will close that eventually. That iTMS was launched in coordination with the RIAA suing file sharers to scare people away from peer to peer networks certainly helped [1].
Attacking Playfair shows that Apple will not tolerate iTunes users who want to be in control of their own computers. It may allow people to jump through hoops to extract the plaintext - but it will always be on their terms.
Now, regarding the role of the Apple "zealots" - no, they are not the only people who have accepted Apple's DRM. But they are it's defenders. It's footsoldiers. It's guerilla marketing. Normal users got started with iTMS because they had Mac fanatics telling them how wonderful it was. It is the Mac zealots who are here on Slashdot defending Apple, attacking Jon Johansen, and moderating comments reminding people that Apple DRM is the same fuckware we have been fighting all along as troll (for some reason I was spared today). The fact is that they have played an integral part in perpretrating this mess on mankind.
[1] Part of my harsh reaction about this whole thing is just guilt. I know how to make a p2p file sharing network that is more or less impervious to such attack (I know a lot of people say that, but I really mean it. And none of the Freenet type babble either - I mean simple real solutions) but real life has kept me from spending the months needed writing such software. The world needs file sharing networks not because I think copyright infringement is great (I really don't care) but because they offer an option to DRM. Napster is the only reason why we aren't already living in a DRM society.
So while the people you speak of certainly do exist, what do you say to the VASTLY larger proportion of PC and Mac-based iPod users who just haven't noticed the DRM because it doesn't get in their faces?
iTMS is no longer new. It is dominant. Entrenched. It is the early adapters among the Mac zealots who made it possible to pull the blinds over the non-technical users entering now.
Why do you think it was around so long without a windows version? Why do you think there wasn't a single crack for the DRM until it was ported?
I find that placing a fine layer of Obecalp spray over the entire surface works miracles when it comes to containing the problem that leads to these symptoms. Like everthing good, it is hard to get ahold of: but I have a supply, and for the low price of only $99 a bottle I can sell you some.
Unfortunately, there is a risk you may have to repeat the treatment after a while. It really depends on the severity of you Airdnocopyh (the scientific name for this serious illness) condition.
Most people have given up on the fact that one can't record a VHS movie cassette directly from one VCR to another. Yet you stand up and yell when we can't take our purchased iTunes AAC file from any of five computers to another computer, or worse, to a mp3 player that isn't an iPod.
The difference is that in the analog age, the stupid copy-control things weren't in your telephone, they weren't in your typewriter, they weren't in your pen, and they weren't in your mouth.
A computer is not just a fancy VCR, and the Internet is not just a thousand TV channels. Our computers are tools for communication, and ever increasingly they are our primary such tools. To relinquish control over our computers to those who wish to control how and what we communicate is something entirely new - even if iTMS is just the first step.
Apologists always talk about practical issues: "Oh, but I can make as many copies as I need", "It allows me to do everything I normally would." But this is not a problem of practice, it is one of principle. By going after the makers of Playfair Apple have showed that they will not tolerate anybody to attempt to excert control over their own computer once you have started using iTMS: that is simply not acceptable.
Real have the right to reverse engineer Apple's products, and Apple (and anybody else) has the right to reverse engineer Real's. That has nothing to do with "hacking into your IP rights", and whoever wrote that is so far removed from reality I wouldn't know how to reason with him.
We support Real's position when real are right. We support Apple's position when they are right. Real were wrong when tried to keep people from reverse engineering their protocols, and Apple is wrong when it does the same.
There is nothing hypocritical about deriding the bad actions of a company, while lauding the good. What is hypocritical is to turn on a penny so as to see every action of a certain company as something benign.
Hypocracy is what one ends up with when one sees the world through Apple colored glasses. Apple is in the right here because Real were in the wrong before (for exactly the same actions as are so right from Apple now). When the MPAA attacked Jon Johansen they were evil, when Apple does it one has to understand that they have to act in the best interest of their stockholders, so it isn't really Apple that is evil (what a company is except for the interest of it's stockholders I'm not sure). When Microsoft builds proprietary DRM systems it is a cynical power grab, but when Apple does it is a wonderful innovation and any control is purely what the record companies fault. When some other corporation pulls a bait and switch it is devious, when Apple suddenly changes the number of copies or amount of computers that you can put the files you (don't!) own on, it is perfectly reasonable.
In Apple fans, DRM finally found it's adapters. Everywhere else it has reared it's ugly head, it has been spat on, rejected, hacked, and mod-chipped. Every type of consumer has rejected it for the power grab that it is - for the fact that control over their information, their computers, and their communication is something they reserve onto themselves. But not Apple fans. For them, DRM came from a higher place, a divine being, something that simply could not be wrong. Turning over control to Apple is as natural and right as anything could be, and they will spit upon those who would reject such an arrangement (not just now, but read the comments that followed Jon's hacks).
What DRM never previously got was it's early adapters. Those who are the first to accept a technology are also the first reject being controlled by: those that want most flexibility, freedom, possibilities. But in the Apple zealots, the music industry finally found it's early adapters: those who cannot see wrong in the company they idolize.
Good for you guys. You will live to reap the sorrows.
A ``me too'' attack consists of taking someone else's filter and claiming it as your own. This does not help you get recognized by other correspondents - that determination is made by comparing your email address against their list of stored filters - but once you are 'in', it will make you appear to share many contacts with people you actually don't know well at all.
Why not just salt the SHA1 function with the filter owners email address? That way somebody could never take my filter and claim it as their own, since the bloom filter won't match anything when the hash values are produced with their email address as the salt.
The only valid complaint here is that your marketing person claimed that connecting to the database via a socket was a "grey area" in regards to linking. It is not a "grey area", and never has been - doing so makes the client no more of a derivative work then IE is a derivative work off Apache. Claiming otherwise is downright deceitful.
Networks with names that are still around: The Usenet, Janet, Freenet, Sunet, Milnet, The World Wide Web, Internet2. I could go on. Most these are either a part of, or run on top of, The Internet, but they are still networks with names.
Just because The United Nations has overtaken all other global unions of countries, doesn't suddenly make it the united nations.
Obviously I didn't include down payments. If one adds a five year amortization (I don't agree that that is too much: computer replacement rates are falling, and a five year old computer is completely fine today) it comes to $104/month the first year, falling to $87/month the fifth.
That is a lot, but remember, we were talking about somebody made $40K a year, in which case the answer is still hell yes that I would pay that much a computer (I pay almost that much for my Internet connection, and I make $25K or so as a grad student). Scale the numbers back down to somebody who makes $2K paying for a computer a $250 computer, and we are talking about $6 per month.
Slashdot Mirror
It played just fine using mplayer and mplayer-plugin for Mozilla. I have installed some hacked up windows dlls though I think.
b) those kids don't have to pay at all. If they can't afford it, they are propably qualified for a exemption. If your PC's video card has an TV tuner, you have to pay anyway. There is no change.
And you know this because you know people so much better then they know themselves? Because you cannot live without TV and you are the epitomy of greatness, it cannot be possible that somebody else could? Because it is your place to tell people how to live their lives?
Or is it simply that the minority of people who simply don't want to TV is so small they should be ignored? (*)
I don't live in Germany but in a neighboring country that is sure to follow suit soon enough. I do not have a TV, and my computers do not have a TV tuner card. I don't stream a TV signal from anywhere, and I never watch TV. Not because I cannot afford it, but because I do not want it.
I never watch the public propaganda channels. I never visit their website, read their news service, or get anything from them at all. But yes, I do own computer, several of them. Why the hell should I have to pay for something I don't use because I belong to a minority that by your reconning is too small to count? (But apparently big enough to rob.)
(*) Once again showing why socialism is so close to fascism.
I have read an attributed Ayn Rand quote about this, but I can't find it now. Something like:
"The surest sign of a lesser man is his contempt for the success of others."
Babies, however, are rather fond of being mounted to racks.
I recently sent this to their "suggest-source" address:
I suggest that you add the following news source:
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm
to Google news. It is the official news service of the Democratic
Peoples Republic of Korea.
If not, I am wondering how this is different from Xinhua, another
propaganda organization of a dictorial government, whose articles are
often featured highly on Google news?
Obviously there is a plan here, and it is very simple. Google are simply going to let the service run as beta, until it has enough users (and it is getting there) that the shoe is on the other foot: and the news providers will WANT to be screen scraped.
I mean, when news pages start seeing that 90% of their article reads are referred from news.google.com, or that do reader research and find that Google News is the number one way that people learn to read their site, then Google can start gladly removing anybody who asks. I have started reading several newssites regularly that I first found via Google News.
Number of car thefts per 100 people in the USA in 2000: 0.5. In Sweden: 1.3.
It is funny how like ten people replied like this, but nobody bothered to look up that stat. It was hard with google: there are 100 bicycles bicycles in the USA, and 6 million in Sweden.
So the number of thefts in the USA is approx 300,000,000 * 0.027 = 8,100,000 per year.
The number of thefts in Sweden is approx 9,000,000 * 0.094 = 846,000.
Thefts / bicycle and year:
USA = 0.081
Sweden = 0.141
So clearly, Swedish bicycle owners have absolutely no need to worry about theft!
Jesus, I am so sick of the patronizing American mythology that crime is something only you have and that Europe is some lala land where everybody is nice to one another. In fact, crime rates are higher in most of Europe than in the US, and yes, that include the mythical land of Sweden.
Yes, up here in Scandinavia all we do is where clogs and dance in circle, and nobody ever takes anything. Why the hell does bullshit like this even get moderated up?
If you leave a bicycle unlocked in Sweden, it will get stolen. If you don't believe me, I suggest you come here and try.
For the record: the number of bicycle thefts per 100 people in America in the year 2000: 2.7. In Sweden: 9.4.
My problem with Illium is that you just can't see exactly where it's going.
Yeah, I always hate that in a book!
I don't have a hundred gigs but only arouhnd 40, but my music is currently playing, and status bar says:
[playing] [shuffle: albums] [6982 songs in 520 albums] [58 songs scheduled]
So yes, one big playlist.
Having the music on for more than 12 hours a day, it takes about 40 days run the whole cycle, so I doubt there is any music there I haven't heard in years.
For instance, in France, it is illegal to state publicly that the gas chambers did not exist.
Which is so idiotic it almost requires no comment. If something is true, than fair, open discussion will bair that out. All such laws do is fuel the fires of those wóuld be inclined to believe otherwise.
Even though I don't have any doubt that the holocaust is real, such laws smell like "It is heresy to claim the world is round" to me. The truth does not require censorship!
You may disagree with this strategy, but you may at least agree with their goal.
And Hitler's goal was to make the world a perfect place. So what?
It isn't wrong to treat company names as being plural. It is a British/American thing.
Being inconsistant about it, like I was above, is definitely wrong though. I shall settle for one some day.
I remember Cisco used to be about 85$....
I love it when people consider the cost per stock as an indicator of whether a company is overvalued. It is people like you who create arbitrage in the market for the rest of us to exploit...
Different companies have different number of stocks you know. $85 gives Google a total value of $23 Billion (market capitalization), while Cisco is still worth around $150 billion...
But what SCO has done is not to take IBMs (and all other Linux contributors) code and distributed it under the GPL relying the contributors statement that the GPL is valid. What SCO has done, by claiming that distributing Linux requires a license from them (because purportingly it contains some IP they have rights to) is to VIOLATE the GPL.
So what are the options:
1) The GPL is valid and SCO violated it. The GPL states very clearly that the GPL cannot be combined with other contractual obligations (like "SCOsource"). If you have something that contains GPLed code, but contractually can't be distributed under the GPL, then the license states explicitely that you cannot distribute the resulting code at all. So you can say: "This guy stole my code and combined it with GPL code to make a product, nobody can distribute that," but you can never say "This guy stole my code and combined it with GPL code, so you must pay me to distribute the result," which is what SCO tried to do.
2) The GPL is invalid and SCO tried to license under "SCOsource" lots of stuff it had no valid license to even redistribute. Now, you can claim promisary estoppel for following the letter of the GPL even if it doesn't hold water - but you can't claim promisary estoppel for doing something that violated the GPL when it held no water. That is just nonsense.
They release OS upgrades for free that make their OS faster.
Ah, thank god for Apple with their free $129 upgrades, compared to those super expensive $0 service packs that MS release, not to speak of those Linux updates that are so expensive they not only cost nothing, but you can do whatever you want with them.
Inside the RDF, the above sentence made sense, I promise!
What you are trying to say is "early adopters". You know 'adopt' to take on, not 'adapt' to change.
Thanks. I knew that of course, but...
In truth it was really just regular old consumers. From your fiery rhetoric of the past I'm sure you will spit on those advertising-manipulated sheep as being just as worthless as "Mac zealots". The point you have to recognize, however, is that the mass market is what drives the success or failure of new technology.
There is no doubt that Apple were a lot smarter about how to get people into using DRM than previous vendors. They learned the lesson about how to boil a frog: make sure he doesn't jump out when first put in the kettle. By making sure that right now, normal consumers can do the things they were doing before, Apple made sure that people who don't question the consequences of these things would accept the new regime of control over their files and computers. This leaves the oh-so-mentioned circumvention of burning to disk wide open for now, but I have no doubt they will close that eventually. That iTMS was launched in coordination with the RIAA suing file sharers to scare people away from peer to peer networks certainly helped [1].
Attacking Playfair shows that Apple will not tolerate iTunes users who want to be in control of their own computers. It may allow people to jump through hoops to extract the plaintext - but it will always be on their terms.
Now, regarding the role of the Apple "zealots" - no, they are not the only people who have accepted Apple's DRM. But they are it's defenders. It's footsoldiers. It's guerilla marketing. Normal users got started with iTMS because they had Mac fanatics telling them how wonderful it was. It is the Mac zealots who are here on Slashdot defending Apple, attacking Jon Johansen, and moderating comments reminding people that Apple DRM is the same fuckware we have been fighting all along as troll (for some reason I was spared today). The fact is that they have played an integral part in perpretrating this mess on mankind.
[1] Part of my harsh reaction about this whole thing is just guilt. I know how to make a p2p file sharing network that is more or less impervious to such attack (I know a lot of people say that, but I really mean it. And none of the Freenet type babble either - I mean simple real solutions) but real life has kept me from spending the months needed writing such software. The world needs file sharing networks not because I think copyright infringement is great (I really don't care) but because they offer an option to DRM. Napster is the only reason why we aren't already living in a DRM society.
So while the people you speak of certainly do exist, what do you say to the VASTLY larger proportion of PC and Mac-based iPod users who just haven't noticed the DRM because it doesn't get in their faces?
iTMS is no longer new. It is dominant. Entrenched. It is the early adapters among the Mac zealots who made it possible to pull the blinds over the non-technical users entering now.
Why do you think it was around so long without a windows version? Why do you think there wasn't a single crack for the DRM until it was ported?
I find that placing a fine layer of Obecalp spray over the entire surface works miracles when it comes to containing the problem that leads to these symptoms. Like everthing good, it is hard to get ahold of: but I have a supply, and for the low price of only $99 a bottle I can sell you some.
Unfortunately, there is a risk you may have to repeat the treatment after a while. It really depends on the severity of you Airdnocopyh (the scientific name for this serious illness) condition.
Most people have given up on the fact that one can't record a VHS movie cassette directly from one VCR to another. Yet you stand up and yell when we can't take our purchased iTunes AAC file from any of five computers to another computer, or worse, to a mp3 player that isn't an iPod.
The difference is that in the analog age, the stupid copy-control things weren't in your telephone, they weren't in your typewriter, they weren't in your pen, and they weren't in your mouth.
A computer is not just a fancy VCR, and the Internet is not just a thousand TV channels. Our computers are tools for communication, and ever increasingly they are our primary such tools. To relinquish control over our computers to those who wish to control how and what we communicate is something entirely new - even if iTMS is just the first step.
Apologists always talk about practical issues: "Oh, but I can make as many copies as I need", "It allows me to do everything I normally would." But this is not a problem of practice, it is one of principle. By going after the makers of Playfair Apple have showed that they will not tolerate anybody to attempt to excert control over their own computer once you have started using iTMS: that is simply not acceptable.
Real have the right to reverse engineer Apple's products, and Apple (and anybody else) has the right to reverse engineer Real's. That has nothing to do with "hacking into your IP rights", and whoever wrote that is so far removed from reality I wouldn't know how to reason with him.
We support Real's position when real are right. We support Apple's position when they are right. Real were wrong when tried to keep people from reverse engineering their protocols, and Apple is wrong when it does the same.
There is nothing hypocritical about deriding the bad actions of a company, while lauding the good. What is hypocritical is to turn on a penny so as to see every action of a certain company as something benign.
Hypocracy is what one ends up with when one sees the world through Apple colored glasses. Apple is in the right here because Real were in the wrong before (for exactly the same actions as are so right from Apple now). When the MPAA attacked Jon Johansen they were evil, when Apple does it one has to understand that they have to act in the best interest of their stockholders, so it isn't really Apple that is evil (what a company is except for the interest of it's stockholders I'm not sure). When Microsoft builds proprietary DRM systems it is a cynical power grab, but when Apple does it is a wonderful innovation and any control is purely what the record companies fault. When some other corporation pulls a bait and switch it is devious, when Apple suddenly changes the number of copies or amount of computers that you can put the files you (don't!) own on, it is perfectly reasonable.
In Apple fans, DRM finally found it's adapters. Everywhere else it has reared it's ugly head, it has been spat on, rejected, hacked, and mod-chipped. Every type of consumer has rejected it for the power grab that it is - for the fact that control over their information, their computers, and their communication is something they reserve onto themselves. But not Apple fans. For them, DRM came from a higher place, a divine being, something that simply could not be wrong. Turning over control to Apple is as natural and right as anything could be, and they will spit upon those who would reject such an arrangement (not just now, but read the comments that followed Jon's hacks).
What DRM never previously got was it's early adapters. Those who are the first to accept a technology are also the first reject being controlled by: those that want most flexibility, freedom, possibilities. But in the Apple zealots, the music industry finally found it's early adapters: those who cannot see wrong in the company they idolize.
Good for you guys. You will live to reap the sorrows.
A ``me too'' attack consists of taking someone else's filter and claiming it as your own. This does not help you get recognized by other correspondents - that determination is made by comparing your email address against their list of stored filters - but once you are 'in', it will make you appear to share many contacts with people you actually don't know well at all.
Why not just salt the SHA1 function with the filter owners email address? That way somebody could never take my filter and claim it as their own, since the bloom filter won't match anything when the hash values are produced with their email address as the salt.
Am I missing something?
The only valid complaint here is that your marketing person claimed that connecting to the database via a socket was a "grey area" in regards to linking. It is not a "grey area", and never has been - doing so makes the client no more of a derivative work then IE is a derivative work off Apache. Claiming otherwise is downright deceitful.
Networks with names that are still around: The Usenet, Janet, Freenet, Sunet, Milnet, The World Wide Web, Internet2. I could go on. Most these are either a part of, or run on top of, The Internet, but they are still networks with names.
Just because The United Nations has overtaken all other global unions of countries, doesn't suddenly make it the united nations.
Obviously I didn't include down payments. If one adds a five year amortization (I don't agree that that is too much: computer replacement rates are falling, and a five year old computer is completely fine today) it comes to $104/month the first year, falling to $87/month the fifth.
That is a lot, but remember, we were talking about somebody made $40K a year, in which case the answer is still hell yes that I would pay that much a computer (I pay almost that much for my Internet connection, and I make $25K or so as a grad student). Scale the numbers back down to somebody who makes $2K paying for a computer a $250 computer, and we are talking about $6 per month.