Within urban centres, I absolutely agree with you. The costs will remain largely stable (up or down a certain amount) while speeds will increase greatly. But that wasn't my point.
I'm talking about where the infrastructure to support increased speed does not exist and likely never will exist for a long, long time. This is the rural areas. You spoke of the difference in speed of home connectivity in 20 years. Well, for a not-insubstantial number of internet users (those in the countryside), the speed of access has not increased *at all* in about 10 years (since dial-up ISPs started using 56kbs modems).
As I stated above, I see no evidence that any affordable alternative is forthcoming for this market. As a result, only the businesses that feel that they can completely abandon a good-sized chunk of the population (how big a chunk depends on your country) will stop producing physical product. I don't see that happening.
PDA software is *small*. Regardless of someone's internet connection, it is efficient to purchase this software online.
PS Elements is not small, but it is about the size of a full CD-ROM ISO. If you have the bandwidth and/or patience, downloading is an option. If you don't, PS Elements is prominently displayed at any computer outlet you care to name, and it better remain that way for the foreseeable future.
The bar will continue to be raised for the size of the file where it is feasible to offer a downloadable version, but the physical copy always has to offered: this will not change. Why? As someone stated above, there is a substantial portion of the population (in every country with a rural area) that does not have, and likely never will have, access to a broadband internet connection. What are the options? - DSL? Not if a telco can't justify the expense of upgrading hardware to a sparsely distributed set of subscribers. - Cable? Same as above (and even more unlikely given the existing penetration of satellite TV). Speaking of which... - Satellite? Possible, but unaffordable. Prices can't come down because the infrastructure of increasing capacity is just too expensive to do. Plus (we are talking gaming here) the latency involved in satellite communications cannot be overcome as it pertains to MMORGs. - WiFi? The only one that seems at all possible. A company that can set up a cellular-like service to the outlying areas just *might* work. There is not even a proof of concept of such a service to a rural setting yet, let alone a working example, so we'll have to reserve judgement and see on this one, especially whether or not it is affordable.
No company can dismiss a chunk of the market that can be as large as 30% even in a developed country.
This is just what I was going to post. Around here, it seems very few can relate to technology that doesn't make sense to a home PC.
Faster network speeds can only improve the computing state of the art, as tech from big hardware trickles down to stuff we can afford to buy ourselves after a time.
They are right, but nowhere copyright says that using the material under "Fair use" should be easy.
As a defence of DRM, that would be fine... if the content cartels hadn't managed to get a law passed that makes the exercise of fair use not only difficult, but illegal.
Absolutely. The evil thing about the WIPO treaties' laws (DMCA included) is that they play lip-service to respecting fair use, but make it impossible to claim it. In the US, you are technically permitted to break the DRM for your own personal use (this is exempt under the DMCA), but you are forbidden from ever telling anyone how you went about breaking the DRM. This effectively limits legal fair use to advanced electronics and computer engineers who have a lot of time on their hands.
What I'd love to see (and I know I never will) is for copyright protection to only be granted to works that can be copied. If you publish a work (book, software, music, etc.) on a medium that permits someone to make copies, then you can legally enforce your "copy right" against anyone who infringes that right.
If, however, you publish something that prevents copies from being made, then you forfeit the legal mechanism that the government has granted you. You are taking the job of preventing infringment of your work out of the government's hand, and taking responsibility for that yourself. After all, why should you be given protection from illicit copying of their work when your work is "uncopyable"?
I know, it won't happen. It probably tips the copyright balance too far in the other direction. But dare to dream...
You're acting like this would be voluntary: "cancel the fee"
I guarantee that this would be applied to each and every "broadband" (ie: always on, regardless of how slow) internet connection, whether you download a single file or not. This, of course, eliminates the problem you suggest. It also eliminates a big accounting/billing bureaucracy that would have had to have been created to manage the system you described.
which is how I discovered Lacuna Coil, so that's almost certainly one more customer from rampant piracy
Yes, but is Lacuna Coil's gain of a customer at the expense of another band? You said earlier in your post that you'd put off buying a graphics card to buy music, but you've only got a finite amount of money to make purchases with, and eventually it's going to come down to another CD that you would have purchased, but won't because you can't justify spending more.
So what you get is an indie band that benefits, while another (potentially mass-marketed RIAA-backed) band will not get a sale. This is the reason for the RIAA's attack on P2P: they are losing control on people's exposure to music, and they can no longer dictate who will be listened to.
As you can tell, totally legal music sharing via P2P networks still hurts the big music cartel. There does not need to be any copyright infringement: it is still a threat to the RIAA's business model.
As the highly computer literate relative, I have had to put my foot down as well. My time isn't limitless. More than half of my family run drastically outdated software on even more outdated hardware, and the phone rings a lot. I tell most of them there's nothing I can do. New software and new hardware.
I appreciate (and can sympathize) with the sentiment...
I have contractor cousins. I would never dream of saying, "Shingle my house for free. Here are some old shingles."
... but your analogy is a bit off. If you were interested in shingling your own roof, I don't think your contractor cousins would mind terribly if you phoned them up asked them some questions on what is the best way for you to do this. This is the equivalent of asking your relative who works for Microsoft to figure out how to clean out malware, or how to share a folder on a network. Asking for advice/tips is different than asking them to "come over and fix this."
(I suppose if the same questions get asked repeatedly, ie. they're not interested in learning and doing for themselves, then it would get tedious fast and I would agree with your stance.)
This guy said that he wouldn't help out any family members unless they were running XP (immediately after its release). That's the equivalent of your cousins insisting that in exchange for advising you on how to do your own roof, you have to buy their brand-new line of shingles from them (and no promise of any discount, either!)
Okay, fine, he's not taking sadistic pleasure in his relatives' lack of knowledge, so he's not a true BOFH. But he's still a knob for forcing family members to go out and buy a new computer or buy Windows XP (and deal with all the migration and software installation issues that come with it) if they want his help/advice for their computers, and all of this no more than a few months following XP's release.
C'mon, given a proper firewall appliance and some basic education on how to behave online, Windows 98SE is even today still a usable OS, and it is not necessary for everyone to pony up the cash and investment of time to upgrade. For someone of this guy's position and knowledge to refuse to help out anyone (specifically his *family*) with basic questions (about *his own company's products*) without jumping through his hoops is just plain mean-spirited.
In late 2001, I sent a mail to all of my family members telling them that I would only help them with their PC if they were running Windows XP, so my grandmother ran out and bought an XP machine.
He's a VP at Microsoft, and treats his family like the BOFH! I would think that if I didn't want to be in a "forced upgrade" situation, that having this guy in my family would be perfect. No such luck. He must be really popular at family reunions.
Openoffice or Staroffice can replace Micosoft Office today so the majority of things in the business world are taken care of. Get replacements for a few others and companies will be able to convert large numbers of users.
Sorry, but your list of tools that need Linux versions (Visio, Project Management, tax) are not the overriding forces keeping the "enterprise" (big or small) from leaving Windows. The real reasons are:
Resistance to change by users - Users will always raise a stink when forced to learn something new. In general, this reaction is softened somewhat for Windows upgrades, because most people realize that they'll probably soon be (or already are) using the same software at home as well, so it won't be seen to be "forced" by nearly as many people.
Access to existing Microsoft documents - Most businesses have all of their data locked away in MS documents, and only MS apps are perceived to be guaranteed to open them properly. We really need a slick tool that batches these.doc,.xls,.ppt, etc. documents and mass converts them open XML documents, once the filters are (we hope) figured out to the Nth degree of accuracy.
Home-Grown Applications - Most businesses have a bunch of tools that range from fully developed applications, right down to customized macros on spreadsheets, that were created on MS products. They may be company supported or just a pet project of an employee who needs it to get his/her work done. Regardless, moving to Linux will probably break them, and cause much grief to those maintaining them.
Enterprise-class apps on Windows only - The *really* big one. Big companies have already invested huge dollars in purchasing big & complicated proprietary applications (client/server) for accounting, project/time management, human resources, CRM, workflow, etc. The companies that produce these tools aren't going to make Linux versions until they see a few big customers committing to go with their product AND switching to Linux. Pretty hard for a company to commit to the switch if the product doesn't yet exist. The proverbial Catch-22.
This list could also include groupware function provided by Exchange (calendars, room bookings, etc.), but Free solutions have also somewhat improved there as well.
Bottom line is that you are right: increased penetration of Linux at home is dependant first on seeing Linux in the workplace. But the bar's a lot higher than you thought. Regardless, I'm sure that migrations are going to happen in time anyways, simply due to the advantages that Linux has that Windows does not (cost, control, security, stability, etc.), and the snowball action will slowly take effect.
The article was a send-up of all the "trying out Linux" articles that Windows power users have been writing for the past several years. You get to hear what difficulty they have getting used to a different way of doing things, but of course they call if a "problem" instead.
Same here, except in reverse, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The article is showing how asinine it is to flame an OS when you don't know what the hell you are doing, and have no experience with it.
You DID notice the "It's funny, laugh!" icon at the top of the/. post?
Alright, that makes sense then. Except for the fact that HP was already in the Blu-Ray camp, and presumably already knew its limitations when it signed on.
I guess it could be a case of "well, here's a good idea, can we make Sony do this by making subtle threats of pulling out?" kind of thing, I suppose. One has to assume, though, that there was a legitimate reason for Sony to put those protections in to start with: it might be like pulling teeth to get them to change their mind.
I mean, HP is a PC builder. They provide equipment that is expandable & upgradable, and can be customized by the factory or the user with (relative) ease. So what if the Blu-Ray consortium doesn't put a couple of the features of HD-DVD into its spec? If the lack of those features causes the popular opinion to sway to HD-DVD from Blu-Ray, then it is a pretty trivial exercise for HP to start intstalling HD-DVD (or, more likely, dual-format) drives into their new computers, and equally pretty trivial for its existing customers to upgrade.
The people who really care about this battle are:
Content producers: They don't want to produce millions of copies of movies/software, then be stuck because no one is buying the format that they chose to produce their content on. More importantly, they don't want consumers to not be buying their new content at all while waiting on the new "standard" to be decided by the overall market.
Component hardware makers: The component that looks good in the home theatre is not going to be upgraded by 99.9% of its purchasers. Same as above: they know that a lot of people were burned by buying Beta, and simply will not buy new hardware until the "standard" has been firmly decided.
I mean, it's nice that HP wants this settled, but they are really the least impacted by this. I really doubt that too many PC purchases will be put on hold while waiting for the winner to really be declared in this mess.
... after all it seems to me that most movies these days are released close to the same time all over the world now, instead of being spaced apart in different regions. There is just less need for the studios to try to implement this control any longer.
Didn't it used to be that a feature release movie in N. America took about 4-6 months before being released in Europe? The idea of region coding was that the movie could be in theatres in Europe, while already released to DVD in the U.S.
Of course, leaving the region coding off this new format could also be due to the fact that (as I understand it) the majority of DVD players outside of N. America just ignore the region code anyways.
I've never seen a more obvious bluff in my entire life.
Of course it's a bluff. The RIAA/MPAA/etc. is not going to withdraw from their line of business.
I just don't understand their argument at all.
It isn't an argument at all. It is only meant to appear to be one, and you successfully saw through it.
However, most people, when presented with this statement, do NOT see this bluff as obvious. They are terrified of losing their music or TV from the sources they currently get them from. And how do they learn of this "danger"? Why, from the media, who happen to be on the same corporate side as the RIAA/MPAA. Guess what kind of spin will be on almost every story about this?
This is pure spin, nothing more. It's a FUD campaign aimed at people with their brains in neutral. They don't actually believe what they spout, they spout what they want the people to believe.
You are completely right about this being about retaining the recording companies' control over the music industry. It doesn't matter that, in a courtroom, a lawsuit (to prevent making devices that record satellite broadcasts to MP3) would ultimately fail. The point is that this is the RIAA's job! They are supposed to be the asshats who object to anything that could remotely challenge the control and revenues of the companies that it represents, regardless of its legality.
The RIAA has to fight against any and all threats to its members. As long as its members continue to try to maximize profits (ie. as long as they are in business), this organization will be constantly lobbying and making noise against anything that upsets their business model. The only thing that will shut them up is the bankrupcy of all the major recording labels.
However you can firget about a case defining trial. The RIAA will simply settle, as they have forced others to settle, therby bypassing the entire justice system and leaving P2P eternally ambiguous.
Her lawyer might convince her to stick it out through trial. True, the RIAA may offer up a carrot for a settlement. But if the woman and her lawyer think that the RIAA can get spanked for big punitive damages (or if she is in pursuit of justice more than cash), then there is nothing to stop this from going to trial.
KDE and Win overall performance *as a desktop on the same hardware* is similar.
Sorry, but I don't find that to be the case on my (admitted slowish) hardware. I have dual boots of XP and Kubuntu 5.04 on both my machines (1 GHz Athlon & 450 MHz K6-2, both with 512MB SDRAM), and XP is far faster on both machines in every way imaginable. I've done all the tweaks I can think of, and there's just no comparison, especially on the old K6-2.
Maybe KDE works faster on a loaded-up new machine. I hope it does. It also doesn't keep me from using Linux as my primary OS. I'm just letting you know that your statement is demonstratably incorrect on at least two computers that I know of.
.. can switch from providing Blu-Ray drives to HD-DVD drives at the drop of a hat. And their customers can change to HD-DVD drives reasonably easily as well.
When comparing the stakeholders in this battle, the PC manufacturers (and their customers) are the least influential. The content providers and consumer electronics manufacturers are far more important, as they will be much more reluctant to switch directions once they have made a decision on which way they will go.
The camp that gets these companies on board and producing faster and cheaper will be the winner in this battle.
Never saw the movie, but the novel was part of my Grade 11 English class.
Overall, I thought it was an excellent story. The character of Allie was an eccentric wingnut whose life self-dustructed despite his genius (or perhaps because of it). The story was told through the eyes of his eldest son (I think about 12), and that really added to the charm and innocence of the narrative.
The OP is correct: just like with digicams, it very often doesn't matter what the resolution is, the scanner needs to have good quality optics or it is shite.
What would you rather have, a 300dpi scan that is crystal clear (if a bit jaggy under a magnifier), or a 1200dpi scan that renders its blurriness in incredible resolution, and at about 16x the file size?
If your scanner doesn't have good glass under the hood, it makes no difference how fine the CCD/CMOS resolution is.
it was my impression, and this was reiterated many times, that not one of the 9-11 terrorists came through Canada
Your impression is correct. Hearing this myth repeated ad nauseum by Fox pundits is one thing, but when a politician spouts it as well, that's another. When Newt Gingrich used this "fact" earlier this year, our Ambassador to the U.S. called him out pretty quickly, and forced an apology. Here is one article on the story.
Aren't there some proprietary CRM systems out there that do exactly that (ActiveX and freaky Javascript)? This could be what the OP was talking about. His work will likely be to customize a package (probably closed source) that has been developed exclusively to live on IIS and run on IE.
Once a slick salesman convinces the PHB of a particular solution, it gets difficult to change his mind.
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Within urban centres, I absolutely agree with you. The costs will remain largely stable (up or down a certain amount) while speeds will increase greatly. But that wasn't my point.
I'm talking about where the infrastructure to support increased speed does not exist and likely never will exist for a long, long time. This is the rural areas. You spoke of the difference in speed of home connectivity in 20 years. Well, for a not-insubstantial number of internet users (those in the countryside), the speed of access has not increased *at all* in about 10 years (since dial-up ISPs started using 56kbs modems).
As I stated above, I see no evidence that any affordable alternative is forthcoming for this market. As a result, only the businesses that feel that they can completely abandon a good-sized chunk of the population (how big a chunk depends on your country) will stop producing physical product. I don't see that happening.
PDA software is *small*. Regardless of someone's internet connection, it is efficient to purchase this software online.
PS Elements is not small, but it is about the size of a full CD-ROM ISO. If you have the bandwidth and/or patience, downloading is an option. If you don't, PS Elements is prominently displayed at any computer outlet you care to name, and it better remain that way for the foreseeable future.
The bar will continue to be raised for the size of the file where it is feasible to offer a downloadable version, but the physical copy always has to offered: this will not change. Why? As someone stated above, there is a substantial portion of the population (in every country with a rural area) that does not have, and likely never will have, access to a broadband internet connection. What are the options?
- DSL? Not if a telco can't justify the expense of upgrading hardware to a sparsely distributed set of subscribers.
- Cable? Same as above (and even more unlikely given the existing penetration of satellite TV). Speaking of which...
- Satellite? Possible, but unaffordable. Prices can't come down because the infrastructure of increasing capacity is just too expensive to do. Plus (we are talking gaming here) the latency involved in satellite communications cannot be overcome as it pertains to MMORGs.
- WiFi? The only one that seems at all possible. A company that can set up a cellular-like service to the outlying areas just *might* work. There is not even a proof of concept of such a service to a rural setting yet, let alone a working example, so we'll have to reserve judgement and see on this one, especially whether or not it is affordable.
No company can dismiss a chunk of the market that can be as large as 30% even in a developed country.
This is just what I was going to post. Around here, it seems very few can relate to technology that doesn't make sense to a home PC.
Faster network speeds can only improve the computing state of the art, as tech from big hardware trickles down to stuff we can afford to buy ourselves after a time.
As a defence of DRM, that would be fine... if the content cartels hadn't managed to get a law passed that makes the exercise of fair use not only difficult, but illegal.
Absolutely. The evil thing about the WIPO treaties' laws (DMCA included) is that they play lip-service to respecting fair use, but make it impossible to claim it. In the US, you are technically permitted to break the DRM for your own personal use (this is exempt under the DMCA), but you are forbidden from ever telling anyone how you went about breaking the DRM. This effectively limits legal fair use to advanced electronics and computer engineers who have a lot of time on their hands.
What I'd love to see (and I know I never will) is for copyright protection to only be granted to works that can be copied. If you publish a work (book, software, music, etc.) on a medium that permits someone to make copies, then you can legally enforce your "copy right" against anyone who infringes that right.
If, however, you publish something that prevents copies from being made, then you forfeit the legal mechanism that the government has granted you. You are taking the job of preventing infringment of your work out of the government's hand, and taking responsibility for that yourself. After all, why should you be given protection from illicit copying of their work when your work is "uncopyable"?
I know, it won't happen. It probably tips the copyright balance too far in the other direction. But dare to dream...
You're acting like this would be voluntary: "cancel the fee"
I guarantee that this would be applied to each and every "broadband" (ie: always on, regardless of how slow) internet connection, whether you download a single file or not. This, of course, eliminates the problem you suggest. It also eliminates a big accounting/billing bureaucracy that would have had to have been created to manage the system you described.
which is how I discovered Lacuna Coil, so that's almost certainly one more customer from rampant piracy
Yes, but is Lacuna Coil's gain of a customer at the expense of another band? You said earlier in your post that you'd put off buying a graphics card to buy music, but you've only got a finite amount of money to make purchases with, and eventually it's going to come down to another CD that you would have purchased, but won't because you can't justify spending more.
So what you get is an indie band that benefits, while another (potentially mass-marketed RIAA-backed) band will not get a sale. This is the reason for the RIAA's attack on P2P: they are losing control on people's exposure to music, and they can no longer dictate who will be listened to.
As you can tell, totally legal music sharing via P2P networks still hurts the big music cartel. There does not need to be any copyright infringement: it is still a threat to the RIAA's business model.
I appreciate (and can sympathize) with the sentiment
I have contractor cousins. I would never dream of saying, "Shingle my house for free. Here are some old shingles."
... but your analogy is a bit off. If you were interested in shingling your own roof, I don't think your contractor cousins would mind terribly if you phoned them up asked them some questions on what is the best way for you to do this. This is the equivalent of asking your relative who works for Microsoft to figure out how to clean out malware, or how to share a folder on a network. Asking for advice/tips is different than asking them to "come over and fix this."
(I suppose if the same questions get asked repeatedly, ie. they're not interested in learning and doing for themselves, then it would get tedious fast and I would agree with your stance.)
This guy said that he wouldn't help out any family members unless they were running XP (immediately after its release). That's the equivalent of your cousins insisting that in exchange for advising you on how to do your own roof, you have to buy their brand-new line of shingles from them (and no promise of any discount, either!)
Okay, fine, he's not taking sadistic pleasure in his relatives' lack of knowledge, so he's not a true BOFH. But he's still a knob for forcing family members to go out and buy a new computer or buy Windows XP (and deal with all the migration and software installation issues that come with it) if they want his help/advice for their computers, and all of this no more than a few months following XP's release.
C'mon, given a proper firewall appliance and some basic education on how to behave online, Windows 98SE is even today still a usable OS, and it is not necessary for everyone to pony up the cash and investment of time to upgrade. For someone of this guy's position and knowledge to refuse to help out anyone (specifically his *family*) with basic questions (about *his own company's products*) without jumping through his hoops is just plain mean-spirited.
In late 2001, I sent a mail to all of my family members telling them that I would only help them with their PC if they were running Windows XP, so my grandmother ran out and bought an XP machine.
He's a VP at Microsoft, and treats his family like the BOFH! I would think that if I didn't want to be in a "forced upgrade" situation, that having this guy in my family would be perfect. No such luck. He must be really popular at family reunions.
Sorry, but your list of tools that need Linux versions (Visio, Project Management, tax) are not the overriding forces keeping the "enterprise" (big or small) from leaving Windows. The real reasons are:
This list could also include groupware function provided by Exchange (calendars, room bookings, etc.), but Free solutions have also somewhat improved there as well.
Bottom line is that you are right: increased penetration of Linux at home is dependant first on seeing Linux in the workplace. But the bar's a lot higher than you thought. Regardless, I'm sure that migrations are going to happen in time anyways, simply due to the advantages that Linux has that Windows does not (cost, control, security, stability, etc.), and the snowball action will slowly take effect.
The article was a send-up of all the "trying out Linux" articles that Windows power users have been writing for the past several years. You get to hear what difficulty they have getting used to a different way of doing things, but of course they call if a "problem" instead.
/. post?
Same here, except in reverse, and with tongue planted firmly in cheek. The article is showing how asinine it is to flame an OS when you don't know what the hell you are doing, and have no experience with it.
You DID notice the "It's funny, laugh!" icon at the top of the
Must have been because of this quote.... :-)
I don't have too much insightful or informative to say
Alright, that makes sense then. Except for the fact that HP was already in the Blu-Ray camp, and presumably already knew its limitations when it signed on.
I guess it could be a case of "well, here's a good idea, can we make Sony do this by making subtle threats of pulling out?" kind of thing, I suppose. One has to assume, though, that there was a legitimate reason for Sony to put those protections in to start with: it might be like pulling teeth to get them to change their mind.
The people who really care about this battle are:
I mean, it's nice that HP wants this settled, but they are really the least impacted by this. I really doubt that too many PC purchases will be put on hold while waiting for the winner to really be declared in this mess.
... after all it seems to me that most movies these days are released close to the same time all over the world now, instead of being spaced apart in different regions. There is just less need for the studios to try to implement this control any longer.
Didn't it used to be that a feature release movie in N. America took about 4-6 months before being released in Europe? The idea of region coding was that the movie could be in theatres in Europe, while already released to DVD in the U.S.
Of course, leaving the region coding off this new format could also be due to the fact that (as I understand it) the majority of DVD players outside of N. America just ignore the region code anyways.
I've never seen a more obvious bluff in my entire life.
Of course it's a bluff. The RIAA/MPAA/etc. is not going to withdraw from their line of business.
I just don't understand their argument at all.
It isn't an argument at all. It is only meant to appear to be one, and you successfully saw through it.
However, most people, when presented with this statement, do NOT see this bluff as obvious. They are terrified of losing their music or TV from the sources they currently get them from. And how do they learn of this "danger"? Why, from the media, who happen to be on the same corporate side as the RIAA/MPAA. Guess what kind of spin will be on almost every story about this?
This is pure spin, nothing more. It's a FUD campaign aimed at people with their brains in neutral. They don't actually believe what they spout, they spout what they want the people to believe.
You are completely right about this being about retaining the recording companies' control over the music industry. It doesn't matter that, in a courtroom, a lawsuit (to prevent making devices that record satellite broadcasts to MP3) would ultimately fail. The point is that this is the RIAA's job! They are supposed to be the asshats who object to anything that could remotely challenge the control and revenues of the companies that it represents, regardless of its legality.
The RIAA has to fight against any and all threats to its members. As long as its members continue to try to maximize profits (ie. as long as they are in business), this organization will be constantly lobbying and making noise against anything that upsets their business model. The only thing that will shut them up is the bankrupcy of all the major recording labels.
Dare to dream....
Two in Canada, that I know of...Home Depot and Mark's Work Warehouse (a largish men's clothing chain).
However you can firget about a case defining trial. The RIAA will simply settle, as they have forced others to settle, therby bypassing the entire justice system and leaving P2P eternally ambiguous.
Her lawyer might convince her to stick it out through trial. True, the RIAA may offer up a carrot for a settlement. But if the woman and her lawyer think that the RIAA can get spanked for big punitive damages (or if she is in pursuit of justice more than cash), then there is nothing to stop this from going to trial.
KDE and Win overall performance *as a desktop on the same hardware* is similar.
Sorry, but I don't find that to be the case on my (admitted slowish) hardware. I have dual boots of XP and Kubuntu 5.04 on both my machines (1 GHz Athlon & 450 MHz K6-2, both with 512MB SDRAM), and XP is far faster on both machines in every way imaginable. I've done all the tweaks I can think of, and there's just no comparison, especially on the old K6-2.
Maybe KDE works faster on a loaded-up new machine. I hope it does. It also doesn't keep me from using Linux as my primary OS. I'm just letting you know that your statement is demonstratably incorrect on at least two computers that I know of.
.. can switch from providing Blu-Ray drives to HD-DVD drives at the drop of a hat. And their customers can change to HD-DVD drives reasonably easily as well.
When comparing the stakeholders in this battle, the PC manufacturers (and their customers) are the least influential. The content providers and consumer electronics manufacturers are far more important, as they will be much more reluctant to switch directions once they have made a decision on which way they will go.
The camp that gets these companies on board and producing faster and cheaper will be the winner in this battle.
Never saw the movie, but the novel was part of my Grade 11 English class.
Overall, I thought it was an excellent story. The character of Allie was an eccentric wingnut whose life self-dustructed despite his genius (or perhaps because of it). The story was told through the eyes of his eldest son (I think about 12), and that really added to the charm and innocence of the narrative.
The OP is correct: just like with digicams, it very often doesn't matter what the resolution is, the scanner needs to have good quality optics or it is shite.
What would you rather have, a 300dpi scan that is crystal clear (if a bit jaggy under a magnifier), or a 1200dpi scan that renders its blurriness in incredible resolution, and at about 16x the file size?
If your scanner doesn't have good glass under the hood, it makes no difference how fine the CCD/CMOS resolution is.
it was my impression, and this was reiterated many times, that not one of the 9-11 terrorists came through Canada
Your impression is correct. Hearing this myth repeated ad nauseum by Fox pundits is one thing, but when a politician spouts it as well, that's another. When Newt Gingrich used this "fact" earlier this year, our Ambassador to the U.S. called him out pretty quickly, and forced an apology. Here is one article on the story.
Aren't there some proprietary CRM systems out there that do exactly that (ActiveX and freaky Javascript)? This could be what the OP was talking about. His work will likely be to customize a package (probably closed source) that has been developed exclusively to live on IIS and run on IE.
Once a slick salesman convinces the PHB of a particular solution, it gets difficult to change his mind.