i have always questioned 'diamonds'. after all it's only an example of a fantastic marketing campaign by DeBeers. i always thought that i was kinda alone in thinking that. and that diamonds after all had some value. relieved to see other people skipping (or trying to at least) on the 'marriage tax' to DeBeers. i had to buy my now wife a diamond ring only because of my parents who thought it would be socially unaccetable to not have one. but my wife doesn't wear rings. she wears one with her birthstone and is very cool with me not wearing anything. her reason -- if the marriage is held together only by the ring that's a pretty sad pathetic marriage. i've been 'surprising' her with books instead. (she's really into genetics.)
I don't think they'll be able to live down the stigma associated with their company name
For me, the stigma is not with the name but their support. I got a company laptop with a trident card. need i say more? i will anyway, no driver support under linux. so no X. no more trident for me. what's even worse is that there is a third part driver but has a small quirk (intermittantly types in multiple chars when i hit a key) trident could have just helped this guy fix the driver. but guess not. they want to keep their IP to themselves. they can keep their video cards to themselves too.
For the longest time, 'critics' pointed fingers at mozilla group and said things to the effect of 'lookey here, open-source project is a no go..' Finally, the 'critics' are at least saying that mozilla group has "..reached their stated goal." that's a 10+ score in my book.
write yourself a song. doesn't have to be any good -- i mean listen to the trash that there now -- then copyright it and voila, along with the copyright 'certificate' you also got yourself deputized and you are now authorized to go take a wack at whatever network you think is involved in trading your song... metnick is wishing he had waited for this. script kiddies, get your favorite song-writing pad and pen out.
is that everyone is connected to the internet all the time.
How the heck are you going to validate (thru 'Da Man') when you can't talk to da man?
besides, if people are foolish enough to spend more money to get a crippled version of what they have now, they deserve it. me, i still have my old trusty 640x480 monochrome display laptop for just such times.
Well, i don't own a home yet. and for a forseeable future i don't plan to. however, the apartments that i've been renting have been pretty good about phone lines. i have a wall mount for phones in each bathrooms! but to a nerd like me, phone lines mean nothing if they don't carry DSL service. i was thinking about drilling some holes to wire the apartment with cat5 to get back to the DSL router but with the (relatively) cheap wireless hardware out there, i'm pretty set without the holes. someone mentioned wiring for cat5 but then later upgrading to fiber once fiber becomes cheap. i would imagine wireless would follow 'moores law'/n curve. i, for one, would consider being a little behind the curve in terms of bandwidth in exchange for not having to wire the house at all! most of my traffic is out to the internet which is limited by the DSL bandwidth anyways. why wire the house now with cat5 and then rip that out and rewire when fiber becomes cheap? use wireless! (and pray that it keeps getting fatter in terms of bandwidth).
well, apart from the convinience of having an always-on connection, i can't think of anything that i'd need to fork over ~$40/mo to access. i stopped 'file-sharing' a while ago and my connection from home is starting to collect dust. i'm starting to realize that there's nothing on the internet that compelling (mind you -- not talking about graphics/flash heavy sites that i avoid anyways) that would warrent such bandwidth. except for slashdot and a few other news sites that update frequently, a cron-ed wget to 'mirror' the site is a very viable solution for me. and that can happen over a dial-up in the middle of the night.
I think the cable providers are just shooting themselves in the foot. or at least the pinky-toe...
isn't napster what fueled the demand for broadband in the first place? as soon as the market shrinks even a little, economies of scale will take hold and the whole broadband thing will be in the shitter. 'twas good while it lasted i guess.
well, since you asked for a 'soft'-ware solution, i suggest using foam padding on the walls surrounding your conference room. altho i don't understand why you're so bent on the material being soft. foam is soft and from my very-basic understanding of acoustics, it dampens and reduces echo. wait, oh... that software!?
Your SSN maybe a good identification number, but in many cases it is also used as a password, which is just foolish, because you can't change it, and it can be stolen. On the other hand, a retinal scan, as I said above, makes an excellent ID/password, because it is so difficult to duplicate.
you contradicted yourself. you said SSN as a password is bad because you can't change it. but in the next sentence you go on to say retina is good? if someone does figure out my retinal patterns in practical resolution. what options do i have? change my eye? and link 'pwd' to extract my eye, extract the eye of a coworker down the hall with a mechanical arm and then interchange 'em?
i suppose you've been getting retina implants on a daily basis huh? and what happens when you do donate you eye (i have to plead ignorance here as i don't know which eye-part is actually transplantable.)?
Oh btw, just like 640k was sooo enough for everyone; and the world market only had demand for about a thousand (or a hundred, i forget which) computers (some IBM head-huncho back in the 60s) retinal scans are very difficult to replicate.
in the process of implementing this type of IDs, we will have figured out a cost effictive way to work with retina-scans. effectively, figuring out reproducing and or manipulating the scans. what seems difficult technologically will become trivially easy tomorrow. so don't bank your entire identity on the fact that today's technology can't crack it. because tomorrow, you may cease to exist.
at rap (or hiphop these days) stars (and Mr. T) that wore 10-15mile worth of gold chains around their neck didn't you? they were smarter after all. you still don't get it? gaussian cage around their head. who's laughing now;) run forest run... to the nearest jewellry store. or just dig into wife's dresser.
try that and instead of a bluetooth radio station, you'll be a black-eye radio station. if Ms. Rosen gets her way. I mean, that would be public performance... unless of course you were listening to copylefted or otherwise free (un-copyrighted) tunes.
I'm an honorable businessman. I got dis business down in chicago. Wit dis money I make, I'm creating a loddof, watcha call it, jobs... yea, jobs. On toppadat, I also pay the state and da feds.. sometimes underda table. So in oder words, I'm generating a lot of revenue for da country. Wit dis Ness (or here for an update) mess, you got dis business set back some fiddy years. Do you really want to set us back 50 years and undo all the progress we made? The eco-system that we have created with our blood and sweat? People are working together day and night and the supply chain management is flawless. We have efficiency you don't see in any other industry. We also have the best dedication among any group of organized labor. They are ready to give their life for the good of da business. You want to dismantle us just because we rob banks and supply the alcohol that the consumer wants? Since when is it a crime to supply what the people want. This is what the consumer are telling us -- 'give us more alcohol'. The consumer also wants some redistribution of wealth so we bundled that together as well. We rob banks and give the money to the working class (as long as they're working for us.) People also wants protection. Why have the police as a seperate entity just to provide the protection. We bundled that together too -- just pay us the protection fee. So you see yo 'onor. We are just putting together dis package that the consumer wants. We bundle all these features together and give the consumer what they want. With everyting integreted into one big package, they just have one, how shall i say this, neighborhood representative to talk to for all their daily needs: booze, protection, etc..If you dismantle us we won't be able to function like one large organized business.It will take us years to rebuild this empire. Many more people will have to be killed in the process. Whadabbout all the 'little' people that drive trucks everynight to bring you the booze. In short, yor 'onor, we are one big happy family. We bring people what they want in one big package. It took us years to build this empire. Besides I just gave some money and R&D promise to provide for compition to Steve Jobs' Apple. Don't break us up.
You dissappoint me fredo. (oops.. wrong movie) you dissappoint me yor 'onor.
Seriously tho, the similarities about the business/empire and how they are evolving are scary. Bill Gates must be the digital gangsta'. He needs to get a wireless divice shooting bits and bytes all over the place disrupting standard protocol ala Kerberos. let's call it the 'tommy PDA'. wouldn't it be funny when you start hearing.. 'in the news.. Bill Gates is wanted by the feds for questioning for the drive by rebooting.'
"...eco-system that has worked extremely well in the United States"
You mean, the illegal-monopoly-eco-system? So Mr. Gates is actually suggesting that other countries and their governments should adopt this type of culture to actually *foster monopoly*? Isn't that like a convicted serial killer telling all the governments around the world to start schooling their citizens on how to kill people in a certain sociopathic way? Would anyone take such advice from a felon seriously?
Why does everyone seem to overlook the fact that the ecosystem MS is so proud of has actually been deemed illegal. More interesting is the fact that even after being convicted MS seems to be even more proud of that fact. I guess who wouldn't be if the govt sucks up to them and they can get away with murder.
I've been shopping around for schools to do my masters in.. guess what. A lot of these schools have 'java' and MS tools in their brochures (the schools that i'm seriously considering don't because they tend to focus on the science aspect rather than the trade-school aspect). but everywhere i've gone, as soon as i mention something like linux or mosix or clustering in general someone would say... 'psst... come in the back we'll show you what we *really* do..' and lo and behold they'd have a bunch of retired computers running linux and some bearded guy with long hair running it. and chatting up a storm with a grin on his face and a twinkle in his eyes about how he and his buddies put the thing together and what they're planning to do with it.
what i'm trying to say is open-source/gnu empowers people. people that want to know that want to learn and are interested. from what i've seen at the colleges i've been to, no FUD will derail the empowerment. and guess what, the same people will be running systems of tomorrow. MS pulling shit like this won't stop people running linux. actually it makes it more attractive. if you want to be a rebel and be 'cool' (well, as cool as CS majors can be) you gotta do what the system won't let you do. the harder you make it to do these these things the more enticing it becomes. so thank you MS. you just made my job cooler. btw, i'm looking forward to going to this particular college for their extensive distributed computing curriculum. the students there run a 20 somthing node mosix cluster with a combination of PowerPC and x86. None of them running windows. guess MS can stuff those EULAs for the 15+ x86s up their you know what.
Barter worked for a long time...
on
Google to Offer API
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· Score: 3, Insightful
..and may work again. I think google is in a unique position where they could make a value proposition by using a combination of a barter system and of course the monetery system. consider this: google could have one of two modes of payment:
1) you pay a subscription fee ($/query, or flat fee, a combination of both like the utilities... whatever works best).
2) for people that don't want to pay, or cannot afford to pay... put up a barter system. the way that would work is, the subscriber gives up clock cycles (in the SETI@home fashion to build up 'karma' or 'virtual money' that can be used to pay for the subscription system mentioned previously. That way people who cannot or don't want to pay for the service directly in real-dollars can keep their computers on and earn google-dollars to later redeem it.
Google benefits from the monetery system in an obvious way. They also benefit from the barter system by vastly adding to the crunch power which hopefully improves their indexing/grading system. Unused clock cycles which would otherwise be wasted can now earn some value for the users and at the same time give google the 'value' for providing their service.
So their 'open' system if presented in the form of barter could actually work for the advantage of both parties involved.
I agree. I have worked on some 'i18n' of a 'weblication' that's been used in virtually all countries of the world. (about 40+ languages in all including arabic, chinease, japanese etc..) One of the major problems is that the context and tone of translations make it impossible to make a one to one relation between phrases/words from one language to another. We ended up using a ranking system for the translated phrases where the higher ranked (by way of higher usage meaning higher acceptance of that particular version of the translation) is suggested but leave it up to a local administrator to pick the translation varient. All of which amounts to a bank of plausible translations but eventually need human intervention to actually make that translation. Essentially, the bank just suggests translations the administrator has to eventually 'translate' the word/phrase. Unless the software doing the translation goes beyond just the 'natural language' processing (which in itself is a monumental task) and gets into local conotations, context and tone you'd run into the 'chevy nova' situation in the overall level while at the more subtle levels you would end up with offensive and 'rude' translations of otherwise innocent original phrases.
All in all, I think a good exercise in 'grid' computing if you can call it that (at least utilizing the unused CPU cycles) but futile as far as end-all-be-all translating effort. Call me a luddite but I wouldn't get my hopes very high. I'll have to admit that this is probably a good start.
if we agree that this bill will outlaw opensource...
we go back a couple of decades where computers where very propriatery and closed and affordable to few (think mainframes) effectively putting us back in the stone age of computers. effectively undoing the progress of the last few dacades in this field. The reason PCs took off was because it was made open. Anyone could implement the open design. Look at all the closed machines -- eg. mainframes, workstations... Does anyone have one at home? For their children to learn on? So that they are efficiently well versed to become the next generation to further that technology?
government sanctions and or sanctions imposed by the 'chosen' few mega corps will severely impede on the innovations at the grass roots level. If you look at any sort of innovation, it usually is the case that a few people - not a corporation - come out with novel ideas.
what we have today is a complex electronic device - only possible with open, accessible standards - that multiple entities collaborate to produce. this device is then 'purposed' for multitude of application via software. by imposing any type of restriction on this device we will be limiting its future and its use -- both present and future. Are movies and music really worth that much to protect it to such a level where something much, much bigger is sacrificed?
For example, think beowulf, mosix... all using Linux -- something that would be outlawed -- technologies that exist today that allow the very same entities that are trying to ban open works such as the ones mentioned to perform extreamly complex operations. Hollywood uses linux for movies. Government uses it in various labs for research. All this on commodity hardware. Opensource/GNU has made it possible for someone like me to do the same thing at home! I put a cluster together and got to learn parallel processing at home because of open systems. Propriatary systems are either too expensive and cost prohibitive or they don't exist. Taking these learning opportunity away from the masses to protect movies just doesn't seem a good value proposition to me as a consumer.
These technologies exist today. The reason they exist is that someone who had the vision had access to the source, the design. Had this bill been in place who know if these technologies would even exist.
In short, PCs and computers in general are much, much, much bigger than hollywood. I don't care much for movies streamed to me on my computers if hollywood can't figure out a way to do so with a framework that has worked for everyone else. It doesn't reduce the value of computers for me. As for watching movies I can rent a tape/DVD and watch it on dedicated hardware that already has copy protection. I don't want my computer to be turned into yet another DVD-player/TV combo. I already have that. Btw, computers and the internet weren't put together after years of research for me to turn a $2500 worth of equipment (not including software prices, connection fees etc.) to a 'toaster' like device that replaces a walk to the movie rental store, a VCR and a tv. Movies are already 'streamed' to my home thru cable. What is the value added for me, the consumer to limit the use of the hardware I have paid for? Hollywood has their hardware. Millions are spent on TVs and DVD players by consumers. They have made the rules and I have subscribed to the rules of their game. I have a VCR, a DVD player and several TVs in my home -- all manufactured to the specification of hollywood. Why can't they spend more R&D dollars and create enough value in those existing 'hollywood' hardware? It's obvious that they just want to 'choke the airsupply' of any technology that poses a threat to their stronghold. If hollywood wants to play the computer 'game' -- more specifically, the PC game it can't expect to have the rules changed for them.
Sure computers could be used to pirate. Knives can be used to kill. Hammers can be used to smash heads. Crowbars can be used to break in. Maybe we ought to start selling blunt knives, plastic hammers and well, outright ban for the Crowbar. Therefore, this bill doesn't protect the consumer or add any value whatsoever for the consumer. Sorry i rambled a little but i'm really infuriated at the short sightedness of various elected brianiacs effectively to amputate a technology much much bigger than movies and music for the sake of protecting hollywood (while there's abundence of 'hollywood hardware' that could be enhanced if hollywood was truly concerned about providing consumers more value.)
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i have always questioned 'diamonds'. after all it's only an example of a fantastic marketing campaign by DeBeers. i always thought that i was kinda alone in thinking that. and that diamonds after all had some value. relieved to see other people skipping (or trying to at least) on the 'marriage tax' to DeBeers. i had to buy my now wife a diamond ring only because of my parents who thought it would be socially unaccetable to not have one. but my wife doesn't wear rings. she wears one with her birthstone and is very cool with me not wearing anything. her reason -- if the marriage is held together only by the ring that's a pretty sad pathetic marriage. i've been 'surprising' her with books instead. (she's really into genetics.)
...windows makes a sound everytime you start it up, click on something, shut it down etc..?
can be achieved by painting the chips red (like fire hydrents) and letting your dog loose.
For me, the stigma is not with the name but their support. I got a company laptop with a trident card. need i say more? i will anyway, no driver support under linux. so no X. no more trident for me. what's even worse is that there is a third part driver but has a small quirk (intermittantly types in multiple chars when i hit a key) trident could have just helped this guy fix the driver. but guess not. they want to keep their IP to themselves. they can keep their video cards to themselves too.
For the longest time, 'critics' pointed fingers at mozilla group and said things to the effect of 'lookey here, open-source project is a no go..' Finally, the 'critics' are at least saying that mozilla group has "..reached their stated goal." that's a 10+ score in my book.
... and scott evil ranks 1.0 according to Dr. Evil while on the Springer show.
write yourself a song. doesn't have to be any good -- i mean listen to the trash that there now -- then copyright it and voila, along with the copyright 'certificate' you also got yourself deputized and you are now authorized to go take a wack at whatever network you think is involved in trading your song... metnick is wishing he had waited for this. script kiddies, get your favorite song-writing pad and pen out.
How the heck are you going to validate (thru 'Da Man') when you can't talk to da man?
besides, if people are foolish enough to spend more money to get a crippled version of what they have now, they deserve it. me, i still have my old trusty 640x480 monochrome display laptop for just such times.
Well, i don't own a home yet. and for a forseeable future i don't plan to. however, the apartments that i've been renting have been pretty good about phone lines. i have a wall mount for phones in each bathrooms! but to a nerd like me, phone lines mean nothing if they don't carry DSL service. i was thinking about drilling some holes to wire the apartment with cat5 to get back to the DSL router but with the (relatively) cheap wireless hardware out there, i'm pretty set without the holes. someone mentioned wiring for cat5 but then later upgrading to fiber once fiber becomes cheap. i would imagine wireless would follow 'moores law'/n curve. i, for one, would consider being a little behind the curve in terms of bandwidth in exchange for not having to wire the house at all! most of my traffic is out to the internet which is limited by the DSL bandwidth anyways. why wire the house now with cat5 and then rip that out and rewire when fiber becomes cheap? use wireless! (and pray that it keeps getting fatter in terms of bandwidth).
for a while i laid off of file sharing. i'm going to start back up. we need to dump their tea into the harbor.
I think the cable providers are just shooting themselves in the foot. or at least the pinky-toe...
isn't napster what fueled the demand for broadband in the first place? as soon as the market shrinks even a little, economies of scale will take hold and the whole broadband thing will be in the shitter. 'twas good while it lasted i guess.
well, since you asked for a 'soft'-ware solution, i suggest using foam padding on the walls surrounding your conference room. altho i don't understand why you're so bent on the material being soft. foam is soft and from my very-basic understanding of acoustics, it dampens and reduces echo. wait, oh... that software!?
he'll probably get some extra credits for defending himself.
you contradicted yourself. you said SSN as a password is bad because you can't change it. but in the next sentence you go on to say retina is good? if someone does figure out my retinal patterns in practical resolution. what options do i have? change my eye? and link 'pwd' to extract my eye, extract the eye of a coworker down the hall with a mechanical arm and then interchange 'em?
i suppose you've been getting retina implants on a daily basis huh? and what happens when you do donate you eye (i have to plead ignorance here as i don't know which eye-part is actually transplantable.)?
Oh btw, just like 640k was sooo enough for everyone; and the world market only had demand for about a thousand (or a hundred, i forget which) computers (some IBM head-huncho back in the 60s) retinal scans are very difficult to replicate.
in the process of implementing this type of IDs, we will have figured out a cost effictive way to work with retina-scans. effectively, figuring out reproducing and or manipulating the scans. what seems difficult technologically will become trivially easy tomorrow. so don't bank your entire identity on the fact that today's technology can't crack it. because tomorrow, you may cease to exist.
to me the most beautiful experiment is this except replace the lead with two boobies flip-flopping in the wind while the owner of the said boobies is enjoying a vigorous bout of volleyball or something
at rap (or hiphop these days) stars (and Mr. T) that wore 10-15mile worth of gold chains around their neck didn't you? they were smarter after all. you still don't get it? gaussian cage around their head. who's laughing now ;) run forest run ... to the nearest jewellry store. or just dig into wife's dresser.
call the BSA hotline.
try that and instead of a bluetooth radio station, you'll be a black-eye radio station. if Ms. Rosen gets her way. I mean, that would be public performance... unless of course you were listening to copylefted or otherwise free (un-copyrighted) tunes.
I'm an honorable businessman. I got dis business down in chicago. Wit dis money I make, I'm creating a loddof, watcha call it, jobs... yea, jobs. On toppadat, I also pay the state and da feds.. sometimes underda table. So in oder words, I'm generating a lot of revenue for da country. Wit dis Ness (or here for an update) mess, you got dis business set back some fiddy years. Do you really want to set us back 50 years and undo all the progress we made? The eco-system that we have created with our blood and sweat? People are working together day and night and the supply chain management is flawless. We have efficiency you don't see in any other industry. We also have the best dedication among any group of organized labor. They are ready to give their life for the good of da business. You want to dismantle us just because we rob banks and supply the alcohol that the consumer wants? Since when is it a crime to supply what the people want. This is what the consumer are telling us -- 'give us more alcohol'. The consumer also wants some redistribution of wealth so we bundled that together as well. We rob banks and give the money to the working class (as long as they're working for us.) People also wants protection. Why have the police as a seperate entity just to provide the protection. We bundled that together too -- just pay us the protection fee. So you see yo 'onor. We are just putting together dis package that the consumer wants. We bundle all these features together and give the consumer what they want. With everyting integreted into one big package, they just have one, how shall i say this, neighborhood representative to talk to for all their daily needs: booze, protection, etc..If you dismantle us we won't be able to function like one large organized business. It will take us years to rebuild this empire. Many more people will have to be killed in the process. Whadabbout all the 'little' people that drive trucks everynight to bring you the booze. In short, yor 'onor, we are one big happy family. We bring people what they want in one big package. It took us years to build this empire. Besides I just gave some money and R&D promise to provide for compition to Steve Jobs' Apple. Don't break us up.
You dissappoint me fredo. (oops.. wrong movie) you dissappoint me yor 'onor.
Sincerely,
Bill Gates
Seriously tho, the similarities about the business/empire and how they are evolving are scary. Bill Gates must be the digital gangsta'. He needs to get a wireless divice shooting bits and bytes all over the place disrupting standard protocol ala Kerberos. let's call it the 'tommy PDA'. wouldn't it be funny when you start hearing .. 'in the news.. Bill Gates is wanted by the feds for questioning for the drive by rebooting.'
You mean, the illegal-monopoly-eco-system? So Mr. Gates is actually suggesting that other countries and their governments should adopt this type of culture to actually *foster monopoly*? Isn't that like a convicted serial killer telling all the governments around the world to start schooling their citizens on how to kill people in a certain sociopathic way? Would anyone take such advice from a felon seriously?
Why does everyone seem to overlook the fact that the ecosystem MS is so proud of has actually been deemed illegal. More interesting is the fact that even after being convicted MS seems to be even more proud of that fact. I guess who wouldn't be if the govt sucks up to them and they can get away with murder.
what i'm trying to say is open-source/gnu empowers people. people that want to know that want to learn and are interested. from what i've seen at the colleges i've been to, no FUD will derail the empowerment. and guess what, the same people will be running systems of tomorrow. MS pulling shit like this won't stop people running linux. actually it makes it more attractive. if you want to be a rebel and be 'cool' (well, as cool as CS majors can be) you gotta do what the system won't let you do. the harder you make it to do these these things the more enticing it becomes. so thank you MS. you just made my job cooler. btw, i'm looking forward to going to this particular college for their extensive distributed computing curriculum. the students there run a 20 somthing node mosix cluster with a combination of PowerPC and x86. None of them running windows. guess MS can stuff those EULAs for the 15+ x86s up their you know what.
Google benefits from the monetery system in an obvious way. They also benefit from the barter system by vastly adding to the crunch power which hopefully improves their indexing/grading system. Unused clock cycles which would otherwise be wasted can now earn some value for the users and at the same time give google the 'value' for providing their service.
So their 'open' system if presented in the form of barter could actually work for the advantage of both parties involved.
All in all, I think a good exercise in 'grid' computing if you can call it that (at least utilizing the unused CPU cycles) but futile as far as end-all-be-all translating effort. Call me a luddite but I wouldn't get my hopes very high. I'll have to admit that this is probably a good start.
In short, PCs and computers in general are much, much, much bigger than hollywood. I don't care much for movies streamed to me on my computers if hollywood can't figure out a way to do so with a framework that has worked for everyone else. It doesn't reduce the value of computers for me. As for watching movies I can rent a tape/DVD and watch it on dedicated hardware that already has copy protection. I don't want my computer to be turned into yet another DVD-player/TV combo. I already have that. Btw, computers and the internet weren't put together after years of research for me to turn a $2500 worth of equipment (not including software prices, connection fees etc.) to a 'toaster' like device that replaces a walk to the movie rental store, a VCR and a tv. Movies are already 'streamed' to my home thru cable. What is the value added for me, the consumer to limit the use of the hardware I have paid for? Hollywood has their hardware. Millions are spent on TVs and DVD players by consumers. They have made the rules and I have subscribed to the rules of their game. I have a VCR, a DVD player and several TVs in my home -- all manufactured to the specification of hollywood. Why can't they spend more R&D dollars and create enough value in those existing 'hollywood' hardware? It's obvious that they just want to 'choke the airsupply' of any technology that poses a threat to their stronghold. If hollywood wants to play the computer 'game' -- more specifically, the PC game it can't expect to have the rules changed for them.
Sure computers could be used to pirate. Knives can be used to kill. Hammers can be used to smash heads. Crowbars can be used to break in. Maybe we ought to start selling blunt knives, plastic hammers and well, outright ban for the Crowbar. Therefore, this bill doesn't protect the consumer or add any value whatsoever for the consumer. Sorry i rambled a little but i'm really infuriated at the short sightedness of various elected brianiacs effectively to amputate a technology much much bigger than movies and music for the sake of protecting hollywood (while there's abundence of 'hollywood hardware' that could be enhanced if hollywood was truly concerned about providing consumers more value.)
And the other $5 is for lobbying.