Porn.
Standards follow porn. VHS was built on porn. The consumer Internet was built on porn. DVD's were built on porn. Webcams were built on porn. The only reason we REALLY need broadband is for porn.
"50 First Dates" and Vin Diesel are irrelavant.
Until you can see boobies in crystal clear definition that makes you feel like you can actually reach out and squeeze them, the market for Blue-Ray will tepid at best.
Nobody needs to see Drew Barrymore THAT clearly.
Jenna Jamison on the other hand.....
In general the only difference between Democrats and Republicans is that the Republicans generally go after the "we have to do this to stop the terrorists" angle, and the Democrats tend towards "we have to protect the children!"
The only differences between the two major parties are abortion and gay marriage. They pretty much agree on all the rest.
It's more like buying a Ferrari with a top speed of 196mph, and then finding that you can rarely go faster than 60 because other drivers are always in your way.
Actually, it's more like Farrari renting you a car to race on their track at 196Mph, and you find that you can't go faster than 90Mph because Farrari rented similar cars on the same track to 100 other drivers.
Last time I checked, you get no SLA (Service Level Agreement) with consumer DSL or cable Internet accounts. To the best of my knowledge you get no SLA with commercial DSL or cable accounts either (at least I don't and don't know of anyone who does). You have to buck up and pay for T or Frame or OC lines before you get an SLA.
Not sure you need an SLA.
If you look up "Implied Law of Merchantability", or even the more onimous "Misreprentation" in Federal and State consumer statutes... the basic premise of these regulations is that you have to reasonably deliver what you advertise. Even if they dislaim it away in some fine print, you may still be entitled to it. Geneally, the fine print cannot taketh away what the big print giveth.
The problem is in the enforcement. Most people won't hire a lawyer over a few Mbps. They would have to prove that it was on the client side and not the server side (my 6Mbps connection us useless on a./'ed site), yada yada yada.
Of course, this is where the fetile seeds of class action suits get planted.
Some lawyer somewhere will get $10 million or so, and you will get a coupon for half off a pay=per-view movies.
It's wrong, and probably illegal, but you probably be compensated for it.
I guess you could "vote with your dollars", but pretty much all broadband providers do the same thing.
I dare you to find a cellphone provider that doesn't have mandatory binding arbitration in the contract.
The lost sales argument aside, this is the problem I have with any music/movie pirates who justify it the way you did. "Well, I wouldn't buy that shit anyway, and I just made a copy, I didn't physically deprive them of anything." Well, 1) How pathetic must you be to waste your time downloading shit you don't value? Either that or you're lying, and enjoy getting something for free.
I think we do indeed value it. Just not nearly as much as they value it.
And since we cannot come to an agreement on how much we value it... this is the outcome.
Also, it is difficult to figure out how much you value something until you know what it is.
I mean SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE paid $24.95 for the "From Justin to Kelly" DVD.
I watched it out of morbid curiosity, and might have paid, I dunno.... 3 bucks to do so.
However, after seeing it, I am thinking of suing for damages. It should have been a capital offense to put that thing into the public domain.
Most of the stuff REALLY ISN'T WORTH what they charge for it. But it is worth 60 minutes of background downloading, and if it stinks, hit delete. No harm, no foul.
>Problem is that terrorists are more clever than to use unencrypted information sharing, so what you're proposing is that we allow the Gov. to listen in on us while the terrorists really doesn't care.
Do you really think people accustomed to taking things for free and financing their business with porn ads should handle distribution of your tax money?
Only if the advertised porn sites contain a sufficient girl-on-girl selection.
Now I remember reading the legal threats page, and the phrase normally went along the lines of "US Copyrights Mean Nothing Here".
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
It's really quite simple.
Terrorists can download.torrent files. And if terrorists can download.torrent files, then terrorists can obtain unlimited copies of material by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, etc.
This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.
This will impact the safety of all of our children as terrorists with big boners from watching Britney in that video with the short skirt will erupt into testosterone-fueled rages... and this will greatly impact our war on terror.
This has nothing to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the safety of the free world.
It's not a game loading complex 3D worlds and sound effects, it's a load of text being displayed on screen. What difference does a few milliseconds here or there make? OpenDocument could be ten times slower and the benefits of an open document format would still vastly outweigh the effects of loading time.
Agreed. We have converted ALL of our documents to ODF.
Is it slower? To be honest, I have never noticed a difference. Nobody has mentioned it. Maybe it is slower, maybe it isn't. If it takes 5 seconds vs. 3 seconds to load/save, I'm not sure anyone cares.
OO will run on more platforms, and running slower is probably a necessary result of being portable and not hooked into the OS tightly. My tabbed third-party replacement for Notepad also takes a little longer to load. But I would not give it up because notepad is faster.
After using OO and Office for many years, I honestly can't tell much of a diffence. And I think both office suites are very fine products, but speed is probably the least of their differences, IMHO.
I'll see your 250 computers with no domain and raise you 10,000+ 2000 SP4 and XP Pro SP2 machines on a domain with non-admin users running Office 2000 and 2003 with no issues related to the lack of admin rights.
Call him a urine-soaked booze hound!! Call him a urine-soaked booze hound!!
I don't really care all the much about the operating system. Probably not a ton of people do. I cdo are about the applications. Firefox on Linux, Firefox on Windows. Cool. Open Office on Windows. Open Office on Windows. Cool.
If I need to put another Gig of RAM into my computer and soup up the CPU to run the exact same applications that I run now, then I feel that the OS has gone from being an OS to being an application.
Right now I can do cool transparent window things with my two Nvidea 6800 Ultra's and Nvidea's window application manager. I can do alot of nifty things tha Vista does already with some add-ons.
I don't know that a few file system and window manager upgrades are worth hardware upgrades. And you can already get the window manager stuff.
I mean, maybe i'm way off base here. I still run WindowMaker when I use Linux instead of KDE or Gnome. If I want a GUI file manager, I use one. But for goodness sake... if you need to add another GB of RAM to your machine just to optimally run the OPERATING SYTEM, which in theory should be little more than a kernel, device drivers, a file system, and window manager... then Vista seems more like a MAJOR application more than something that you just use to launch your applications.
I'd rather have my apps, data, files, etc using the memory. Not the OS.
Or maybe I am just getting to be an old set-in-my way geezer now.
I just don't get the hype. And I am a "fanboy" of both Linux and Windows. I use both very extensively. There just isn't anything overtly compelling in Vista to me.
That being said, I'm sure I will be forced to get it at some point.
If laptop sales just passed desktop sales... then what does that tell you about the installed base? I'll spell it out - there are more, much more pcs than laptops.
First, they were pretty close to neck and neck before laptops took the lead, so there are not that many fewer old laptops than there are old desktops (unless you are talking pre-2002 machines which probably won't run Vista anyway).
And since Vista is a new OS, and most new computers are laptops, and a large amount of old computers will not be able to run Vista then simple math reveals that the majority of new computers that come pre-installed with Vista will be laptops.
People tend to see the 50% but don't see the new. While laptops may be 50% of all new sales. Existing systems vastly outnumber new systems. Many business still have 3-5 year old machines. A lot of computers are up to 10 years old.
Vista is a new OS that probably won't run (well) on 5-10 year old machines. Heck it may not even do that well on 2 year old machines that still have 512K.
Not to mention, that every person here saying "run it on a desktop" means a business-class desktop and not some gaming rig that has more tweaks than there are bugs on the planet.
Ahhhhh, it's a "business class" computer we should be using now.
Is Vista a business OS?
What I see is a bunch of narrowing down of what the definition of a computer is... to compensate for a possible lackluster showing of the Beta.
"Oh this isn't a computer, oh that isn't a computer, you'd have to be crazy to run the OS on this or that, etc, etc"
I mean, come on guys. We can redfine what a computer is down to very specific parts and even lot numbers of parts.
If the Beta is meant to run on a very specifically configured machine, then MS should clearly state as much so that people who are reviewing the product don't waste their time.
Your idea of a computer, and someone else's idea of a computer may be completely different.
And since laptop sales are currently outpacing desktop sales, the likelihood of Jane Soccermom considering her computer a "real" computer is more likely then her saying "No! That review is invalid because it wasn't run on a business class computer!!".
If you need a specific test on specific hardware disseminated to the publi as a whole (including almost every AOL users), don't send it to a mainstream outlet like MSNBC to report their findings.
And the reviewer said that Microsoft support helped him. Why didn't Microsoft tell him to abort the installation on a laptop, and obtain a "business class desktop" on which to test the installation?
It's beta, but it's not pre-Alpha.
Beta means that it's almost ready to ship, but that not enough people have had their hands on it to truly iron out all the bugs.
A Beta (or near beta) OS should work on most consumer computer hardware, of which laptops now make up the majority.
You can, but getting a standardized desktop is a lot easier. An Asus NForce board with a NVidia video card, SATA HDDs, and an IDE DVD
I wasn't aware that this was a "standard" computer. I didn't know that a "standardized" desktop even existed.
If the specs you posted are considered "standard", then when MS ships a Beta OS to a major news organization to be widely reviewed and reported, MS should clearly state "This OS is only to be tested on an Asus NForce board with a NVidia video card, SATA HDDs, and an IDE DVD"
Make a couple hundred stickers and put them right on the Beta CD itself. Wouldn't cost more than 20 bucks or so to make the stickers. Then the Beta OS would run as MS expected, and everyone would be happy. Seems like a good investment for 20 bucks.
To summarise: he formatted his HDD and was surprised that it was indeed wiped clean, he had to download a TON of drivers from the manufacturer (I'd be willing to wager because of custom drivers), and he was shocked to find out that the onboard audio and wireless hardware drivers were either wrong, or out of date. Basically, he does not know how to do a completely fresh installation of beta software.
Then I guess MS need to rethink who they ship their Beta OS's to for review on major websites. What was the point in MS shipping it to this guy for a review?
My mother is a writer for a major newspaper, but I certainly wouldn't send her a copy of Linux to review in that paper. She can barely check her email. I'm sure she would declare it junk.
Microsoft rolled the dice and gambled with this particular organization. They gave it to a guy for review who is not the most savvy dude on the planet.
What can you do?
And for what it's worth. I am SURE that Vista will run fine on every major laptop once it is offically released. I just don't see the point in having MSNBC review an obviously premature beta release. What good can come of it?
I am speaking about negative way of supporting the system "you" love.
I am not sure what you are talking about. I am on a Windows XP Pro system right now. It works just fine. "Love" is a strong word, but I like it just fine.
It is not a good way of supporting your system. If there is ONE SYSTEM you should not test a beta operating system is a LAPTOP. Especially new laptops which everything is done via software, e.g. giant drivers.
Then what specific configuration do you thing someone should test a beta OS on? One without multiple graphics cards? One without Raid? One without a DVD writer?
You need to qualify your statement beyond "Desktop", because they all require a myriad of drivers.
Is it your official position that all Beta OS's should only be tested on an 3.4Ghz Intel Dell whiteboxes with 1Gb of RAM, a keyboard, and a mouse?
I don't understand your gripe. The guy tested what MS sent him, and reported his findings. He also expressed optimism that it would be worked out by the official release. What did you want him to say?
I doubt somebody held a gun to MS's head and forced them to send the beta OS to MSNBC. When you do that, you take your chances about what they will find. They will test the OS on what they have lying around the office unless told to do otherwise. I don't see the problem.
I mean it is shared by OS X community too. On each security alert , Linux and OS X (fanatic) people jump up and down happily, people like me using OS X wonder how many unneeded crap will be coming from zombies including bugging my port 135.
You completely lost me. I don't understand your anger here. Good luck with whatever you use.
I bet some guys from Lenovo called MS Hardware Compatibility labs or vice versa.
Probably.
This kind of "support" kills Linux respect some people have.
Not sure what this means. If you read the article to the end, the author was optimistic that all of these issues would be worked out by 2007. We are all very well aware that he was testing a beta release.
But, it was Beta 2 provided by Microsoft, and he reported his experiences with Beta 2. Sounds reasonable. No?
Vista will run on laptops. But like with most XP machines today, custom drivers will be built to handle all the embedded hardware. The problem here is that Vista is in beta, ergo it has very little driver support. Thus if you want to review a beta (as opposed to doing bug reporting for Microsoft) then you should use a more standardized system. i.e. A Desktop.
Not sure I agree.
You can put together a desktop computer with 1,000,000 different hardware configurations. Laptops are actually much less configurable... hardware-wise.
Desktops need just as many drivers as laptops (if not more), and they are hardly "standardized".
You can get a generic Dell white box, or an Alienware Gaming Monster. Both desktops, very different computers.
Laptops are actually more standard these days, IMHO.
You are unlikely to have dual-7800 Ultra cards running SLI with an AMD X2 with Cool-N-Quiet, and Raid 0 in a laptop.
Desktops are far from standardized, and I don't see any reason why it would be easier to get Vista running on one.
Am I the only one who's sitting here and wondering, "What was this guy thinking?!" Laptops have so much custom hardware these days that it's a Bad Idea(TM) to attempt an OS installation from anything but restore CDs.
Well, a year or so ago, laptop sales surpassed desktop sales.
So if you had to test an OS on a machine, statistically you would go with a laptop in 2006.
The hardware isn't terribly specialized anymore.
If Vista doesn't run on laptops, then Microsoft will be cut out more than 50% of all new computer sales.
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Dammit! I left the webcam on again while changing underwear!
Porn. Standards follow porn. VHS was built on porn. The consumer Internet was built on porn. DVD's were built on porn. Webcams were built on porn. The only reason we REALLY need broadband is for porn. "50 First Dates" and Vin Diesel are irrelavant. Until you can see boobies in crystal clear definition that makes you feel like you can actually reach out and squeeze them, the market for Blue-Ray will tepid at best. Nobody needs to see Drew Barrymore THAT clearly. Jenna Jamison on the other hand .....
You can still get a perfectly good 'Pong' machine, and that's all the entertainment anyone needs.
http://www.classicgaming.com/museum/pong/
Actually, I can't stand the little bastards.
The only differences between the two major parties are abortion and gay marriage. They pretty much agree on all the rest.
Actually, it's more like Farrari renting you a car to race on their track at 196Mph, and you find that you can't go faster than 90Mph because Farrari rented similar cars on the same track to 100 other drivers.
Not sure you need an SLA.
If you look up "Implied Law of Merchantability", or even the more onimous "Misreprentation" in Federal and State consumer statutes ... the basic premise of these regulations is that you have to reasonably deliver what you advertise. Even if they dislaim it away in some fine print, you may still be entitled to it. Geneally, the fine print cannot taketh away what the big print giveth.
The problem is in the enforcement. Most people won't hire a lawyer over a few Mbps. They would have to prove that it was on the client side and not the server side (my 6Mbps connection us useless on a ./'ed site), yada yada yada.
Of course, this is where the fetile seeds of class action suits get planted.
Some lawyer somewhere will get $10 million or so, and you will get a coupon for half off a pay=per-view movies.
It's wrong, and probably illegal, but you probably be compensated for it.
I guess you could "vote with your dollars", but pretty much all broadband providers do the same thing.
I dare you to find a cellphone provider that doesn't have mandatory binding arbitration in the contract.
Sometimes there is simply nowhere else to go.
I think we do indeed value it. Just not nearly as much as they value it.
And since we cannot come to an agreement on how much we value it ... this is the outcome.
Also, it is difficult to figure out how much you value something until you know what it is.
I mean SOMEBODY, SOMEWHERE paid $24.95 for the "From Justin to Kelly" DVD.
I watched it out of morbid curiosity, and might have paid, I dunno .... 3 bucks to do so.
However, after seeing it, I am thinking of suing for damages. It should have been a capital offense to put that thing into the public domain.
Most of the stuff REALLY ISN'T WORTH what they charge for it. But it is worth 60 minutes of background downloading, and if it stinks, hit delete. No harm, no foul.
>Problem is that terrorists are more clever than to use unencrypted information sharing, so what you're proposing is that we allow the Gov. to listen in on us while the terrorists really doesn't care.
o <- Joke
O
/--\ <-You
|
/ \
Only if the advertised porn sites contain a sufficient girl-on-girl selection.
Otherwise, no.
What changed? Sending letters is one thing, but something pretty heavy must be going on to warrant that kind of response.
Can any of our swedish friends fill in the gaps here? I'm sure we're missing something.
It's really quite simple.
Terrorists can download .torrent files. And if terrorists can download .torrent files, then terrorists can obtain unlimited copies of material by Britney Spears, Kelly Clarkson, etc.
This will (obviously) lead to a greater hatred of America, and western culture in general.
This will impact the safety of all of our children as terrorists with big boners from watching Britney in that video with the short skirt will erupt into testosterone-fueled rages ... and this will greatly impact our war on terror.
This has nothing to do with copyright law, and everything to do with the safety of the free world.
I don't understand what you don't get about it?
Agreed. We have converted ALL of our documents to ODF.
Is it slower? To be honest, I have never noticed a difference. Nobody has mentioned it. Maybe it is slower, maybe it isn't. If it takes 5 seconds vs. 3 seconds to load/save, I'm not sure anyone cares.
OO will run on more platforms, and running slower is probably a necessary result of being portable and not hooked into the OS tightly. My tabbed third-party replacement for Notepad also takes a little longer to load. But I would not give it up because notepad is faster.
After using OO and Office for many years, I honestly can't tell much of a diffence. And I think both office suites are very fine products, but speed is probably the least of their differences, IMHO.
Call him a urine-soaked booze hound!! Call him a urine-soaked booze hound!!
But here's the thing.
I don't really care all the much about the operating system. Probably not a ton of people do. I cdo are about the applications. Firefox on Linux, Firefox on Windows. Cool. Open Office on Windows. Open Office on Windows. Cool.
If I need to put another Gig of RAM into my computer and soup up the CPU to run the exact same applications that I run now, then I feel that the OS has gone from being an OS to being an application.
Right now I can do cool transparent window things with my two Nvidea 6800 Ultra's and Nvidea's window application manager. I can do alot of nifty things tha Vista does already with some add-ons.
I don't know that a few file system and window manager upgrades are worth hardware upgrades. And you can already get the window manager stuff.
I mean, maybe i'm way off base here. I still run WindowMaker when I use Linux instead of KDE or Gnome. If I want a GUI file manager, I use one. But for goodness sake ... if you need to add another GB of RAM to your machine just to optimally run the OPERATING SYTEM, which in theory should be little more than a kernel, device drivers, a file system, and window manager ... then Vista seems more like a MAJOR application more than something that you just use to launch your applications.
I'd rather have my apps, data, files, etc using the memory. Not the OS.
Or maybe I am just getting to be an old set-in-my way geezer now.
I just don't get the hype. And I am a "fanboy" of both Linux and Windows. I use both very extensively. There just isn't anything overtly compelling in Vista to me.
That being said, I'm sure I will be forced to get it at some point.
First, they were pretty close to neck and neck before laptops took the lead, so there are not that many fewer old laptops than there are old desktops (unless you are talking pre-2002 machines which probably won't run Vista anyway).
And since Vista is a new OS, and most new computers are laptops, and a large amount of old computers will not be able to run Vista then simple math reveals that the majority of new computers that come pre-installed with Vista will be laptops.
Vista is a new OS that probably won't run (well) on 5-10 year old machines. Heck it may not even do that well on 2 year old machines that still have 512K.
That's why people tend to see the new.
Ahhhhh, it's a "business class" computer we should be using now.
Is Vista a business OS?
What I see is a bunch of narrowing down of what the definition of a computer is ... to compensate for a possible lackluster showing of the Beta.
"Oh this isn't a computer, oh that isn't a computer, you'd have to be crazy to run the OS on this or that, etc, etc"
I mean, come on guys. We can redfine what a computer is down to very specific parts and even lot numbers of parts.
If the Beta is meant to run on a very specifically configured machine, then MS should clearly state as much so that people who are reviewing the product don't waste their time.
Your idea of a computer, and someone else's idea of a computer may be completely different.
And since laptop sales are currently outpacing desktop sales, the likelihood of Jane Soccermom considering her computer a "real" computer is more likely then her saying "No! That review is invalid because it wasn't run on a business class computer!!".
If you need a specific test on specific hardware disseminated to the publi as a whole (including almost every AOL users), don't send it to a mainstream outlet like MSNBC to report their findings.
And the reviewer said that Microsoft support helped him. Why didn't Microsoft tell him to abort the installation on a laptop, and obtain a "business class desktop" on which to test the installation?
It's beta, but it's not pre-Alpha.
Beta means that it's almost ready to ship, but that not enough people have had their hands on it to truly iron out all the bugs.
A Beta (or near beta) OS should work on most consumer computer hardware, of which laptops now make up the majority.
Please don't rub it in.
I've been using this computer without a video card or monitor for a solid year now and I'm a little sensitive about it.
I wasn't aware that this was a "standard" computer. I didn't know that a "standardized" desktop even existed.
If the specs you posted are considered "standard", then when MS ships a Beta OS to a major news organization to be widely reviewed and reported, MS should clearly state "This OS is only to be tested on an Asus NForce board with a NVidia video card, SATA HDDs, and an IDE DVD"
Make a couple hundred stickers and put them right on the Beta CD itself. Wouldn't cost more than 20 bucks or so to make the stickers. Then the Beta OS would run as MS expected, and everyone would be happy. Seems like a good investment for 20 bucks.
Then I guess MS need to rethink who they ship their Beta OS's to for review on major websites. What was the point in MS shipping it to this guy for a review?
My mother is a writer for a major newspaper, but I certainly wouldn't send her a copy of Linux to review in that paper. She can barely check her email. I'm sure she would declare it junk.
Microsoft rolled the dice and gambled with this particular organization. They gave it to a guy for review who is not the most savvy dude on the planet.
What can you do?
And for what it's worth. I am SURE that Vista will run fine on every major laptop once it is offically released. I just don't see the point in having MSNBC review an obviously premature beta release. What good can come of it?
I am not sure what you are talking about. I am on a Windows XP Pro system right now. It works just fine. "Love" is a strong word, but I like it just fine.
It is not a good way of supporting your system. If there is ONE SYSTEM you should not test a beta operating system is a LAPTOP. Especially new laptops which everything is done via software, e.g. giant drivers.
Then what specific configuration do you thing someone should test a beta OS on? One without multiple graphics cards? One without Raid? One without a DVD writer?
You need to qualify your statement beyond "Desktop", because they all require a myriad of drivers.
Is it your official position that all Beta OS's should only be tested on an 3.4Ghz Intel Dell whiteboxes with 1Gb of RAM, a keyboard, and a mouse?
I don't understand your gripe. The guy tested what MS sent him, and reported his findings. He also expressed optimism that it would be worked out by the official release. What did you want him to say?
I doubt somebody held a gun to MS's head and forced them to send the beta OS to MSNBC. When you do that, you take your chances about what they will find. They will test the OS on what they have lying around the office unless told to do otherwise. I don't see the problem.
I mean it is shared by OS X community too. On each security alert , Linux and OS X (fanatic) people jump up and down happily, people like me using OS X wonder how many unneeded crap will be coming from zombies including bugging my port 135.
You completely lost me. I don't understand your anger here. Good luck with whatever you use.
And that is exactly what he was testing.
I bet some guys from Lenovo called MS Hardware Compatibility labs or vice versa.
Probably.
This kind of "support" kills Linux respect some people have.
Not sure what this means. If you read the article to the end, the author was optimistic that all of these issues would be worked out by 2007. We are all very well aware that he was testing a beta release.
But, it was Beta 2 provided by Microsoft, and he reported his experiences with Beta 2. Sounds reasonable. No?
Not sure I agree.
You can put together a desktop computer with 1,000,000 different hardware configurations. Laptops are actually much less configurable ... hardware-wise.
Desktops need just as many drivers as laptops (if not more), and they are hardly "standardized".
You can get a generic Dell white box, or an Alienware Gaming Monster. Both desktops, very different computers.
Laptops are actually more standard these days, IMHO.
You are unlikely to have dual-7800 Ultra cards running SLI with an AMD X2 with Cool-N-Quiet, and Raid 0 in a laptop.
Desktops are far from standardized, and I don't see any reason why it would be easier to get Vista running on one.
Well, a year or so ago, laptop sales surpassed desktop sales.
So if you had to test an OS on a machine, statistically you would go with a laptop in 2006.
The hardware isn't terribly specialized anymore.
If Vista doesn't run on laptops, then Microsoft will be cut out more than 50% of all new computer sales.
http://www.sunbelt-software.com/ihs/alex/sonysettl eme23423423434nt.pdf
Read page 17.
Only 1,000 people have to opt-out to preserve individual consumer rights for legal redress.
We can only hope that 1,000 people did so.