65 dba (a bit louder than a normal conversation) doesn't seem like a "pretty decent" spec to me. My UPS is a heck of a lot quieter seeing as I can't even hear it.
I bet before they overstepped the boundaries that you were already stealing music, so what loss of revenue do you inflict?
The real problem is that they are losing actual paying customers with these tactics. Customers who don't care to even learn how to use Napster, but instead learn new CDs don't work when put in their expensive car CD player, are the customers the RIAA should try to protect.
I hope for the sake of their business model that there are more CDs bought by thieves than CDs returned, or never even purchased, by unsatisfied customers. I personally feel like the thieves just circumvent the copy-protection, the RIAA spends ever increasing amounts to make up new schemes, and the level of customer satisfaction continues on a downward spiral.
My experience with HPNA (Home Phoneline Network) is 100% why I stick with Windows. I feel it is definitely worth buying a few copies of Windows and a couple HPNA cards instead of rewiring a house for ethernet.
I tried buying a Linksys HPNA card that has Linux drivers, and then bought a copy of Lycoris "with support", and tried to get it working. Ran into problems, never heard back from Lycoris (yea.. money well spent!) and so I gave up and stuck with Microsoft.
I think most people are like me in the willingness to give things a try, but make it too difficult and the money goes somewhere else. And I think most people also aren't too fond of paying for a service and never getting it.
If you ever watch a VCR tape and a VCD on a low-end TV (no HD now) you will probably be happier with the VCD quality. I even drop the VCD quality to about half the bit rate and I still can't see the difference on the crappy TV, except that VCDs don't bounce around.
Of course my computer monitor is a completely different story.
Why not FreeDOS? It doesn't matter. It's just a token.
I would imagine it is a very good token though. A lot of users will remember DOS, and will think there is a free equivalent (who cares if it is not equivalent, they will THINK it is). Imagine if they offered a "FreeWindows" option. To the uneducated it would be assumed equal.
Can't MS use their ever-popular embrace and extend concept for oss?
Convincing MS to make their own software open source if it still makes billions of dollars (Office and Windows) is pretty much impossible, and if it did happen I think at least a couple of stockholders would have very good reason to get extremely upset.
Instead, couldn't MS embrace the open source alternatives to their own integrated applications (notepad, calc, solitaire, etc) which do not serve any direct profit-making potential. MS could then extend the capabilities of their own proprietary OS, and possibly even extend the open source project's functionality.
This would benefit MS by:
- decreasing hostilities between oss and MS
- increase the value of the Windows OS by providing new functionality
- decrease costs associated with the little applications that take in no money
- decrease costs by allowing the abandonment of a product by open sourcing it instead (abandonment risks upsetting customers, but open sourcing it shifts the blame at least in part)
- make the argument integration into the OS allows MS to crush the competition much less effective
The benefits for oss include:
- decrease hostilities between oss and MS
- increase public exposure to open source alternatives (instant access to entire Windows installed-base)
- allow more standards (file formats, etc) to be revealed by MS (at least the ones that don't make money)
- allow better interaction between oss products since the most-used products will be known, allowing development efforts to be more focused.
- start the wheel moving. Successful integration of small products will lead to larger and larger open source adoption.
- risk MS allocating high-quality developers to the chosen open source projects
But one major question remains: is the open source community willing to embrace billg?
How does this work out? Let's say a page is 100K. 30M pages/month makes 3GB/month. To be safe, let's multiply that by (like this matters) 10 to account for e-mails and such. So 30G/mo. Looking at OSDN advert pricing, banner ads (the one at the top) is at least $40/thousand impressions. So 30M pages / 1000 pages * $40 = $1.2 million per month. Has bandwidth really become THAT expensive that a million bucks can't buy 30GB?
To my knowledge, that kind of bandwidth only costs about a thousand. At least at http://pair.com they aren't charging a million bucks a month.
Slashdot Mirror
Cmdr Taco, turn on spell check!
65 dba (a bit louder than a normal conversation) doesn't seem like a "pretty decent" spec to me. My UPS is a heck of a lot quieter seeing as I can't even hear it.
I bet before they overstepped the boundaries that you were already stealing music, so what loss of revenue do you inflict?
The real problem is that they are losing actual paying customers with these tactics. Customers who don't care to even learn how to use Napster, but instead learn new CDs don't work when put in their expensive car CD player, are the customers the RIAA should try to protect.
I hope for the sake of their business model that there are more CDs bought by thieves than CDs returned, or never even purchased, by unsatisfied customers. I personally feel like the thieves just circumvent the copy-protection, the RIAA spends ever increasing amounts to make up new schemes, and the level of customer satisfaction continues on a downward spiral.
My experience with HPNA (Home Phoneline Network) is 100% why I stick with Windows. I feel it is definitely worth buying a few copies of Windows and a couple HPNA cards instead of rewiring a house for ethernet.
I tried buying a Linksys HPNA card that has Linux drivers, and then bought a copy of Lycoris "with support", and tried to get it working. Ran into problems, never heard back from Lycoris (yea.. money well spent!) and so I gave up and stuck with Microsoft.
I think most people are like me in the willingness to give things a try, but make it too difficult and the money goes somewhere else. And I think most people also aren't too fond of paying for a service and never getting it.
If you ever watch a VCR tape and a VCD on a low-end TV (no HD now) you will probably be happier with the VCD quality. I even drop the VCD quality to about half the bit rate and I still can't see the difference on the crappy TV, except that VCDs don't bounce around.
Of course my computer monitor is a completely different story.
PS and case fans can be replaced with quieter ones, and resistors can even be added to further reduce noise.
As for the 2.5"s, I have to agree that they are no quieter than a Seagate or Maxtor liquid drive while being a lot slower.
Webcasts of local news have existed for a while. And if that is too much like TV for you, just read the stories on the local channel's web site.
Why not FreeDOS? It doesn't matter. It's just a token.
I would imagine it is a very good token though. A lot of users will remember DOS, and will think there is a free equivalent (who cares if it is not equivalent, they will THINK it is). Imagine if they offered a "FreeWindows" option. To the uneducated it would be assumed equal.
I'm interested in an answer to that.
Can't MS use their ever-popular embrace and extend concept for oss?
Convincing MS to make their own software open source if it still makes billions of dollars (Office and Windows) is pretty much impossible, and if it did happen I think at least a couple of stockholders would have very good reason to get extremely upset.
Instead, couldn't MS embrace the open source alternatives to their own integrated applications (notepad, calc, solitaire, etc) which do not serve any direct profit-making potential. MS could then extend the capabilities of their own proprietary OS, and possibly even extend the open source project's functionality.
This would benefit MS by:
- decreasing hostilities between oss and MS
- increase the value of the Windows OS by providing new functionality
- decrease costs associated with the little applications that take in no money
- decrease costs by allowing the abandonment of a product by open sourcing it instead (abandonment risks upsetting customers, but open sourcing it shifts the blame at least in part)
- make the argument integration into the OS allows MS to crush the competition much less effective
The benefits for oss include:
- decrease hostilities between oss and MS
- increase public exposure to open source alternatives (instant access to entire Windows installed-base)
- allow more standards (file formats, etc) to be revealed by MS (at least the ones that don't make money)
- allow better interaction between oss products since the most-used products will be known, allowing development efforts to be more focused.
- start the wheel moving. Successful integration of small products will lead to larger and larger open source adoption.
- risk MS allocating high-quality developers to the chosen open source projects
But one major question remains: is the open source community willing to embrace billg?
Just my thoughts.
Richard
How does this work out? Let's say a page is 100K. 30M pages/month makes 3GB/month. To be safe, let's multiply that by (like this matters) 10 to account for e-mails and such. So 30G/mo. Looking at OSDN advert pricing, banner ads (the one at the top) is at least $40/thousand impressions. So 30M pages / 1000 pages * $40 = $1.2 million per month. Has bandwidth really become THAT expensive that a million bucks can't buy 30GB? To my knowledge, that kind of bandwidth only costs about a thousand. At least at http://pair.com they aren't charging a million bucks a month.