Wow, you are wrong on _every_ point you made. Do you just make this stuff up?
the phillips-sony-etc conglomerate that created the dvd standard refused to license the decoder to any OS besides Windoze and MacOS
Huh? Then why are there commercial software Linux DVD players like here and here?
Not to mention the commercial products that use embedded Linux and can play MPEG 1-4 and DVD like some of these.
People can watch DVDs on linux only by using (illegally) reverse engineered software
Umm, look at the links above, you can buy the software if you want. And the reverse engineering is/was not illegal. "DVD John" was tried due to a complaint by the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) and the Motion Picture Association (MPAA). The verdict was announced on January 7, 2003 acquitting Johansen of all charges!
Next time try Google or Wikipedia to get your facts correct.
This will have the consequence of pissing off the judge and the DA to no end
And why should the judge's or DA's mood have _anything_ to do with a case? That is the major problem with local courts IMO. The small-time judges act as if they are god's and rulers of their domain.
I once (many years ago in my college days) had a parking ticket. I put the ticket somewhere and it really got misplaced. I totally forgot about it. A few weeks later while I was on break from college and working during the summer, I get a knock on my apartment door. Two constables were standing there to arrest me for not paying a freackin $10 ticket! I go with them (in cuffs!) and go into a room with the judge; note: it was _not_ a court room. The judge basically acts as if he will put me away for a long time, tells his sheriff to re-cuff me and "take this punk away". Well, I really didn't want to go to jail, so I was basically at the judges mercy. I agreed to pay the fines, had to apologize to the court about how I "didn't mean to not take his jurisdiction seriously", yada, yada, yada.
It really is a crook what local judges can get away with in the USA. Most of the cases they hear only need to show a "preponderance" of the evidence. Basically it means who ever the judge feels like believing. So if it is just your word and some cops, guess who the judge is going to believe?
In local courts in the USA, it really is "guilty until proven innocent". Oh, unless of course you pay a lawyer a few hundred bucks to go with you to the small claims/local court. Judges act _totally_ different if you have representation! Without a lawyer, you are pretty much toast; with a lawyer, you have a much better chance. I think that it is really sad if you are not able to represent yourself in a municipal court!
So, when you last drove, you payed a toll and/or owned all of the roads that you travelled on. When you go to the park, you have to stop and visit all of the maintenance people first to pay them before you can get in. ... Naturally, you pay a fee to get into the local public pool, and you pay a fee when you swim on public beaches. If you want police to protect you, you have to go pay them first - same if you want firemen to come put out any fires at your house. Of course, you don't just pay them, you have to pay for all of their equipment and monthly bills as well.
Yes, they are called taxes, and I see them on my bills.
What, you say? You pay for them through taxes? Well, that is what is being discussed here. The idea is to treat net infrastructure and services as we treat other "widely utilized infrastructure and services" in the country. Should broadband fall under that category?
Just what we need, _more_ taxes! The problem with taxes are that there are no _controls_ on them. My cable taxes went up, I had no say in it and I have no option other than being disconnected from the world and giving up cable.
With a free market with little to no governmet forced taxes on services, things are much better. If I don't like one high speed provider, I go try a competitor until I find one _I_ like. By us (we the tax payers) subsidizing one monolithic provider, it provides _very_ little incentive for that giant to innovate, reduce prices or create happy customers.
The numbers I gave were for 2004 from the CIA World Factbook, wich I would trust over wikipedia. The numbers from Wikipedia are only an estimate of GDP for 2005. Even if you go by the Wikipedia estimates, there is not one other _single_ nation that even comes close.
I personally agree with you 100%. Cost-wise there is no difference to a company. However, Disney would rather limit their tickets per-person. This way Disney will get two tickets purchases from two people instead of just one. Do I think this if fair or the right way to do business? No. However, this is very similar to how a lot of software is also licensed. If my company buys some developer tool for me, it is licensed to me, and technically, no other programmer can use it.
I do agree with you that from a cost perspective, it doesn't cost a company any more money. It only loses (in their opinion) them "potential" sales. For example, me, you and 3 other guys split a 5 day pass to Disney. We each use the pass for 1 day. Disney was paid by us for 1 person to go to the park(s) each day for 5 days. So there is no lose on the part of Disney from our perspective. However from a Disney-bean-counter perspective, Disneyy lost the sale of 4 additional 5 day passes.
wondering at how quickly and why the Chinese are catching up with the US.
I hear this all the time. China is not "catching up with the US.". To "catch" up to us, China will need to get rid of their communistic government. Their current hodgepodge of communism and sudo-capitalism just wont work in the long run.
China's GDP as of 2004 is $7,262,000,000,000 (7.26 trillion) while the GDP of the USA as of 2004 is $11,750,000,000,000 (11.75 trillion). Growing a nations GDP by 1 trillion is a few years let alone more than 4 trillion is just impossible. China has _at least_ 1 billion people. Divide their GDP by their population and you get about $7,262 per person. The USA has about 300 million people. Divide our GDP per person and you get about $39,166.66 per person. A _huge_ difference, more than five time the amount _per person_! The whole time China is trying to grow to "catch up", the USA will be growing too. In fact, if you look at the CIA World Factbook, there is not one other single nation that even comes close to the GDP of the USA. The #2 rank is the European Union which is like 25 seperate nations. If you take the average GDP of the whole EU it is only like $466,000,000,000 (466 billion) per nation per year. The USA does more than twice that per month!
Maybe it is time to stop all this "China is catching up" paranoia.
It is news because you didn't take the time to read the second (and subsequent) line(s).
But he called for lawmakers and industry leaders to examine the issue of software and business-method patents and to work toward limiting the number issued and their duration.
...
"But I do think we can help. As a company with some high-profile software patents, we're in a credible position to call for meaningful (perhaps even radical) patent reform,"
...
In his letter, Bezos called for software and business-method patents to be limited from the current 17 years to three to five years. He also called for the limitation to be retroactive so that current patents would be enforceable for only three to five years.
In addition to the time limit on patents, Bezos proposed a public comment period before a patent is issued to allow Net users the chance to show previous examples of the potential patent.
This coming from a big CEO is pretty amazing to me. I say three cheers for Bezos! I think software patents suck, however they would be _much_, _much_ more agreeable if they were limited as Bezos suggests.
I would think that _any_ nuclear weapon is deadly. However, The USA has the most "nukes" followed by Russia. Here are the nations that have "nukes" and how many.
Country Number Year of first test -------------- ------- ------------------ United States 10,240 1945 Russia 8,400 1949 China 390 1964 France 350 1960 United Kingdom 200-300 1952 India 60-90 1974 Pakistan 30-52 1998 North Korea 0-18 not yet?
More info can be found on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co untries_with_nuclear_weapons
Nontransferable; must be used by the same person on any and all days
Disney is not responsible for misplaced, lost or stolen tickets
Parks or attractions may change operating hours; close temporarily due to refurbishing, capacity, inclement weather or special events; and may otherwise change or be discountinued without notice and without liability to the owners of the WALT DISNEY WORLD(R) Resort
Ticket and ID required for entry; Ticket, ID and handstamp required for re-entry
Not valid for special events requiring a separate admission charge or for any park commencing operations after May 1, 1998
It is agreed between owners of the WALT DISNEY WORLD(R) Resort and ticket users that all claims for injury or loss arising incident to presence on owners' property shall be litigated in Florida
If you do not agree to those terms then either complain to Disney or don't buy a ticket.
IANAL but for Disney to hold a customer to such terms I would think they would need to disclose the details at the time of sale especially since its different than I think the average person would expect the terms to be.
They do. I am looking at my annual pass right now and it states:
Nontransferable; must be used by the same person on any and all days
Disney is not responsible for misplaced, lost or stolen tickets
Parks or attractions may change operating hours; close temporarily due to refurbishing, capacity, inclement weather or special events; and may otherwise change or be discountinued without notice and without liability to the owners of the WALT DISNEY WORLD(R) Resort
Ticket and ID required for entry; Ticket, ID and handstamp required for re-entry
Not valid for special events requiring a separate admission charge or for any park commencing operations after May 1, 1998
It is agreed between owners of the WALT DISNEY WORLD(R) Resort and ticket users that all claims for injury or loss arising incident to presence on owners' property shall be litigated in Florida
A ticket is a ticket, why should Disney care who bought it.
Why should someone who didn't pay for a ticket be allowed to use up Disney resources (only so many people can get on a ride per-hour).
Say I go in to a 7-11 and buy one of those huge cups that come with free refills for a certain amount of time. Should I be allowed to give you the cup so you can get free drinks even though you didn't pay for them? IMO that is wrong, other may disagree.
To me it comes down to whether the resource being used is finite or infinite. For example, I don't have a problem with letting someone borrow a CD I bought to listen to it (without copying it). The CD can be duplicated an infinite number of times. However, for my 7-11 example, once you drink the soda, it is gone, I cannot go and drink the soda that you just drank (well not without some disgusting regurgitation on your part).
If I purchase a multi day pass and cannot use it all of the days. Disney would have me trhow it away?
No, you can use your multi-day park passes for a long time. I live in central Florida a few minutes from Disney World. My family and I have annual passes while my parents, who live in PA, come down twice a year. They buy multi-day park hopper passes and can use them for the entire year.
I purchased an admission. I should be able to give it to my friend and have him use it if I can't.
You purchased an admission ticket to the park for _your_self_, read the agreement. If you don't like it contact Disney or don't go to Disney. Disney is not a basic life requirement, it is a luxury and they have the option to make the rules. Don't like them, don't go. It is really that simple.
Say I own a buffet. You and your friend come in to my restaurant. You buy the all-you-can-eat buffet and your friend says he is not hungry. Should you be allowed to steal food back from the buffet for your friend who didn't pay? IMO, no. It is the same for Disney. The parks have limited resources, only so many people can get on a ride per-hour. Why should someone who did not pay to go into the park be allowed to use those resources?
Or, rather, is the amount that they make by preventing pass sharing greater than or at least equal to the cost to deploy such a system?
Have you ever worked for a fortune 500 and deployed multi-million dollar systems? I have (three different fortune 500's). When an expensive system is deployed you don't look to make your money back in one year. It might take 5 years or 10 years to see the full potential. If the system lowers the amount of people "stealing" their way into the park without paying by 80%/year, and the system can stay in place for 20 years, that represents a huge return over the life of the system for Disney.
I'm going to put the price tag on a system like this to be well over six figures annually.
Six figures annually is a drop in the bucket for a large enterprise. You can be certain that Disney _had_ to justify this system some way to their share holders. If you are really curious, start googling for the answer. I would guess that it returns many different values to Disney. 1) it helps to dramatically reduce people getting into their park without paying (there are a lot of people in Florida you know, and like me, many purchase season or annual passes which save a family a _ton_ of cash). 2) Better tracking of their customers such as peak park times, how many people go to more than one park in a day, etc. Stats like that can help Disney offer better options to their customers such as the "Park Hopper" passes. 3) Many other benefits that only Disney employees could probably tell you since I am not employed by Disney.
What will be really interesting is how they use this to make more money. Undoubtedly, the installation of this system cost money, without any obvious profit as a result.
Without any obvious profit? How do you figure? The system is designed to stop people from using tickets that they didn't pay for. That results in either those people not going to the parks or those people _paying_ for tickets. Should I be allowed to give my families annual passes to another family so that Disney is cheated out of those sales?
Keeping people from reusing the pass? Ok, that is fair, but it would have seemed better to use something like "It was used twice in minutes? That makes no sense!" Or perhaps "They haven't left the building yet, how has it been used elsewhere?"
But that wouldn't stop me from giving my family annual passes to another family to use on a day my family and I don't plan on going to the park. The other family would get a free day at the Disny parks.
I live in central Florida and have been getting annual passes for my family for a few years now. My wife and I always have to put our fingers in the little scanners, however our small children (3 and 1) obviously do not.
I personally do not see the device as a finger print scanner. The devices are just a little too crude looking (and don't take very long to do) to actually scan your finger print and compare that to a massive database of other prints in the 2 - 3 seconds it takes. I agree with the GP, they seem to just grab some non-unique hand geometry and compare that to the first record that was created the first time the ticket was used. The device seems only "good enough" to prevent me from giving my annual ticket to my friend so he can get a free day at one of the parks. I am sure that enough people tried my pass, one of them would have similar enough hand geometry to get in.
I think it is. If you downloaded the sample code and played with it you would have seen that the code just uses images to replace the controls. You can replace his with what ever you like. If you have some artistic abilities (I don't), you could come up with very nice looking checkboxes/radio controls to fit better with a sites design. Or you could just check Google Images for radios and checkboxes. However, I do think that if you make them look too non-standard it could lead to user confusion. Though I personally leave the design up to the artistic types and just do the programming ; )
I was referring to 3% of the PC market, not 3% of AMD's current production volume. 3% of the PC market is about 15% of AMD's market. AMD would need to increase their production by 15% or so in a very short time. However, the increase for Intel would be much smaller to handle the Apple demand.
Use some logic. AMD's _current_ market will not go away. AMD will probably not be able to _increase_ their production by the 3% or more that Apple would need. However, for Intel, the 3% increase is a drop in the bucket.
Your argument/post seems to assume that the *tad* bigger entusiast PC market will go away and Apple will replace that. However that is not the case. AMD will still need to service that *tad* bigger entusiast PC market _and_ the new Mac OS X market. The "new" Mac OS X market really doesn't take into account the mass switch of users of MS Windows that will make the switch to Mac OS X when it is available on x86. Trust me, it will be _huge_. Sure, Joe User will still stay with MS Windows, however I bet most technical or "power users" under MS Windows will take the plunge into Mac OS X. Once someone tries OS X over MS Win XP SP2, I doubt they will go back. Especially if they can run their needed MS Win programs on x86 Mac OS X. Mac OS X is just a _far_, _far_ better OS than MS Windows XP. Anyone that would try to counter that has never really tried Mac OS X.
These are the latest and greatest from Intel and AMD right?
No. Intel has a lot up its sleeve. AMD won't be able to change/adapt as fast as Intel IMO. AMD could never handle the production needs of Apple (or any major vendor for that matter). I personally have all AMD systems in my own home, however, AMD just cannot produce what Apple needs, even at only 3% or so of the desktop market.
Apple's only source is Intel. Even though AMD may be leading Intel in some benchmarks, it really makes no difference to Intel's core market. Do you really think millions of corporate, Intel based, servers will be replaced by AMD just because they are a little faster or a little less expensive? It just won't happen. Intel and their Xeon, have proven they are solid to the big corps. The big corps (like the fortune 500 I work for) will just continue to buy Intel. The best thing Apple could do is side with Intel and get Intel to start talking about Apple Mac OS X as a "possible" desktop/server system. Apple needs to get on the PHB radar. Apple is not going to get there on expensive PowerPC systems.
Well, for starters, you cannot currently run Mac OS X on a Pentium M.
Also, according to the link you posted, the 27-watt Pentium M only goes up to 2.13 GHz. That is not much more than the 970FX chips which use _half_ the power for up to 1.6 GHz. I would rather have a 1.6GHz processor at 16 watts than a 2.13 GHz Pentium M at 27 watts. That is almost _twice_ the power consumption for only 0.53 more GHz. I think I will pass.
Almost half the power consumption, _plus_ the ability to run Mac OS X on sweet Apple hardware? Gee, let me think? Which one should I pick!
Funny, most of the capitalistic world would disagree with you. Otherwise all the major Internet advertisers would be taking your advice, which they are not.
Incorrect, nice try, but no cigar. Advertisers have the money and you have to make them happy before they give their money to you, who has none
Huh? That makes no sense what so ever. I can get a prime time commercial during Super Bowl Sunday for the crappiest product in the world if I have the money to buy the advertising space. Advertisers do not care about my product and I do not have to "make them happy". All I need to do is pay their bill.
It will be soon.
What will be soon? Affiliate programs? And how soon is that? Not one of the major Internet advertisers has shown even the smallest interest in your whole "affiliate programs" stuff.
Makes sense to me. Justify your adspace, show me the sales, and I'll give you a cut.
Again, that is just stupid, and none of the major advertisers will ever go for it. Keep living in your pipe dream. One small time cell phone _reseller_ is far from being an example of success.
Slashdot Mirror
Next time try Google or Wikipedia to get your facts correct.
I once (many years ago in my college days) had a parking ticket. I put the ticket somewhere and it really got misplaced. I totally forgot about it. A few weeks later while I was on break from college and working during the summer, I get a knock on my apartment door. Two constables were standing there to arrest me for not paying a freackin $10 ticket! I go with them (in cuffs!) and go into a room with the judge; note: it was _not_ a court room. The judge basically acts as if he will put me away for a long time, tells his sheriff to re-cuff me and "take this punk away". Well, I really didn't want to go to jail, so I was basically at the judges mercy. I agreed to pay the fines, had to apologize to the court about how I "didn't mean to not take his jurisdiction seriously", yada, yada, yada.
It really is a crook what local judges can get away with in the USA. Most of the cases they hear only need to show a "preponderance" of the evidence. Basically it means who ever the judge feels like believing. So if it is just your word and some cops, guess who the judge is going to believe?
In local courts in the USA, it really is "guilty until proven innocent". Oh, unless of course you pay a lawyer a few hundred bucks to go with you to the small claims/local court. Judges act _totally_ different if you have representation! Without a lawyer, you are pretty much toast; with a lawyer, you have a much better chance. I think that it is really sad if you are not able to represent yourself in a municipal court!
With a free market with little to no governmet forced taxes on services, things are much better. If I don't like one high speed provider, I go try a competitor until I find one _I_ like. By us (we the tax payers) subsidizing one monolithic provider, it provides _very_ little incentive for that giant to innovate, reduce prices or create happy customers.
The numbers I gave were for 2004 from the CIA World Factbook, wich I would trust over wikipedia. The numbers from Wikipedia are only an estimate of GDP for 2005. Even if you go by the Wikipedia estimates, there is not one other _single_ nation that even comes close.
I do agree with you that from a cost perspective, it doesn't cost a company any more money. It only loses (in their opinion) them "potential" sales. For example, me, you and 3 other guys split a 5 day pass to Disney. We each use the pass for 1 day. Disney was paid by us for 1 person to go to the park(s) each day for 5 days. So there is no lose on the part of Disney from our perspective. However from a Disney-bean-counter perspective, Disneyy lost the sale of 4 additional 5 day passes.
China's GDP as of 2004 is $7,262,000,000,000 (7.26 trillion) while the GDP of the USA as of 2004 is $11,750,000,000,000 (11.75 trillion). Growing a nations GDP by 1 trillion is a few years let alone more than 4 trillion is just impossible. China has _at least_ 1 billion people. Divide their GDP by their population and you get about $7,262 per person. The USA has about 300 million people. Divide our GDP per person and you get about $39,166.66 per person. A _huge_ difference, more than five time the amount _per person_! The whole time China is trying to grow to "catch up", the USA will be growing too. In fact, if you look at the CIA World Factbook, there is not one other single nation that even comes close to the GDP of the USA. The #2 rank is the European Union which is like 25 seperate nations. If you take the average GDP of the whole EU it is only like $466,000,000,000 (466 billion) per nation per year. The USA does more than twice that per month!
Maybe it is time to stop all this "China is catching up" paranoia.
I would think that _any_ nuclear weapon is deadly. However, The USA has the most "nukes" followed by Russia. Here are the nations that have "nukes" and how many.
o untries_with_nuclear_weapons
Country Number Year of first test
-------------- ------- ------------------
United States 10,240 1945
Russia 8,400 1949
China 390 1964
France 350 1960
United Kingdom 200-300 1952
India 60-90 1974
Pakistan 30-52 1998
North Korea 0-18 not yet?
More info can be found on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c
Say I go in to a 7-11 and buy one of those huge cups that come with free refills for a certain amount of time. Should I be allowed to give you the cup so you can get free drinks even though you didn't pay for them? IMO that is wrong, other may disagree.
To me it comes down to whether the resource being used is finite or infinite. For example, I don't have a problem with letting someone borrow a CD I bought to listen to it (without copying it). The CD can be duplicated an infinite number of times. However, for my 7-11 example, once you drink the soda, it is gone, I cannot go and drink the soda that you just drank (well not without some disgusting regurgitation on your part).
Say I own a buffet. You and your friend come in to my restaurant. You buy the all-you-can-eat buffet and your friend says he is not hungry. Should you be allowed to steal food back from the buffet for your friend who didn't pay? IMO, no. It is the same for Disney. The parks have limited resources, only so many people can get on a ride per-hour. Why should someone who did not pay to go into the park be allowed to use those resources?
I personally do not see the device as a finger print scanner. The devices are just a little too crude looking (and don't take very long to do) to actually scan your finger print and compare that to a massive database of other prints in the 2 - 3 seconds it takes. I agree with the GP, they seem to just grab some non-unique hand geometry and compare that to the first record that was created the first time the ticket was used. The device seems only "good enough" to prevent me from giving my annual ticket to my friend so he can get a free day at one of the parks. I am sure that enough people tried my pass, one of them would have similar enough hand geometry to get in.
So check out OS X. By the time longhorn comes out, Apple will be shipping OS X on Intel. I am wating for this to happen and then I am jumping ship!
I think it is. If you downloaded the sample code and played with it you would have seen that the code just uses images to replace the controls. You can replace his with what ever you like. If you have some artistic abilities (I don't), you could come up with very nice looking checkboxes/radio controls to fit better with a sites design. Or you could just check Google Images for radios and checkboxes. However, I do think that if you make them look too non-standard it could lead to user confusion. Though I personally leave the design up to the artistic types and just do the programming ; )
There has been a spell checking extension for Firefox for a while now. It is called SpellBound (Spellchecker for Firefox and the Mozilla Suite).
I was referring to 3% of the PC market, not 3% of AMD's current production volume. 3% of the PC market is about 15% of AMD's market. AMD would need to increase their production by 15% or so in a very short time. However, the increase for Intel would be much smaller to handle the Apple demand.
Your argument/post seems to assume that the *tad* bigger entusiast PC market will go away and Apple will replace that. However that is not the case. AMD will still need to service that *tad* bigger entusiast PC market _and_ the new Mac OS X market. The "new" Mac OS X market really doesn't take into account the mass switch of users of MS Windows that will make the switch to Mac OS X when it is available on x86. Trust me, it will be _huge_. Sure, Joe User will still stay with MS Windows, however I bet most technical or "power users" under MS Windows will take the plunge into Mac OS X. Once someone tries OS X over MS Win XP SP2, I doubt they will go back. Especially if they can run their needed MS Win programs on x86 Mac OS X. Mac OS X is just a _far_, _far_ better OS than MS Windows XP. Anyone that would try to counter that has never really tried Mac OS X.
Apple's only source is Intel. Even though AMD may be leading Intel in some benchmarks, it really makes no difference to Intel's core market. Do you really think millions of corporate, Intel based, servers will be replaced by AMD just because they are a little faster or a little less expensive? It just won't happen. Intel and their Xeon, have proven they are solid to the big corps. The big corps (like the fortune 500 I work for) will just continue to buy Intel. The best thing Apple could do is side with Intel and get Intel to start talking about Apple Mac OS X as a "possible" desktop/server system. Apple needs to get on the PHB radar. Apple is not going to get there on expensive PowerPC systems.
Also, according to the link you posted, the 27-watt Pentium M only goes up to 2.13 GHz. That is not much more than the 970FX chips which use _half_ the power for up to 1.6 GHz. I would rather have a 1.6GHz processor at 16 watts than a 2.13 GHz Pentium M at 27 watts. That is almost _twice_ the power consumption for only 0.53 more GHz. I think I will pass.
Almost half the power consumption, _plus_ the ability to run Mac OS X on sweet Apple hardware? Gee, let me think? Which one should I pick!