Yes, they could, and some of them even do. This is how the E911 system works, but most cell phone companies haven't yet enabled it for non-911 calls. Verizon Wireless is scheduled to launch this service in the third quarter of 2005. Of course, it'll probably be crippleware like everything else verizon releases.
A small handful of phone/provider combinations allow the user to access the information, but not many.
Verizon is scheduled to launch location based services in the third quarter of 2005. Of course, like most things Verizon, this will probably be a pay service, but also like most things Verizon, there will probably be a way to hack it.
Whether you're stealing something, or you're copying something, you're still depriving people of income that they've worked for.
So by reading your post am I depriving you of income that you've worked for? I don't think so. To "deprive" someone of something suggest that they had it in the first place, or at least that they deserve it in the first place.
They have created things, and have decided to share them for a cost.
And they've done that. Then I borrowed one of those things, made a copy of it, and gave it back.
You decided that these things are valuable enough that you desire them, yet you feel that the ability to get them for free absolves you of any responsibility to pay for them?
Well, I certainly don't think there are any RIAA albums which are worth the price of the CD. So maybe that's the difference. But I don't think so.
Nothing needs to absolve me of any responsibility to pay to make a copy of something, because I have no responsibility to pay for that in the first place. I'm the one making the copy. I'm the one doing the work. If I were asking someone else to make the copy for me, it'd be a different story.
As for losing sympathy for the artists working under a label, don't you think that's a little bit judgmental of you?
I suppose it is.
A lot of these bands were signed on when they were young, looking for a break in a competitive and overcrowded profession. And the labels often take advantage of that and lock the musicians into unfair contracts.
And most of these musicians are either so popular that they're rich, and don't need my money anyway, or they haven't yet recouped the RIAA's costs, and so they get absolutely nothing when I buy a CD anyway.
As you've said, the music industry is competitive and overcrowded already. Maybe it'd be better if these musicians just went and got a real job.
They might not deserve much sympathy, and they certainly don't all deserve success, but I fail to see how that gives everyone else the right to distribute their work freely.
See, I think I have a right to do whatever I want so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. And I see no reason that a musician has a right to take money from me just because I make a copy of something which is a copy of something which is a copy of something which that musician created. The default situation, in my opinion, should be that I don't have to pay someone for doing something within the confines of my own home. If there is to be an exception to that rule, the exception is what needs to be justified,
While downloading a song off of kazaa is not as big a deal as shoplifting, they're both taking something that I haven't paid for, and that is something that I try not to do.
One is taking something that you haven't paid for, the other is copying something that you haven't paid for. Big difference in my opinion.
Have you had to work for a living? Do you like to get paid for your time and effort?
Yes, I do. I currently work doing the books for several small businesses. These people pay me for actually doing work, not whenever they make photocopies of the reports I make for them.
I sure do, and I respect that musicians do too. Sure it sucks that the record labels serve as unfair middlemen, but I can't screw them over without screwing over their artists as well.
When you work for bad people you lose any sympathy I might have had for you.
My cell phone has a GPS in it, but I can't seem to access it. Supposedly you can get your location by going to the debug screen and dialing "922", but I've heard this forwards your call to 911, so I don't want to mess around with it.
Getting the tower IDs and signal strength, on the other hand, is a simple matter off accessing the debug screen (on my Samsung phone you hit * on the setup menu, the password is "000000", debug screen is 1). Of course, it's much easier to just ask someone where I am than to type in all that data, but there's probably a way to access it through the phone's serial port (I haven't even bought the cable though).
Incidently, I just discovered the "Brew menu" on my phone. From the debug menu, hit number 9. I wonder if this can be used for me to install apps I've written myself onto my phone. If so that'd be real cool.
Really though, it's not like a GPS receiver is going to cost any more than an "WPS" receiver.
It's not clear whether or not these "WPS" receivers work using a standard wifi receiver. I guess you could use signal strength, but that's going to probably vary from day to day, and I don't think roundtrip pings are fast enough to be able to base it on that. If these do work with standard receivers, and you already have wifi, free is cheaper than any price. More importantly, in terms of mobile devices, there's no extra space required, and you don't use up an extra port.
Even dirt cheap GPS receivers are accurate withing about 10-15 feet, all day, every day.
How cheap is dirt cheap for a GPS receiver which will connect to an iPaq? Could I connect it while I've still got my 802.11 card hooked up? Last time I checked the answers were $150 and no. So I've actually been thinking about hacking together one of these myself anyway. Wifi access isn't all that great around here, though.
I just bought a card for Verizon's wireless broadband access service. Maybe there's a GPS in it which I can somehow access, or maybe I can somehow get the signal strength and tower number. I haven't yet hooked it up to my iPaq, so I'm not sure what info I can get out of it.
All this effort to develop technology to determine your location is great if the reason for finding your location is because you're lost. But, otherwise, it seems like another case of the technology industry developing a new market for devices of questionable usage.
Wow, I've gotta really disagree here. If GPS were cheap enough, I can think of a lot of legitimate uses for it other than when I'm lost. Basically, it's useful for tracking things (where did I park my car? where did the car thief take my car?), and tracking myself (how far did I travel for business purposes in 2004? what time did I get to work yesterday?).
Throw legitimate privacy issues into the mix - generally in the US at least and certainly elsewhere - the thought of some anonymous entity determining my location is positively horrifying.
If by "some anonymous entity" you mean the government or your phone company, well, they could have already done it anyway. I don't see it as horrifying. I don't think it's such a good idea, but I still have a cell phone.
Why is it so difficult to simply self-identify my location
Besides the fact that good voice recognition technology isn't that widespread, it'd be a big hassle to constantly identify ones location. ("OK computer, I've parked my car in section D-5. OK, now I'm arriving at work.")
rather than relying on the sketchy availability of GPS satellites or databases of WiFi APs and doing all that trigonometry
Sketchy availability? Availability of GPS is basically a question of "are you outside?" It doesn't work as well indoors, and that's a problem for a lot of uses we might dream up for it (tell 911 where I am), but it was built for guiding missles, not calling 911. This is one advantage that wifi access points may be able to give. Of course I'm skeptical as to how reliable such a scheme would be. It certainly will never be global like GPS. I can get a GPS reception in the middle of the pacific ocean.
It's not how copyright works per say, as much as it's how physical media distribution works. It costs the same amount to ship a CD and keep it on the store shelves, whether it has 70 minutes of music or 20 minutes recorded on it.
So why not let people select which 70 minutes of music to put on the CD? It's trivial to do, and it would be done now if it weren't for the fact that it's not legal.
So they're going to fill them all, and charge about the same for all of them, and they've chosen the price that the good CD's can pull.
Well, yeah, but they can only do that because they own a monopoly on the distribution of those CDs, due to copyright law.
Digital distribution makes the whole equation different though, I don't have to pay for the filler anymore. If I spend $30 in a month on music via iTMS, I can make sure that I'm getting at least 30 songs that I like. That seems like a pretty good deal to me, especially compared to CD's on average.
I'm somewhat flabbergasted by the fact that so many people are willing to pay money for something which they could get for free. I guess the RIAA has done a good job of keeping P2P difficult to use. But for individual songs, last time I checked, it was still very easy. What is more difficult is finding complete albums.
I guess that explains why these online services are geared more toward individual songs. That's where the real competition is.
I tend to think of buying the average CD as paying a few bucks for a handful of good songs, and then a bunch of filler thrown in for free.
It's usually not filler though. To call it that would be to imply that the artist spent little time creating it. I suppose that's true with some albums, but usually all the songs took just as long to create, it's just that some of them turn out to be good and some of them turn out to be bad. And if you want to look at it that way, you're also paying for a bunch of songs from other artists who flopped, which you don't even get to hear.
I guess that's just how copyright works. Incidently, the movie companies used to do something similar all the time. You'd buy a ticket for one (good) movie, and you'd get to see another (bad) one for free. Then the Supreme Court went and told them it was illegal to give away movies for free, so they stopped doing it.
Your argument is the same one used to promote communism. In theory having one company control all the food production or all the car manufacture prevents duplication of effort and makes the system more efficient. In some cases it actually works.
We're not talking about food production or car manufacture. We're talking about the production of software, which is completely different. Once you've made a software program, it costs virtually nothing to make a copy of it. This is completely different from a car or food, where there are significant incremental costs.
More money is spent by MS buying up competitors and killing them off than on building new products.
Money, maybe, but that's mostly a zero-sum game. If you forced two companies to make the same operating system, that's a waste of actual time and effort, not just transferring dollars from one group to another.
If MS is efficient now why does it take them 7 years to put out a new version of their OS? Why does it take them 5 years to add tabs to their browser or a pop-up blocker?
I fail to see how either of these two things have anything to do with efficiency. You seem to be confusing altruism with efficiency. Yes, Microsoft is a monopoly, and as such it can get away with producing an inferior product and charging more money for it. However, that doesn't mean that it is inefficient in producing that product. It's very efficient, that's why it makes so much in profits.
The answer is, they are not efficient because they have no incentive to be.
But they do have an incentive to be efficient. The more efficient they are, the more profit they make.
You also mention that you think open source will win in the long term. That may be true and it may be beneficial to society as a whole, but it does not mean we should ignore the abuses going on now from MS.
I don't think we should ignore the abuses going on from MS. I just think splitting Microsoft up is not a good way to address those abuses.
You might as well argue the king is a homicidal maniac who eats babies
Charging too much for an operating system is not at all analogous to eating babies. And considering that the only reason people pay for Microsoft's products is because the government requires us to by law, I think the best solution is quite obvious.
why do you think porting either Windows or UNIX software to a Mac will be easier just because it runs on Intel hardware?
Fewer architecture issues. The most basic ones are the endianness of the system and data alignment issues. Of course, any of the direct assembly would not have to be ported, and it'd be more like the bugs which rely on the architecture would work on both systems as well.
Maybe it won't be as significant as I'm thinking though.
Don't waste the stamp. They'll figure it out within a few years anyway. At least Apple is smart enough to stop developing an OS for PPC. It'll probably take IBM a little longer to admit its mistake. Freak.
It's quite possible for a company to last 5 years without selling anything and still not be bankrupt. But, yeah, obviously someone has bought the product, I just wonder who it is.
First, "registering what you think is a good name with the hopes that you'll be able to resell it for a profit" is not the same as registering various permutations of *Google* or any other trademark you don't own.
I didn't realize Google had trademarked the letter G.
And second, these Spamer companies that own acres of common and useful words that invariably lead to pseudo-search sites that when I navigate away try to make me set them as my home page, these people should be shot.
The only people I know who use Linux are those who are either fed up of Windows or prefer to get more hands on with their OS environment.
And why are people fed up with Windows? Why is it possible to get more hands on with Linux? Because it's Free.
And as the only people I know who use Linux have at least a higher knowledge of computers (In general), it would not be that hard for them to come into a 'free' copy of Windows.
Just because you don't pay anything for Windows doesn't mean it's Free.
people who don't buy them will continue to avoid them for the same reasons they do now
Well, there are answers to a few reasons people currently avoid Macs. The main one is software compatibility. I believe the switch to X86 will greatly improve the ability of a Mac to run Windows software and the ability of application writers to port software to the Mac. Also, since OS X is unix, it'll be extremely easy to port any unix software to OS X.
They will still be 'special hardware' (read you can't just build your own) running a nifty but not the main stream OS.
You probably will be able to build your own to a large extent. Sure, you'll probably have to buy the motherboard from Apple and maybe the chip, but you can probably buy the case, power supply, expansion cards, hard drive, memory, printer, USB devices, etc, from someone else. Every time I've built a computer I've bought the motherboard and chip together anyway, it's not "build your own" computer means you put together the transistors. That said, I'm not sure the target market is going to change much, because the motherboard/CPU combo will probably be expensive.
The problem Apple faces is that it can't bring down costs without dramatically increasing volumes. Operating systems are a natural monopoly (high startup costs, virtually zero incremental costs), and Apple isn't that monopoly. Take a look some time at the cost of revenues for Apple and Microsoft. It costs Apple nearly as much as Microsoft to make its product (6.0 billion vs. 6.7 billion). But Microsoft has the volume to charge less and make more, their revenues are 4.6 times as much as Apple.
"Why buy a Dell for 499 that runs that unsecure Windows OS when I can buy a Mac Mini using (nearly) the same hardware running the slick as shit OSX?"
But that question doesn't have the word Linux in it anywhere. Yes, Apple switching to X86 is going to affect Apple and Microsoft, but I really don't see why Linux users (or potential Linux users) are going to care. If anything this will make it easier for Mac users to switch to Linux. Macs will now be able to run Windows, so that means they'll be able to run x86 Linux too. This will probably kill the development of Linux on PPC (I believe Yellow Dog Linux is the most prominent example), but even that will be a good thing for the Linux community, because it means more people working on x86 Linux.
If they can get and OSX version on WINE running where all you have to do is double click on an installer and *BOOM* all the software you already bought for Windows all of a sudden works, that might entice some more people to get Macs.
Of course, WINE is LGPL, so it'll entice more people to get Linux, too.
could mean major trouble for distros like Xandros and Linspire which are reliant on the desktop audience. These distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, which will soon be the primary x86 alternative to Windows XP not only because of OS X's dedicated and outspoken user base but because of its slick looks and ease of use.
People don't switch from Windows XP to Linux because of its slick looks and ease of use. People switch to Linux because it's Free.
Anyway, I agree that these distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, but these distros are clearly not ready to take on Windows XP, either. Anyone who cares about slick looks and ease of use isn't going to switch to Linux in the first place.
Adapt or die? More like adapt or don't come to life in the first place.
With a few exceptions, such as transferring the title of real estate, that's true just about everywhere. A signature is just evidence that you agreed to the contract.
That said, I don't think having a written contract without a verifiable signature is as bad as having a verbal contract. Sure, one of the problems with verbal contracts is it's difficult or impossible to prove that the parties agreed to them. But another problem is that memories are not very reliable. Yes, if someone is going to create fake documents and outright perjure themselves in court the judge (or jury) is going to have to decide which, if either, document is credible. But this is a lot easier when you have two documents in front of you. And there are plenty of court cases over verbal agreements where both sides legitimately believe they are telling the truth. Had there been a written contract in place, the issue might have never been litigated in the first place.
In addition to the fact that no backlighting is required, the display also has an inherently stable memory effect which requires no power to maintain an image - both of which drastically increase the battery life. The result is 1/100 the power consumption of traditional display options.
Huh? My watch has all these features, and the technology is very very old. The hour and minute of the day are stored in stable memory using these things called an "hour hand" and a "minute hand", requiring no power to maintain an image. The image itself is razor thin, and there is this substance called "phosphors" contained on the "hands" which allows me to see the display even in the dark. I think the "phosphors" are kept charged using "radium", so even in the dark there is no need for backlighting, the display is nuclear powered.
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Just like all of those pot smokers imprisoned becaused they possessed on their person a single ounce of weed.
You're talking about state laws, not federal laws.
Couldn't cell towers offer a CPS service?
Yes, they could, and some of them even do. This is how the E911 system works, but most cell phone companies haven't yet enabled it for non-911 calls. Verizon Wireless is scheduled to launch this service in the third quarter of 2005. Of course, it'll probably be crippleware like everything else verizon releases.
A small handful of phone/provider combinations allow the user to access the information, but not many.
Verizon is scheduled to launch location based services in the third quarter of 2005. Of course, like most things Verizon, this will probably be a pay service, but also like most things Verizon, there will probably be a way to hack it.
Whether you're stealing something, or you're copying something, you're still depriving people of income that they've worked for.
So by reading your post am I depriving you of income that you've worked for? I don't think so. To "deprive" someone of something suggest that they had it in the first place, or at least that they deserve it in the first place.
They have created things, and have decided to share them for a cost.
And they've done that. Then I borrowed one of those things, made a copy of it, and gave it back.
You decided that these things are valuable enough that you desire them, yet you feel that the ability to get them for free absolves you of any responsibility to pay for them?
Well, I certainly don't think there are any RIAA albums which are worth the price of the CD. So maybe that's the difference. But I don't think so.
Nothing needs to absolve me of any responsibility to pay to make a copy of something, because I have no responsibility to pay for that in the first place. I'm the one making the copy. I'm the one doing the work. If I were asking someone else to make the copy for me, it'd be a different story.
As for losing sympathy for the artists working under a label, don't you think that's a little bit judgmental of you?
I suppose it is.
A lot of these bands were signed on when they were young, looking for a break in a competitive and overcrowded profession. And the labels often take advantage of that and lock the musicians into unfair contracts.
And most of these musicians are either so popular that they're rich, and don't need my money anyway, or they haven't yet recouped the RIAA's costs, and so they get absolutely nothing when I buy a CD anyway.
As you've said, the music industry is competitive and overcrowded already. Maybe it'd be better if these musicians just went and got a real job.
They might not deserve much sympathy, and they certainly don't all deserve success, but I fail to see how that gives everyone else the right to distribute their work freely.
See, I think I have a right to do whatever I want so long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others. And I see no reason that a musician has a right to take money from me just because I make a copy of something which is a copy of something which is a copy of something which that musician created. The default situation, in my opinion, should be that I don't have to pay someone for doing something within the confines of my own home. If there is to be an exception to that rule, the exception is what needs to be justified,
While downloading a song off of kazaa is not as big a deal as shoplifting, they're both taking something that I haven't paid for, and that is something that I try not to do.
One is taking something that you haven't paid for, the other is copying something that you haven't paid for. Big difference in my opinion.
Have you had to work for a living? Do you like to get paid for your time and effort?
Yes, I do. I currently work doing the books for several small businesses. These people pay me for actually doing work, not whenever they make photocopies of the reports I make for them.
I sure do, and I respect that musicians do too. Sure it sucks that the record labels serve as unfair middlemen, but I can't screw them over without screwing over their artists as well.
When you work for bad people you lose any sympathy I might have had for you.
My cell phone has a GPS in it, but I can't seem to access it. Supposedly you can get your location by going to the debug screen and dialing "922", but I've heard this forwards your call to 911, so I don't want to mess around with it.
Getting the tower IDs and signal strength, on the other hand, is a simple matter off accessing the debug screen (on my Samsung phone you hit * on the setup menu, the password is "000000", debug screen is 1). Of course, it's much easier to just ask someone where I am than to type in all that data, but there's probably a way to access it through the phone's serial port (I haven't even bought the cable though).
Incidently, I just discovered the "Brew menu" on my phone. From the debug menu, hit number 9. I wonder if this can be used for me to install apps I've written myself onto my phone. If so that'd be real cool.
Really though, it's not like a GPS receiver is going to cost any more than an "WPS" receiver.
It's not clear whether or not these "WPS" receivers work using a standard wifi receiver. I guess you could use signal strength, but that's going to probably vary from day to day, and I don't think roundtrip pings are fast enough to be able to base it on that. If these do work with standard receivers, and you already have wifi, free is cheaper than any price. More importantly, in terms of mobile devices, there's no extra space required, and you don't use up an extra port.
Even dirt cheap GPS receivers are accurate withing about 10-15 feet, all day, every day.
How cheap is dirt cheap for a GPS receiver which will connect to an iPaq? Could I connect it while I've still got my 802.11 card hooked up? Last time I checked the answers were $150 and no. So I've actually been thinking about hacking together one of these myself anyway. Wifi access isn't all that great around here, though.
I just bought a card for Verizon's wireless broadband access service. Maybe there's a GPS in it which I can somehow access, or maybe I can somehow get the signal strength and tower number. I haven't yet hooked it up to my iPaq, so I'm not sure what info I can get out of it.
All this effort to develop technology to determine your location is great if the reason for finding your location is because you're lost. But, otherwise, it seems like another case of the technology industry developing a new market for devices of questionable usage.
Wow, I've gotta really disagree here. If GPS were cheap enough, I can think of a lot of legitimate uses for it other than when I'm lost. Basically, it's useful for tracking things (where did I park my car? where did the car thief take my car?), and tracking myself (how far did I travel for business purposes in 2004? what time did I get to work yesterday?).
Throw legitimate privacy issues into the mix - generally in the US at least and certainly elsewhere - the thought of some anonymous entity determining my location is positively horrifying.
If by "some anonymous entity" you mean the government or your phone company, well, they could have already done it anyway. I don't see it as horrifying. I don't think it's such a good idea, but I still have a cell phone.
Why is it so difficult to simply self-identify my location
Besides the fact that good voice recognition technology isn't that widespread, it'd be a big hassle to constantly identify ones location. ("OK computer, I've parked my car in section D-5. OK, now I'm arriving at work.")
rather than relying on the sketchy availability of GPS satellites or databases of WiFi APs and doing all that trigonometry
Sketchy availability? Availability of GPS is basically a question of "are you outside?" It doesn't work as well indoors, and that's a problem for a lot of uses we might dream up for it (tell 911 where I am), but it was built for guiding missles, not calling 911. This is one advantage that wifi access points may be able to give. Of course I'm skeptical as to how reliable such a scheme would be. It certainly will never be global like GPS. I can get a GPS reception in the middle of the pacific ocean.
It's not how copyright works per say, as much as it's how physical media distribution works. It costs the same amount to ship a CD and keep it on the store shelves, whether it has 70 minutes of music or 20 minutes recorded on it.
So why not let people select which 70 minutes of music to put on the CD? It's trivial to do, and it would be done now if it weren't for the fact that it's not legal.
So they're going to fill them all, and charge about the same for all of them, and they've chosen the price that the good CD's can pull.
Well, yeah, but they can only do that because they own a monopoly on the distribution of those CDs, due to copyright law.
Digital distribution makes the whole equation different though, I don't have to pay for the filler anymore. If I spend $30 in a month on music via iTMS, I can make sure that I'm getting at least 30 songs that I like. That seems like a pretty good deal to me, especially compared to CD's on average.
I'm somewhat flabbergasted by the fact that so many people are willing to pay money for something which they could get for free. I guess the RIAA has done a good job of keeping P2P difficult to use. But for individual songs, last time I checked, it was still very easy. What is more difficult is finding complete albums.
I guess that explains why these online services are geared more toward individual songs. That's where the real competition is.
I tend to think of buying the average CD as paying a few bucks for a handful of good songs, and then a bunch of filler thrown in for free.
It's usually not filler though. To call it that would be to imply that the artist spent little time creating it. I suppose that's true with some albums, but usually all the songs took just as long to create, it's just that some of them turn out to be good and some of them turn out to be bad. And if you want to look at it that way, you're also paying for a bunch of songs from other artists who flopped, which you don't even get to hear.
I guess that's just how copyright works. Incidently, the movie companies used to do something similar all the time. You'd buy a ticket for one (good) movie, and you'd get to see another (bad) one for free. Then the Supreme Court went and told them it was illegal to give away movies for free, so they stopped doing it.
Your argument is the same one used to promote communism. In theory having one company control all the food production or all the car manufacture prevents duplication of effort and makes the system more efficient. In some cases it actually works.
We're not talking about food production or car manufacture. We're talking about the production of software, which is completely different. Once you've made a software program, it costs virtually nothing to make a copy of it. This is completely different from a car or food, where there are significant incremental costs.
More money is spent by MS buying up competitors and killing them off than on building new products.
Money, maybe, but that's mostly a zero-sum game. If you forced two companies to make the same operating system, that's a waste of actual time and effort, not just transferring dollars from one group to another.
If MS is efficient now why does it take them 7 years to put out a new version of their OS? Why does it take them 5 years to add tabs to their browser or a pop-up blocker?
I fail to see how either of these two things have anything to do with efficiency. You seem to be confusing altruism with efficiency. Yes, Microsoft is a monopoly, and as such it can get away with producing an inferior product and charging more money for it. However, that doesn't mean that it is inefficient in producing that product. It's very efficient, that's why it makes so much in profits.
The answer is, they are not efficient because they have no incentive to be.
But they do have an incentive to be efficient. The more efficient they are, the more profit they make.
You also mention that you think open source will win in the long term. That may be true and it may be beneficial to society as a whole, but it does not mean we should ignore the abuses going on now from MS.
I don't think we should ignore the abuses going on from MS. I just think splitting Microsoft up is not a good way to address those abuses.
You might as well argue the king is a homicidal maniac who eats babies
Charging too much for an operating system is not at all analogous to eating babies. And considering that the only reason people pay for Microsoft's products is because the government requires us to by law, I think the best solution is quite obvious.
What makes you think that Apple will suddenly offer Mac barebones or Mac motheboard/CPU combos?
Even if they don't that doesn't mean someone else can't.
why do you think porting either Windows or UNIX software to a Mac will be easier just because it runs on Intel hardware?
Fewer architecture issues. The most basic ones are the endianness of the system and data alignment issues. Of course, any of the direct assembly would not have to be ported, and it'd be more like the bugs which rely on the architecture would work on both systems as well.
Maybe it won't be as significant as I'm thinking though.
Don't waste the stamp. They'll figure it out within a few years anyway. At least Apple is smart enough to stop developing an OS for PPC. It'll probably take IBM a little longer to admit its mistake. Freak.
It's quite possible for a company to last 5 years without selling anything and still not be bankrupt. But, yeah, obviously someone has bought the product, I just wonder who it is.
First, "registering what you think is a good name with the hopes that you'll be able to resell it for a profit" is not the same as registering various permutations of *Google* or any other trademark you don't own.
I didn't realize Google had trademarked the letter G.
And second, these Spamer companies that own acres of common and useful words that invariably lead to pseudo-search sites that when I navigate away try to make me set them as my home page, these people should be shot.
OK, but we weren't talking about them.
The only people I know who use Linux are those who are either fed up of Windows or prefer to get more hands on with their OS environment.
And why are people fed up with Windows? Why is it possible to get more hands on with Linux? Because it's Free.
And as the only people I know who use Linux have at least a higher knowledge of computers (In general), it would not be that hard for them to come into a 'free' copy of Windows.
Just because you don't pay anything for Windows doesn't mean it's Free.
people who don't buy them will continue to avoid them for the same reasons they do now
Well, there are answers to a few reasons people currently avoid Macs. The main one is software compatibility. I believe the switch to X86 will greatly improve the ability of a Mac to run Windows software and the ability of application writers to port software to the Mac. Also, since OS X is unix, it'll be extremely easy to port any unix software to OS X.
They will still be 'special hardware' (read you can't just build your own) running a nifty but not the main stream OS.
You probably will be able to build your own to a large extent. Sure, you'll probably have to buy the motherboard from Apple and maybe the chip, but you can probably buy the case, power supply, expansion cards, hard drive, memory, printer, USB devices, etc, from someone else. Every time I've built a computer I've bought the motherboard and chip together anyway, it's not "build your own" computer means you put together the transistors. That said, I'm not sure the target market is going to change much, because the motherboard/CPU combo will probably be expensive.
The problem Apple faces is that it can't bring down costs without dramatically increasing volumes. Operating systems are a natural monopoly (high startup costs, virtually zero incremental costs), and Apple isn't that monopoly. Take a look some time at the cost of revenues for Apple and Microsoft. It costs Apple nearly as much as Microsoft to make its product (6.0 billion vs. 6.7 billion). But Microsoft has the volume to charge less and make more, their revenues are 4.6 times as much as Apple.
"Why buy a Dell for 499 that runs that unsecure Windows OS when I can buy a Mac Mini using (nearly) the same hardware running the slick as shit OSX?"
But that question doesn't have the word Linux in it anywhere. Yes, Apple switching to X86 is going to affect Apple and Microsoft, but I really don't see why Linux users (or potential Linux users) are going to care. If anything this will make it easier for Mac users to switch to Linux. Macs will now be able to run Windows, so that means they'll be able to run x86 Linux too. This will probably kill the development of Linux on PPC (I believe Yellow Dog Linux is the most prominent example), but even that will be a good thing for the Linux community, because it means more people working on x86 Linux.
If they can get and OSX version on WINE running where all you have to do is double click on an installer and *BOOM* all the software you already bought for Windows all of a sudden works, that might entice some more people to get Macs.
Of course, WINE is LGPL, so it'll entice more people to get Linux, too.
Who's buying Xandros in the first place?
could mean major trouble for distros like Xandros and Linspire which are reliant on the desktop audience. These distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, which will soon be the primary x86 alternative to Windows XP not only because of OS X's dedicated and outspoken user base but because of its slick looks and ease of use.
People don't switch from Windows XP to Linux because of its slick looks and ease of use. People switch to Linux because it's Free.
Anyway, I agree that these distros are clearly not ready to take on OS X, but these distros are clearly not ready to take on Windows XP, either. Anyone who cares about slick looks and ease of use isn't going to switch to Linux in the first place.
Adapt or die? More like adapt or don't come to life in the first place.
Swap out the primitives before you start seeing smoke.
I'd go further than that, though. Don't digitally sign a document (using a key you can't repudiate) unless you've created that document yourself.
If you must digitally sign a document which you haven't created yourself, do so without using any hash whatsoever.
With a few exceptions, such as transferring the title of real estate, that's true just about everywhere. A signature is just evidence that you agreed to the contract.
That said, I don't think having a written contract without a verifiable signature is as bad as having a verbal contract. Sure, one of the problems with verbal contracts is it's difficult or impossible to prove that the parties agreed to them. But another problem is that memories are not very reliable. Yes, if someone is going to create fake documents and outright perjure themselves in court the judge (or jury) is going to have to decide which, if either, document is credible. But this is a lot easier when you have two documents in front of you. And there are plenty of court cases over verbal agreements where both sides legitimately believe they are telling the truth. Had there been a written contract in place, the issue might have never been litigated in the first place.
In addition to the fact that no backlighting is required, the display also has an inherently stable memory effect which requires no power to maintain an image - both of which drastically increase the battery life. The result is 1/100 the power consumption of traditional display options.
Huh? My watch has all these features, and the technology is very very old. The hour and minute of the day are stored in stable memory using these things called an "hour hand" and a "minute hand", requiring no power to maintain an image. The image itself is razor thin, and there is this substance called "phosphors" contained on the "hands" which allows me to see the display even in the dark. I think the "phosphors" are kept charged using "radium", so even in the dark there is no need for backlighting, the display is nuclear powered.