That is true, but you will notice that their current plans only extend to Home/Student versions of Office, so corporate adoption of the model is meaningless.
How does this work for other subscription services like World of Warcraft? Technically, your character, etc, is your data, though by the EULA Blizzard claims that all data is theirs, so perhaps that's how they get around it, and Microsoft could just do the same.
Also, it isn't impossible to access your data - you can renew your subscription or even use any of a number of free solutions (OpenOffice) to get at it once your subscription lapses. And who knows, they may very well leave read only enabled.
In short, though I think that the product will suck (unless it pencils out to be roughly the same as buying it over a 2-5 year subscription, and even then it won't be for everybody), I don't think there are any laws that will make it stillborn.
Using the numbers from the summary (because RTFA would be too much work), FiOS appears to come out cheaper per user, though possibly with a bandwidth hit. From the article, the cost is $1.58/mo per user for 60 million users spread across 400,000 mosques.
60,000,000*1.58/400,000=$237/mo per mosque
FiOS is $42.99/mo per site (mosques in this case).
237/42.99=5.51 times more expensive than FiOS, though they supposedly get (224/30=) 7.46 times the bandwidth based on download speeds. However, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia , such speeds at each mosque are unrealistic, leading me to believe that this is likely a shared pipe at the local head ends, tipping the scales substantially in the favor of FiOS. I will leave that math as an exercise for the reader.
Fanboy? How could my post be construed as that? If anything, it was anti-fanboy, as I was responding to the delusions of an overly enthusiastic HD-DVD fanboy.
Ah, the irony. I own neither an HD-DVD nor a Blu-Ray player. I intend to purchase neither. From the beginning I have deemed both formats as too little, too late, and vowed to avoid them. I own neither a PS3 nor an X-box, so I haven't even fallen into the "it doubles as an HD player" sand trap. I also have no interest in either as an "upscaling DVD player". I'm waiting out this generation until the next, then I'll see if that looks more viable.
But you had to assume that I was a fanboi so that you could call me stupid for stating a an opinion that was impartial and developed based on observation of previous market trends. But who am I to criticize you for an unprovoked assault on a reasoned argument? This is Slashdot, so it's to be expected. Presumably by now you realize what an ass you were being and feel a little humbled by your momentary lapse in judgment. I don't expect an apology, as those almost never happen on Slashdot, and it's enough that I know in my heart that you are sorry, or at least that you made a fool of yourself in front of hundreds or thousands.
Somebody must have hit you with the stupid stick.
If they did, they hit you harder with it. The quote you take provides foundation for the argument based on the original poster's mention of obsolete media. So, I give examples of two types of obsolete media that persisted for quite some time after they were officially (and repeatedly) pronounced dead. Then, just after you stopped quoting (and apparently reading with a reasonable level of comprehension), I mention a combo drive - a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive, as a matter of fact, which yes, I have seen. I have actually USED them, as I mention further in (after you stopped paying attention) when I mentioned Dell's use of the drives. Here is a link http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=3R9&q=5.25+3.5+combo+floppy&um=1&ie=UTF-8 to a Google product search page listing a good number of them that YOU CAN BUY RIGHT THIS MOMENT! And, also, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players that obviously will never exist according to you http://www.google.com/products?q=hd-dvd+blu-ray+combo&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1. So, uh, yeah, your whole argument here was an epic fail.
Again, idiotic.
And yet when DVD is no longer a medium "everybody uses", Blu-Ray players will still support them (assuming anyone actually believes that Blu-Ray will actually succeed DVD). And Toshiba won't have to revive anything - they just have to lower the licensing costs such that they at least make SOMETHING off of the failure of HD-DVD and other manufacturers will add it in. When it costs only a few cents to do so, it will be hard to argue in favor of NOT doing it. And, since there is already a single beam http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/09/new-lasers-from-ricoh-read-both-hd-dvd-and-blu-ray/ solution available, such a cost difference is not unreasonable.
Maybe I'm smoking crack. Maybe Ricoh's laser is significantly more expensive than just a regular blue laser. But I have a reasonable expectation that even if Blu-Ray players don't read HD-DVD by default sometime soon, whatever disc based reader follows (HVD? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc) will. It's just the way it's tended to work in the past. Not always (Laser Disc was too large to incorporate into DVD players), but in cases where the form factor of the physical media lends itself, this tends to be the way old technologies get phased out.
Hmm, you must be old here - only the experienced elite ignore the article AND the summary and start spouting utter nonsense. From TFA, a quick trip to E-bay will show otherwise.
I think what you meant to say was that HD-DVD will soon be gone, but I beg to differ - the line to beat this particular dead horse is still quite long. Look at your standard DVD player and the formats it supports - hardly anyone uses most of them anymore, but that doesn't stop them from lingering in the list of features. HD-DVD will suffer the same fate - either in Blu-Ray players or in whatever succeeds it, or both.
Right, because I couldn't find 5.25" disk drives nearly a decade after it stopped being used as a distribution medium, and just try buying a 3.5" floppy drive today, because that format is dead and replaced by USB memory sticks. Oh, and no-one's ever heard of a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive - what market could have ever supported the premium on the price to support dead formats. I've never worked with Dell systems where such things were standard. And no-one makes Betamax players anymore, or VCRs, or DAT players - why just the other day I was remarking at how the home media section of Walmart was only DVD and Blu-Ray players - not a VHS player to be found. And most DVD players don't support VCD, or a myriad of other formats that have either passed their hay-day or never found considerable market traction. And, of course, Blu-Ray players will never offer backwards compatibility with DVD, since it is soon to be a dead format.
What was I thinking, ignoring all these previous market trends to the contrary?
Another consideration is that by the time BD players come down in price in a year or two, they are likely to be multiformat players, integrating HD-DVD playback. The technology is already available (http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/09/05/lgs-bh200-hd-dvd-blu-ray-combo-player-set-for--october/), and since there will be a significant market comprised of people that don't want to repurchase their HD-DVD collection, it only makes sense that either this multi-format system will become standard, or be a very low cost option. So all these people taking advantage of cheap HD-DVD players/movies now can also take advantage of low priced Blu-Ray a couple years down the line with almost no down side.
Despite Samsung canceling its next gen combo player (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006597.html), I think that this is a near term decision - when the market picks up for current model combo players, there will be financial incentive to meet that demand with new products.
6) a fifth and sixth rack, or at least the space to put them. Seriously, plan to grow anywhere from 25-50% over the next five years unless you have reason to believe otherwise. This was hinted at in item 3, but warrants clarification/repeating.
Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
Or anything dubbed by the Vietnamese. They don't even try. There is ONE person doing the parts for ALL characters. And they have NO inflection - they read it in a near-perfect monotone. It is unlikely you could dub it worse if you tried. And nowhere near 100% of the lines are translated and the dubbed voice is frequently nowhere near the actual speaking part (you can hear the English actor speak most of his part in English before the Vietnamese dub kicks in - yes, they leave the original audio in place and merely talk over it). The overall effect is like having a translator there watching it with you, translating live without a script. Which is probably how they do it - simply recording the translator as they watch the program for the first time.
Since the people modding you insightful cannot post in this forum without losing said modding ability, I would like to ATTEMPT to speak for them: This is absolutely the truth. Both points are more accurate by far than any projection or reason that any MPAA affiliate has ever made against P2P. DVDs are sold to collectors. There may be the odd birthday or Christmas gift given to introduce someone to the series that the company will miss out on, but the uptake from people who would have otherwise never been exposed will make that insignificant. I have NEVER been asked to take a survey on why I buy DVDs of TV shows, nor read here about such a survey, and yet I would think that if the content providers were really interested in meeting their customers needs, they might at least ask that question to determine what new product formats might impact those sales.
Making episodes available for free DOES NOT impact DVD sales. Sure, I don't have the numbers or research to back that up, but I have explained above that the content providers don't either. I have at least asked that question to people I know and discovered exactly what the parent post pointed out. Letting people download episodes and burn them to CD or DVD MIGHT impact DVD sales, hence the effort to put them up in a streaming format to combat P2P distribution by pirates, though the argument for P2P hurting DVD sales is highly debatable for similar reasons to the arguments against P2P distribution of music - most importantly that the bulk of people that keep music they have downloaded and like and listen to it regularly are unlikely to have purchased it at full price anyway because they are financially unable or unwilling to do so. Without a massive change to the music/TV/movie distribution system, these people are highly unlikely to have been "converted" to customers anyway. This is NOT a defense of "piracy", just a simple fact that the whole "lost profits due to Internet piracy" is largely a fallacy do to poor market research and an unwillingness to investigate new revenue streams that might impact their main method of distribution.
On the flip side, they can't just ignore Internet distribution or that would be perceived as an implicit endorsement of it, but at least in the case of television programming a change in the distribution model is needed. MTV seems to get it, or at least be willing to investigate it rather than just hope that this is a phase they can just ignore or litigate into oblivion and then go merrily on their way with last generation's distribution model.
There is a black market that actively buys food stamps for pennies on the dollar, giving the food stamp sellers cash with which to buy whatever they please - cigarettes, alcohol, porn, or black market substances. Or food that is not normally included in the program. And with community welfare kitchens, they might be able to easily trade away all of their foodstamp bought food and still eat. Here is one creative example of how the system is already being worked - http://www.local10.com/news/13788797/detail.html.
However, these are likely fringe cases, and trading foodstamps for cash is illegal, of course. But the point is that your distinction of trading their food for them instead of the food stamps directly is irrelevant - they do both: trade food stamps directly for money or goods, and buy food with the stamps and trade that for money or goods.
But none of this addresses the core argument: though any system is subject to abuse, it seems apparent that the welfare system is significantly more open to this abuse than is rightly should be, and some simple (if unpopular) changes could easily rectify it. It's that caveat - "unpopular" - that is really where the argument rightly begins.
And yes, this is vague and simplified for space and time. I have better stuff to do than spend a half hour Googling for people that are already perfectly capable of doing it themselves. Consider this my attempt at Slashdot welfare reform.
Third (and we're getting lower on the probability scale here, but still) the transmission itself may contain immediately useful information for us. It could be anything. Make widgets like this. Don't go to the 3rd planet of Beta Centauri. Cut it out with the nukes, assholes. Efficient space drive drive works like so. Your Aishwara Rai, can we buy her? 42. Sorry, saw this and thought of this: http://partiallyclips.com/index.php?id=1415
Having been in (and having friends who were in) many of the top tier raiding guilds in EQ (PoP-GoD era), I can safely say that EQ is NOT harder, it is simply a longer grind. Most raids boiled down to a handful of good players leading a bunch of support players that spent half the raid in tell hell or AFK until the boss fight/loot distribution. Losing XP when you die does NOT make the game harder, it simply makes it take longer. Any idiot can find an easy spot to safely grind back lost XP. Corpse loss (from early EQ days) is something that was universally despised by EQ players until WoW came out and they could suddenly claim that living through that made them somehow superior. Notice that even EQ did away with it. It was a BAD idea, and if you haven't caught up with the rest of us in realizing that, then it is only your loss.
As far as PayPalling your way to uberness, having participated in farming in EQ, I know that the GMs basically look the other way even when it is obvious that people are using automated tools to farm cash to sell online. Hell, in EQ2 Sony has even gotten into the picture on some realms by having a marketplace as PART OF THE GAME where players can sell to other players for REAL WORLD money. Conversely, Blizzard shuts down thousands of accounts per month for farming and other TOU violations. So explain to me again how WOW is more farmer friendly than your beloved Sony has-beens?
People like it because it's easy and dumbed down.
Just like movies, television, music, console games, and most any other popular form of entertainment. It hasn't stopped them from making bazillions and remaining relevant for many years. If you want a challenge, do the NY Times crossword, or take up extreme sports, or, I don't know, cure cancer. If you want to relax and have fun, easy and dumbed down is the preferred way to go. Personally, I prefer things that engage the mind (unlike much of the drek on TV), but they don't have to tax it. I enjoy WoW because I can relax and play it (with my wife, no less) and have fun. I can also turn it into a challenge if I choose. Try two manning a 5 man raid instance (at the appropriate level, without uber gear) and I doubt you'd be calling it easy. By being able to set my own challenge, I can either coast or put significant effort into it, depending on the mood I am in.
Unfortunately, I don't think that checking this would yield useful results anyway. On the faster computer, the time the hourglass is shown might be cut in half for any given task, but with the user then able to perform more tasks, he'd probably just end up seeing the hourglass for the same amount of time - it'd be spread across twice as many tasks (using greatly simplified math), sure, but your metric would still show little improvement on the new system over a given time period (8 hour work day). Plus, each user is not likely to be doing the exact same thing, or spendign the same percentage of his day at his desk doing it. What you need to do is take a two step approach.
First, use perfmon. So long as you are upgrading, spec the machine right. By adding the faster processor, the bottleneck might just move to the HDD. So maybe a fast SATA or even SCSI drive, possibly in a RAID configuration (the exact type depending on whether it is read bound, write bound, or both) could vastly improve performance. Or maybe the extra HDD activity is due to swap file usage, so extra RAM could boost performance again. And so on, with networking and video card performance, etc.
Once you have an ideal system spec, now you need to compare the two systems side by side. The best tool for this is the plain old stopwatch. Pick a set of common tasks and perform them on each system, timing how long it takes to complete it. The time difference can then map to extra productivity/profit however you deem optimal. Then you can push for the upgrade with that data and wait for the poor engineers to curse your name for making them do twice as much in the same 8 hour day.
Also note that as fast as the computer might be, it'll still likely spend most of its time waiting on the user, so all test results need to be viewed through appropriately tinted glasses.
Ah. You don't like to have too much reality/truth in your Science Fiction. Don't worry, there's this whole pantheon of Star Trek universes for you to enjoy. I understand this point of view - SF, or more accurately in your case, Fantasy, is supposed to be an escape from the difficulties of the world we live in. I tend to enjoy fiction that celebrates the nuances of humanity. Celebrates the the whole range of sacrifice and achievement, from the minor to the epic, from the brief shining moments to the lifetimes of dedication. These are the things that the science fiction masters (Asimov, Clarke, et al) were dedicated to, and why SF, GOOD SF, is not simply considered Fantasy, why it indeed deserves its own literary category. We all seek different things from our stories, so I truly do not wish to trivialize your preferences. However, your comments on what *I* like, your attempts to trivialize valid literary devices simply because they don't agree with you, I do rather take offense to.
Killing key characters as a dramatic device is nothing new. And it certainly isn't a childish "affectation". Elevating the tragedy by giving them more and more to live for before the death is also nothing new. Note Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", to name just one (and perhaps the most famous) example, where after finding each other's perfect love, they both die. Since their name's were both in the title of the play, I can only assume they were not just "key characters", but leads.
Also, celebrating the individual triumphs of otherwise mediocre (or even unpalatable) characters who rise above their limitations (including distrust) is also a common plot device used by accoladed masters over the centuries (pick a Mark Twain story and there's a good chance you'll find an example).
Just because it is either too sophisticated for, or just plain disagrees with, you is no reason to insult it. There is plenty of bona-fide drek out there more deserving of ridicule. Like 90% of reality TV (I dislike 100% of it, but even I acknowledge that some percentage of it arguably has merit).
Disclaimer: I like both Star Trek and Whedon's work (Buffy, Firefly, etc). I also like them in a critical, non-fanboi fashion and can argue their merits and deficiencies without calling them names. Emotions get to high when politics are brought in, especially for the closed minded. Being Libertarian myself, I must tolerate overtly liberal or conservative overtones in most media I partake in. I have learned to separate these unfortunate viewpoints being thrust undisguised down my throat from the beauty (or lack of as the case may be) of the rest of the work that contains them. I think it is most sad when someone is so obsessed with their political leanings that is taints everything they say or do. To be defined by something so marginal seems to me to be even sadder than those "sad, lonely people who don't relate well with others".
Online is likely the distribution format of the future, but aside from that, I am guessing that some solid state technology will prevail - high capacity (10+ Gig) media cards or holographic storage cubes or something like that. The technology is almost already here (2G MMC cards are commercially available, and various technology reports make it sound like 5G-10G cards within a year or two aren't unrealistic. A PC card (Type I) sized format should be able to hold 20+ Gig easily, making it denser and more durable than a DVD, though obviously tremendously more expensive. I don't know how much mass production can bring the price down, but making it a distribution media should have a significant effect.
Slashdot Mirror
Mine are right FOUR times a day, thanks to the Time Cube.
That is true, but you will notice that their current plans only extend to Home/Student versions of Office, so corporate adoption of the model is meaningless.
How does this work for other subscription services like World of Warcraft? Technically, your character, etc, is your data, though by the EULA Blizzard claims that all data is theirs, so perhaps that's how they get around it, and Microsoft could just do the same.
Also, it isn't impossible to access your data - you can renew your subscription or even use any of a number of free solutions (OpenOffice) to get at it once your subscription lapses. And who knows, they may very well leave read only enabled.
In short, though I think that the product will suck (unless it pencils out to be roughly the same as buying it over a 2-5 year subscription, and even then it won't be for everybody), I don't think there are any laws that will make it stillborn.
Using the numbers from the summary (because RTFA would be too much work), FiOS appears to come out cheaper per user, though possibly with a bandwidth hit. From the article, the cost is $1.58/mo per user for 60 million users spread across 400,000 mosques.
60,000,000*1.58/400,000=$237/mo per mosque
FiOS is $42.99/mo per site (mosques in this case).
237/42.99=5.51 times more expensive than FiOS, though they supposedly get (224/30=) 7.46 times the bandwidth based on download speeds. However, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia , such speeds at each mosque are unrealistic, leading me to believe that this is likely a shared pipe at the local head ends, tipping the scales substantially in the favor of FiOS. I will leave that math as an exercise for the reader.
Ah, the irony. I own neither an HD-DVD nor a Blu-Ray player. I intend to purchase neither. From the beginning I have deemed both formats as too little, too late, and vowed to avoid them. I own neither a PS3 nor an X-box, so I haven't even fallen into the "it doubles as an HD player" sand trap. I also have no interest in either as an "upscaling DVD player". I'm waiting out this generation until the next, then I'll see if that looks more viable.
But you had to assume that I was a fanboi so that you could call me stupid for stating a an opinion that was impartial and developed based on observation of previous market trends. But who am I to criticize you for an unprovoked assault on a reasoned argument? This is Slashdot, so it's to be expected. Presumably by now you realize what an ass you were being and feel a little humbled by your momentary lapse in judgment. I don't expect an apology, as those almost never happen on Slashdot, and it's enough that I know in my heart that you are sorry, or at least that you made a fool of yourself in front of hundreds or thousands.
If they did, they hit you harder with it. The quote you take provides foundation for the argument based on the original poster's mention of obsolete media. So, I give examples of two types of obsolete media that persisted for quite some time after they were officially (and repeatedly) pronounced dead. Then, just after you stopped quoting (and apparently reading with a reasonable level of comprehension), I mention a combo drive - a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive, as a matter of fact, which yes, I have seen. I have actually USED them, as I mention further in (after you stopped paying attention) when I mentioned Dell's use of the drives. Here is a link http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=3R9&q=5.25+3.5+combo+floppy&um=1&ie=UTF-8 to a Google product search page listing a good number of them that YOU CAN BUY RIGHT THIS MOMENT! And, also, HD-DVD/Blu-Ray players that obviously will never exist according to you http://www.google.com/products?q=hd-dvd+blu-ray+combo&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1. So, uh, yeah, your whole argument here was an epic fail.
Again, idiotic.
And yet when DVD is no longer a medium "everybody uses", Blu-Ray players will still support them (assuming anyone actually believes that Blu-Ray will actually succeed DVD). And Toshiba won't have to revive anything - they just have to lower the licensing costs such that they at least make SOMETHING off of the failure of HD-DVD and other manufacturers will add it in. When it costs only a few cents to do so, it will be hard to argue in favor of NOT doing it. And, since there is already a single beam http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/09/new-lasers-from-ricoh-read-both-hd-dvd-and-blu-ray/ solution available, such a cost difference is not unreasonable.
Maybe I'm smoking crack. Maybe Ricoh's laser is significantly more expensive than just a regular blue laser. But I have a reasonable expectation that even if Blu-Ray players don't read HD-DVD by default sometime soon, whatever disc based reader follows (HVD? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc) will. It's just the way it's tended to work in the past. Not always (Laser Disc was too large to incorporate into DVD players), but in cases where the form factor of the physical media lends itself, this tends to be the way old technologies get phased out.
Hmm, you must be old here - only the experienced elite ignore the article AND the summary and start spouting utter nonsense. From TFA, a quick trip to E-bay will show otherwise.
I think what you meant to say was that HD-DVD will soon be gone, but I beg to differ - the line to beat this particular dead horse is still quite long. Look at your standard DVD player and the formats it supports - hardly anyone uses most of them anymore, but that doesn't stop them from lingering in the list of features. HD-DVD will suffer the same fate - either in Blu-Ray players or in whatever succeeds it, or both.
Right, because I couldn't find 5.25" disk drives nearly a decade after it stopped being used as a distribution medium, and just try buying a 3.5" floppy drive today, because that format is dead and replaced by USB memory sticks. Oh, and no-one's ever heard of a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive - what market could have ever supported the premium on the price to support dead formats. I've never worked with Dell systems where such things were standard. And no-one makes Betamax players anymore, or VCRs, or DAT players - why just the other day I was remarking at how the home media section of Walmart was only DVD and Blu-Ray players - not a VHS player to be found. And most DVD players don't support VCD, or a myriad of other formats that have either passed their hay-day or never found considerable market traction. And, of course, Blu-Ray players will never offer backwards compatibility with DVD, since it is soon to be a dead format.
What was I thinking, ignoring all these previous market trends to the contrary?
Another consideration is that by the time BD players come down in price in a year or two, they are likely to be multiformat players, integrating HD-DVD playback. The technology is already available (http://www.engadgethd.com/2007/09/05/lgs-bh200-hd-dvd-blu-ray-combo-player-set-for--october/), and since there will be a significant market comprised of people that don't want to repurchase their HD-DVD collection, it only makes sense that either this multi-format system will become standard, or be a very low cost option. So all these people taking advantage of cheap HD-DVD players/movies now can also take advantage of low priced Blu-Ray a couple years down the line with almost no down side.
Despite Samsung canceling its next gen combo player (http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/006597.html), I think that this is a near term decision - when the market picks up for current model combo players, there will be financial incentive to meet that demand with new products.
He's calculating using a time cube
6) a fifth and sixth rack, or at least the space to put them. Seriously, plan to grow anywhere from 25-50% over the next five years unless you have reason to believe otherwise. This was hinted at in item 3, but warrants clarification/repeating.
Anyone who has ever watched The Simpsons in German will agree.
Or anything dubbed by the Vietnamese. They don't even try. There is ONE person doing the parts for ALL characters. And they have NO inflection - they read it in a near-perfect monotone. It is unlikely you could dub it worse if you tried. And nowhere near 100% of the lines are translated and the dubbed voice is frequently nowhere near the actual speaking part (you can hear the English actor speak most of his part in English before the Vietnamese dub kicks in - yes, they leave the original audio in place and merely talk over it). The overall effect is like having a translator there watching it with you, translating live without a script. Which is probably how they do it - simply recording the translator as they watch the program for the first time.
Since the people modding you insightful cannot post in this forum without losing said modding ability, I would like to ATTEMPT to speak for them: This is absolutely the truth. Both points are more accurate by far than any projection or reason that any MPAA affiliate has ever made against P2P. DVDs are sold to collectors. There may be the odd birthday or Christmas gift given to introduce someone to the series that the company will miss out on, but the uptake from people who would have otherwise never been exposed will make that insignificant. I have NEVER been asked to take a survey on why I buy DVDs of TV shows, nor read here about such a survey, and yet I would think that if the content providers were really interested in meeting their customers needs, they might at least ask that question to determine what new product formats might impact those sales.
Making episodes available for free DOES NOT impact DVD sales. Sure, I don't have the numbers or research to back that up, but I have explained above that the content providers don't either. I have at least asked that question to people I know and discovered exactly what the parent post pointed out. Letting people download episodes and burn them to CD or DVD MIGHT impact DVD sales, hence the effort to put them up in a streaming format to combat P2P distribution by pirates, though the argument for P2P hurting DVD sales is highly debatable for similar reasons to the arguments against P2P distribution of music - most importantly that the bulk of people that keep music they have downloaded and like and listen to it regularly are unlikely to have purchased it at full price anyway because they are financially unable or unwilling to do so. Without a massive change to the music/TV/movie distribution system, these people are highly unlikely to have been "converted" to customers anyway. This is NOT a defense of "piracy", just a simple fact that the whole "lost profits due to Internet piracy" is largely a fallacy do to poor market research and an unwillingness to investigate new revenue streams that might impact their main method of distribution.
On the flip side, they can't just ignore Internet distribution or that would be perceived as an implicit endorsement of it, but at least in the case of television programming a change in the distribution model is needed. MTV seems to get it, or at least be willing to investigate it rather than just hope that this is a phase they can just ignore or litigate into oblivion and then go merrily on their way with last generation's distribution model.
There is a black market that actively buys food stamps for pennies on the dollar, giving the food stamp sellers cash with which to buy whatever they please - cigarettes, alcohol, porn, or black market substances. Or food that is not normally included in the program. And with community welfare kitchens, they might be able to easily trade away all of their foodstamp bought food and still eat. Here is one creative example of how the system is already being worked - http://www.local10.com/news/13788797/detail.html.
However, these are likely fringe cases, and trading foodstamps for cash is illegal, of course. But the point is that your distinction of trading their food for them instead of the food stamps directly is irrelevant - they do both: trade food stamps directly for money or goods, and buy food with the stamps and trade that for money or goods.
But none of this addresses the core argument: though any system is subject to abuse, it seems apparent that the welfare system is significantly more open to this abuse than is rightly should be, and some simple (if unpopular) changes could easily rectify it. It's that caveat - "unpopular" - that is really where the argument rightly begins.
And yes, this is vague and simplified for space and time. I have better stuff to do than spend a half hour Googling for people that are already perfectly capable of doing it themselves. Consider this my attempt at Slashdot welfare reform.
Having been in (and having friends who were in) many of the top tier raiding guilds in EQ (PoP-GoD era), I can safely say that EQ is NOT harder, it is simply a longer grind. Most raids boiled down to a handful of good players leading a bunch of support players that spent half the raid in tell hell or AFK until the boss fight/loot distribution. Losing XP when you die does NOT make the game harder, it simply makes it take longer. Any idiot can find an easy spot to safely grind back lost XP. Corpse loss (from early EQ days) is something that was universally despised by EQ players until WoW came out and they could suddenly claim that living through that made them somehow superior. Notice that even EQ did away with it. It was a BAD idea, and if you haven't caught up with the rest of us in realizing that, then it is only your loss. As far as PayPalling your way to uberness, having participated in farming in EQ, I know that the GMs basically look the other way even when it is obvious that people are using automated tools to farm cash to sell online. Hell, in EQ2 Sony has even gotten into the picture on some realms by having a marketplace as PART OF THE GAME where players can sell to other players for REAL WORLD money. Conversely, Blizzard shuts down thousands of accounts per month for farming and other TOU violations. So explain to me again how WOW is more farmer friendly than your beloved Sony has-beens?
It's called foreplay. I recommend you look into it. :p
I have this experiment you can perform, but you'll have to listen carefully, because you only get one shot...
People like it because it's easy and dumbed down.
Just like movies, television, music, console games, and most any other popular form of entertainment. It hasn't stopped them from making bazillions and remaining relevant for many years. If you want a challenge, do the NY Times crossword, or take up extreme sports, or, I don't know, cure cancer. If you want to relax and have fun, easy and dumbed down is the preferred way to go. Personally, I prefer things that engage the mind (unlike much of the drek on TV), but they don't have to tax it. I enjoy WoW because I can relax and play it (with my wife, no less) and have fun. I can also turn it into a challenge if I choose. Try two manning a 5 man raid instance (at the appropriate level, without uber gear) and I doubt you'd be calling it easy. By being able to set my own challenge, I can either coast or put significant effort into it, depending on the mood I am in.
Unfortunately, I don't think that checking this would yield useful results anyway. On the faster computer, the time the hourglass is shown might be cut in half for any given task, but with the user then able to perform more tasks, he'd probably just end up seeing the hourglass for the same amount of time - it'd be spread across twice as many tasks (using greatly simplified math), sure, but your metric would still show little improvement on the new system over a given time period (8 hour work day). Plus, each user is not likely to be doing the exact same thing, or spendign the same percentage of his day at his desk doing it. What you need to do is take a two step approach.
First, use perfmon. So long as you are upgrading, spec the machine right. By adding the faster processor, the bottleneck might just move to the HDD. So maybe a fast SATA or even SCSI drive, possibly in a RAID configuration (the exact type depending on whether it is read bound, write bound, or both) could vastly improve performance. Or maybe the extra HDD activity is due to swap file usage, so extra RAM could boost performance again. And so on, with networking and video card performance, etc.
Once you have an ideal system spec, now you need to compare the two systems side by side. The best tool for this is the plain old stopwatch. Pick a set of common tasks and perform them on each system, timing how long it takes to complete it. The time difference can then map to extra productivity/profit however you deem optimal. Then you can push for the upgrade with that data and wait for the poor engineers to curse your name for making them do twice as much in the same 8 hour day.
Also note that as fast as the computer might be, it'll still likely spend most of its time waiting on the user, so all test results need to be viewed through appropriately tinted glasses.
an enemy capable of destroying the earth which actually does it
Been done. See "Battlestar Galactica".
Ah. You don't like to have too much reality/truth in your Science Fiction. Don't worry, there's this whole pantheon of Star Trek universes for you to enjoy. I understand this point of view - SF, or more accurately in your case, Fantasy, is supposed to be an escape from the difficulties of the world we live in. I tend to enjoy fiction that celebrates the nuances of humanity. Celebrates the the whole range of sacrifice and achievement, from the minor to the epic, from the brief shining moments to the lifetimes of dedication. These are the things that the science fiction masters (Asimov, Clarke, et al) were dedicated to, and why SF, GOOD SF, is not simply considered Fantasy, why it indeed deserves its own literary category. We all seek different things from our stories, so I truly do not wish to trivialize your preferences. However, your comments on what *I* like, your attempts to trivialize valid literary devices simply because they don't agree with you, I do rather take offense to.
Killing key characters as a dramatic device is nothing new. And it certainly isn't a childish "affectation". Elevating the tragedy by giving them more and more to live for before the death is also nothing new. Note Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", to name just one (and perhaps the most famous) example, where after finding each other's perfect love, they both die. Since their name's were both in the title of the play, I can only assume they were not just "key characters", but leads.
Also, celebrating the individual triumphs of otherwise mediocre (or even unpalatable) characters who rise above their limitations (including distrust) is also a common plot device used by accoladed masters over the centuries (pick a Mark Twain story and there's a good chance you'll find an example).
Just because it is either too sophisticated for, or just plain disagrees with, you is no reason to insult it. There is plenty of bona-fide drek out there more deserving of ridicule. Like 90% of reality TV (I dislike 100% of it, but even I acknowledge that some percentage of it arguably has merit).
Disclaimer: I like both Star Trek and Whedon's work (Buffy, Firefly, etc). I also like them in a critical, non-fanboi fashion and can argue their merits and deficiencies without calling them names. Emotions get to high when politics are brought in, especially for the closed minded. Being Libertarian myself, I must tolerate overtly liberal or conservative overtones in most media I partake in. I have learned to separate these unfortunate viewpoints being thrust undisguised down my throat from the beauty (or lack of as the case may be) of the rest of the work that contains them. I think it is most sad when someone is so obsessed with their political leanings that is taints everything they say or do. To be defined by something so marginal seems to me to be even sadder than those "sad, lonely people who don't relate well with others".
NewsForge and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.
Maybe this could just become a tag: newsforgeandslashdotownedbyostg.
Or even shorter: nfandsdownedbyostg.
Or even: ownedbyostg.
Or just: ostg.
It just seems such a commonly used footer could make great use of the tagging system.
Online is likely the distribution format of the future, but aside from that, I am guessing that some solid state technology will prevail - high capacity (10+ Gig) media cards or holographic storage cubes or something like that. The technology is almost already here (2G MMC cards are commercially available, and various technology reports make it sound like 5G-10G cards within a year or two aren't unrealistic. A PC card (Type I) sized format should be able to hold 20+ Gig easily, making it denser and more durable than a DVD, though obviously tremendously more expensive. I don't know how much mass production can bring the price down, but making it a distribution media should have a significant effect.