...what this means in relation to Intel's.09 micron work with Prescott (slated for late next year)? Could be nothing, could be indicative of INtel hitting some stone walls in.09 micron development (which I always knew would be a tough row to hoe for complex cpus.)
Read one post earlier in which the poster thought AMD was abdicating a "clock speed" race. Obviously, this sentiment, among so many like it, comes from Hector Ruiz's speech last week in which he said that AMD wasn't going to do "technology for technology's sake." I wish Hector had made himself a bit clearer...;)
What I think he meant was that unlike Intel with Itanium, AMD was not going to design brand-new technologies with no practical worth simply for the sake of performance (because Itanium has no software it's very nearly useless--except for doing PR benchmarks for Intel.) That's why AMD chose to do x86-64--because it is technology for practicality's sake. That's my take on that statement.
Also, AMD has been out of the "clock race" ever since they designed the K7. The race AMD wants to win, and has been winning, is the "performance race" which doesn't depend on raw MHz. Any P4 will be much slower than any K7, when clocked at the same MHz speed. That's why AMD's been using performance ratings--because they are much better measures of performance than mere MHz speeds could ever be between competing cpus with differing architectures.
...a judge who agrees with you is a judge who "sees the sense in all of it", right?
Good grief. How many lynch mobs have behaved in precisely the same dull-witted, imbecilic, zombie-like manner? Not knowing, not caring about the "facts," a lynch mob doesn't rest until the noose snaps tight. After that, it takes the time to consider its actions.
Your idea that "nearly the entire computing industry hates Microsoft," is truly one of the most egregiously ridiculous statements I've ever heard. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of software and hardware companies world wide which owe their existence--their entire success--to the market Microsoft built with Windows. In fact, Microsoft could never in a million years have built such a market without the aid of all of these companies consciously working to build a market. The idea that Microsoft did it alone is sheer nonsense *chuckle*--the Dells, Gateways, Microns, HPs and all the rest in this world have contributed just as much if not more to the Windows market as Microsoft has.
The kind of thinking which places Microsoft in its current position and forgets all of the other corporations sharing in and assisting in Microsoft's market illustrates the most extreme kind of ignorance.
Frankly, I'm sick of the self-righteousness of deluded people who think the courts, the companies--and anybody else who stands in their way--is wrong. It's really looking like a pathetic viewpoint these days.
Why people make statments like "buy an Xbox instead of a PC" is beyond me. Xbox is a game console designed to be connected to a television monitor. A PC is an open-ended device which can be used for writing novels or illustrating them, engineering the next cpu--basically there is PC software for every task imaginable. AND on top of it PC's run computer games, too, and not just at 640x480 like the Xbox but comfortably at 1600x1200 with a clarity and sharpness (and performance, depending on your graphics card) that an Xbox cannot match.
And so one costs $1500 +, including RGB monitor, and one costs $300 without a monitor. Seems no mystery to me why each costs what it does...
...are not really interested in consumers "getting to" their music without paying for it--except in certain promotional aspects.
Secondly, the artists sign contracts with the Music companies which empowers and benefits both parties and is entirely voluntary.
Third, if you download a digital song from the Internet it is saved on a physical medium called your hard drive. You can then copy it from that physical medium to another called a CD, if you choose. Seems to me we aren't quite ready yet to begin telepathically projecting music to each other, so until then there will always be some kind of physical media involved in the process and a very physical electronic player device as well (so that we may hear it with our physical ears)...;)
Last, how would a fee-based P2P network work? Sort of like Amway? *chuckle*....;) Somehow I think everyone's looking for something a little more direct. What the big music producers are looking for is a way to cut out the middleman retailer, and the Internet looks like the ticket to some degree.
Try them and see. All of the "powered-by" ATI cards are built on the same reference design that the "built-by" cards are built on. Can't see why they wouldn't work.
It's just like nVidia--only nVidia doesn't build it's own brand. All of the various "powered-by" nVidia cards are built off of the same reference design furnished by nVidia--hence nVidia's drivers work with them all.
Mostly, the "differences" between brands of cards using the same GPUs are cosmetic and done to differentiate for marketing purposes only.
...This is the kind of resulting nonsense you can expect--laws, laws, and more laws--a virtual feeding frenzy for lawyers. And of course the private citizen and his freedoms are relegated to the bottom of the stack.
So thank you SUN, and thank you Netscape, for spending all of thise millions of $$ lobbying on Capitol Hill to convince the government how evil Microsoft is (all so that you could maybe get a leg up competitively.) As an offshoot of all of this everything we know as "digital" will slowly but surely fall under the government's domain, and there will be plenty of laws and plenty of work for lawyers from here on out. And the rights of consumers and citizens will be trampled. The irony is it's all done "for the public good", isn't it?
...I see no direct evidence presented in the article which even begins to prove that these kinds of caps are going to be implemented in the near future--by Comcast/AT&T.
Rather the article sounds like speculation based on the merger. I am sure that the new company is "looking at" a wide variety of things. That's a long way from implementing them, however.
Basically, in the current economic climate I think they'd be nuts to rock the boat by implementing something like caps charges. Seems to me that by restricting up/down bandwidth they are already effectively curtailing most of the abuse.
Not one living soul in the great US of A *HAD* to buy Windows XP this year. No sir, not a single, solitary soul. Not one.
And please spare me the rot--"Oh, yes you did! If you wanted to get good deals elsewhere, then you HAD to buy it!"--because that's for the birds--a real looney tune, if you know what I mean.
People, the only things you HAVE to do in this world are pay taxes and expire. That's it. The rest, including Windows, is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
Now that hopefully we have that fundamental reality quite squared away...LOOK at all of the people who did buy WinXP this year--NOT because they "had to" but becasue *gasp, shudder* they WANTED to buy it!
What a novel concept, huh? Imagine that--a product comes out that people don't HAVE to have and people buy it anyway just because they WANT to. Wow, and double wow--I've never heard of such a thing before, have you? (Thick, syrupy sarcasm.) More sarcasm:
And of course we know that PEOPLE NEVER BUY THINGS THEY DON"T HAVE TO HAVE--ever--and the only reason people might DO THIS AWFUL THING is because Microsoft is FORCING THEM AGAINST THEIR WILLS THROUGH A PROGRAM OF DECEIT AND CHICANERY to buy WIndows XP when the truth is people *really, really* don't want it or need it! (Mountains of sarcasm and ridicule.)
EVEN MORE SARCASM:
All consumers who bought Windows XP are idiots, with no will power, and mere shills for the black-hearted, immoral, God-forsaken and cursed corporation known as Microsoft. (Continents of sarcasm.) Still more sarcasm to come:
Oh it gets worse, people! Microsoft has been labeled as Evil by the Federal Government (itself a soft-hearted entity who rarely even pushes people to pay their taxes, vote, or anything else)--therefore EVERYBODY KNOWS that Microsoft is supposed to LOSE MONEY and if the company MAKES MONEY why this is STARK PROOF of the rotten, reprobate nature of this God-damned corporation. (Oceans of sarcasm, and yes, more to come...)
CAN you believe, people, that Microsoft makes an 86% PROFIT (shudder, jeer, boo!) from selling--*gasp*--SOFTWARE???? I mean, so many EXPERTS have chimed in here to say that YOU CAN"T MAKE THAT KIND OF MONEY SELLING SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU ARE A BLACK_HEARTED THUG RIPPING OFF OLD LADIES WHILE THEY CROSS THE SIDEWALKS!!!!! NO--the EXPERTS tell us that a SOFTWARE COMPANY "should" make around a FOUR PERCENT PROFIT selling SOFTWARE!!!!! GOd bless them every one for being such righteous paragons of Holiness that they can lead us all to the promised land so that we don't wind up in Hell alongside Microsoft!!!
(Planets of sarcasm with still more to come)...
WHO would ever have dreamed the sinful thought that SOFTWARE COMPANIES MAKE HIGHER PROFITS THAN HARDWARE COMPANIES BECAUSE AFTER THE DEVELOPMENT COSTS ARE PAID FOR THERE REMAIN FEW EXPENSES TO SELLING IT OTHER THAN THE MEDIA IT SHIPS ON AND A FEW OTHER MINOR COSTS! Oh, thank goodness we have all been led to the light--and now we know the TRUTH--THAT any SOFTWARE COMPANY OF THE FACE OF THE EARTH SHOULD MAKE A FOUR_PERCENT PROFIT AND ANYTHING MORE COMES OF WICKEDNESS AND EVIL!
(To tell you the truth there isn't enough sarcasm in all the known Universe to cover the ignorance and stupidity I'm seeing expounded by SOME--thank goodness not all--people on this "issue.")
YOu absolutely DO HAVE TO BUY THE COKE WITH THE BURGER (and possibly Frensh Fries, too), IF you want to get the most for your money. McDonalds calls them Value Meals.
Man, where did some of you grow up? In Siberia? You don't sound as if you know the first thing about the money you spend every day.
"If your neighbor demands your shirt, not only give him your shirt but your coat as well," and "If your neighbor compells you to go with him a mile go not one, but two," and "Return not evil for evil" and "Overcome evil with good," and many, many other things that speak to the basic human condition in a universal sense. A great deal of what Jesus said defies cultural boundaries and can't properly be diluted or negated by the anecdotal cultural suppositions historians are fond of making. Indeed, the entire Gospel accounts are of Christ and His Disciples reaching far beyond the cultural limits of their day. Much of Christ's own ministry was a cultural slap in the face to his own society because He taught that so much of their present culture was founded on untruths.
But "sending a bill" seems out of the purview of these instructions, as I can't see how sending a bill is either right or wrong. Rather, Christ always de-emphasized ego whenever possible, and He definitely did teach a subservience to God.
Also, I don't see how his former boss calling him and demanding help could be classified as an "attack" upon him in any way. It's merely a request which he could choose to accept or not as he would. I think his question had to do with whether or not telling his former boss to take her problem and put it where the sun don't shine would have been an appropriate response. Frankly, I don't see how this situation rises to the level of the kind of decision Jesus was talking about when he talked of "Turning the other cheek." In any event I think he made the right decision in choosing to help his former boss, and one that certainly speaks very well of his character, as I think the natural response of "take your job and shove it" would have been far easier to do than what he did when he decided to help her.
Like Microsoft has $100,000,000,000 in loose change just lying around. *chuckle* Ah, if only I had a nickel for all of the M$ fantasies floating around--I'd have more money than M$...!...;)
Microsoft truly is one of those companies which is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't...How many times have we heard the same vociferous group of people decry the "security holes" in Windows and curse Microsoft to the nether regions for being lax in their estimation? [Note: by far the majority of "security holes" are found by individuals and universities who are paid by Microsoft to find them, and they are often of such an obscure nature, requiring such an obscure chain of events to manifest, that it's no surprise few if any of them have ever been exploited by the elusive "hacker" in our midst.]
Yet, the same group now decries Microsoft's efforts to take those very steps by saying: "Hey, Microsoft, we want security and all of that--but hey--not if it breaks our older applications--we don't want it *that* bad!"
Jeeps. What a crock. Like one person earlier said, 99% of the security equation revolves around end users and the skill of system administrators. But isn't it just like the common public to want to keep its cake and eat it, too? Sure, it is.
It's gratifying to see that someone out there has awakened to the reality that the people suing Microsoft aren't necessarily angels suing to have their halos and wings restored. In point of fact, some of the companies suing Microsoft would exert a far harsher regimen of "control and conquer" than Microsoft has ever thought about doing. "Better the Devil you know than the one you don't," as the saying goes. The fact is there are a lot worse companies out there than Microsoft--a lot worse. These suits by these companies are not an objection to what Microsoft has done--they're an objection that Microsoft did it and the other guys didn't get the chance to do it first.
In the wake of the anti-Microsoft DOJ trial and associated developments, most people are confused as to what was done that was deserving of all that attention, time, and money on the part of the government.
Many of them construe that there must be something inherently "wrong" with an Operating System in general as a result. So we get this type of character climbing out of the woodwork to brilliantly proclaim that we don't "need those evil operating systems" anymore--all we need to see are documents....;) That way, the evil Operating System is dealt with and disposed of. *chuckle* As if we don't have enough Looney Tunes running around...!
Just what does this guy plan to use as the interface between his document software and the hardware the documents are displayed on? Obviously, the poor fellow hasn't a clue as to how computers work and what the function of operating systems are.
In a sense this reminds me of the amusing premise that Netscape bandied about several years ago. The idea, according to Netscape, was that we don't need OS's--all we need are browsers--and I remember well the company's "We will bury Windows" comments at the time. I thought it was amusing that while all of this was going on by far the largest distributed network for Netscape was Windows platforms...;) In fact, you could say that Windows created a market big enough for Netscape to get big enough to say "We don't need Windows anymore"...;) That didn't work out too well for Netscape, it seems.
Anyway, I'm surprised we don't hear more of this kind of quackery, frankly.
The fact has always been that SUN has been fighting Microsoft all along to protect what SUN deems is SUN's monopoly--the insanely high-priced server market. This is the grudge that SUN has always held about Redmond--it sees Microsoft as setting dangerous precedents for cheap and powerful software (compared to SUN's) which runs on cheap and powerful hardware (by AMD, Intel, and scores of other companies.) The combination is a death-knell for SUN's operational MO. And SUN has seen the writing on the wall for quite some time. SUN thinks that it ought not to have to compete with Microsoft in the market SUN thinks it has some privileged access to, and SUN will do everything within its power to destroy Microsoft. The way that SUN sees it, its present business model is doomed if Microsoft continues making better software and selling it at unbelievably cheap prices (according to SUN's prices.) Note that while Microsoft was stuck in the Win3.x era that SUN had barely a comment to make about Microsoft one way or the other. It's only since Microsoft began shipping post Win3.x software that SUN went on the war path.
The irony here is that it's not Microsoft attempting to stifle competition--it's SUN! Now that the DOJ-Microsoft settlement has been confirmed, effectively answering the *real* problems the investigation uncovered, SUN's true aim in this matter since the beginning becomes (or ought to become) crystal clear. SUN has never been interested in either the "consumer" or the "free market" or "competition." SUN's motive has always been SUN's preservation of a market SUN has come to the twisted conclusion that it somehow "owns"--and SUN will brook no competition in that market.
Of course SUN will inevitably lose in the end since its vision is so fundamentally flawed. But it's interesting to see the true colors of the people pushing the anti-Microsoft governmental regulation now that the government has proved it's nobody's amiable dupe in corporate competitive struggles.
It's indeed invigorating to finally see that anti-competitive corporations like SUN and Netscape, after spending millions of dollars lobbying in Washington and hiring out the likes of Bob Dole and Judge Bork as paid, professional lobbyists--are in the end completely unsuccessful in using the government as a tool and a dupe to remove Microsoft as a competitor (as these companies were unable to do in the marketplace.)
It's gratifying to see that saner, cooler heads do, in the end, prevail. A lot of bad effects, not the least of which is the loss of public confidence in the technology sector, have come out of this decade-long drive by SUN and Netscape to run Microsoft out of business by slander, innuendo and accusation. It was always extremely naive of these companies to think that any negative effects from these actions would be neatly curtailed to Microsoft and would not spill out into the industry as a whole. Nothing good has come out of this suit for anybody, as far as I can see, and the best thing that has happened so far is that we are approaching the end of this embarrassing debacle (which saw grown men in front of Congress in televised hearings in which the topic of debate was not nuclear or biological disarmament, as the mood and emphasis would suggest, but rather THE EVILS OF THE INTERNET BROWSER INTERNET EXPLORER AND ITS THREAT TO ALL OF MANKIND.) Embarrassing is definitely the word.
In the recent years a few important things have been decided by our government which have actually helped me to start respecting it again--this is one of them. While the technology sector, of which I am undeniably a part, may wish to rend and tear itself to shreds in spasms of jealousy and envy, at least some of our government officials have their heads screwed on straight and are not nitwits to be manipulated by some highly paid snake-oil salesmen who served as lobbyists for companies like Netscape and SUN. Unfortunately, and predictibly, some of our government people were skillfully manipulated by appeals to their vanity achieved with an appreciation for their ignorance in technological matters, but in the end the ones with the real clout made the final decisions and have proven thmeselves to be anything but nitwits.
It's the first time in a long time I can say, "Three cheers for the government," and mean it. I *wish* I could say the same for the technology sector as a whole, but I can't.
Quote, unquote: "Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on every EULA that came up.....Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high."
Ummmm...."clicking through the Eulas" is the only way to install the software. If he wants "cable companies to stop doing this" he could have cancelled the install and thrown the "cable guy" out. And, yes, as he observed the cable guy "clicking through the Eulas" and did not throw him out he *did* agree to them. However, this is a moot point because the software is easily uninstallable and is not required for the cable modem to function properly.
Cable companies are frequently "monopolies" in towns because of the expense of laying new cable and maintaining it. You can't have 10 cable companies all laying 10 strands of cable on each telephone poll. Besides that, it isn't economical for a company to provide service in an area in which it cannot have a guaranteed customer base (not a guaranteed number of paying customers--that is entirely different), because of the expense involved in setting up the cabling to begin with. Towns frequently entertain "bids" by competing cable companies as to which company will provide the area with the best prices, service and choice prior to awarding the "contract" to a particular cable company. It's not a monopoly--it's a practicality.
Frankly, I grow a bit weary hearing people complain about non-issues like this. Usually, these complaints are based on a wide degree of ignorance and fear, just like this one. It would be a different matter if you couldn't uninstall the software and still use the modem. But you can, and that fact alone makes this much ado about nothing.
Aside from the fact that this article was very poorly written, it's difficult to understand what the author is so excited about. Between phrases like "dawn of a new era" and so on, the author makes a terrible, rotten case for why anybody should be excited about this at all. Basically, all I got out of it that was of seemingly immediate importance was the fact that the author seems to think thinner, longer drive cabling is revolutionary and heralds a new day in personal computing.
The article was extremely misleading in that it said next to nothing about the kind of drive technology to be used in SATA drives. Is this because the author doesn't know anything about these drives, or is it because the author knows there's nothing new whatever in the current SATA technology as far as the actual drives go except for the interface and cabling?
From what little I've read the first SATA drives are standard parallel IDE drives with serial interfaces. Is this approach supposed to make them run faster, or something? *chuckle* (facetious question)
Without some interesting new drive technology to make the interface change worthwhile, what's the point, here? *IS* there some point aside from thinner/longer cables???
A couple of days ago I saw a 200GB WD SE with 8 megs of cache. I'm already enjoying the benefits of RAID 0 + 1--the current IDE subsystems are *already* much faster than the drives they host. What's the problem? Cables? These days you can buy well-made rounded IDE cables (that are not simple ribbon cables folded, spindled, and mutilated.)
Maybe I'll become impressed when I can read more about the drive technology planned here and how it differs (if it does) from current IDE drive technology, but right now I'm not impressed at all. It's articles like these that definitely give SATA a "bad name"--if it in fact deserves something better.
I tried AOL for awhile back in 1995. Dropped it in 1996 and went to Earthlink because I realized I didn't need AOL--just access to the Internet. (Been on cable for the last couple of years.)
At last count I had approaching 25 "come back to AOL disks." They do make good coasters, but I don't need 25 coasters...;) I continue to receive them on a regular basis.
I've often wondered how much money AOL spends to send out these disks. Assuming a cost of $1 per disk, including postage (which might be low), AOL could be spending anywhere from $10M a year to $100M a year just sending out these disks and doing nothing else. Remarkable.
I'd love to know the percentage of "hits" AOL gets on a mail-out like this. The company must certainly consider them successful as they've made no effort to cease and desist--just got another one a couple of weeks ago.
The hypocrisy here is blinding. Apple runs switch ads so insulting to the intelligence that you wonder what kind of people might actually believe the drivel Apple paid these people to say...and a Microsoft employee decides to get "cute" and run a pun--but nobody has a sense of humor--the pun gets canned, the employee "sanctioned"--and the whole point of the pun is lost. It's horrific--the lack of a sense of humor in some people.
It's really scary sometimes. Talk about Microsoft "taking over the world" was always pretty funny to me (take it over how, through "Microsoft Bob" or the "Impotent Internet" that's all bark and no bite?) But now I see some people take all of that nonsense seriously...! Good grief, Microsoft doesn't even compete with Apple--and I don't mean just the relative size of the companies. Microsoft is a software company, Apple is a hardware company. Frankly, with as much guff as Microsoft suffers from the "Apple community" through making software to support Apple's OS and hardware, I don't know why Microsoft puts up with it. The sheer aggravation of it all isn't worth the tiny fragment of their sales that go to the Apple community. Worst of all, though, is that no one has a sense of humor anymore.
It's hard to see what one has to do with the other. Macs are great paperweights and conversation pieces for yuppies (who don't know a disk drive from a ram chip) to brag on when they say, "Oh, yea, I've got a computer at home, too!" Mac is all about the "how you look" crowd versus the "what you are" crowd. That's all true.
But...what's that got to do with making a parking lot out of Iraq? You can't honestly say the idea isn't appealing. "Tundra to Tarmac, Tomorrow"--what a great slogan. Either political party could run well with that one, seems like.
...anyone's freedom. The notion that I "need" to be able to make money by usurping someone else's creation is ludicrous. I say the Founding Fathers were exactly right in what they did.
What's happened though is that things are taken to excess and Congress, as usual, is way below the intellectual standard needed to make decisions like this. They think in terms of publicity, and in terms of financial contributions to their election campaigns, unfortunately. And, so the RIAA and the MPAA and all the rest are running wild and free, seemingly unfettered to crush small freedoms for the sake of the Almighty dollar.
That is what is so ludicrous about the entire position of the RIAA, etc. They seem to be suffering under the incredible delusion that every "illegitimate" copy made of their stuff is a lost sale. Why they have come to this rather idiotic conclusion is anybody's guess. It's not true that deprived of any other means people would be forced to buy this music, film, etc. Nope, most of them would exercise their remaining choice in the matter and refuse to buy it and simply live without it.
Doesn't the RIAA know that people who *want* this stuff badly enough to buy it are *already* buying it? The rest of them don't want it badly enough to pay for it, and deprived of any choice except paying for it, they'll choose not to pay for it and live without it. It's only when they perceive this stuff is "free" that it becomes worth having--it's not worth buying to the great majority of these people I'll wager.
It's kind of like software piracy. Miscrosoft bitches and moans about piracy and puts Product Activation into XP. The central problem with the argument, however, is that Microsoft got to its present position by selling non-Product-Activated Operating Systems! The contradiction is glaring, for if Microsoft had been victimized by software piracy on an institutional scale, the company would never have survived long enough to write Product Activation into XP, let alone long enough to write XP in the first place. Therefore, despite no controls on piracy at all, history convincingly demonstrates that the vast majority of Microsoft's customers want Microsoft's products badly enough to pay for them and did exactly that. There's simply no way to argue the negative there.
So here's what I think all of this is about, whether it's Microsoft's Product Activation or the RIAA's sabre rattling: GREED. Pure, old fashioned, unadulterated, unblemished GREED.
I think the position will backfire on the RIAA in a big way if it is successful in shutting off avenues of free distribution for those who will accept it no other way--it will likely do an extreme amount of damage to the industry it proclaims it is trying to protect, because the principles behind these issues are economically flawed in the first place.
To me the litmus test for copyright ought to be profit. If a copyright is broken for profit the breaker should be prosecuted. If there is no profit involved it should be a moot issue. The trigger to invoke copyright law should be profit and profit alone being made on the copyrighted works. If no profit is being made it then becomes exceedingly difficult for the copyright holder to prove damages since no one actually paid anything to obtain the copyrighted material.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think the trigger of the existing copyright laws is already profit and monetary gain. It seem to me that this is the "loophole" the RIAA and others hope to plug because they are proceeding from the patently false assumption that every copy out is a sale lost--which is absolutely untrue and therefore is an impossible proposition to prove.
I'll close with a message to Microsoft:
"OK, guys, you've had your fun and put PA into an OS. Therefore, you have eliminated any piracy of it and can therefore lower the prices as you've been saying for years. So when do we see the first $49.95 copy of Windows XP?"
Heh-Heh--my guess is that if they put chains on each CD and a microbomb in them to explode in case of copyright violation--we'd still never see the prices go down.
It strikes me that most current thinking on the viability of intelligent life other than humanity is exceedingly anthropomorphic. Note that while some of the very same people who find the notion of starfaring sentience crowding the galaxy to be a very rational notion, they find the notion of God to be irrational. If that isn't the same old humanist-centered thinking that's dominated mankind since the flat worlders, I don't know what it is.
When you get right down to it the only notion of extraterrestrial life most can stomach, or imagine, even, is the kind we could defeat in a face to face confrontation if it came down to that. I doubt we are anywhere near as progressed as you imagine in the sense of our ability to live in a non-man-centered universe.
Slashdot Mirror
...what this means in relation to Intel's .09 micron work with Prescott (slated for late next year)? Could be nothing, could be indicative of INtel hitting some stone walls in .09 micron development (which I always knew would be a tough row to hoe for complex cpus.)
Read one post earlier in which the poster thought AMD was abdicating a "clock speed" race. Obviously, this sentiment, among so many like it, comes from Hector Ruiz's speech last week in which he said that AMD wasn't going to do "technology for technology's sake." I wish Hector had made himself a bit clearer...;)
What I think he meant was that unlike Intel with Itanium, AMD was not going to design brand-new technologies with no practical worth simply for the sake of performance (because Itanium has no software it's very nearly useless--except for doing PR benchmarks for Intel.) That's why AMD chose to do x86-64--because it is technology for practicality's sake. That's my take on that statement.
Also, AMD has been out of the "clock race" ever since they designed the K7. The race AMD wants to win, and has been winning, is the "performance race" which doesn't depend on raw MHz. Any P4 will be much slower than any K7, when clocked at the same MHz speed. That's why AMD's been using performance ratings--because they are much better measures of performance than mere MHz speeds could ever be between competing cpus with differing architectures.
Oh, exactly!
Now we are pulling away the veil and peering through the haze of lynchmob fervor--and catching glimpses of the simple truth, aren't we?
Why *are* people still buying Microsoft if they think the company and its products are so rotten?
Hint: Maybe because your sentiment is a minority sentiment--distinctly a minority sentiment? Just a thought...
...a judge who agrees with you is a judge who "sees the sense in all of it", right?
Good grief. How many lynch mobs have behaved in precisely the same dull-witted, imbecilic, zombie-like manner? Not knowing, not caring about the "facts," a lynch mob doesn't rest until the noose snaps tight. After that, it takes the time to consider its actions.
Your idea that "nearly the entire computing industry hates Microsoft," is truly one of the most egregiously ridiculous statements I've ever heard. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of software and hardware companies world wide which owe their existence--their entire success--to the market Microsoft built with Windows. In fact, Microsoft could never in a million years have built such a market without the aid of all of these companies consciously working to build a market. The idea that Microsoft did it alone is sheer nonsense *chuckle*--the Dells, Gateways, Microns, HPs and all the rest in this world have contributed just as much if not more to the Windows market as Microsoft has.
The kind of thinking which places Microsoft in its current position and forgets all of the other corporations sharing in and assisting in Microsoft's market illustrates the most extreme kind of ignorance.
Frankly, I'm sick of the self-righteousness of deluded people who think the courts, the companies--and anybody else who stands in their way--is wrong. It's really looking like a pathetic viewpoint these days.
Why people make statments like "buy an Xbox instead of a PC" is beyond me. Xbox is a game console designed to be connected to a television monitor. A PC is an open-ended device which can be used for writing novels or illustrating them, engineering the next cpu--basically there is PC software for every task imaginable. AND on top of it PC's run computer games, too, and not just at 640x480 like the Xbox but comfortably at 1600x1200 with a clarity and sharpness (and performance, depending on your graphics card) that an Xbox cannot match.
And so one costs $1500 +, including RGB monitor, and one costs $300 without a monitor. Seems no mystery to me why each costs what it does...
...are not really interested in consumers "getting to" their music without paying for it--except in certain promotional aspects.
Secondly, the artists sign contracts with the Music companies which empowers and benefits both parties and is entirely voluntary.
Third, if you download a digital song from the Internet it is saved on a physical medium called your hard drive. You can then copy it from that physical medium to another called a CD, if you choose. Seems to me we aren't quite ready yet to begin telepathically projecting music to each other, so until then there will always be some kind of physical media involved in the process and a very physical electronic player device as well (so that we may hear it with our physical ears)...;)
Last, how would a fee-based P2P network work? Sort of like Amway? *chuckle*....;) Somehow I think everyone's looking for something a little more direct. What the big music producers are looking for is a way to cut out the middleman retailer, and the Internet looks like the ticket to some degree.
Try them and see. All of the "powered-by" ATI cards are built on the same reference design that the "built-by" cards are built on. Can't see why they wouldn't work.
It's just like nVidia--only nVidia doesn't build it's own brand. All of the various "powered-by" nVidia cards are built off of the same reference design furnished by nVidia--hence nVidia's drivers work with them all.
Mostly, the "differences" between brands of cards using the same GPUs are cosmetic and done to differentiate for marketing purposes only.
...This is the kind of resulting nonsense you can expect--laws, laws, and more laws--a virtual feeding frenzy for lawyers. And of course the private citizen and his freedoms are relegated to the bottom of the stack.
So thank you SUN, and thank you Netscape, for spending all of thise millions of $$ lobbying on Capitol Hill to convince the government how evil Microsoft is (all so that you could maybe get a leg up competitively.) As an offshoot of all of this everything we know as "digital" will slowly but surely fall under the government's domain, and there will be plenty of laws and plenty of work for lawyers from here on out. And the rights of consumers and citizens will be trampled. The irony is it's all done "for the public good", isn't it?
...I see no direct evidence presented in the article which even begins to prove that these kinds of caps are going to be implemented in the near future--by Comcast/AT&T.
Rather the article sounds like speculation based on the merger. I am sure that the new company is "looking at" a wide variety of things. That's a long way from implementing them, however.
Basically, in the current economic climate I think they'd be nuts to rock the boat by implementing something like caps charges. Seems to me that by restricting up/down bandwidth they are already effectively curtailing most of the abuse.
Not one living soul in the great US of A *HAD* to buy Windows XP this year. No sir, not a single, solitary soul. Not one.
And please spare me the rot--"Oh, yes you did! If you wanted to get good deals elsewhere, then you HAD to buy it!"--because that's for the birds--a real looney tune, if you know what I mean.
People, the only things you HAVE to do in this world are pay taxes and expire. That's it. The rest, including Windows, is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL.
Now that hopefully we have that fundamental reality quite squared away...LOOK at all of the people who did buy WinXP this year--NOT because they "had to" but becasue *gasp, shudder* they WANTED to buy it!
What a novel concept, huh? Imagine that--a product comes out that people don't HAVE to have and people buy it anyway just because they WANT to. Wow, and double wow--I've never heard of such a thing before, have you? (Thick, syrupy sarcasm.) More sarcasm:
And of course we know that PEOPLE NEVER BUY THINGS THEY DON"T HAVE TO HAVE--ever--and the only reason people might DO THIS AWFUL THING is because Microsoft is FORCING THEM AGAINST THEIR WILLS THROUGH A PROGRAM OF DECEIT AND CHICANERY to buy WIndows XP when the truth is people *really, really* don't want it or need it! (Mountains of sarcasm and ridicule.)
EVEN MORE SARCASM:
All consumers who bought Windows XP are idiots, with no will power, and mere shills for the black-hearted, immoral, God-forsaken and cursed corporation known as Microsoft. (Continents of sarcasm.) Still more sarcasm to come:
Oh it gets worse, people! Microsoft has been labeled as Evil by the Federal Government (itself a soft-hearted entity who rarely even pushes people to pay their taxes, vote, or anything else)--therefore EVERYBODY KNOWS that Microsoft is supposed to LOSE MONEY and if the company MAKES MONEY why this is STARK PROOF of the rotten, reprobate nature of this God-damned corporation. (Oceans of sarcasm, and yes, more to come...)
CAN you believe, people, that Microsoft makes an 86% PROFIT (shudder, jeer, boo!) from selling--*gasp*--SOFTWARE???? I mean, so many EXPERTS have chimed in here to say that YOU CAN"T MAKE THAT KIND OF MONEY SELLING SOFTWARE UNLESS YOU ARE A BLACK_HEARTED THUG RIPPING OFF OLD LADIES WHILE THEY CROSS THE SIDEWALKS!!!!! NO--the EXPERTS tell us that a SOFTWARE COMPANY "should" make around a FOUR PERCENT PROFIT selling SOFTWARE!!!!! GOd bless them every one for being such righteous paragons of Holiness that they can lead us all to the promised land so that we don't wind up in Hell alongside Microsoft!!!
(Planets of sarcasm with still more to come)...
WHO would ever have dreamed the sinful thought that SOFTWARE COMPANIES MAKE HIGHER PROFITS THAN HARDWARE COMPANIES BECAUSE AFTER THE DEVELOPMENT COSTS ARE PAID FOR THERE REMAIN FEW EXPENSES TO SELLING IT OTHER THAN THE MEDIA IT SHIPS ON AND A FEW OTHER MINOR COSTS! Oh, thank goodness we have all been led to the light--and now we know the TRUTH--THAT any SOFTWARE COMPANY OF THE FACE OF THE EARTH SHOULD MAKE A FOUR_PERCENT PROFIT AND ANYTHING MORE COMES OF WICKEDNESS AND EVIL!
(To tell you the truth there isn't enough sarcasm in all the known Universe to cover the ignorance and stupidity I'm seeing expounded by SOME--thank goodness not all--people on this "issue.")
YOu absolutely DO HAVE TO BUY THE COKE WITH THE BURGER (and possibly Frensh Fries, too), IF you want to get the most for your money. McDonalds calls them Value Meals.
Man, where did some of you grow up? In Siberia? You don't sound as if you know the first thing about the money you spend every day.
He also said things like:
"If your neighbor demands your shirt, not only give him your shirt but your coat as well," and "If your neighbor compells you to go with him a mile go not one, but two," and "Return not evil for evil" and "Overcome evil with good," and many, many other things that speak to the basic human condition in a universal sense. A great deal of what Jesus said defies cultural boundaries and can't properly be diluted or negated by the anecdotal cultural suppositions historians are fond of making. Indeed, the entire Gospel accounts are of Christ and His Disciples reaching far beyond the cultural limits of their day. Much of Christ's own ministry was a cultural slap in the face to his own society because He taught that so much of their present culture was founded on untruths.
But "sending a bill" seems out of the purview of these instructions, as I can't see how sending a bill is either right or wrong. Rather, Christ always de-emphasized ego whenever possible, and He definitely did teach a subservience to God.
Also, I don't see how his former boss calling him and demanding help could be classified as an "attack" upon him in any way. It's merely a request which he could choose to accept or not as he would. I think his question had to do with whether or not telling his former boss to take her problem and put it where the sun don't shine would have been an appropriate response. Frankly, I don't see how this situation rises to the level of the kind of decision Jesus was talking about when he talked of "Turning the other cheek." In any event I think he made the right decision in choosing to help his former boss, and one that certainly speaks very well of his character, as I think the natural response of "take your job and shove it" would have been far easier to do than what he did when he decided to help her.
Like Microsoft has $100,000,000,000 in loose change just lying around. *chuckle* Ah, if only I had a nickel for all of the M$ fantasies floating around--I'd have more money than M$...!...;)
This is a beancounter's idea, obviously--someone who thinks Linux is "free" *chuckle*...
Microsoft truly is one of those companies which is damned if it does, damned if it doesn't...How many times have we heard the same vociferous group of people decry the "security holes" in Windows and curse Microsoft to the nether regions for being lax in their estimation? [Note: by far the majority of "security holes" are found by individuals and universities who are paid by Microsoft to find them, and they are often of such an obscure nature, requiring such an obscure chain of events to manifest, that it's no surprise few if any of them have ever been exploited by the elusive "hacker" in our midst.]
Yet, the same group now decries Microsoft's efforts to take those very steps by saying: "Hey, Microsoft, we want security and all of that--but hey--not if it breaks our older applications--we don't want it *that* bad!"
Jeeps. What a crock. Like one person earlier said, 99% of the security equation revolves around end users and the skill of system administrators. But isn't it just like the common public to want to keep its cake and eat it, too? Sure, it is.
It's gratifying to see that someone out there has awakened to the reality that the people suing Microsoft aren't necessarily angels suing to have their halos and wings restored. In point of fact, some of the companies suing Microsoft would exert a far harsher regimen of "control and conquer" than Microsoft has ever thought about doing. "Better the Devil you know than the one you don't," as the saying goes. The fact is there are a lot worse companies out there than Microsoft--a lot worse. These suits by these companies are not an objection to what Microsoft has done--they're an objection that Microsoft did it and the other guys didn't get the chance to do it first.
In the wake of the anti-Microsoft DOJ trial and associated developments, most people are confused as to what was done that was deserving of all that attention, time, and money on the part of the government.
Many of them construe that there must be something inherently "wrong" with an Operating System in general as a result. So we get this type of character climbing out of the woodwork to brilliantly proclaim that we don't "need those evil operating systems" anymore--all we need to see are documents....;) That way, the evil Operating System is dealt with and disposed of. *chuckle* As if we don't have enough Looney Tunes running around...!
Just what does this guy plan to use as the interface between his document software and the hardware the documents are displayed on? Obviously, the poor fellow hasn't a clue as to how computers work and what the function of operating systems are.
In a sense this reminds me of the amusing premise that Netscape bandied about several years ago. The idea, according to Netscape, was that we don't need OS's--all we need are browsers--and I remember well the company's "We will bury Windows" comments at the time. I thought it was amusing that while all of this was going on by far the largest distributed network for Netscape was Windows platforms...;) In fact, you could say that Windows created a market big enough for Netscape to get big enough to say "We don't need Windows anymore"...;) That didn't work out too well for Netscape, it seems.
Anyway, I'm surprised we don't hear more of this kind of quackery, frankly.
The fact has always been that SUN has been fighting Microsoft all along to protect what SUN deems is SUN's monopoly--the insanely high-priced server market. This is the grudge that SUN has always held about Redmond--it sees Microsoft as setting dangerous precedents for cheap and powerful software (compared to SUN's) which runs on cheap and powerful hardware (by AMD, Intel, and scores of other companies.) The combination is a death-knell for SUN's operational MO. And SUN has seen the writing on the wall for quite some time. SUN thinks that it ought not to have to compete with Microsoft in the market SUN thinks it has some privileged access to, and SUN will do everything within its power to destroy Microsoft. The way that SUN sees it, its present business model is doomed if Microsoft continues making better software and selling it at unbelievably cheap prices (according to SUN's prices.) Note that while Microsoft was stuck in the Win3.x era that SUN had barely a comment to make about Microsoft one way or the other. It's only since Microsoft began shipping post Win3.x software that SUN went on the war path.
The irony here is that it's not Microsoft attempting to stifle competition--it's SUN! Now that the DOJ-Microsoft settlement has been confirmed, effectively answering the *real* problems the investigation uncovered, SUN's true aim in this matter since the beginning becomes (or ought to become) crystal clear. SUN has never been interested in either the "consumer" or the "free market" or "competition." SUN's motive has always been SUN's preservation of a market SUN has come to the twisted conclusion that it somehow "owns"--and SUN will brook no competition in that market.
Of course SUN will inevitably lose in the end since its vision is so fundamentally flawed. But it's interesting to see the true colors of the people pushing the anti-Microsoft governmental regulation now that the government has proved it's nobody's amiable dupe in corporate competitive struggles.
It's indeed invigorating to finally see that anti-competitive corporations like SUN and Netscape, after spending millions of dollars lobbying in Washington and hiring out the likes of Bob Dole and Judge Bork as paid, professional lobbyists--are in the end completely unsuccessful in using the government as a tool and a dupe to remove Microsoft as a competitor (as these companies were unable to do in the marketplace.)
It's gratifying to see that saner, cooler heads do, in the end, prevail. A lot of bad effects, not the least of which is the loss of public confidence in the technology sector, have come out of this decade-long drive by SUN and Netscape to run Microsoft out of business by slander, innuendo and accusation. It was always extremely naive of these companies to think that any negative effects from these actions would be neatly curtailed to Microsoft and would not spill out into the industry as a whole. Nothing good has come out of this suit for anybody, as far as I can see, and the best thing that has happened so far is that we are approaching the end of this embarrassing debacle (which saw grown men in front of Congress in televised hearings in which the topic of debate was not nuclear or biological disarmament, as the mood and emphasis would suggest, but rather THE EVILS OF THE INTERNET BROWSER INTERNET EXPLORER AND ITS THREAT TO ALL OF MANKIND.) Embarrassing is definitely the word.
In the recent years a few important things have been decided by our government which have actually helped me to start respecting it again--this is one of them. While the technology sector, of which I am undeniably a part, may wish to rend and tear itself to shreds in spasms of jealousy and envy, at least some of our government officials have their heads screwed on straight and are not nitwits to be manipulated by some highly paid snake-oil salesmen who served as lobbyists for companies like Netscape and SUN. Unfortunately, and predictibly, some of our government people were skillfully manipulated by appeals to their vanity achieved with an appreciation for their ignorance in technological matters, but in the end the ones with the real clout made the final decisions and have proven thmeselves to be anything but nitwits.
It's the first time in a long time I can say, "Three cheers for the government," and mean it. I *wish* I could say the same for the technology sector as a whole, but I can't.
Quote, unquote: "Since I can always remove the software, I agreed, but I noticed while he was flipping through the install, he was clicking 'agree' on every EULA that came up. ....Neither myself or anyone in my family agreed to the software; the cable guy did. And is there anyway to get cable companies to stop doing this as I can imagine since the cable company is a monopoly in this town, that the percentage of people who still have this software on their computers is pretty high."
Ummmm...."clicking through the Eulas" is the only way to install the software. If he wants "cable companies to stop doing this" he could have cancelled the install and thrown the "cable guy" out. And, yes, as he observed the cable guy "clicking through the Eulas" and did not throw him out he *did* agree to them. However, this is a moot point because the software is easily uninstallable and is not required for the cable modem to function properly.
Cable companies are frequently "monopolies" in towns because of the expense of laying new cable and maintaining it. You can't have 10 cable companies all laying 10 strands of cable on each telephone poll. Besides that, it isn't economical for a company to provide service in an area in which it cannot have a guaranteed customer base (not a guaranteed number of paying customers--that is entirely different), because of the expense involved in setting up the cabling to begin with. Towns frequently entertain "bids" by competing cable companies as to which company will provide the area with the best prices, service and choice prior to awarding the "contract" to a particular cable company. It's not a monopoly--it's a practicality.
Frankly, I grow a bit weary hearing people complain about non-issues like this. Usually, these complaints are based on a wide degree of ignorance and fear, just like this one. It would be a different matter if you couldn't uninstall the software and still use the modem. But you can, and that fact alone makes this much ado about nothing.
Aside from the fact that this article was very poorly written, it's difficult to understand what the author is so excited about. Between phrases like "dawn of a new era" and so on, the author makes a terrible, rotten case for why anybody should be excited about this at all. Basically, all I got out of it that was of seemingly immediate importance was the fact that the author seems to think thinner, longer drive cabling is revolutionary and heralds a new day in personal computing.
The article was extremely misleading in that it said next to nothing about the kind of drive technology to be used in SATA drives. Is this because the author doesn't know anything about these drives, or is it because the author knows there's nothing new whatever in the current SATA technology as far as the actual drives go except for the interface and cabling?
From what little I've read the first SATA drives are standard parallel IDE drives with serial interfaces. Is this approach supposed to make them run faster, or something? *chuckle* (facetious question)
Without some interesting new drive technology to make the interface change worthwhile, what's the point, here? *IS* there some point aside from thinner/longer cables???
A couple of days ago I saw a 200GB WD SE with 8 megs of cache. I'm already enjoying the benefits of RAID 0 + 1--the current IDE subsystems are *already* much faster than the drives they host. What's the problem? Cables? These days you can buy well-made rounded IDE cables (that are not simple ribbon cables folded, spindled, and mutilated.)
Maybe I'll become impressed when I can read more about the drive technology planned here and how it differs (if it does) from current IDE drive technology, but right now I'm not impressed at all. It's articles like these that definitely give SATA a "bad name"--if it in fact deserves something better.
I tried AOL for awhile back in 1995. Dropped it in 1996 and went to Earthlink because I realized I didn't need AOL--just access to the Internet. (Been on cable for the last couple of years.)
At last count I had approaching 25 "come back to AOL disks." They do make good coasters, but I don't need 25 coasters...;) I continue to receive them on a regular basis.
I've often wondered how much money AOL spends to send out these disks. Assuming a cost of $1 per disk, including postage (which might be low), AOL could be spending anywhere from $10M a year to $100M a year just sending out these disks and doing nothing else. Remarkable.
I'd love to know the percentage of "hits" AOL gets on a mail-out like this. The company must certainly consider them successful as they've made no effort to cease and desist--just got another one a couple of weeks ago.
The hypocrisy here is blinding. Apple runs switch ads so insulting to the intelligence that you wonder what kind of people might actually believe the drivel Apple paid these people to say...and a Microsoft employee decides to get "cute" and run a pun--but nobody has a sense of humor--the pun gets canned, the employee "sanctioned"--and the whole point of the pun is lost. It's horrific--the lack of a sense of humor in some people.
It's really scary sometimes. Talk about Microsoft "taking over the world" was always pretty funny to me (take it over how, through "Microsoft Bob" or the "Impotent Internet" that's all bark and no bite?) But now I see some people take all of that nonsense seriously...! Good grief, Microsoft doesn't even compete with Apple--and I don't mean just the relative size of the companies. Microsoft is a software company, Apple is a hardware company. Frankly, with as much guff as Microsoft suffers from the "Apple community" through making software to support Apple's OS and hardware, I don't know why Microsoft puts up with it. The sheer aggravation of it all isn't worth the tiny fragment of their sales that go to the Apple community. Worst of all, though, is that no one has a sense of humor anymore.
It's hard to see what one has to do with the other. Macs are great paperweights and conversation pieces for yuppies (who don't know a disk drive from a ram chip) to brag on when they say, "Oh, yea, I've got a computer at home, too!" Mac is all about the "how you look" crowd versus the "what you are" crowd. That's all true.
But...what's that got to do with making a parking lot out of Iraq? You can't honestly say the idea isn't appealing. "Tundra to Tarmac, Tomorrow"--what a great slogan. Either political party could run well with that one, seems like.
...anyone's freedom. The notion that I "need" to be able to make money by usurping someone else's creation is ludicrous. I say the Founding Fathers were exactly right in what they did.
What's happened though is that things are taken to excess and Congress, as usual, is way below the intellectual standard needed to make decisions like this. They think in terms of publicity, and in terms of financial contributions to their election campaigns, unfortunately. And, so the RIAA and the MPAA and all the rest are running wild and free, seemingly unfettered to crush small freedoms for the sake of the Almighty dollar.
That is what is so ludicrous about the entire position of the RIAA, etc. They seem to be suffering under the incredible delusion that every "illegitimate" copy made of their stuff is a lost sale. Why they have come to this rather idiotic conclusion is anybody's guess. It's not true that deprived of any other means people would be forced to buy this music, film, etc. Nope, most of them would exercise their remaining choice in the matter and refuse to buy it and simply live without it.
Doesn't the RIAA know that people who *want* this stuff badly enough to buy it are *already* buying it? The rest of them don't want it badly enough to pay for it, and deprived of any choice except paying for it, they'll choose not to pay for it and live without it. It's only when they perceive this stuff is "free" that it becomes worth having--it's not worth buying to the great majority of these people I'll wager.
It's kind of like software piracy. Miscrosoft bitches and moans about piracy and puts Product Activation into XP. The central problem with the argument, however, is that Microsoft got to its present position by selling non-Product-Activated Operating Systems! The contradiction is glaring, for if Microsoft had been victimized by software piracy on an institutional scale, the company would never have survived long enough to write Product Activation into XP, let alone long enough to write XP in the first place. Therefore, despite no controls on piracy at all, history convincingly demonstrates that the vast majority of Microsoft's customers want Microsoft's products badly enough to pay for them and did exactly that. There's simply no way to argue the negative there.
So here's what I think all of this is about, whether it's Microsoft's Product Activation or the RIAA's sabre rattling: GREED. Pure, old fashioned, unadulterated, unblemished GREED.
I think the position will backfire on the RIAA in a big way if it is successful in shutting off avenues of free distribution for those who will accept it no other way--it will likely do an extreme amount of damage to the industry it proclaims it is trying to protect, because the principles behind these issues are economically flawed in the first place.
To me the litmus test for copyright ought to be profit. If a copyright is broken for profit the breaker should be prosecuted. If there is no profit involved it should be a moot issue. The trigger to invoke copyright law should be profit and profit alone being made on the copyrighted works. If no profit is being made it then becomes exceedingly difficult for the copyright holder to prove damages since no one actually paid anything to obtain the copyrighted material.
In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think the trigger of the existing copyright laws is already profit and monetary gain. It seem to me that this is the "loophole" the RIAA and others hope to plug because they are proceeding from the patently false assumption that every copy out is a sale lost--which is absolutely untrue and therefore is an impossible proposition to prove.
I'll close with a message to Microsoft:
"OK, guys, you've had your fun and put PA into an OS. Therefore, you have eliminated any piracy of it and can therefore lower the prices as you've been saying for years. So when do we see the first $49.95 copy of Windows XP?"
Heh-Heh--my guess is that if they put chains on each CD and a microbomb in them to explode in case of copyright violation--we'd still never see the prices go down.
It strikes me that most current thinking on the viability of intelligent life other than humanity is exceedingly anthropomorphic. Note that while some of the very same people who find the notion of starfaring sentience crowding the galaxy to be a very rational notion, they find the notion of God to be irrational. If that isn't the same old humanist-centered thinking that's dominated mankind since the flat worlders, I don't know what it is.
When you get right down to it the only notion of extraterrestrial life most can stomach, or imagine, even, is the kind we could defeat in a face to face confrontation if it came down to that. I doubt we are anywhere near as progressed as you imagine in the sense of our ability to live in a non-man-centered universe.