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User: RedAlert99

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  1. Re:Where's Larry? on US Couple Gets Prison Time For Internet Obscenity · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's an interesting version of history. It's not all true, but it's interesting.

  2. Re:Could be fun on Google Was 3 Hours Away From DOJ Antitrust Charges · · Score: 1

    Not only is the other poster correct that the definition of monopoly centers on having market power (not on being a "single source"), but also, many of the search engines you listed are not. Ask.com=Ask Jeeves. AOL uses Google under the hood.

    The others you listed are basically BS, too. Example: searching miva.com for "michael jordan" yields one hit, an ad. You call that a search engine?

  3. Re:Funny but True on AMD Introduces the Athlon XP 2200+ · · Score: 1

    Seriously you need to learn how to run your computer. I have a p2-350 with 384 ram. My internet explorer loads like lightning, and the only thing that slows it down is my internet connection. I know software bloat is out of control and all, but your computer shouldn't be *that* slow. You must have it set up wrong.

  4. Re:What do you expect on Greene's Grammy Speech Debunked · · Score: 1

    NAPSTER HAS NOT BOOSTED MUSIC SALES! I know some people have been saying this, but it's not even close to true. There are two strong pieces of evidence for this:
    1) The industry is struggling - they're having one of their worst years ever. They're doing much worse than... say... movie sales are. They're doing worse than most struggling industries in the economy. The sales of blank cd media now outpace the sales of published cd's.
    2) As another posted below noted - If they thought it was helping them - they wouldn't be fighting it. This is just a fact of nature.

    The correlation/causation problem is not what people think it is. Napster and comparable services have hurt the music industry (net sales) the whole time, but at first, their effect was smaller than the robust growth the industry was otherwise enjoying. Now that lots of people have burners, faster connections, etc... they are effectively stealing from the record labels, and hurting those businesses. This mistake was believing that somehow file sharing was *helping* the music industry.

    I'm not saying all this because I support the record execs. Lord knows the music industry (especially radio) is F***'ed up. But my point is that we have to be more realistic about this. The simplest answer, once again, is the right one. If people can get music for free - they're not paying for it. All this is illegal. It was a fantasy to doubt this.

    Andy

  5. Re:Game piracy = 100% loss?? on College Students Are Buying More, Warez-ing Less · · Score: 1

    If you could completely stamp out all piracy, they could lower the price and sell more. Part of the reason prices are so high is that creators have to make as much as they can on the people that DO buy games (law-abiders, big companies, gov, etc) because they know that whether the product is $20 or $40, the same people will still copy them illegally. The big company has to have legal copies, and can pay $40 for them, even though they'd obviously rather pay $20.

  6. Re:Pentium 4 Multithreading? on Itanium Update · · Score: 1

    It was not done ONLY to increase yield. It was also done to differentiate products and discriminate (in the economic sense) between buyers. Those who could afford it bought the the DX, others bought the SX, but it would've been too expensive to actually run completely separate fab lines, so they just disabled it on some, made less profit on those, but sold units they otherwise wouldn't have sold.

  7. Re:OT: Why does the US takes so long to get new te on Japanese I-Mode Phones Under Attack · · Score: 1

    It's not 1 to 2 year old tech. The technology is as modern in the US as in Japan (or often even newer in the US). It's 1 to 2 year old products. That explanation about translating stuff is BS. 1) It doesn't take very long to badly translate game subtitles. 2) It's not like the programmers are surprised and suddenly have to export the game to the US. They could plan for that in advance. The real reason it takes longer is simply that the companies have worked out these elaborate product cycles. They use the Japanese market to test things for the US market and to create free "advertising." If they suddenly jumped ahead 1 yr here, they would miss out on selling all the stuff that came in between. Companies everywhere withhold things from the market. Why do movies come out on different dates in different countries? Even when the speak the same language?

  8. Re:And Now a Word About Infrastructure on Japanese I-Mode Phones Under Attack · · Score: 1

    That's an interesting way to define the "worlds." Unfortunately, it's wrong, as is the previous poster. The first world is the western world (Europe and the US basically). The second world is the Soviet bloc. The third world is the non-aligned countries or the countries too poor to be involved much in the cold war.

  9. Re:They Don't *Always* Win on The Return Of Microsoft: Part Two · · Score: 1

    Ha ha... mac people are cute.

  10. Re:What are they thinking? on Launchcast Sued · · Score: 1

    Uh... you guys are missing the point. For every person who is now downloading movies, there are 100 people who can't find anything on napster anymore. 99 of these people haven't really been able to use anything else, or haven't tried.
    BTW - if you really knew what you were doing, you'd still be using Napster. It's very fast now that all the idiots are gone.

  11. Re:Makes sense on Launchcast Sued · · Score: 1

    No. You are wrong. Law protects freedom. Without freedom of expression, you are not free to make whatever music you want. Let's imagine an anarchical society. Now in this society, is it easier or harder for you to find music you like? You'd have to make it yourself, it'd be your only choice.

  12. Re:Has the author even played UO ?? on Lord British In The New Yorker · · Score: 1

    It was better. You should read the parts of the article you missed.

  13. Re:"nothing new here" on Lord British In The New Yorker · · Score: 1

    You're wrong. And, hopefully, you're not a teacher. I bet you think I can't start a sentence with "And."

  14. Re:Mike defined total file size himself on How I Completed The $5000 Compression Challenge · · Score: 1

    Absolutely Right! I can't believe none of the other posts I read (many) mentioned this. I'm sure the file that the Challenge-maker created was exactly 3Mb (or whatever it was supposed to be), not 3Mb less the overhead for the file-storage system. How am I sure of this? Because if he were going to send a file that had less than 3 Mb of data + the filename and whatnot, it *would* depend what OS he was using, and the challengee specifically asked if it had to run on multiple platforms or not. The defense Mike made was that that information (like filenames) is part of the data, and so in total, it's not smaller after the "compression" routine. However, that means, by his own definition, he didn't send the right "size" file to Patrick. Patrick may have violated the spirit of the challenge, but Mike VALIDATED his violation by using the same *wrong* definition of "file size."

  15. Re:The Bible's God on Creation: Life And How to Make It · · Score: 1

    Oh god. Can't you see how naive you are? It's like part of your brain got poisoned when you were little. I don't think the concept of a deity is necessarily trivial, but to think that someone's "experience with God" proves anything is ridiculous. People have experiences with Cocaine, too, of which they sometimes speak quite highly. Many people have "witnessed" the lochness monster. So neener neener, now because some crackheads believe in the lochness monster... you can never prove that wrong.

  16. Re:MOD THIS BITCH/HO/WHORE'S POST DOWN!!! on Yamauchi Puts the Game Industry In Its Place · · Score: 1

    Sorry Carl. She was right. The best translation for keiretsu in a single word is "conglomerate." That was all she was right about, though.

  17. Re:This is where Japanese business scores. on Yamauchi Puts the Game Industry In Its Place · · Score: 1

    The Japanese system is good at producing, but bad at innovation. They made good vcr's cheap, but somehow missed the internet completely. The reason they're not doing well is because they're not "catching up" anymore. When they were doing that, they knew what to produce, and did so efficiently. Now that they're forced to innovate and compete, the keiretsu system, with its massive and often slow-moving companies, is holding them back.

  18. Re:I don't need any justification on New Planetary Systems Stun Astronomers · · Score: 1

    So I guess if you ever have any good ideas, I might as well just steal them, because you don't care, it doesn't hurt you, etc... right? It doesn't matter that they belong to someone else. How about if you were selling a service and I just held a gun to your head and forced you to perform the service for free. Hell... I'm just hurting some business. I didn't take anything away from him, did I? I mean I didn't go through his normal billing process, but who cares?

    Saying you "don't care" is a rationalization.

  19. Re:Planet Definition, Planet 20% of oribiting body on New Planetary Systems Stun Astronomers · · Score: 1

    Then what is Earth? It's not 20% of the sun.

  20. Re:messed up on Tutoring A Child Prodigy? · · Score: 1

    That picture would have matched your comment well if it weren't fake. I know Einstein was a good guy, but that tongue doesn't look ANYTHING like real. And his eyes don't look right for someone who's sticking their tongue out.

  21. Re:Military is a waste of time on Messages From Democracy's Ghosts · · Score: 1

    For all purposes the army I served in was a complete waste of time and the people who have taken the 24 months or have gone to jail have been, in general, more intelligent, better educated and more productive members of the society than their counterparts in the armed service.

    That's a very arrogant point of view. I used to share it. I'll describe the thought process that lead to my abandonment of it.

    First I figured I shouldn't join the military because I'm too smart. I thought, from a purely pragmatic point of view, that I would serve the country better in industry or planning or whatever and not dying on a beach from a bomb blast or something.

    Then I thought about it some more. My next line of thought was this: if you had to choose between you dying or someone else dying, who would you choose to live? The smarter person? The more useful person? The more I thought about this the more I realized that you can only choose yourself to die, because you don't have the right to condemn other people to death, but you do, imho, have the right to decide your own fate. That made the question of military service different. Perhaps I should join so that no one else might die in my place. I can deal with my own death. But think of the sacrifice others might have to make for you. Could you deal with knowing you could've taken their place and saved a life, but didn't? I'm not saying all people who don't enlist should feel guilty, but they should respect the sacrifice others are making for them, even if those making the sacrifices are motivated by goals other than altruism. So when I think about it that way it seems to me that it's just as much my (as a smart person) duty to serve as it is Joe Blow's duty. Perhaps being in the army can make you a better person if you learn from it that on some level, everyone's equal, and IQ doesn't grant you a special elevated place in society. Hitler probably had an above average IQ.

    ...more productive members of the society than their counterparts in the armed service.
    Productivity can be measured in terms other than dollars. If someone "dumb" could've taken your place, wouldn't that seem mighty productive to you? Perhaps it was productive for you to serve because it left someone more humble to work in the civilian sector.

  22. Re:Problem is shift in function of politicians. on Messages From Democracy's Ghosts · · Score: 1

    That's why people shouldn't vote like this:

    1) Figure out what issues are important to them.
    2) Find that candidate who agrees on the highest number of these issues.
    3) Vote for that candidate.

    There are many reasons for this. One is that the hard issues are hard. Why are you more right about issues like abortion? Vote for a candidate who you think will do his/her best to make the right decision. In the long run, that's a lot safer than tallying issues. Honestly, how many people would've put Kosovo, relations with China, dealing with a surplus, etc... on their list before electing Clinton? Not many people. Everybody always focuses on the death penalty, abortion, etc... Those issues are important, but, honestly, I don't feel arrogant enough to think I know the right answers to all of them. Instead I choose to vote for whatever candidate I feel is the best positioned to make good decisions. The one who seems most honest, capable, and well-intentioned.

  23. Re:Actually you are incorrect on Messages From Democracy's Ghosts · · Score: 1

    The "representative" in representative democracy contains the enigma within itself. Does the politician simply pass on the will of 50%+1 voters, or represent them fully in the sense that he decides what's good for them. If the first way were the way we wanted it, we wouldn't need to elect anyone, we'd simply vote on everything. I agree with the other two responses here.

  24. Re:"Good way to fight"...? on Barenaked Ladies Battle Napster (But Not In Court) · · Score: 1

    That is a seriously weak argument. I'm all for open source, but do you think that just because something has been coded that said code belongs to anyone who wants it? How about a process for making a product. Once I've made it and told my workers how to make it, does it belong to you? Your real failing is to recognize that music is an invention/innovation/creation/product, like other products, and should be protected in more or less the same way as other products. Once you've seen a toaster on tv does that mean you have the right to own the toaster without paying for it? Even if say... your friend has it and you eat toast made in it... I'm aiming for a mp3-->radio analogy here, but I think I'm missing. Anyways... your argument is simplistic and retarded. If things were that simple we wouldn't need to have whole forums devoted to things like this.

  25. forgot the URL! on Please Do Not Harass Blizzard · · Score: 1

    hehe.. [red face] linuxport.members.easyspace.com