As a result, US Debt is considered 0-risk. It is the ONLY debt instrument in the world that is considered zero risk. Even other government debt has a small implicit risk premium in it.
No debt is "0-risk." US Debt is widely (and accurately, in my opinion) considered the safest investment in the world. Even it, though, carries risk, however small that risk may be.
Amen to that. If I were in the market for an x86 desktop these days, I would go one of two routes: DP PIIIs or a P-M. I'd prefer the latter because of low power consumption and heat dissipation, despite performance that rivals P4s and Athlons.
What you say MS fears is called WebTV, and it failed, and anything like it will continue to fail over the short to medium term (five years, at least), for a variety of reasons, including the problems of the input device and the fact that not many people want to use their computer as their TV monitor. Not many people have HD capable TVs, and until they come down drastically in price, not many people will.
What MS really worries about, and what you got at least somewhat right, is the "Media Center" idea. Even that, though, strikes me as a flying car-type idea: one that sounds fascinating and is at least technologically feasible but never happens. The problems with the Media Center include, among other things, the fact that dedicated boxes for cable, movie-playback and sound seem to work better than one box (running Windows, no less) that is much more of a hassle to use. Furthermore, PVRs, even though they've been around for a few years, haven't really taken off. Most of the families I know that could afford a PVR and Media Center don't buy one, because what they have now works and probably works better than buying a Media Center and such.
I'm not sure what inspired MS to make the Xbox, but I don't think that your "conjecture" is on-target.
I think you missed one of the points the author was trying to make, which is that for smart, satisfied people, work and play generally merge into a single activity at which the individual is very, very good. That's how you get people who spend 80 hours per week programming and such. People whose work is play never have to work, and they seldom have to worry about money. The sooner one figures out how to make one's work one's play, the better off and happier that person will probably be.
Oh -- and how the hell do you find a consistent 10% return on investment? The stock market historically returns 7%, and that's about as risky as anyone should get for the long-term.
No, the stock market historically returned 11% with dividends reinvested. When quoting the 7% figure, you forgot to include the "no dividend reinvestment" caveat.
Of course, as my Vanguard account says, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Still, historically, American stocks are the best investment anyone can make. If you're curious about what makes some people rich and others poor, you should read The Millionaire Next Door, which also discusses things like market performance and why smart people invest.
He shouldn't be modded troll, he should be modded overrated because there is no -1, doesn't get it mod. The reason the iPod is so successful is iTunes, the iTunes Music Store and the iPod's small form factor. The iPod's ease of use is why it's so successful, not some kind of magical Apple marketing. Since he doesn't get that factor and doesn't address it in his post, he doesn't deserved to be highly moderated.
The issue is not the chip but the overall design. One very recent computer that's received too much press on/. comes without a fan. If someone started offering Pentium M motherboards, I'm sure we'd see plenty of quiet, fanless x86 systems, and the PM is a very fast chip. Give one a gig or two of RAM and a fast HD and it'll give most P4s a run for their money.
I don't think there has to be a perfect medium for teaching, but while I've loved reading since I learned to, I only liked gaming when I was a teenager. By the time I went to University, I'd had enough gaming -- but my passion for reading never abated. I realize anecdote != data, but virtually all of the most thoughtful, intelligent people I've met are also avid readers. This applies across all fields, and includes everyone from scientists to lawyers to teachers (of all subjects).
I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, in which a woman asked how to make her children great scientists. Einstein allegedly said "Read them fairy stories." When they had digested that and still hoped for a "real" answer, they would often ask again, "And after that?" And he would come back with: "Read them MORE fairy stories." I used Google to find this source. Somehow, had Einstein lived today, I doubt he would say "Give your child Doom 3."
That depends on how you paid and where the company is located. If they won't send you the source, you may be screwed. If you paid by check, you can try to stop payment, and if you paid by credit card you can reject the charge. If it's too late for either of those or if you paid by some other means, you might be out of luck. If the other party is in America you can try suing them, but that may or may not be worth the time and effort and you'll need a lawyer. If that person isn't in America, you probably won't be able to sue and collect.
The good news about being out of country is that the price is inexpensive. The bad news is that, if things go sour, you have almost no recourse or leverage.
Finally, next time I can only recommend you take this guy's advice. I realize that may not inspire much comfort now.
Exactly. Those of you curious should check out the About OSDL page, which lists Intel as a founding member.
Keep an eye on the North American members page, however, because that also lists AMD. So the two biggest x86 vendors both support Linux, at least to some degree.
I wouldn't be surprised if Intel actually prefers Linux users, because spending less money on software means more money leftover for hardware. A $1,000 laptop minus the $75 MST (Microsoft Tax) might mean an upgrade to the next chip level.
Don't forget, though, that the EULA must be reasonable. It's very unlikely that the first point about not being allowed to publish anything negative would hold up in court; same with the third. The fourth is unclear atm, because I don't think courts have established how the doctrine of first sale applies to software. Still, every time I go in Half Priced Books I see a fair amount of software for sale, so I suspect that if a company tried to enforce such a claues they'd quickly find defendents with sufficiently deep pockets to fight it out.
Keep in mind what TFA said: not just anything can go in an EULA and be legally binding. Courts are currently hashing out what is and isn't legally binding, and it'll probably be a while -- like a decade or two -- before they're done. In addition, so far as I know, no EULA cases have yet made it to the Supreme Court.
Besides, I was addresssing that dumbshits over general statement about laws and how the should be treated by the population. He is advocating that people be Sheep, and I can in no way agree with that.
I agree.
I don't believe that was ever the intent of th framers of the Constitution, and that is the highest Law of the Land, whether you like it or not.
What the framers of the Constitution intended has nothing to do with the rest of your post.
Yeah well, it's kind of a no-brainer if you spend 15 to 20 minutes in Reality as opposed to whatever pile of sand you've got your head buried in these days...
I'm not sure to what the "it's" in that sentence refers. Still, ad hominem attacks don't address the points I made.
What the RIAA is doing is blatently illegal. Why not suggest to them that they obey the law instead of trying lame snipes at the/. population. The Federal government is systematically and thoroughly violating ever precept of the founding documents of the nation and bragging about it in international media. Tell them to "work to change the law, but don't break it".
The article is about the U.S. Department of Justice, not the RIAA, since only the DOJ has the power to arrest and prosecute people. The DOJ enforces federal laws, including those governing copyright. I'm curious how the DOJ is violating "ever precept of the founding documents of the nation" [sic].
Also, as a side note, I followed the link to your website, and I'm curious how one gets to be an "Evil Overlord", per this statement: "0x0000 is a currently unemployed Evil Overlord..."
Remember that shipping is also going to cost much, much less. I remember reading an article about how it cost Apple way too much money to ship the iMac2, which is part of the reason a) they didn't make as much money as they would have liked (and could drop prices) and b) iMac3 is much lighter and slimmer, which makes it easier to ship.
Come on I've built many computers and it usually takes less then an hour. Take on a few for pricing components/ Frys run for most of the people here it is a loss of $50 or so. As another poster already said it is fun and education. Worst case it costs a few more hours another 100 or so.
Are you counting the cost of your time researching the parts and making sure you find the ones you want? Are you including the time necessary to ensure that all of them work together? Are you including the risk you take that the parts won't work together, and thus cost you more time troubleshooting? Are you including the cost of an operating system, if you choose a closed source one (this assumes that you aren't pirating it). In addition, you've learned how to put together a computer, and developing those skills took time. Most people lack such skills. Chances are, the computer isn't as inexpensive as you think.
I can't argue against the fun and education factors, because they're the best part (for the record I have rolled my own before). In addition, one gets to control exactly what goes in, which has its own value. On pure cost, however, I doubt most homebuilt computers are worth it these days. That goes doubly because homebuilt systems can't run OS X, which is, IMHO, the best consumer OS around these days.
The problem is that copyright laws are just (at least as originally intended -- I don't think they should be continually extended, but that's another story). The guys being arrested weren't making some kind of protest against copyright; they just took something for nothing. It's somewhat disingenuous to compare copyright infringement to the civil rights movement and the US government to the dictators.
IANAL, but as far as I understand, in the US it is legal for law enforcement to buy (or, in this case, copy) from someone who offers it to you. The closest precedent is probably buying drugs and then arresting seller, which is a legal tactic (in the sense that it's okay). What you're probably thinking of is entrapment, which would occur if a police officer tried to sell drugs to someone and then arrested them.
So downloading works in copyright from a public website is legal, or very probably legal. What wouldn't be legal is sending an IM to one of the guys offering works in copyright and then nailing them for receiving it. That's part of the reason the entertainment industry lawyers are going after the guys distributing, not the ones downloading.
It probably won't happen until the Pentium M hits the desktop, and even then you may not be able to get a machine as inexpensive because of the cost of the chip.
This leads me in the direction of a rant about the dearth of the P-M for desktops, but that's for another thread. Still, I think it'll happen eventually, and that's when we'll start seeing x86 clones of the MM.
Do you have any links or information demonstrating IBM's desktop -- which is what I assume you mean -- push in southeast Asia? I haven't heard such a thing, and if it is true, I wonder how many people are buying -- particularly given that PPC won't run Windows.
I don't think it's going to happen. Almost everyone with PowerPCs in the non-embedded world (i.e. PC in the old sense) these days gets them from two places: Apple or in servers. Since that's unlikely to change in the near future, unless MS decides to port Windows to PPC, which is about as me being declared King of England.
It would be interesting, but so would a lot of more probable things. If you want an ultra-quiet, inexpensive G4, those now exist.
I'd say that though the "gap" between laptop and desktop power will not close in the short to intermediate term, it is narrowing, and the difference for most users is also shrinking. Computers in general are so powerful today that most users don't need all the power available. For users who are interested in office apps, light gaming, web browsing, cd burning, e-mail and a handful of other tasks, virtually any computer on the market will work. Those who play cutting-edge games, frequently compile large chunks of code or edit audio/video actually need the power, and those people are probably a minority of users.
While you may view laptops and desktops as separate entities, I suspect that, for most users, the two are merging because the as the price delta shrinks and the power available in a laptop becomes "good enough," it's not going to matter. There will always be a group of users who need every last mhz, but that group is shrinking (at least relative to the overall size of the market). Average users used to see tremendous gains in what was available every two years, but over the last five years, the relative increase in hardware ability has slowed to the point that anyone with a 1 Ghz+ chip, 512 MB of RAM and a 7200 RPM HD has a set up that is good enough for most tasks.
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No debt is "0-risk." US Debt is widely (and accurately, in my opinion) considered the safest investment in the world. Even it, though, carries risk, however small that risk may be.
I take it the "IANAA" (accountant and "IANAM" (mathematician) are implied.
Keep in mind, too, that Cocoa has hooks for Rendezvous, which probably makes an app like SubEthaEditor much easier to create.
The guy just above you asked more or less the same question, and a response answered to say that Firefix is still too slow for older Windows machines.
Amen to that. If I were in the market for an x86 desktop these days, I would go one of two routes: DP PIIIs or a P-M. I'd prefer the latter because of low power consumption and heat dissipation, despite performance that rivals P4s and Athlons.
What MS really worries about, and what you got at least somewhat right, is the "Media Center" idea. Even that, though, strikes me as a flying car-type idea: one that sounds fascinating and is at least technologically feasible but never happens. The problems with the Media Center include, among other things, the fact that dedicated boxes for cable, movie-playback and sound seem to work better than one box (running Windows, no less) that is much more of a hassle to use. Furthermore, PVRs, even though they've been around for a few years, haven't really taken off. Most of the families I know that could afford a PVR and Media Center don't buy one, because what they have now works and probably works better than buying a Media Center and such.
I'm not sure what inspired MS to make the Xbox, but I don't think that your "conjecture" is on-target.
I think you missed one of the points the author was trying to make, which is that for smart, satisfied people, work and play generally merge into a single activity at which the individual is very, very good. That's how you get people who spend 80 hours per week programming and such. People whose work is play never have to work, and they seldom have to worry about money. The sooner one figures out how to make one's work one's play, the better off and happier that person will probably be.
No, the stock market historically returned 11% with dividends reinvested. When quoting the 7% figure, you forgot to include the "no dividend reinvestment" caveat.
Of course, as my Vanguard account says, past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Still, historically, American stocks are the best investment anyone can make. If you're curious about what makes some people rich and others poor, you should read The Millionaire Next Door, which also discusses things like market performance and why smart people invest.
He shouldn't be modded troll, he should be modded overrated because there is no -1, doesn't get it mod. The reason the iPod is so successful is iTunes, the iTunes Music Store and the iPod's small form factor. The iPod's ease of use is why it's so successful, not some kind of magical Apple marketing. Since he doesn't get that factor and doesn't address it in his post, he doesn't deserved to be highly moderated.
The issue is not the chip but the overall design. One very recent computer that's received too much press on /. comes without a fan. If someone started offering Pentium M motherboards, I'm sure we'd see plenty of quiet, fanless x86 systems, and the PM is a very fast chip. Give one a gig or two of RAM and a fast HD and it'll give most P4s a run for their money.
I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, in which a woman asked how to make her children great scientists. Einstein allegedly said "Read them fairy stories." When they had digested that and still hoped for a "real" answer, they would often ask again, "And after that?" And he would come back with: "Read them MORE fairy stories." I used Google to find this source. Somehow, had Einstein lived today, I doubt he would say "Give your child Doom 3."
The good news about being out of country is that the price is inexpensive. The bad news is that, if things go sour, you have almost no recourse or leverage.
Finally, next time I can only recommend you take this guy's advice. I realize that may not inspire much comfort now.
Brilliant argument.
I agree with the poster to whom you are responding in that you are a troll, which posting history indicates.
Call back when you grow up - or get a clue - whichever comes first.
This statement is ironic, given the quote that opens my post.
Keep an eye on the North American members page, however, because that also lists AMD. So the two biggest x86 vendors both support Linux, at least to some degree.
I wouldn't be surprised if Intel actually prefers Linux users, because spending less money on software means more money leftover for hardware. A $1,000 laptop minus the $75 MST (Microsoft Tax) might mean an upgrade to the next chip level.
Keep in mind what TFA said: not just anything can go in an EULA and be legally binding. Courts are currently hashing out what is and isn't legally binding, and it'll probably be a while -- like a decade or two -- before they're done. In addition, so far as I know, no EULA cases have yet made it to the Supreme Court.
I agree.
I don't believe that was ever the intent of th framers of the Constitution, and that is the highest Law of the Land, whether you like it or not.
What the framers of the Constitution intended has nothing to do with the rest of your post.
Yeah well, it's kind of a no-brainer if you spend 15 to 20 minutes in Reality as opposed to whatever pile of sand you've got your head buried in these days...
I'm not sure to what the "it's" in that sentence refers. Still, ad hominem attacks don't address the points I made.
What the RIAA is doing is blatently illegal. Why not suggest to them that they obey the law instead of trying lame snipes at the /. population. The Federal government is systematically and thoroughly violating ever precept of the founding documents of the nation and bragging about it in international media. Tell them to "work to change the law, but don't break it".
The article is about the U.S. Department of Justice, not the RIAA, since only the DOJ has the power to arrest and prosecute people. The DOJ enforces federal laws, including those governing copyright. I'm curious how the DOJ is violating "ever precept of the founding documents of the nation" [sic].
Also, as a side note, I followed the link to your website, and I'm curious how one gets to be an "Evil Overlord", per this statement: "0x0000 is a currently unemployed Evil Overlord..."
Remember that shipping is also going to cost much, much less. I remember reading an article about how it cost Apple way too much money to ship the iMac2, which is part of the reason a) they didn't make as much money as they would have liked (and could drop prices) and b) iMac3 is much lighter and slimmer, which makes it easier to ship.
Are you counting the cost of your time researching the parts and making sure you find the ones you want? Are you including the time necessary to ensure that all of them work together? Are you including the risk you take that the parts won't work together, and thus cost you more time troubleshooting? Are you including the cost of an operating system, if you choose a closed source one (this assumes that you aren't pirating it). In addition, you've learned how to put together a computer, and developing those skills took time. Most people lack such skills. Chances are, the computer isn't as inexpensive as you think.
I can't argue against the fun and education factors, because they're the best part (for the record I have rolled my own before). In addition, one gets to control exactly what goes in, which has its own value. On pure cost, however, I doubt most homebuilt computers are worth it these days. That goes doubly because homebuilt systems can't run OS X, which is, IMHO, the best consumer OS around these days.
The problem is that copyright laws are just (at least as originally intended -- I don't think they should be continually extended, but that's another story). The guys being arrested weren't making some kind of protest against copyright; they just took something for nothing. It's somewhat disingenuous to compare copyright infringement to the civil rights movement and the US government to the dictators.
So downloading works in copyright from a public website is legal, or very probably legal. What wouldn't be legal is sending an IM to one of the guys offering works in copyright and then nailing them for receiving it. That's part of the reason the entertainment industry lawyers are going after the guys distributing, not the ones downloading.
This leads me in the direction of a rant about the dearth of the P-M for desktops, but that's for another thread. Still, I think it'll happen eventually, and that's when we'll start seeing x86 clones of the MM.
Do you have any links or information demonstrating IBM's desktop -- which is what I assume you mean -- push in southeast Asia? I haven't heard such a thing, and if it is true, I wonder how many people are buying -- particularly given that PPC won't run Windows.
It would be interesting, but so would a lot of more probable things. If you want an ultra-quiet, inexpensive G4, those now exist.
While you may view laptops and desktops as separate entities, I suspect that, for most users, the two are merging because the as the price delta shrinks and the power available in a laptop becomes "good enough," it's not going to matter. There will always be a group of users who need every last mhz, but that group is shrinking (at least relative to the overall size of the market). Average users used to see tremendous gains in what was available every two years, but over the last five years, the relative increase in hardware ability has slowed to the point that anyone with a 1 Ghz+ chip, 512 MB of RAM and a 7200 RPM HD has a set up that is good enough for most tasks.