While that software may very well run on both OSes, Windows comes with a license fee for the OS itself which is not insignificant. Four machines running the most basic model of a supported Windows version is between $100 and $200 per license meaning you're paying between $400 and $800 just for the OS.
On top of that, you eventually move out of support, and are forced to spend more money upgrading to the next version of Windows (in the case of Vista between $200 and $400 per license for an upgrade total of $800 to $1600). When the new version of Windows fails to support the old software (like Quicken and Turbo Tax) then you're forced to purchase the new versions of that as well.
With Linux you are not forced into an upgrade cycle (barring critical security flaws on an old kernel version that is no longer supported -- older than 2.4) and even if you are, it costs you nothing. If Intuit provided Quicken/TT for Linux then an upgrade of the kernel is rather unlikely to break Quicken, but even if it does, you can run Quicken from within a chroot jail using an older version of the kernel that still works. Again, all this is accomplished at only the cost of the software (Quicken) were it provided for Linux.
If you search around a bit (Google cache helped here) you'll see that it wasn't a nudie picture he was embarrassed about, it was his entire bit on Hannity and Colmes where they verbally beat him down for badmouthing our troops. He figured that he owned his own image and that somehow the DMCA gave him the power to prevent the reproduction of his image in that broadcast.
Naturally you don't own the copyright to your image if someone else takes a picture of you and you sign a waiver giving up your copyright to that particular image and likeness.
In the end, he's just a sad, disillusioned jerkoff who does things the American Way(TM) - without thinking about or understanding his actions.
I concur. A good friend of mine has been a self-proclaimed atheist for as long as I've known him and at times he will become as fervently anti-theist as Jerry Falwell is religious. His fervency ebbs and flows, but he is always ready and willing to argue with a religious person about why God can't exist and why the other person is wrong in their belief.
On the other hand, I consider myself agnostic in that as I see no way to empirically prove or deny the existence of God, I choose to live my life without the constraints of any formalized religion. This does not mean I deny the possibility that I'm wrong, but it means that I will not live my life under the assumption of something I can't prove and would not otherwise improve the quality of my life as I see it.
That being said, I still have faith in people more often than not. I find it hard to believe in a God who would impose as many restrictive rules on his creation as religion would imply, but even if that were the case and I am wrong, I do not agree with God's tactics and as he has apparently given me the gift of free will, I choose to exercise it and make my own moral choices not based on dogma and religious pressure.
But would you agree or disagree that the amount of work listed in this article's teacher's weekly homework list was excessive for 2nd graders? I know by 5th grade I had homework that I was expected to do along the lines of what you have suggested, but I don't recall any significant homework in 2nd grade besides perhaps a list of spelling words to review for the weekly spelling test.
While I think children need to learn and homework helps reinforce their in-class education at home, I also think they need to have time to be children, particularly during elementary school years (K-6).
VOGEL glances up and recognizes INDY who quickly punches Vogel in the face, knocking him toward the window. In another quick move, Indy TOSSES HIM OUT THE WINDOW onto the tarmac below.
If and when Newegg goes public, that will be the beginning of the end. Publicly traded companies have an obligation by law to increase shareholder value and the market can be very demanding. More often than not when a company goes public it's because of one of two reasons:
1. they have gotten too big and are federally mandated to go public due to their size 2. they are in some dire straits and need the cash infusion that they can't get from elsewhere
In either case, going public is likely to introduce new cost-cutting measures and policies that reduce the overall quality of the services / products until it becomes just another corporate chain that acts like all the other corporate chains (overseas customer service, crappy return / refund policies, etc.).
I'm surprised Google has been able to hold out against these corporate pressures for as long as they have since going public, but rest assured, it will happen even to Google when their stock price comes down off it's inflated high.
If the east coast gets lucky, Fry's will move in to take the place of CompUSA.
As it stands though, in my city (roughly 1 million people) we only have Best Buy, Circuit City, and a handful of local chains all of which gouge substantially - especially the local chains that play off the "we're local, we're better" mentality and charge 50-100% more than the chains with poorer customer service (believe it or not).
CompUSA may not have been the best (I'd never ask their employees for technical advice) but they did have weekly specials on recordable media, hard drives, and other things at very low prices (or free) after rebate with an online rebate tracking site. Also, CompUSA is the only place around here that sells PC components such as fans, heatsinks, various modding supplies, and so forth. Their selection isn't huge, but if you need a replacement fan TODAY because the one on your CPU died, you could get it. BB and CC don't have that or if they do it's only a handful of items from one vendor.
If you look even more closely at the box those "HDCP Ready" cards actually say that they can't play HDCP content without yet another piece of the puzzle. But in any case, the point is not what can carry HDCP, the point is why do we need another expensive type of cable? I can make four 25 foot coaxial RCA-style cables for about $15. If I match of three of them together I have a 25' component video cable for dirt cheap. I'm quite certain making your own HDMI cable is out of the question though I know you can still make your own DVI cable at a slightly higher cost per cable.
Video cables are sensationally priced to start with, the last thing we need is a new type of cable that costs about $2.50 per foot that has no real benefit over the existing cabling.
I mention the DRM because in my mind it's still a reason I don't move to HD. Even if this were the Newsweek Forums I'd have it in my list. Are you suggesting that since Slashdotters are so embedded in groupthink that DRM isn't really a problem - we just like to complain about it for the sake of being whiny?
I never stated that I was opposed to HDMI because of DRM, however it has been inextricably tied to it in that the movie studios have strong-armed manufacturers into producing players that only send out HD signals over the HDMI interface even if that device has a component video or DVI output.
My biggest gripe about HDMI itself is its a pointless shift in cabling designed for no other purpose than to make me shell out a bunch of money for "upgrades". I've never been given a convincing reason why HDMI is better than component video or DVI, both of of which have longer lengths of cable and are cheaper to produce than HDMI.
And I will wait until HD is consistent both in availability of content and quality of content. The major problems I have with HD right now include:
Costs more than standard content
Just 'cause it's shown in HD doesn't mean it was filmed that way
HD standards keep changing -- my HDTV has DVI and component video, but by the time HD actually hit HDMI is the only acceptable transport/connection for anything over 480p
HD is far from regulated -- the government can't even put its foot down to require digital broadcast signals
HD is locked in so much DRM even with a bunch of supposedly compliant hardware I've still seen it fail
For these and other reasons I'll stick with standard definition DVDs -- widescreen perhaps, but standard def. I have zero incentive to move to HD any time soon. If they really wanted people to adopt it, they'd give it away for free or at an extremely low cost to get it in everyone's hands to ensure its success (or at least market penetration).
The only completely secure OS is going to be one that cannot be modified in any way by the user. Once you start letting the user make changes to parts of the operating system or the way it behaves, then you introduce the potential for that user to either maliciously alter the OS or to foolishly alter the OS in a way that others can maliciously alter it.
This is no cure for stupidity and ignorance except through education, but it's a pipe dream to think that all computer users will one day be completely educated on the subject. The best we can strive for is a system that minimizes the effects of malicious intent on the greater network.
3) It's solving a symptom and not any of the actual problems (e.g. hosts being compromised to send spam).
There is no technological solution to a social problem. If we wanted to seriously reduce spam, everyone would be using public key encryption / signing and signing keys of people / companies they trust. In that world, if you started receiving spam from someone in your network, you simply drop their trust level (partially or completely) and then the software simply junks (or refuses to deliver) untrusted mail.
It's still a problem in that scenario because untrusted agents are sending mail to lots of people and the servers still are burdened with processing the mail, but it now becomes much harder for a spammer to successfully deliver a spam mail because it won't have been signed with a trusted party's key.
Not really, because their DRM scheme either becomes a publicity nightmare (like Sony's rootkit) or it gets cracked very shortly after it's released and all those months (or years) of research and development are for naught, forcing them to start over again from scratch.
I view DRM scheme creators in a similar light to anti-virus software makers: their task is never-ending because they are attacking the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself and it's a very thankless job.
So that means that if I get a DVD decrypter (illegally) and rip all my DVDs to my hard drive removing the encryption in the process...as long as I don't get caught with the decrypter software there's nothing they can do to me after the fact (since they've explicitly stated over and over again, what they care about are the circumvention tools, not the material after it has been accessed).
Slashdot Mirror
BOFH is that you?
While that software may very well run on both OSes, Windows comes with a license fee for the OS itself which is not insignificant. Four machines running the most basic model of a supported Windows version is between $100 and $200 per license meaning you're paying between $400 and $800 just for the OS.
On top of that, you eventually move out of support, and are forced to spend more money upgrading to the next version of Windows (in the case of Vista between $200 and $400 per license for an upgrade total of $800 to $1600). When the new version of Windows fails to support the old software (like Quicken and Turbo Tax) then you're forced to purchase the new versions of that as well.
With Linux you are not forced into an upgrade cycle (barring critical security flaws on an old kernel version that is no longer supported -- older than 2.4) and even if you are, it costs you nothing. If Intuit provided Quicken/TT for Linux then an upgrade of the kernel is rather unlikely to break Quicken, but even if it does, you can run Quicken from within a chroot jail using an older version of the kernel that still works. Again, all this is accomplished at only the cost of the software (Quicken) were it provided for Linux.
I think the GP's point still stands.
If you search around a bit (Google cache helped here) you'll see that it wasn't a nudie picture he was embarrassed about, it was his entire bit on Hannity and Colmes where they verbally beat him down for badmouthing our troops. He figured that he owned his own image and that somehow the DMCA gave him the power to prevent the reproduction of his image in that broadcast.
Naturally you don't own the copyright to your image if someone else takes a picture of you and you sign a waiver giving up your copyright to that particular image and likeness.
In the end, he's just a sad, disillusioned jerkoff who does things the American Way(TM) - without thinking about or understanding his actions.
...what can go wrong?
I concur. A good friend of mine has been a self-proclaimed atheist for as long as I've known him and at times he will become as fervently anti-theist as Jerry Falwell is religious. His fervency ebbs and flows, but he is always ready and willing to argue with a religious person about why God can't exist and why the other person is wrong in their belief.
On the other hand, I consider myself agnostic in that as I see no way to empirically prove or deny the existence of God, I choose to live my life without the constraints of any formalized religion. This does not mean I deny the possibility that I'm wrong, but it means that I will not live my life under the assumption of something I can't prove and would not otherwise improve the quality of my life as I see it.
That being said, I still have faith in people more often than not. I find it hard to believe in a God who would impose as many restrictive rules on his creation as religion would imply, but even if that were the case and I am wrong, I do not agree with God's tactics and as he has apparently given me the gift of free will, I choose to exercise it and make my own moral choices not based on dogma and religious pressure.
But would you agree or disagree that the amount of work listed in this article's teacher's weekly homework list was excessive for 2nd graders? I know by 5th grade I had homework that I was expected to do along the lines of what you have suggested, but I don't recall any significant homework in 2nd grade besides perhaps a list of spelling words to review for the weekly spelling test.
While I think children need to learn and homework helps reinforce their in-class education at home, I also think they need to have time to be children, particularly during elementary school years (K-6).
INDY: Fahrscheine meine Herr.
VOGEL: Weg.
INDY: Tickets please.
VOGEL: (in German) Was?
VOGEL glances up and recognizes INDY who quickly punches Vogel in the face, knocking him toward the window. In another quick move, Indy TOSSES HIM OUT THE WINDOW onto the tarmac below.
(Shocked Passengers blink in bewilderment.)
INDY: No ticket!
If and when Newegg goes public, that will be the beginning of the end. Publicly traded companies have an obligation by law to increase shareholder value and the market can be very demanding. More often than not when a company goes public it's because of one of two reasons:
1. they have gotten too big and are federally mandated to go public due to their size
2. they are in some dire straits and need the cash infusion that they can't get from elsewhere
In either case, going public is likely to introduce new cost-cutting measures and policies that reduce the overall quality of the services / products until it becomes just another corporate chain that acts like all the other corporate chains (overseas customer service, crappy return / refund policies, etc.).
I'm surprised Google has been able to hold out against these corporate pressures for as long as they have since going public, but rest assured, it will happen even to Google when their stock price comes down off it's inflated high.
Definition: femtosecond (n.) - the amount of time it takes a fem-bot to ready its nipple guns and start firing.
If the east coast gets lucky, Fry's will move in to take the place of CompUSA.
As it stands though, in my city (roughly 1 million people) we only have Best Buy, Circuit City, and a handful of local chains all of which gouge substantially - especially the local chains that play off the "we're local, we're better" mentality and charge 50-100% more than the chains with poorer customer service (believe it or not).
CompUSA may not have been the best (I'd never ask their employees for technical advice) but they did have weekly specials on recordable media, hard drives, and other things at very low prices (or free) after rebate with an online rebate tracking site. Also, CompUSA is the only place around here that sells PC components such as fans, heatsinks, various modding supplies, and so forth. Their selection isn't huge, but if you need a replacement fan TODAY because the one on your CPU died, you could get it. BB and CC don't have that or if they do it's only a handful of items from one vendor.
I'm going to miss CompUSA.
- WinCE vs. PalmOS => Winner: PalmOS
- XBox 360 vs. Playstation 3 => Winner: XBox 360
- Internet Explorer vs. Netscape => Winner: Internet Explorer
- Doubledisk/Doublespace vs. Stacker => Winner: Stacker
- Windows vs. OS/2 => Winner: Windows
See? Microsoft doesn't always win!So I guess GMail is out of the picture for schools and libraries.
If you look even more closely at the box those "HDCP Ready" cards actually say that they can't play HDCP content without yet another piece of the puzzle. But in any case, the point is not what can carry HDCP, the point is why do we need another expensive type of cable? I can make four 25 foot coaxial RCA-style cables for about $15. If I match of three of them together I have a 25' component video cable for dirt cheap. I'm quite certain making your own HDMI cable is out of the question though I know you can still make your own DVI cable at a slightly higher cost per cable.
Video cables are sensationally priced to start with, the last thing we need is a new type of cable that costs about $2.50 per foot that has no real benefit over the existing cabling.
I mention the DRM because in my mind it's still a reason I don't move to HD. Even if this were the Newsweek Forums I'd have it in my list. Are you suggesting that since Slashdotters are so embedded in groupthink that DRM isn't really a problem - we just like to complain about it for the sake of being whiny?
I never stated that I was opposed to HDMI because of DRM, however it has been inextricably tied to it in that the movie studios have strong-armed manufacturers into producing players that only send out HD signals over the HDMI interface even if that device has a component video or DVI output.
My biggest gripe about HDMI itself is its a pointless shift in cabling designed for no other purpose than to make me shell out a bunch of money for "upgrades". I've never been given a convincing reason why HDMI is better than component video or DVI, both of of which have longer lengths of cable and are cheaper to produce than HDMI.
Perhaps they Verizon now?
And I will wait until HD is consistent both in availability of content and quality of content. The major problems I have with HD right now include:
For these and other reasons I'll stick with standard definition DVDs -- widescreen perhaps, but standard def. I have zero incentive to move to HD any time soon. If they really wanted people to adopt it, they'd give it away for free or at an extremely low cost to get it in everyone's hands to ensure its success (or at least market penetration).
Webstandards perhaps?
The only completely secure OS is going to be one that cannot be modified in any way by the user. Once you start letting the user make changes to parts of the operating system or the way it behaves, then you introduce the potential for that user to either maliciously alter the OS or to foolishly alter the OS in a way that others can maliciously alter it.
This is no cure for stupidity and ignorance except through education, but it's a pipe dream to think that all computer users will one day be completely educated on the subject. The best we can strive for is a system that minimizes the effects of malicious intent on the greater network.
There is no technological solution to a social problem. If we wanted to seriously reduce spam, everyone would be using public key encryption / signing and signing keys of people / companies they trust. In that world, if you started receiving spam from someone in your network, you simply drop their trust level (partially or completely) and then the software simply junks (or refuses to deliver) untrusted mail.
It's still a problem in that scenario because untrusted agents are sending mail to lots of people and the servers still are burdened with processing the mail, but it now becomes much harder for a spammer to successfully deliver a spam mail because it won't have been signed with a trusted party's key.
Do you by any chance employ a bespectacled male with a striped tie that won't lay flat and several other over-worked and under-motivated employees?
If so, I'm available for some contract work, but it'll require a trip out to may native Elbonia (as I don't have the means to leave here).
Not really, because their DRM scheme either becomes a publicity nightmare (like Sony's rootkit) or it gets cracked very shortly after it's released and all those months (or years) of research and development are for naught, forcing them to start over again from scratch.
I view DRM scheme creators in a similar light to anti-virus software makers: their task is never-ending because they are attacking the symptoms of a problem, not the problem itself and it's a very thankless job.
Don't you mean Tubenet?
Hee hee hee
So that means that if I get a DVD decrypter (illegally) and rip all my DVDs to my hard drive removing the encryption in the process...as long as I don't get caught with the decrypter software there's nothing they can do to me after the fact (since they've explicitly stated over and over again, what they care about are the circumvention tools, not the material after it has been accessed).