Exited from politics? Yeah so those speeches he's giving every week for moveon.org aren't political right? Give me a break. Quit defending the indefensible.
You're delusional if you think it's just the Republicans. The Dems are just as if not more guilty of it. Al Gore is on Apple's board of directors for christs sake. I'm so sick of the partisanship these days, you honestly think power hungry people i.e. politicians are ever innocent of pandering and profiteering? They ALL do it equally. John Kerry is the richest man to ever grace the senate, he's married to Teresa HEINZ Kerry, you know, the ketchup chick. They have billions, none of it he EARNED. He married the widow of a rich ketchup producer. I mean come on dude, do you not see the total BS you're dishing out?
TV's also have this thing called a "couch" going for them. I love my couch, it's much better than my computer chair. I also prefer a game controller to the repetitive stress injuries from my mouse and keyboard. Not every game is an FPS you know.
I think the Xbox is showing that with anti-aliasing resolution is moot, especially with HDTV sets.
...with Rendezvous. I want my mac to be my "digital hub". I should be able to play music and movies on it from anywhere in my home, likewise with games. I see no reason why game controllers can't be made wireless and why the video signal can't be sent to my TV on the otherside of the room or house. All the pieces are here, someone just needs to "make it work". Just imagine pluggin in your Mac/PC and having it autodiscover your TV, Phone, Stereo via wireless ethernet and bluetooth etc etc.
You're welcome to move there. It's a free country, you aren't beng stopped by anyone.
Do you honestly think this doesn't happen in other countries? France has an entire department in their government devoted to keeping the french language "pure". Every country does it, every race, every culture.
So you go run to europe where the grass is greener and shit doesn't stink. I'll stay here and laugh at you for being such an ignorant fool.
I'd take an invite. I'm a little curious what the hype is about, I did the livejournal thing when it was invite only and it never caught my fancy, but Okut seems interesting.
That's the right attitude but I don't see how it can be put into action. In a country where we can't teach our children to read, write or do math how are we going to teach them about sex, self respect, respect for others and responsability?
It has something to do with society/religion and consequences.
Firstly, sex can have some pretty bad consequences, for instance teenage pregnancy which severely handicaps young people. I know. I was a father at 19 and while I've gone on to great things many do not, especially in poorer communities. That said, young people who are not violent can watch violent movies and just be entertained, then shrug it off later. Young people however are naturally all VERY horny and extremely curious. Growing up I can remember plenty of "show me yours and I'll show you mine" moments. Stealing dads pornos, running out of the adult book shop porno movie securely stashed under the coat. Lots of awkward moments with girls etc etc. People are afraid easy access to this material will cause trauma, and the fact is that if it goes unchecked and without guidance it will. Imagine being 10 years old and seeing a japanese bukake video and thinking that's normal.
I'm not defending it, but people seem to think these days that sex has no consequences when it very clearly does. Young people are the least aware of these consequences and subsequently the most effected by them. Disease, pregnancy, disrespect of the opposite sex. The effects these activities have on education, emotional development and maturity. These are all real things and should not be neglected because you and others think sex is harmless.
"Sex like fire makes an excellent servant but a terrible master" - The Buddha
"They all run better on the Mac? Really? In term of what?"
You're a fucking retard. Look up the benchmarks yourself, they run better, all of them across the board. I wont do the research for you dick head.
"You have everything YOU need. Everyone else might not. I, for one, own an Opteron desktop in addition to my PowerBook because I can't get apps like Far Cry, Battlefield: Vietnam, and few others under OSX."
Oh poor baby, can't get his video games, oh no what ever will we do. Battlefield Vietnam is coming to the mac BTW, to bad you didn't look that one up. Every productivity app is on the Mac and quite a few that aren't or at least a viable alternative. Nice try reducing this to a "OMFG I CAN'T PLAY MY VIDEO GAMES" argument. Run away now moron.
"A balanced, best-of-all-worlds approach. Imagine that, huh?"
Yeah whatever. Fucktard.
"Really? Apple leads the market? I can get a Mac with dual optical drives? How about an X800 GPU like I have in my Boxx workstation? How about internal 10K RAIDed drives? From the hardware side, there's no question that the x86 world gets a leg up on Apple. Sorry, that's just the way it is."
Yes you can get all of that and more. Sorry, but as stated above, you're a fucktard.
"As for who's copying who, you need to realize that MS steals from Apple, and Apple from MS. Good ideas are borrowed all the time."
Do you just like hearing yourself or are you generally this fucking dumb? Fuck off now troll, you contributed nothing.
"Macs used to ship with all SCSI drives, but now ship with standard IDE."
No they ship with SATA. Try again.
"Quark runs on PC and mac. So does photoshop, so does every other major application put out by adobe."
They all run better on the Mac, and the vast majority of people using these apps are doing so on the mac. Your point is moot.
"Mac *WAS* the only choice a few years back."
Do you know what a render farm is? Do you think they design their CGI on a farm? Sorry junior, they are designed on macs, then SENT to a render farm to, get this, RENDER. That is all. And most render farms are now being built from G5's, like the one Pixar is now building.
"I don't see much difference in ease of use between MacOS and XP."
You obviously never used OSX.
"Why not just run BSD and get it over with?"
Because BSD doesnt have quartz, aqua etc etc etc. This shows your obvious ignorance to the subject.
"Between the lack of applications"
What lack of applications? I have everything I need, liteally.
"the constantly playing catch up with the PC"
Funny since it's apple who leads the market. Windows copies MacOSX, Apple made USB popular, widescreen displays, firewire etc etc etc.
"and the general FUD mac users like to spread"
No that's you. You don't even understand the subject matter yet pass these stupid ass comments off as facts.
"they're not all that bright"
Now that's funny.
"Most PC users I know use a PC because they don't buy into all that Mac FUD"
Lemmings?
You sir have serious issues. I strongly suggest you take your head out of your hole in the ground and quit making excuses for your beloved windows OS.
If they had never seen the drac before than how was there a drac slave camp and slave traders? Those were humans enslaving dracs and making them work the mines.
Software sales are down because the god damn tech sector is down. For gods sake, did these people sleep through 2003-2004? Do they not see unemployment numbers, people unable to afford this crap and companies making cut backs? Just because sales are down doesn't mean people are stealing. Maybe the software sucks and people aren't buying, maybe they are content with what they have or maybe people just can't afford a grand for a freaking photo manipulation program.
It's pathetic how every corporate organization now needs a scapegoat for their own shitty business practices. Forced upgrade policies, lock ins, price gouging etc etc. It's all coming back to bite them in the ass but wait.... there is this new buzzword called P2P, let's blame that!!
I prefer cold toilet seats and dentist chairs. I do however make the trek out for special events, like Matrix movies, Star Wars and Harry Potter flicks.
I don't see the appeal anymore. You're locked into a cold room with uncomfortable chairs that don't recline, kids behind you kicking your chair, yelling etc. Some fat lady with 2 huge tubs of popcorn talking at full volume on her cell phone. I went to see LotR: The Two Towers last year and a full on fight broke out in the seats behind me.
I have a 65" HDTV in my living room with 5.1 surround sound. I'd rather spend 20$ or less on a nice DVD with good reviews 5-6 months after it's theatre debut than spend 40-50$ at the theatre. Until they can tempt me into coming back I won't go. This would be the same if all I had was a little 20" TV in my bedroom and played DVD's on my xbox. It's still better than sticky floors, seats with missing arm rests, rude people and over priced sweet tarts. I can make popcorn for 30 cents at home, I don't need to pay 3.50$ at the threatre.
SEARS dropped the "customer is always right" motto a long time ago and replaced it with "The customer isn't always right, but they are never wrong".
Lets face it, if you haven't worked retail then you simply don't know what hell is. Customers are often devoid of communication skills, arrogant, flat out dumb or in such a god damn hurry that they just don't care about anyone or anything else. We've become a consumer culture where everyone says "gimme!" with complete disregard. I'm not even gonna get into the number of thefts frauds etc. Just enter a Fry's Electronics some time and try to find an item on the shelf that doesn't have a return label already on it.
People suck most of the time, especially during the holidays. Sales or no sales everyone is pinching pennies and it's usually the rich pricks pinching them hardest and giving you a hard time for no reason other than to be a complete prick.
What I find ironic is that Xmas is the worst time for all of this. A time supposedly for giving, for your fellow man, love, compassion etc etc which when put into perspective is complete hypocrisy from what it really is. Greed, parking lot arguments, massive crowds, bad tempers, increased suicide rates, fraud. I could go on and on. The fact is, people suck whether they are shoppers or the assholes who own the store.
I'm no fan of Best Buy, I go only once in a rare while. But I don't see them as evil or wrong in this. You and I can decide not to patron them, they however have no fucking clue we are coming or what we'll do when we get there. As far as I am concerned they have the right to refuse service to anyone they like.
It's a true story. It was made into a movie and played by Val Kilmer. The problem was the brain never developed things like depth perception and never distinguished between colors and edges. It drove him crazy until his vision once again diminshed due to a genetic defect.
"Everyone nods their heads solomly when someone argues that children need to be protected from the dangers of the net at all costs. But should they?"
It's obvious you aren't a parent or you would realize children need guidance at all ages until adulthood. It's the primary responsibility of all parents. You don't just let kids run loose and do what ever they like when ever they like. They need to learn responsibility, respect etc.. So the answer to you is a resounding yes, they need not only protection from their own childish behavior, but guidance as well.
"There is view that the net is predominatly a smut loving, pedophile and cracker infested den of iniquity. It isn't(for the most part anyway). That view is perpetuated by people who don't like the net and what it represents(i.e. change)."
The porn industry is the biggest online industry, making more money than Microsoft. How you can not see that is astoundingly ignorant. Hiding your head in the ground doesn't change it.
"1) Kids are not going to 'stumble' across pr0n. They are going to go out looking for it."
My neice has been getting porn in her email (hotmail) since she was 14 years old. She never signed up for it. It's called spam and she "stumbled" across it.
"2) The primary responsibility for children who browse the net, lies not with the government, or lawmakers, or ISPs, or pr0n websites, or even the owner of the computer. It lies with their parents."
Agreed but parents can not be there 100% of the time. It takes a whole community to set the tone and standards by which children grow up. Sheltering children and monitoring their every move doesn't allow them to make mistakes and therefor learn from them. You as stated above are under the assumption pron is just a little tiny thing you have to hunt for when in fact it's epidemic in nature and being sent to children all around the world at an astonishing rate.
"3) Pr0n is not the work of satan, despite what many(including 4 S.C. judges) believe. People need a more mature attidude towards sex."
You mean like group orgies and Japanese Bukake images? Porn isn't mature in any way. Maturity is having respect for ones self and for the opposite sex, not exploiting it in the most depraved and demeaning ways. Maybe you watch the Cinemax B porn movies on the weekends but on the net it's no holds barred stuff like bangbus.com and brutal ass rapings with large objects. Chicks with beer bottles up their asses and cum all over their faces. That's not maturity in any way shape or form.
"4) No matter WHAT gets put on the net and no matter WHAT the children see and do on it, we should NEVER sacrafice our liberties for the sake of piece of mind."
Welcome to the real world where sacrifices have to be made for the sake of our future. Only someone without parenting experience could possibly believe what you do. Some day when/if you have kids you will realize how truly ignorant this is.
"Yet another case of society being threatened by people not thinking past their next meal. We need intravinous feeding now"
Funny because I was going to say the same about you.
"It's a market mystery, much like the Internet was. The Internet was humming along for a quarter century, then all of sudden, whammo. Early adopters were there from the beginning, but there was something about the mass market that wasn't ready until 1994. What, I'm still not sure."
There wasn't an OS easy enough for idiots to use until 1995. Your question has been answered.
"Same with home theater. Back in 1983, There was a store down the road from where I live called "Future Tech" that was the inspiration to all us Northern Virginia nerds at the time -- half Atari home computers and half home theater (before that term was coined). In the back was a room plastered with foam sound panels, a 10 foot diagonal Kloss front-projection screen, LaserDisc, and surround sound. It wasn't that different than a DVD/big screen/surround setup of today."
People couldn't afford the price tags and the equipment was crap by todays standards. Maybe you can afford new speakers every year after blowing them but most of us can not. Projection screens were/are crap also, good for only a few years before warping/fading/losing quality. Nevermind the time period you are speaking of "BUY AMERICAN!" was on almost every bumper sticker you saw.
"Due to still being in school, it wasn't until 1988 that I had my own home theater. So when DVD/home theater became the rage in 1998, I'm like, OK, so what? The video quality is no better than LaserDisc."
Oh you mean those extremely large discs that scratched like mad? It's hard enough keeping a tiny DVD clean and in decent condition, surely something with 10 times the surface area must be better. LaserDisc was a step backward for people. No one wanted to use an entire shelf for relatively small number of movies. They also couldn't be carried in backpacks/purses or easily put on store shelves.
"Back in the 1980's we were all waiting for HDTV. Some were even holding off buying NTSC TV's because they thought they'd have to throw them out when HDTV came out just around the corner. Marc Wielage on CompuServe's CEFORUM (the moral equivalent of Commander Taco on Slashdot in the 1980's) kept trying to make bets that HDTV would not come out before 1990, and no one would take him up on it. It's 2004 and we still don't have pre-recorded HDTV movies."
Back in the 80's a significantly large segment of the population were still watching black and white TV's. You might as well have been talking about moonbases and cities under the sea. "You're living in a dreamworld Neo". You need the blue pill my friend.
"If it weren't for DVD's, I'm sure we'd have digital video HDTV LaserDiscs by now. DVD's may have made the studios money, but they're no friend of the videophile."
Videophiles are as utterly retarded as audiophiles. You assume others give a shit about every minute detail, you spend your entire lifes savings for a few extra pixels on a digital medium that isn't even real and blame others for not adopting your same pathology.
I hear he's joining the Apple board of directors, right next to the father of the internet Al Gore. Steve jobs is afterall the father of computers. Wasn't it just fathers day too?
Jokes aside, there are lots of reasons to fire someone. Maybe he's just a prima donna and management was sick of him walking up to chicks in the office saying "I'm the father of the DVD don't ya know". Maybe he just smells bad or jerks off in his cubicle to often. It's not like management said "This guy made us a billion dollars, fire him quick!".
"There are *very* few arguments Microsoft can make against opening file formats and network protocols"
Untrue, intellectual property alone grants them the right to keep these closed.
A better solution is for the court to rule MS must release fully functional versions of it's software for all of it's competitors operating systems. This free's people from having to use windows if they want Office or IE or whatever while still protecting MS's IP rights. Once people get out of windows new doors (pun intended) will open to them and a new age of competition can start. Right now MS owns the canvas, the paint and the brush.
Slashdot Mirror
Exited from politics? Yeah so those speeches he's giving every week for moveon.org aren't political right? Give me a break. Quit defending the indefensible.
You're delusional if you think it's just the Republicans. The Dems are just as if not more guilty of it. Al Gore is on Apple's board of directors for christs sake. I'm so sick of the partisanship these days, you honestly think power hungry people i.e. politicians are ever innocent of pandering and profiteering? They ALL do it equally. John Kerry is the richest man to ever grace the senate, he's married to Teresa HEINZ Kerry, you know, the ketchup chick. They have billions, none of it he EARNED. He married the widow of a rich ketchup producer. I mean come on dude, do you not see the total BS you're dishing out?
TV's also have this thing called a "couch" going for them. I love my couch, it's much better than my computer chair. I also prefer a game controller to the repetitive stress injuries from my mouse and keyboard. Not every game is an FPS you know.
I think the Xbox is showing that with anti-aliasing resolution is moot, especially with HDTV sets.
...with Rendezvous. I want my mac to be my "digital hub". I should be able to play music and movies on it from anywhere in my home, likewise with games. I see no reason why game controllers can't be made wireless and why the video signal can't be sent to my TV on the otherside of the room or house. All the pieces are here, someone just needs to "make it work". Just imagine pluggin in your Mac/PC and having it autodiscover your TV, Phone, Stereo via wireless ethernet and bluetooth etc etc.
Someday guys, someday............
The funny thing is, there are more english speakers in China than the US =) That's bound to happen when you have nearly 4 times the population.
You're welcome to move there. It's a free country, you aren't beng stopped by anyone.
Do you honestly think this doesn't happen in other countries? France has an entire department in their government devoted to keeping the french language "pure". Every country does it, every race, every culture.
So you go run to europe where the grass is greener and shit doesn't stink. I'll stay here and laugh at you for being such an ignorant fool.
I'd take an invite. I'm a little curious what the hype is about, I did the livejournal thing when it was invite only and it never caught my fancy, but Okut seems interesting.
You can email me at iamblue at gmail dot com.
-todd
That's the right attitude but I don't see how it can be put into action. In a country where we can't teach our children to read, write or do math how are we going to teach them about sex, self respect, respect for others and responsability?
It has something to do with society/religion and consequences.
Firstly, sex can have some pretty bad consequences, for instance teenage pregnancy which severely handicaps young people. I know. I was a father at 19 and while I've gone on to great things many do not, especially in poorer communities. That said, young people who are not violent can watch violent movies and just be entertained, then shrug it off later. Young people however are naturally all VERY horny and extremely curious. Growing up I can remember plenty of "show me yours and I'll show you mine" moments. Stealing dads pornos, running out of the adult book shop porno movie securely stashed under the coat. Lots of awkward moments with girls etc etc. People are afraid easy access to this material will cause trauma, and the fact is that if it goes unchecked and without guidance it will. Imagine being 10 years old and seeing a japanese bukake video and thinking that's normal.
I'm not defending it, but people seem to think these days that sex has no consequences when it very clearly does. Young people are the least aware of these consequences and subsequently the most effected by them. Disease, pregnancy, disrespect of the opposite sex. The effects these activities have on education, emotional development and maturity. These are all real things and should not be neglected because you and others think sex is harmless.
"Sex like fire makes an excellent servant but a terrible master" - The Buddha
"They all run better on the Mac? Really? In term of what?"
You're a fucking retard. Look up the benchmarks yourself, they run better, all of them across the board. I wont do the research for you dick head.
"You have everything YOU need. Everyone else might not. I, for one, own an Opteron desktop in addition to my PowerBook because I can't get apps like Far Cry, Battlefield: Vietnam, and few others under OSX."
Oh poor baby, can't get his video games, oh no what ever will we do. Battlefield Vietnam is coming to the mac BTW, to bad you didn't look that one up. Every productivity app is on the Mac and quite a few that aren't or at least a viable alternative. Nice try reducing this to a "OMFG I CAN'T PLAY MY VIDEO GAMES" argument. Run away now moron.
"A balanced, best-of-all-worlds approach. Imagine that, huh?"
Yeah whatever. Fucktard.
"Really? Apple leads the market? I can get a Mac with dual optical drives? How about an X800 GPU like I have in my Boxx workstation? How about internal 10K RAIDed drives? From the hardware side, there's no question that the x86 world gets a leg up on Apple. Sorry, that's just the way it is."
Yes you can get all of that and more. Sorry, but as stated above, you're a fucktard.
"As for who's copying who, you need to realize that MS steals from Apple, and Apple from MS. Good ideas are borrowed all the time."
Do you just like hearing yourself or are you generally this fucking dumb? Fuck off now troll, you contributed nothing.
"Macs used to ship with all SCSI drives, but now ship with standard IDE."
No they ship with SATA. Try again.
"Quark runs on PC and mac. So does photoshop, so does every other major application put out by adobe."
They all run better on the Mac, and the vast majority of people using these apps are doing so on the mac. Your point is moot.
"Mac *WAS* the only choice a few years back."
Do you know what a render farm is? Do you think they design their CGI on a farm? Sorry junior, they are designed on macs, then SENT to a render farm to, get this, RENDER. That is all. And most render farms are now being built from G5's, like the one Pixar is now building.
"I don't see much difference in ease of use between MacOS and XP."
You obviously never used OSX.
"Why not just run BSD and get it over with?"
Because BSD doesnt have quartz, aqua etc etc etc. This shows your obvious ignorance to the subject.
"Between the lack of applications"
What lack of applications? I have everything I need, liteally.
"the constantly playing catch up with the PC"
Funny since it's apple who leads the market. Windows copies MacOSX, Apple made USB popular, widescreen displays, firewire etc etc etc.
"and the general FUD mac users like to spread"
No that's you. You don't even understand the subject matter yet pass these stupid ass comments off as facts.
"they're not all that bright"
Now that's funny.
"Most PC users I know use a PC because they don't buy into all that Mac FUD"
Lemmings?
You sir have serious issues. I strongly suggest you take your head out of your hole in the ground and quit making excuses for your beloved windows OS.
If they had never seen the drac before than how was there a drac slave camp and slave traders? Those were humans enslaving dracs and making them work the mines.
Software sales are down because the god damn tech sector is down. For gods sake, did these people sleep through 2003-2004? Do they not see unemployment numbers, people unable to afford this crap and companies making cut backs? Just because sales are down doesn't mean people are stealing. Maybe the software sucks and people aren't buying, maybe they are content with what they have or maybe people just can't afford a grand for a freaking photo manipulation program.
It's pathetic how every corporate organization now needs a scapegoat for their own shitty business practices. Forced upgrade policies, lock ins, price gouging etc etc. It's all coming back to bite them in the ass but wait.... there is this new buzzword called P2P, let's blame that!!
Last time my daughter and I went it was 30$, if anyone else goes it's another 11$ plus what ever they get at the counter.
I prefer cold toilet seats and dentist chairs. I do however make the trek out for special events, like Matrix movies, Star Wars and Harry Potter flicks.
I don't see the appeal anymore. You're locked into a cold room with uncomfortable chairs that don't recline, kids behind you kicking your chair, yelling etc. Some fat lady with 2 huge tubs of popcorn talking at full volume on her cell phone. I went to see LotR: The Two Towers last year and a full on fight broke out in the seats behind me.
I have a 65" HDTV in my living room with 5.1 surround sound. I'd rather spend 20$ or less on a nice DVD with good reviews 5-6 months after it's theatre debut than spend 40-50$ at the theatre. Until they can tempt me into coming back I won't go. This would be the same if all I had was a little 20" TV in my bedroom and played DVD's on my xbox. It's still better than sticky floors, seats with missing arm rests, rude people and over priced sweet tarts. I can make popcorn for 30 cents at home, I don't need to pay 3.50$ at the threatre.
They're both people. People suck. Why does everyone draw this dichotomy between sales people and real people? They're all equally stupid.
SEARS dropped the "customer is always right" motto a long time ago and replaced it with "The customer isn't always right, but they are never wrong".
Lets face it, if you haven't worked retail then you simply don't know what hell is. Customers are often devoid of communication skills, arrogant, flat out dumb or in such a god damn hurry that they just don't care about anyone or anything else. We've become a consumer culture where everyone says "gimme!" with complete disregard. I'm not even gonna get into the number of thefts frauds etc. Just enter a Fry's Electronics some time and try to find an item on the shelf that doesn't have a return label already on it.
People suck most of the time, especially during the holidays. Sales or no sales everyone is pinching pennies and it's usually the rich pricks pinching them hardest and giving you a hard time for no reason other than to be a complete prick.
What I find ironic is that Xmas is the worst time for all of this. A time supposedly for giving, for your fellow man, love, compassion etc etc which when put into perspective is complete hypocrisy from what it really is. Greed, parking lot arguments, massive crowds, bad tempers, increased suicide rates, fraud. I could go on and on. The fact is, people suck whether they are shoppers or the assholes who own the store.
I'm no fan of Best Buy, I go only once in a rare while. But I don't see them as evil or wrong in this. You and I can decide not to patron them, they however have no fucking clue we are coming or what we'll do when we get there. As far as I am concerned they have the right to refuse service to anyone they like.
It's a true story. It was made into a movie and played by Val Kilmer. The problem was the brain never developed things like depth perception and never distinguished between colors and edges. It drove him crazy until his vision once again diminshed due to a genetic defect.
That is the slowest torrent I have ever seen. 10 peers and I'm getting 0.9KiB/s
sheesh
"attitude stability with redundancy"
Wish my ex-gf had that =/
"Everyone nods their heads solomly when someone argues that children need to be protected from the dangers of the net at all costs. But should they?"
It's obvious you aren't a parent or you would realize children need guidance at all ages until adulthood. It's the primary responsibility of all parents. You don't just let kids run loose and do what ever they like when ever they like. They need to learn responsibility, respect etc.. So the answer to you is a resounding yes, they need not only protection from their own childish behavior, but guidance as well.
"There is view that the net is predominatly a smut loving, pedophile and cracker infested den of iniquity. It isn't(for the most part anyway). That view is perpetuated by people who don't like the net and what it represents(i.e. change)."
The porn industry is the biggest online industry, making more money than Microsoft. How you can not see that is astoundingly ignorant. Hiding your head in the ground doesn't change it.
"1) Kids are not going to 'stumble' across pr0n. They are going to go out looking for it."
My neice has been getting porn in her email (hotmail) since she was 14 years old. She never signed up for it. It's called spam and she "stumbled" across it.
"2) The primary responsibility for children who browse the net, lies not with the government, or lawmakers, or ISPs, or pr0n websites, or even the owner of the computer. It lies with their parents."
Agreed but parents can not be there 100% of the time. It takes a whole community to set the tone and standards by which children grow up. Sheltering children and monitoring their every move doesn't allow them to make mistakes and therefor learn from them. You as stated above are under the assumption pron is just a little tiny thing you have to hunt for when in fact it's epidemic in nature and being sent to children all around the world at an astonishing rate.
"3) Pr0n is not the work of satan, despite what many(including 4 S.C. judges) believe. People need a more mature attidude towards sex."
You mean like group orgies and Japanese Bukake images? Porn isn't mature in any way. Maturity is having respect for ones self and for the opposite sex, not exploiting it in the most depraved and demeaning ways. Maybe you watch the Cinemax B porn movies on the weekends but on the net it's no holds barred stuff like bangbus.com and brutal ass rapings with large objects. Chicks with beer bottles up their asses and cum all over their faces. That's not maturity in any way shape or form.
"4) No matter WHAT gets put on the net and no matter WHAT the children see and do on it, we should NEVER sacrafice our liberties for the sake of piece of mind."
Welcome to the real world where sacrifices have to be made for the sake of our future. Only someone without parenting experience could possibly believe what you do. Some day when/if you have kids you will realize how truly ignorant this is.
"Yet another case of society being threatened by people not thinking past their next meal. We need intravinous feeding now"
Funny because I was going to say the same about you.
"It's a market mystery, much like the Internet was. The Internet was humming along for a quarter century, then all of sudden, whammo. Early adopters were there from the beginning, but there was something about the mass market that wasn't ready until 1994. What, I'm still not sure."
There wasn't an OS easy enough for idiots to use until 1995. Your question has been answered.
"Same with home theater. Back in 1983, There was a store down the road from where I live called "Future Tech" that was the inspiration to all us Northern Virginia nerds at the time -- half Atari home computers and half home theater (before that term was coined). In the back was a room plastered with foam sound panels, a 10 foot diagonal Kloss front-projection screen, LaserDisc, and surround sound. It wasn't that different than a DVD/big screen/surround setup of today."
People couldn't afford the price tags and the equipment was crap by todays standards. Maybe you can afford new speakers every year after blowing them but most of us can not. Projection screens were/are crap also, good for only a few years before warping/fading/losing quality. Nevermind the time period you are speaking of "BUY AMERICAN!" was on almost every bumper sticker you saw.
"Due to still being in school, it wasn't until 1988 that I had my own home theater. So when DVD/home theater became the rage in 1998, I'm like, OK, so what? The video quality is no better than LaserDisc."
Oh you mean those extremely large discs that scratched like mad? It's hard enough keeping a tiny DVD clean and in decent condition, surely something with 10 times the surface area must be better. LaserDisc was a step backward for people. No one wanted to use an entire shelf for relatively small number of movies. They also couldn't be carried in backpacks/purses or easily put on store shelves.
"Back in the 1980's we were all waiting for HDTV. Some were even holding off buying NTSC TV's because they thought they'd have to throw them out when HDTV came out just around the corner. Marc Wielage on CompuServe's CEFORUM (the moral equivalent of Commander Taco on Slashdot in the 1980's) kept trying to make bets that HDTV would not come out before 1990, and no one would take him up on it. It's 2004 and we still don't have pre-recorded HDTV movies."
Back in the 80's a significantly large segment of the population were still watching black and white TV's. You might as well have been talking about moonbases and cities under the sea. "You're living in a dreamworld Neo". You need the blue pill my friend.
"If it weren't for DVD's, I'm sure we'd have digital video HDTV LaserDiscs by now. DVD's may have made the studios money, but they're no friend of the videophile."
Videophiles are as utterly retarded as audiophiles. You assume others give a shit about every minute detail, you spend your entire lifes savings for a few extra pixels on a digital medium that isn't even real and blame others for not adopting your same pathology.
I hear he's joining the Apple board of directors, right next to the father of the internet Al Gore. Steve jobs is afterall the father of computers. Wasn't it just fathers day too?
Jokes aside, there are lots of reasons to fire someone. Maybe he's just a prima donna and management was sick of him walking up to chicks in the office saying "I'm the father of the DVD don't ya know". Maybe he just smells bad or jerks off in his cubicle to often. It's not like management said "This guy made us a billion dollars, fire him quick!".
She was convicted, under your logic sentencing doesn't matter, she should be in jail. You're arguing a negative.
Plainly put we give people the benefit of the doubt regardles of personal bias against MS which can only be described as rabid.
"There are *very* few arguments Microsoft can make against opening file formats and network protocols"
Untrue, intellectual property alone grants them the right to keep these closed.
A better solution is for the court to rule MS must release fully functional versions of it's software for all of it's competitors operating systems. This free's people from having to use windows if they want Office or IE or whatever while still protecting MS's IP rights. Once people get out of windows new doors (pun intended) will open to them and a new age of competition can start. Right now MS owns the canvas, the paint and the brush.