He pushed hard to weaken protection for employees and their right to recieve overtime pay. Plus his policies encourage outsourcing with tax breaks weakening the software industry as a whole. So, to an extent, it _is_ Bush's fault.
I used to have a copy of GURPS Supers, in which the heros are refered to as 'Metahumans' because Marvel and DC jointly own the rights to 'Superhero', 'Supervillan', etc. I think it may be a trademark though (I know, how the fuck could it be a trademark when it's not the name of a company? Same way Barbie is). It's pretty fucked up, but then so's all American Content Law.
to ramp up production like that out of fear of Dell pullin' a Walmart. i.e.
1. go to a smallish company.
2. buy enough product to double or triple production.
3. Watch the company go into massive debt as they struggle to keep up.
4. Threaten to stop buying before all that debt's taken care of and leverage that into a great deal.
5. As the saying goes, Profit!
Walmart destroyed quite a few companies before people wised up, and there's probably still a few small fry that'll get burned.
how is it two companies that make functionally identical products (nevermind the performance) can have such wildly different caps? Can someone clue me in?
Right folks, time to give up on compete India. Jesus, these people work for 1/20 the pay (if you factor overtime), no health, no Social Security, no Unemployment Insurance, no Safety regulations. You can Unionize or not, it doesn't make any difference. You can't compete with that.
Instead, Localize. Switch your IT solutions to Open Source alternatives (*BSD, Linux, etc). Have everything done within the local economy. In the short run it costs more, in the long run you're plowing money back into your economy.
In the past this was a bad idea, because of enonomies of scale and the whole reinvent the wheel thing. Open source takes care of the problem quite nicely.:)
There's one real big problem with this: no one's gonna get _really_ rich. After all, the only way to be really rich is to have a substantial base of poor to work off, and if everything's local your base is too small. Best you can hope for is being well off. For that reason, people, greedy bastards that they are, might never go with this.
different industry I guess. Yeah, I get occassional bugs, but ussually only in huge title (ex. Star Ocean). I can't remember ever seeing a bug in a game for my GBA or for any of my major playstation games. Ape Escape, Tekkan, SFA3, Various Square Games, heck even Valkyrie Profile was stable as a rock. I wonder if console programmers have to put up with this junk...
It's not just arm twisting...
on
Halo 2 Released
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· Score: 1
I remember getting to play a Sega Genesis and it's launch titles when it came out and thinking: gosh, this is really mediocre (not that I didn't have a blast with Revenge of Shinobi, but that's because I did goofy things like try and beat it w/o using ninja stars:D). It was still a let down after reading all those glowing reviews. So why the great reviews? Simple, this is a major event in video gaming, regardless of how good the actual game is. If you're a Magazine publisher then you darned well better hype events like this to keep interest in gaming (and your magazine) high. Without this hype the industry risks short term slumps. The movie industry figured this crap out a decade or two ago. That's why you see so many quote whores and media outlets pushing summer movies. It's about keeping people interested in the industry as a whole.
what we need is not more jobs, what we need is a society that regulates it's birth rate. With less than 5% of our populace engaged in critical stuff (food, shelter, maintence for the latter), we're still all struggling to get by. And why? Because those 'rich fucks' are busy making sure we fight and struggle amonst ourselves for their benefit. Here's a fun statistic (I'm too lazy to look through rotten.com's archives to look it up): out of 18 Billion in money earmarked to rebuild Iraq, 29 million has actually made it into the hands to Iraqis. Better question: Why the hell are we importing foreign labor into a country we're trying to rebuild? This is just an example of larger problems/issues.
Oh, and you fail consider why those goods and services are so much cheaper. Again, a question: How the fuck can steel shipped from South Korea be cheaper than steel made in the USA? Are the South Koreans that much better at making Steel? Or could it be the low pay, complete lack of safty, ignoring environmental concerns, no health benefits... Heck no, it's all that thar competition making their steel so cheap!
Finnally, outsourcing Dooms labor unions. You'll notice there are no big strikes to speak of in developing countires. All it takes is a simple threat to move the plant (which can easily be backed up) to get your workers back in line. No Strikes, no protests, no corrupt gov'ts getting international attention. Just a lot of poor, starving people.
If you outlaw or at least curtail outsorcing to poor, abusive countries, those countries can be force to improve their lot. Things are never going to get better in Mexico so long as the people can come here and get by on what they earn. Before people will act, the shit has to really hit the fan. But the way things are going, our planet is headding for some sort of perverted equilibrium with just enough people struggling to stay/become middle class that there'll never be a real impetus for positive change.
There is no defense for the world's current system and state. I'm sick of hearing people say it'll get better. It's not folks, it's getting worse.
But that's not the moral basis of their power. Without a moral basis for the grotesque amount of power and wealth these people have, it would get taken away... and given to somebody else. People are far too stupid and greedy to give up the false dream of unimaginable wealth. So they'd rather live in poverty than risk taking away their 'freedom' to be rich. A freedom that's largely an illusion and becomming more so every day. Remember, you can't be rich unless somebody's poor. And you need a justification to keep them poor. Divine right of kings doesn't hold up to an educated populace (it's one of the silliest doctrine in history). So you throw around a bunch of flowery language about freedom and rights instead.
Also, I'm having trouble making my point clear (partially because I haven't thought it out that well:D ). It's that weath and power are the same. It all boils down to getting whatever you want within the limits of human ability. It's a level of greed and desire normal people don't fully undersand, but they certainly want too. What I hate seeing is people who can't see the forest for the trees. People so focused on 'job creation' that they don't realize that machines and atomic power can make it all a moot point. What machines and atomics can't do is create the systems by which a small group of people can have whatever they want, no matter what the consequences.
this is the typical arguement pro outsourcers make. It's the sister arguement to the pro work-visa crowd (i.e., Americans don't want these jobs, lets give 'em to foreigners). It's bullshit either way. The work still needs to be done, no matter whose doing it. If company A goes out of business, that doesn't mean what company A was doing for society is no longer necessary. So along comes company B. Same for the work visa arguement: These jobs need to be done, and you can _always_ find an American willing to do it, for the right price. It's just that the rich fucks of the world don't want to pay that price. They want to shift societies efforts to grant them their every little desire.
Make no mistake, 1% of our population makes all the food we need and a small percent more is needed to make our housing. Everything else is just gravy. There's plenty of wealth to go around, and it's not even that rich bastards want it all to themselves. It's more complex than that. It's about power. It's about playing the rest of the poor dumb saps off each other so the Bushs and the Haliburtons of the world can continue to trick the people at large into giving them everything they want. They're the new monarchy, they just don't rely on God or Tradition as excuses any more. Now it's property rights and freedom.
Outsoucing is all about playing one group off the other to keep the masses in check. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: This isn't a consipracy, it's just good business.
Trust me, get to really playing and the 7800's controllers wear out fast. The problem is poor design: There's a small piece of very cheap plastic at the base of the Joystick shaft that circles the shaft and is needed for the Stick's contacts to connect. The plastic would wear down long before the contacts, keeping them from getting pressed. This is in addition to the fact that the 7800 joystick was _really_ uncomfortable after an hour or so. The best joystick ever, to this day, is the Epyx 500xj. Solid metal shaft, durable clicking switches. Great for 2600 games but I don't think it was 7800 compatible. If it was, I had long since got rid of my 7800 by then.
The trouble with the 5200 controllers wasn't durability, it was that they where analog, and all the 5200 games where designed for digital control. An analog joystick isn't the best choice for pac-man...
worst designed system ever. The controllers weared out fast (OK, I played way too much Xevious) and if the tabs that were build into a 7800 cartridge to allow the added contacts to connect broke, you just downgraded to a 2600. I also curse the backwards compatiblity, since that was the reason I got a 7800 instead of a Nintendo at the time (that and it was $40 bucks cheaper). I've heard these consoles where just dumped on the marked to cash in on the resurge, and it showed.
You know, the game will be out _really_ soon. All any self respecting Ebay scammer has to do is set up and auction, close said auction, then wait for the game to ship and tell the buyer, "Oh, I'm sorry it took so long, it's the shipper's fault". I've read reports of it being done with laptops. It takes a little more care and elaboration to not get caught, but if you're careful you can get away with it...
it has nothing to do with the original point, which was that lawyers do horrible things only because their clients tell them, and are thus blameless. I may even at some point employe a lawyer for less than perfectly moral reasons. This would still not make the lawyer blameless (or me, for that matter). We're talking broad principles and ideas, and regardless of my personal circumstances it is still ideally wrong for lawyers to take on cases they know to be morally wrong or baseless.
Now before you get your panties in a bunch, this doesn't apply to criminal defense. The very moral doctorine of Inocent Until Proven Guilty means that a lawyer defending someone up on charges is _never_ doing something morally wrong, because he knows his client is innocent until proven guilty. In a civil matter, it is a lawyers job to advise a client on the likelyhood of them winning a case and to make a value judgement about whether the client even has a case. Failure to do so is morally reprehensible.
Oh, and most of those big businesses screwing me are doing it with the help of lawyers, thank you very much.
no one here really seems to grasp the real value and purpose of all these patents: they stablize the market. The problem with modern technology, especially computers, it it all moves too fast. I can come along and blow Microsoft, a $40+ billion dollar company, out of the water in a decade or less. Look at Sun and how they're hurting (I don't care what they're doing these days, it doesn't match what they were doing or where they're old growth rate would've put them without the slump).
This kind of stuff can really play havok with investor's portfolios. So how do you stablize the system? Patent everything. Now only big, established companies can afford to do business. Make sure some tiny little company can't come along and devalue your $100 million dollar investment overnight. It's the guild systems of old. Keep the knowlege locked up tight, and things move slow and stable. Remember folks, the people making the decisions on patent law (lawyers and politicians) are already rich. They want smooth sailing, not a quick buck from a rising star.
A lawyer is the agent of his client's interests in the legal realm; simply that and nothing more.
That's akin to saying soldiers who commit war crimes are just agents of the Gov't. Sure, legally that may be true, but doing something morally reprehensible just because someone's paying you/ordering you still makes you morally bankrupt. More so for Lawyers, since they don't face face anything worse than losing a client by saying no.
Better example: Doctors who perform dangerous and unnecessary surgery at the patient's behest. Take Micheal Jackson for example. Ignoring the fact that he looks hideous (subjective, I know), from what I've heard he's got serious medical problems from all the surgery (i.e. like his nose is largely ornimental now).
Just because you want to do something boneheaded or evil doesn't mean you should be allowed to. That's what professional ethics is all about: telling you no.
but those people die, and new smokers aren't as throughly hooked, since they started with smaller doses. Also, Like I said, you don't do it all at once, but work your way down (there are plenty of studies done to figure out the progression). As you reduce the Nicotine in smokes, you'll reduce the # of smokers. If only as the die hards croke off.
I would kinda miss buying tobacco though. Cherry tobbacco is just about the finest ant poison money can buy (and no, I'm not kidding, the ants take it back to the nest and feed it to the larva, it kills everything:) ).
People did go crazy and kill people before computer games existed...
Yes, but they did it in a fun, Gov't sanctioned manner (wars). One of the downsides to a civilized society is a lack of good outlets for sick, chemically imblanced people to kill and maim. But hey, it's cool, the current administration is taking care of that:D.
Jokes aside, any society is going to have a miniscule percentage of really, really sick people. In the past they got jobs as torturers and executioners. Now that we're civil, we've still got those people, and they're still sick bastards. We need better systems in place to catch them before they do any harm. But damned if I know how to do it.
That's spyware for ya. If they start to police/remove the stuff, they're gonna probably have to at least double their prices to cover increased developement costs. After all, with viruses, they come to your. With spyware, you've usually got to go looking (I've never got Gator in my inbox).
So the question is, are you prepared to pay more? That's probably what most antivirus venders are trying to figure out.
people don't chew the gum for their daily nicotine fix, they chew it to quit. That's the perception, and it's why people don't start chewing gum. Also, many smokers are largely uneducated, and it wouldn't occur to them to seek out alternatives to Nicotine.
As for my idea, you'd have the gov't require nicotine free smokes and severly punish companies that didn't comply. You could start with a blend, and work down until the whole country kicked the habit.
Your smoker friends are militant because they know what they're doing is silly, dangerous and bad for everyone, but they can't stop, and they're afraid you're going to make them.
most smokers smoke because Nicotine is an adictive depressant. You'll find that the bulk of smokers are in high stress jobs, especially poorly paying ones. People generally don't smoke because they want to. It's something they tried as a kid, and now that they're an adult, with all the stress and misery that comes with adulthood, they can't stop.
A better solution would be to force the tobacco companies to sell Nicotine free cigarettes. Not that they ever will. I remember a story in Wired where the only people who would grow them were the Amish. After all, what multi-national corp in its right mind would take out what makes its product popular? The funny thing is Nicotine is odorless and tasteless, so taking it out wouldn't hurt the 'cool, crisp' taste of your smokes one bit, but you might just loose your reason for smoking along the way...
the cheapest emac I see on apples site is $800. If this is a sale, it's not a very frequent one (I've been toying with the idea of buying a Mac, so I check prices from time to time). Also, this isn't a very well equipped computer (no DVD burning, only a 40 gig drive, only 256 megs of RAM, and yes I realize Macs may be more memory effecient, like that matters when you're editing seveal 1600x1200 jpegs).
if you're tech savy enough to test hardware, you'll get a good deal because most OEMs don't, and pass savings on to you. Plus, you get cheaper hardware thanks to all the marks buying the broken stuff and keeping it because they don't know any better.
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He pushed hard to weaken protection for employees and their right to recieve overtime pay. Plus his policies encourage outsourcing with tax breaks weakening the software industry as a whole. So, to an extent, it _is_ Bush's fault.
I used to have a copy of GURPS Supers, in which the heros are refered to as 'Metahumans' because Marvel and DC jointly own the rights to 'Superhero', 'Supervillan', etc. I think it may be a trademark though (I know, how the fuck could it be a trademark when it's not the name of a company? Same way Barbie is). It's pretty fucked up, but then so's all American Content Law.
to ramp up production like that out of fear of Dell pullin' a Walmart. i.e.
1. go to a smallish company.
2. buy enough product to double or triple production.
3. Watch the company go into massive debt as they struggle to keep up.
4. Threaten to stop buying before all that debt's taken care of and leverage that into a great deal.
5. As the saying goes, Profit!
Walmart destroyed quite a few companies before people wised up, and there's probably still a few small fry that'll get burned.
how is it two companies that make functionally identical products (nevermind the performance) can have such wildly different caps? Can someone clue me in?
Right folks, time to give up on compete India. Jesus, these people work for 1/20 the pay (if you factor overtime), no health, no Social Security, no Unemployment Insurance, no Safety regulations. You can Unionize or not, it doesn't make any difference. You can't compete with that.
:)
Instead, Localize. Switch your IT solutions to Open Source alternatives (*BSD, Linux, etc). Have everything done within the local economy. In the short run it costs more, in the long run you're plowing money back into your economy.
In the past this was a bad idea, because of enonomies of scale and the whole reinvent the wheel thing. Open source takes care of the problem quite nicely.
There's one real big problem with this: no one's gonna get _really_ rich. After all, the only way to be really rich is to have a substantial base of poor to work off, and if everything's local your base is too small. Best you can hope for is being well off. For that reason, people, greedy bastards that they are, might never go with this.
different industry I guess. Yeah, I get occassional bugs, but ussually only in huge title (ex. Star Ocean). I can't remember ever seeing a bug in a game for my GBA or for any of my major playstation games. Ape Escape, Tekkan, SFA3, Various Square Games, heck even Valkyrie Profile was stable as a rock. I wonder if console programmers have to put up with this junk...
I remember getting to play a Sega Genesis and it's launch titles when it came out and thinking: gosh, this is really mediocre (not that I didn't have a blast with Revenge of Shinobi, but that's because I did goofy things like try and beat it w/o using ninja stars :D). It was still a let down after reading all those glowing reviews. So why the great reviews? Simple, this is a major event in video gaming, regardless of how good the actual game is. If you're a Magazine publisher then you darned well better hype events like this to keep interest in gaming (and your magazine) high. Without this hype the industry risks short term slumps. The movie industry figured this crap out a decade or two ago. That's why you see so many quote whores and media outlets pushing summer movies. It's about keeping people interested in the industry as a whole.
what we need is not more jobs, what we need is a society that regulates it's birth rate. With less than 5% of our populace engaged in critical stuff (food, shelter, maintence for the latter), we're still all struggling to get by. And why? Because those 'rich fucks' are busy making sure we fight and struggle amonst ourselves for their benefit. Here's a fun statistic (I'm too lazy to look through rotten.com's archives to look it up): out of 18 Billion in money earmarked to rebuild Iraq, 29 million has actually made it into the hands to Iraqis. Better question: Why the hell are we importing foreign labor into a country we're trying to rebuild? This is just an example of larger problems/issues.
Oh, and you fail consider why those goods and services are so much cheaper. Again, a question: How the fuck can steel shipped from South Korea be cheaper than steel made in the USA? Are the South Koreans that much better at making Steel? Or could it be the low pay, complete lack of safty, ignoring environmental concerns, no health benefits... Heck no, it's all that thar competition making their steel so cheap!
Finnally, outsourcing Dooms labor unions. You'll notice there are no big strikes to speak of in developing countires. All it takes is a simple threat to move the plant (which can easily be backed up) to get your workers back in line. No Strikes, no protests, no corrupt gov'ts getting international attention. Just a lot of poor, starving people.
If you outlaw or at least curtail outsorcing to poor, abusive countries, those countries can be force to improve their lot. Things are never going to get better in Mexico so long as the people can come here and get by on what they earn. Before people will act, the shit has to really hit the fan. But the way things are going, our planet is headding for some sort of perverted equilibrium with just enough people struggling to stay/become middle class that there'll never be a real impetus for positive change.
There is no defense for the world's current system and state. I'm sick of hearing people say it'll get better. It's not folks, it's getting worse.
But that's not the moral basis of their power. Without a moral basis for the grotesque amount of power and wealth these people have, it would get taken away... and given to somebody else. People are far too stupid and greedy to give up the false dream of unimaginable wealth. So they'd rather live in poverty than risk taking away their 'freedom' to be rich. A freedom that's largely an illusion and becomming more so every day. Remember, you can't be rich unless somebody's poor. And you need a justification to keep them poor. Divine right of kings doesn't hold up to an educated populace (it's one of the silliest doctrine in history). So you throw around a bunch of flowery language about freedom and rights instead.
:D ). It's that weath and power are the same. It all boils down to getting whatever you want within the limits of human ability. It's a level of greed and desire normal people don't fully undersand, but they certainly want too. What I hate seeing is people who can't see the forest for the trees. People so focused on 'job creation' that they don't realize that machines and atomic power can make it all a moot point. What machines and atomics can't do is create the systems by which a small group of people can have whatever they want, no matter what the consequences.
Also, I'm having trouble making my point clear (partially because I haven't thought it out that well
this is the typical arguement pro outsourcers make. It's the sister arguement to the pro work-visa crowd (i.e., Americans don't want these jobs, lets give 'em to foreigners). It's bullshit either way. The work still needs to be done, no matter whose doing it. If company A goes out of business, that doesn't mean what company A was doing for society is no longer necessary. So along comes company B. Same for the work visa arguement: These jobs need to be done, and you can _always_ find an American willing to do it, for the right price. It's just that the rich fucks of the world don't want to pay that price. They want to shift societies efforts to grant them their every little desire.
Make no mistake, 1% of our population makes all the food we need and a small percent more is needed to make our housing. Everything else is just gravy. There's plenty of wealth to go around, and it's not even that rich bastards want it all to themselves. It's more complex than that. It's about power. It's about playing the rest of the poor dumb saps off each other so the Bushs and the Haliburtons of the world can continue to trick the people at large into giving them everything they want. They're the new monarchy, they just don't rely on God or Tradition as excuses any more. Now it's property rights and freedom.
Outsoucing is all about playing one group off the other to keep the masses in check. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: This isn't a consipracy, it's just good business.
Trust me, get to really playing and the 7800's controllers wear out fast. The problem is poor design: There's a small piece of very cheap plastic at the base of the Joystick shaft that circles the shaft and is needed for the Stick's contacts to connect. The plastic would wear down long before the contacts, keeping them from getting pressed. This is in addition to the fact that the 7800 joystick was _really_ uncomfortable after an hour or so. The best joystick ever, to this day, is the Epyx 500xj. Solid metal shaft, durable clicking switches. Great for 2600 games but I don't think it was 7800 compatible. If it was, I had long since got rid of my 7800 by then.
The trouble with the 5200 controllers wasn't durability, it was that they where analog, and all the 5200 games where designed for digital control. An analog joystick isn't the best choice for pac-man...
worst designed system ever. The controllers weared out fast (OK, I played way too much Xevious) and if the tabs that were build into a 7800 cartridge to allow the added contacts to connect broke, you just downgraded to a 2600. I also curse the backwards compatiblity, since that was the reason I got a 7800 instead of a Nintendo at the time (that and it was $40 bucks cheaper). I've heard these consoles where just dumped on the marked to cash in on the resurge, and it showed.
More humming bird based shooters. To this day, Kolibri stands out as the finest of the Genre.
You know, the game will be out _really_ soon. All any self respecting Ebay scammer has to do is set up and auction, close said auction, then wait for the game to ship and tell the buyer, "Oh, I'm sorry it took so long, it's the shipper's fault". I've read reports of it being done with laptops. It takes a little more care and elaboration to not get caught, but if you're careful you can get away with it...
it has nothing to do with the original point, which was that lawyers do horrible things only because their clients tell them, and are thus blameless. I may even at some point employe a lawyer for less than perfectly moral reasons. This would still not make the lawyer blameless (or me, for that matter). We're talking broad principles and ideas, and regardless of my personal circumstances it is still ideally wrong for lawyers to take on cases they know to be morally wrong or baseless.
Now before you get your panties in a bunch, this doesn't apply to criminal defense. The very moral doctorine of Inocent Until Proven Guilty means that a lawyer defending someone up on charges is _never_ doing something morally wrong, because he knows his client is innocent until proven guilty. In a civil matter, it is a lawyers job to advise a client on the likelyhood of them winning a case and to make a value judgement about whether the client even has a case. Failure to do so is morally reprehensible.
Oh, and most of those big businesses screwing me are doing it with the help of lawyers, thank you very much.
no one here really seems to grasp the real value and purpose of all these patents: they stablize the market. The problem with modern technology, especially computers, it it all moves too fast. I can come along and blow Microsoft, a $40+ billion dollar company, out of the water in a decade or less. Look at Sun and how they're hurting (I don't care what they're doing these days, it doesn't match what they were doing or where they're old growth rate would've put them without the slump).
This kind of stuff can really play havok with investor's portfolios. So how do you stablize the system? Patent everything. Now only big, established companies can afford to do business. Make sure some tiny little company can't come along and devalue your $100 million dollar investment overnight. It's the guild systems of old. Keep the knowlege locked up tight, and things move slow and stable. Remember folks, the people making the decisions on patent law (lawyers and politicians) are already rich. They want smooth sailing, not a quick buck from a rising star.
This isn't a conspiracy, it's just good business.
That's akin to saying soldiers who commit war crimes are just agents of the Gov't. Sure, legally that may be true, but doing something morally reprehensible just because someone's paying you/ordering you still makes you morally bankrupt. More so for Lawyers, since they don't face face anything worse than losing a client by saying no.
Better example: Doctors who perform dangerous and unnecessary surgery at the patient's behest. Take Micheal Jackson for example. Ignoring the fact that he looks hideous (subjective, I know), from what I've heard he's got serious medical problems from all the surgery (i.e. like his nose is largely ornimental now).
Just because you want to do something boneheaded or evil doesn't mean you should be allowed to. That's what professional ethics is all about: telling you no.
but those people die, and new smokers aren't as throughly hooked, since they started with smaller doses. Also, Like I said, you don't do it all at once, but work your way down (there are plenty of studies done to figure out the progression). As you reduce the Nicotine in smokes, you'll reduce the # of smokers. If only as the die hards croke off.
:) ).
I would kinda miss buying tobacco though. Cherry tobbacco is just about the finest ant poison money can buy (and no, I'm not kidding, the ants take it back to the nest and feed it to the larva, it kills everything
Jokes aside, any society is going to have a miniscule percentage of really, really sick people. In the past they got jobs as torturers and executioners. Now that we're civil, we've still got those people, and they're still sick bastards. We need better systems in place to catch them before they do any harm. But damned if I know how to do it.
That's spyware for ya. If they start to police/remove the stuff, they're gonna probably have to at least double their prices to cover increased developement costs. After all, with viruses, they come to your. With spyware, you've usually got to go looking (I've never got Gator in my inbox).
So the question is, are you prepared to pay more? That's probably what most antivirus venders are trying to figure out.
Acutally. In high enough doses (pack or 2 a day) it's a depressant. Check here
people don't chew the gum for their daily nicotine fix, they chew it to quit. That's the perception, and it's why people don't start chewing gum. Also, many smokers are largely uneducated, and it wouldn't occur to them to seek out alternatives to Nicotine.
As for my idea, you'd have the gov't require nicotine free smokes and severly punish companies that didn't comply. You could start with a blend, and work down until the whole country kicked the habit.
Your smoker friends are militant because they know what they're doing is silly, dangerous and bad for everyone, but they can't stop, and they're afraid you're going to make them.
most smokers smoke because Nicotine is an adictive depressant. You'll find that the bulk of smokers are in high stress jobs, especially poorly paying ones. People generally don't smoke because they want to. It's something they tried as a kid, and now that they're an adult, with all the stress and misery that comes with adulthood, they can't stop.
A better solution would be to force the tobacco companies to sell Nicotine free cigarettes. Not that they ever will. I remember a story in Wired where the only people who would grow them were the Amish. After all, what multi-national corp in its right mind would take out what makes its product popular? The funny thing is Nicotine is odorless and tasteless, so taking it out wouldn't hurt the 'cool, crisp' taste of your smokes one bit, but you might just loose your reason for smoking along the way...
the cheapest emac I see on apples site is $800. If this is a sale, it's not a very frequent one (I've been toying with the idea of buying a Mac, so I check prices from time to time). Also, this isn't a very well equipped computer (no DVD burning, only a 40 gig drive, only 256 megs of RAM, and yes I realize Macs may be more memory effecient, like that matters when you're editing seveal 1600x1200 jpegs).
if you're tech savy enough to test hardware, you'll get a good deal because most OEMs don't, and pass savings on to you. Plus, you get cheaper hardware thanks to all the marks buying the broken stuff and keeping it because they don't know any better.