I get a feeling that folks involved in efforts as mentioned in the introduction are living in the 50s where privacy was such a big deal.
Today's kids do not see that as much of an issue I might add. I hope they direct their efforts elsewhere.
They'll see it as more of an issue when a hostile government and/or body gets hold of this mass of information and uses it as a way to help "deal" with those whose lifestyle or political views they deem undesirable.
I don't believe that human nature has changed fundamentally since 1920s Berlin hedonism gave way to what happened in Germany during the 1930s and the 1940s. We've already seen how the United States was happy to water down- if not abandon- its supposed ideals of freedom, justice, blah blah when attacked by terrorists, and while that veered too far towards fascism for comfort (and still hasn't entirely sailed away from the area, Obamamania be damned), I don't doubt that things could turn much nastier even faster in a supposedly tolerant Western society. Particularly given the potential of the current economic situation. God help you if what you've been doing suddenly marks you out as one of the scapegoat group when certain people come to power.
Then again, I'm not convinced that it's possible to avoid such data being available. Living in the digital age means that you'll inevitably leave a trail and the tide is moving more in that direction. Perhaps the only solution is to meet the problem head on and use this mass of information as a defense against those who would use it against us.
So the decision to be anonymous on facebook has an entirely different meaning than the supermarket. It is far from paranoia, even more so when you think of all the new ways this information could be used,in the future.
And of course, the thing that really matters here is politic: by setting up an anonymous account on facebook, you can lead a political life, convincing people to go to protests, or to vote or donate for a cause. It is a pretty new thing to be able to do so anonymously, and there is nothing cowardly about it when you see how scientology (for example) illegally harasses opponents.
Even minor advances in data mining and/or loosening of privacy laws could enable the dots to be joined on "anonymous" sets of data. It's already kind of possible and I've no doubt that were someone (e.g. government) to get access to that Facebook account data, they could use common sense, word scanning and data mining to tie it together with identities on the same or other websites.
Matter of fact, I suspect that it may even be possible- if not now then in the very near future- to do something similar by grabbing and standardising the existing data presented by a standard Facebook page.
Let's use pattern matching to tie together one or more accounts where you mention or discuss your favourite films. Or bands you like, activities you enjoy, organisations you support. Even if there's nothing concrete from comparing two simple lists on two accounts, you can use data mining on multiple attack vectors and use statistics to spot possibly or probably connected accounts. Which- like doing a jigsaw- makes it easier to make more connections, and so on.
Once you've connected one or more that directly or indirectly gives your identity away, the game is up and there's a nice fat mass of interconnected information about you.
Unless you're being very careful in the way you use such services and how you isolate them, their "anonymity" may present a feeling of false security that will seem laughable in a few years time.
And remember that even if you realise this after a while, you've already put a lot of (not really) "anonymous" personal information already out there, potentially just as dangerous as having done it under your own name.
If you are cautious and don't agree with an EULA, you can also just send an email to Facebook & Co. stating that you've altered their EULA as follows and that by storing or otherwise digitally processing this copyright-protected mail they agree to the altered EULA.
I'm not defending all EULAs (*), but that's a stupid idea anyway. Do you seriously think such pseudo-logical tactics would stand up in court any more than they would if $CHOOSE_BAD_ORGANISATION did them to you? Of course not.
Many- if not most- Slashdotters seem to think that the law works along the same pseudo-logical lines as are required to "win" a pedantic and up-its-own-backside argument on Slashdot. It doesn't, and anyone stupid enough to try such smartassery in court would get what they deserve.
It may have its own internal consistency based on precedents and written law, but you can't "reason" your way as to how the law works from a position of ignorance, regardless of whether you'd like that to be the case. The law is the way that the law is, and the only way to know how the law works is... to find out how the law works.
And if the EULA is illegal in the first place, then why bother anyway?
(*) I'm saying this because it's not the first time that some idiot has taken my criticism of a stupid legal argument to assume that I'm endorsing the person the argument was directed against.
Madoff's "clients" where not idiots, they were conned by one of the most sophisticated conmen ever. ANYONE can be conned, no matter how smug and clever you are.
I've read that Madoff's returns were bordering on too good to be true. The implication of the article was that many of the investors should- and quite probably did- realise there was something borderline legally dubious going on, but turned a blind eye to it because the returns were so good and they were therefore happy to assume (I would guess) the plausible explanation that it was something like a clever tax dodge or trick being used to make *them* money.
Read any/. story that can possibly, in any way, be interpreted as having something to do with Apple, and you'll see plenty of this fanaticism on display.
Really? I believe his point was that he just did, and that he didn't.
I read somewhere that they're gonna link it in with Coronation Street (a long running UK soap where the actor playing Lister has a part).
Good god, I hope not. After the eye-gougingly horrid Dimensions in Time, which had Doctor Who in a tie-up with the already obnoxious po-faced (yet humourlessly camp) soap Eastenders... I never want to see anything as bad as that fucking piece of shit again as long as I live.
Actually, Coronation Street isn't as bad as Eastenders because it at least has some humour and warmth, but I'd still hate to see them do that.
Then again, I couldn't bring myself to watch the remainder of Red Dwarf series 8 at the time, and never have, and after all this time I can't see this new stuff being any more than an unsuccessfully-reheated souffle and a nostalgia-fest for the fans.
A lot of American shows would have benefited with the "6-8 strong episodes a season for 2 seasons" BBC model.
You seem to think that that's a lot more common than it is. Just because Fawlty Towers (which Americans are obsessed with) ran for two series doesn't mean it's typical. That had more to do with John Cleese than the BBC.
Normally if a show's axed after one or two "seasons" (*), it's because it's not been seen as successful. And the BBC are generally less ruthless with the axe than American networks.
Most successful UK shows have less episodes than successful American ones, but that's usually because each series (sorry, "season":-P) has fewer episodes.
While the BBC are probably more willing to let successful shows be axed (often due to those involved wanting to end it or not do more), they'll still do some stuff that runs for ages. Things like Terry and June (which was in turn- according to WP- a semi-continuation of an older show), or 'Allo 'Allo which seemed to run for years- and did.
Or Only Fools and Bloody Horses, which ran for ten years and still keeps churning out "last ever! No, really" Christmas episodes.
(*) Damn this Americanisation! We used to call *those* "series", as in "series 1", "series 2", etc.
if we mean Acetaminophen we'd probably say Tylenol.
Unless you were in Britain, where if you meant paracetamol, you'd probably say Tylenol.
Not really! The Tylenol brand isn't used or known here, and there aren't any other brands that are synonymous in that way. (*) If you meant paracetamol here, you'd probably just say... paracetamol.:-)
(*) Matter of fact, I can't even think of any UK-marketed brand that refers specifically to paracetamol-based painkillers.
My thoughts exactly. I say lets keep them busy. Use VPNs, torrent clients, multiple instant messengers, in game messengers, VOIP, encrypted communication protocols, as many as possible at the same time. Let them do the work. Overload them. Make them give up on whole society surveillance.
Unless everyone is doing that as a matter of course, that'll just draw attention to yourself, justified or not.
That's going to have to be exceptionally well-written if the "bogus" queries are to be so good that they can't be filtered out by a mixture of existing knowledge of how the extension behaves, and of common sense. And that this will remain true for the near future (or however long you want your searching to remain truly obfuscated).
It strikes me as one of those "clever" ideas that geeks come up with that an expert in the field would laugh at, just like home made crypto algorithms. Call me a sceptic, but unless these people are *really* smart, it's just going to give a lot of people a false sense of security.
Am I missing something here? Was that offtopic comment an excuse to spam (ironically ontopic-but-not-really) your MyMiniCity?!
I'd totally forgotten that nonsense. For those who don't remember, MyMiniCity appeared a couple of years back and was superficially a Flash-based simplistic Sim City clone where your aim was to get your city to the top of the rankings.
However, IIRC the size or "success" of your city was derived solely from the number of unique visitors to its page. In other words, it was a clever ruse to get as many people as possible visiting the website, enticed- or more likely conned- into visiting by people who wanted to boost their city's rating.
Yes, it's obviously a piss-poor game that requires little actual skill, but at the same time that's its "strength"; anyone can "play" and get a sense of achievement from it, however unwarranted- and I suspect that the makers knew that there are enough kids- and losers- out there to make it work.
There were a few spams for MyMiniCity a couple of years back, but it seemed to die off. Quite why mlauzon is suddenly spamming this crap under what seemed until a few posts back to be a "proper" account is unclear.
The only reason I can see keeping the current IA32 around is that there's such a huge code base,
As the other guy said, that *is* the overwhelming point; there's no other reason anyone- not even Intel- would want to keep it around from a technical point of view.
Even in the early 1990s, I remember Amiga magazines looking down their nose at the unnecessarily complicated and messed up architecture of the x86- coupled with MS-DOS issues- virtually all of that due to workarounds for workarounds for workarounds for baggage going back years.
and realistically if we cut the cord now, it wouldn't be too long before we could just use emulation for the old non-portable code.
Ah, but here's the interesting bit. Intel chips already "emulate" the traditional x86 architecture in microcode and have been doing so since the Pentium Pro/Pentium II over ten years ago.
All current Intel CPUs are effectively an x86 wrapper around a non-x86 core that some have described as RISC (although some claim it's less RISC and more VLIW). Whatever it is, outer "layer" of the CPU itself converts x86 to the core's native format before execution.
Of course, all this is done inside the "black box" CPU itself, so we've still got to write (or rather, compile) our programs to x86 code. Using ordinary software emulation as you describe would let us use old x86 code while getting the benefits of the new architecture, but then what new architecture would we go for, and would it be well supported? And would it be as "open" as x86?
Your idea is interesting, and probably workable, except for this bit...
Supply the driver for Windows on every piece of media along with a README file explaining to customers why all this is going on. That readme could say something like: "The SD industry has previously used Microsoft's FAT filesystem due to it's uniquity. Microsoft has decided to reward us for helping drive their monopoly by suing us. So we have adopted one of the many other competing file systems for (whatever cute name of new standard). All other popular operating systems support this format out of the box. We offered a driver to Microsoft for inclusion in Windows 7 and they refused to include it. So you will need to click (here) to install the copy we include on each drive/memory card if you have not previously done so."
No, they're not going to include that text or anything like it. They know that 99% of consumers don't give a toss about company X's licensing spats and grievances with MS (whether or not they're justified), at least not at a time when they're simply trying to get their card working. It just comes across as unprofessional and petty to do so.
If they want consumers to know that MS are being dicks, better to reference the issue obliquely and very briefly ("due to licensing issues")- if at all- and let third parties such as photographic websites and magazines cover the issues behind this, which will be well known anyway.
I can't recall any major companies conducting disputes doing it in this manner, and I don't think they're going to start now!
Micropayments are doomed to failure as they will never be cost effective as the transaction charges are more expensive than the payments.
Perhaps you meant
Micropayments as currently implemented are doomed to failure as they will never be cost effective as the transaction charges are more expensive than the payments.
I see nothing wrong with the general principle of micropayments. Is there any reason that some company shouldn't in principle be able to run a micropayments service and still make enough money overall to make it worth their time?
Part of the purchase price should include budgeting for failures or extended warranty on said device.
[..]
The "dicking around" has now cost you more than you saved. It should be pull out, put in, coffee break, done.
I believe that was *exactly* the point he was (obviously) trying to make!
It's been a long time but TDK didn't make their own media, not many people did.
According to Wikipedia, TDK sold off their recording business to Imation in autumn 2007. I don't know whether this includes the rights to the TDK name for optical media and/or a substantial production capacity (though as you pointed out, TDK didn't make their own DVDs anyway).
Shame, I used to like TDKs when I first got my portable cassette deck; I never had the problems with them I had with some cheapass tapes.
Yes, IBM was instrumental in creating the personal computer.
Uh, NO.
IBM may have developed the original "IBM Personal Computer" (ancestor of the models we're still using today). However, they sure as hell did *not* invent the original concept of a personal computer. That had been around for years (arguably originating with the Apple II) and there were already dozens of personal computers by the time IBM's came out.
Even if we accept that you meant "personal computer" as the later synonym for IBM's PC and compatible rivals, these were nothing revolutionary in themselves, even at the time. The original IBM PC was almost entirely built from off-the-shelf and pre-existing parts (including MS-DOS which was originally based on a bought-in borderline ripoff of CP/M). Reasonably powerful- which it ought to have been at the price- but not revolutionary, and likely a success mainly because it was made by IBM rather than on merit.
I'm sure that IBM- at that time the evil behemoth of the mainframe era- only gave the go ahead to *their* PC because it was *already* clear by then that personal computers in general were the future regardless of what they did- and that if they'd left it any longer they'd have lost out on this and been increasingly marginalised. Given the choice, I'm sure they'd rather have killed the personal computer and sat on their mainframe laurels. The revolutionary thing was IBM even building a PC (and the informal way in which it was designed), but that was only because they were forced into it by an even bigger revolution.
Yes, IBM's PC became the de facto standard, but it wasn't the original personal computer, and the format's success had more to do with the name on the box (originally) and the very genericness of the hardware making it easy to clone (later on) than anything revolutionary about its design.
The lights are on, but you're not home
your mind is not your own
your whiskers twitch, your body shakes
another hit is what it takes
Whoa, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah
it's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough,
you know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to cheese^w light
Forced to choose, I'd rather they wasted my taxes by (not) spying on me incompetently than used them more "efficiently" to track me and every other damn person in the UK in the name of counter-terrorism.
Of course, the terrorists have already won- because the UK government's actions were exactly what all terrorists want, to disrupt and alter the behaviour of an entire nation on the basis of a small number of attacks. Remember that the next time you vote.
This assumes that the government didn't *want* to do this anyway, whereas it was more likely a convenient excuse that exposed their underlying control freak authoritarian mentality.
It's been said (by I forget who) that despite the Labour party leadership's political swing away from their early radical left-wing roots in favour of what I'd consider centre-right politics (*) and the post-Thatcherite free-market consensus, their underlying modus operandi and mentality is still essentially Marxist. In a lot of ways, the modern Labour party has the worst of both worlds.
(*) By post-WWII British standards; they're probably still commies by US standards, along with anyone to the left of Genghis Khan:-/
Slashdot Mirror
I get a feeling that folks involved in efforts as mentioned in the introduction are living in the 50s where privacy was such a big deal. Today's kids do not see that as much of an issue I might add. I hope they direct their efforts elsewhere.
They'll see it as more of an issue when a hostile government and/or body gets hold of this mass of information and uses it as a way to help "deal" with those whose lifestyle or political views they deem undesirable.
I don't believe that human nature has changed fundamentally since 1920s Berlin hedonism gave way to what happened in Germany during the 1930s and the 1940s. We've already seen how the United States was happy to water down- if not abandon- its supposed ideals of freedom, justice, blah blah when attacked by terrorists, and while that veered too far towards fascism for comfort (and still hasn't entirely sailed away from the area, Obamamania be damned), I don't doubt that things could turn much nastier even faster in a supposedly tolerant Western society. Particularly given the potential of the current economic situation. God help you if what you've been doing suddenly marks you out as one of the scapegoat group when certain people come to power.
Then again, I'm not convinced that it's possible to avoid such data being available. Living in the digital age means that you'll inevitably leave a trail and the tide is moving more in that direction. Perhaps the only solution is to meet the problem head on and use this mass of information as a defense against those who would use it against us.
So the decision to be anonymous on facebook has an entirely different meaning than the supermarket. It is far from paranoia, even more so when you think of all the new ways this information could be used ,in the future.
And of course, the thing that really matters here is politic: by setting up an anonymous account on facebook, you can lead a political life, convincing people to go to protests, or to vote or donate for a cause. It is a pretty new thing to be able to do so anonymously, and there is nothing cowardly about it when you see how scientology (for example) illegally harasses opponents.
Even minor advances in data mining and/or loosening of privacy laws could enable the dots to be joined on "anonymous" sets of data. It's already kind of possible and I've no doubt that were someone (e.g. government) to get access to that Facebook account data, they could use common sense, word scanning and data mining to tie it together with identities on the same or other websites.
Matter of fact, I suspect that it may even be possible- if not now then in the very near future- to do something similar by grabbing and standardising the existing data presented by a standard Facebook page.
Let's use pattern matching to tie together one or more accounts where you mention or discuss your favourite films. Or bands you like, activities you enjoy, organisations you support. Even if there's nothing concrete from comparing two simple lists on two accounts, you can use data mining on multiple attack vectors and use statistics to spot possibly or probably connected accounts. Which- like doing a jigsaw- makes it easier to make more connections, and so on.
Once you've connected one or more that directly or indirectly gives your identity away, the game is up and there's a nice fat mass of interconnected information about you.
Unless you're being very careful in the way you use such services and how you isolate them, their "anonymity" may present a feeling of false security that will seem laughable in a few years time.
And remember that even if you realise this after a while, you've already put a lot of (not really) "anonymous" personal information already out there, potentially just as dangerous as having done it under your own name.
If you are cautious and don't agree with an EULA, you can also just send an email to Facebook & Co. stating that you've altered their EULA as follows and that by storing or otherwise digitally processing this copyright-protected mail they agree to the altered EULA.
I'm not defending all EULAs (*), but that's a stupid idea anyway. Do you seriously think such pseudo-logical tactics would stand up in court any more than they would if $CHOOSE_BAD_ORGANISATION did them to you? Of course not.
Many- if not most- Slashdotters seem to think that the law works along the same pseudo-logical lines as are required to "win" a pedantic and up-its-own-backside argument on Slashdot. It doesn't, and anyone stupid enough to try such smartassery in court would get what they deserve.
It may have its own internal consistency based on precedents and written law, but you can't "reason" your way as to how the law works from a position of ignorance, regardless of whether you'd like that to be the case. The law is the way that the law is, and the only way to know how the law works is... to find out how the law works.
And if the EULA is illegal in the first place, then why bother anyway?
(*) I'm saying this because it's not the first time that some idiot has taken my criticism of a stupid legal argument to assume that I'm endorsing the person the argument was directed against.
Furries? Fuck furries.
Yes, some furries fuck furries, but others just like dressing up.
Madoff's "clients" where not idiots, they were conned by one of the most sophisticated conmen ever. ANYONE can be conned, no matter how smug and clever you are.
I've read that Madoff's returns were bordering on too good to be true. The implication of the article was that many of the investors should- and quite probably did- realise there was something borderline legally dubious going on, but turned a blind eye to it because the returns were so good and they were therefore happy to assume (I would guess) the plausible explanation that it was something like a clever tax dodge or trick being used to make *them* money.
Read any /. story that can possibly, in any way, be interpreted as having something to do with Apple, and you'll see plenty of this fanaticism on display.
Really? I believe his point was that he just did, and that he didn't.
I read somewhere that they're gonna link it in with Coronation Street (a long running UK soap where the actor playing Lister has a part).
Good god, I hope not. After the eye-gougingly horrid Dimensions in Time, which had Doctor Who in a tie-up with the already obnoxious po-faced (yet humourlessly camp) soap Eastenders... I never want to see anything as bad as that fucking piece of shit again as long as I live.
Actually, Coronation Street isn't as bad as Eastenders because it at least has some humour and warmth, but I'd still hate to see them do that.
Then again, I couldn't bring myself to watch the remainder of Red Dwarf series 8 at the time, and never have, and after all this time I can't see this new stuff being any more than an unsuccessfully-reheated souffle and a nostalgia-fest for the fans.
A lot of American shows would have benefited with the "6-8 strong episodes a season for 2 seasons" BBC model.
You seem to think that that's a lot more common than it is. Just because Fawlty Towers (which Americans are obsessed with) ran for two series doesn't mean it's typical. That had more to do with John Cleese than the BBC.
:-P) has fewer episodes.
Normally if a show's axed after one or two "seasons" (*), it's because it's not been seen as successful. And the BBC are generally less ruthless with the axe than American networks.
Most successful UK shows have less episodes than successful American ones, but that's usually because each series (sorry, "season"
While the BBC are probably more willing to let successful shows be axed (often due to those involved wanting to end it or not do more), they'll still do some stuff that runs for ages. Things like Terry and June (which was in turn- according to WP- a semi-continuation of an older show), or 'Allo 'Allo which seemed to run for years- and did.
Or Only Fools and Bloody Horses, which ran for ten years and still keeps churning out "last ever! No, really" Christmas episodes.
(*) Damn this Americanisation! We used to call *those* "series", as in "series 1", "series 2", etc.
For some reason, my skin looks, I don't know, pale green under CFLs.
It's because you have pale green skin.
(cf. "Does this skirt make my backside look big?" "No, having a big backside makes it look big.")
Panadol. Common in the UK and Australia.
True, although even then I'd say that people would use it as the name of a brand of paracetamol rather than instead of the generic term.
(And personally I didn't even know it was paracetamol-based, though I can't remember the last time I took a painkiller, let alone bought them).
if we mean Acetaminophen we'd probably say Tylenol.
Unless you were in Britain, where if you meant paracetamol, you'd probably say Tylenol.
Not really! The Tylenol brand isn't used or known here, and there aren't any other brands that are synonymous in that way. (*) If you meant paracetamol here, you'd probably just say... paracetamol. :-)
(*) Matter of fact, I can't even think of any UK-marketed brand that refers specifically to paracetamol-based painkillers.
My thoughts exactly. I say lets keep them busy. Use VPNs, torrent clients, multiple instant messengers, in game messengers, VOIP, encrypted communication protocols, as many as possible at the same time. Let them do the work. Overload them. Make them give up on whole society surveillance.
Unless everyone is doing that as a matter of course, that'll just draw attention to yourself, justified or not.
It's called Trackmenot.
That's going to have to be exceptionally well-written if the "bogus" queries are to be so good that they can't be filtered out by a mixture of existing knowledge of how the extension behaves, and of common sense. And that this will remain true for the near future (or however long you want your searching to remain truly obfuscated).
It strikes me as one of those "clever" ideas that geeks come up with that an expert in the field would laugh at, just like home made crypto algorithms. Call me a sceptic, but unless these people are *really* smart, it's just going to give a lot of people a false sense of security.
This iss your penis: 8--o
This iss your penis on drugs: 8=====O
The second one's still well under an inch on my monitor. That's nothing to shout about :-O
Am I missing something here? Was that offtopic comment an excuse to spam (ironically ontopic-but-not-really) your MyMiniCity?!
I'd totally forgotten that nonsense. For those who don't remember, MyMiniCity appeared a couple of years back and was superficially a Flash-based simplistic Sim City clone where your aim was to get your city to the top of the rankings.
However, IIRC the size or "success" of your city was derived solely from the number of unique visitors to its page. In other words, it was a clever ruse to get as many people as possible visiting the website, enticed- or more likely conned- into visiting by people who wanted to boost their city's rating.
Yes, it's obviously a piss-poor game that requires little actual skill, but at the same time that's its "strength"; anyone can "play" and get a sense of achievement from it, however unwarranted- and I suspect that the makers knew that there are enough kids- and losers- out there to make it work.
There were a few spams for MyMiniCity a couple of years back, but it seemed to die off. Quite why mlauzon is suddenly spamming this crap under what seemed until a few posts back to be a "proper" account is unclear.
The only reason I can see keeping the current IA32 around is that there's such a huge code base,
As the other guy said, that *is* the overwhelming point; there's no other reason anyone- not even Intel- would want to keep it around from a technical point of view.
Even in the early 1990s, I remember Amiga magazines looking down their nose at the unnecessarily complicated and messed up architecture of the x86- coupled with MS-DOS issues- virtually all of that due to workarounds for workarounds for workarounds for baggage going back years.
and realistically if we cut the cord now, it wouldn't be too long before we could just use emulation for the old non-portable code.
Ah, but here's the interesting bit. Intel chips already "emulate" the traditional x86 architecture in microcode and have been doing so since the Pentium Pro/Pentium II over ten years ago.
All current Intel CPUs are effectively an x86 wrapper around a non-x86 core that some have described as RISC (although some claim it's less RISC and more VLIW). Whatever it is, outer "layer" of the CPU itself converts x86 to the core's native format before execution.
Of course, all this is done inside the "black box" CPU itself, so we've still got to write (or rather, compile) our programs to x86 code. Using ordinary software emulation as you describe would let us use old x86 code while getting the benefits of the new architecture, but then what new architecture would we go for, and would it be well supported? And would it be as "open" as x86?
Your idea is interesting, and probably workable, except for this bit...
Supply the driver for Windows on every piece of media along with a README file explaining to customers why all this is going on. That readme could say something like:
"The SD industry has previously used Microsoft's FAT filesystem due to it's uniquity. Microsoft has decided to reward us for helping drive their monopoly by suing us. So we have adopted one of the many other competing file systems for (whatever cute name of new standard). All other popular operating systems support this format out of the box. We offered a driver to Microsoft for inclusion in Windows 7 and they refused to include it. So you will need to click (here) to install the copy we include on each drive/memory card if you have not previously done so."
No, they're not going to include that text or anything like it. They know that 99% of consumers don't give a toss about company X's licensing spats and grievances with MS (whether or not they're justified), at least not at a time when they're simply trying to get their card working. It just comes across as unprofessional and petty to do so.
If they want consumers to know that MS are being dicks, better to reference the issue obliquely and very briefly ("due to licensing issues")- if at all- and let third parties such as photographic websites and magazines cover the issues behind this, which will be well known anyway.
I can't recall any major companies conducting disputes doing it in this manner, and I don't think they're going to start now!
Micropayments are doomed to failure as they will never be cost effective as the transaction charges are more expensive than the payments.
Perhaps you meant
Micropayments as currently implemented are doomed to failure as they will never be cost effective as the transaction charges are more expensive than the payments.
I see nothing wrong with the general principle of micropayments. Is there any reason that some company shouldn't in principle be able to run a micropayments service and still make enough money overall to make it worth their time?
Part of the purchase price should include budgeting for failures or extended warranty on said device. [..] The "dicking around" has now cost you more than you saved. It should be pull out, put in, coffee break, done.
I believe that was *exactly* the point he was (obviously) trying to make!
It's been a long time but TDK didn't make their own media, not many people did.
According to Wikipedia, TDK sold off their recording business to Imation in autumn 2007. I don't know whether this includes the rights to the TDK name for optical media and/or a substantial production capacity (though as you pointed out, TDK didn't make their own DVDs anyway).
Shame, I used to like TDKs when I first got my portable cassette deck; I never had the problems with them I had with some cheapass tapes.
Yes, IBM was instrumental in creating the personal computer.
Uh, NO.
IBM may have developed the original " IBM Personal Computer" (ancestor of the models we're still using today). However, they sure as hell did *not* invent the original concept of a personal computer. That had been around for years (arguably originating with the Apple II) and there were already dozens of personal computers by the time IBM's came out.
Even if we accept that you meant "personal computer" as the later synonym for IBM's PC and compatible rivals, these were nothing revolutionary in themselves, even at the time. The original IBM PC was almost entirely built from off-the-shelf and pre-existing parts (including MS-DOS which was originally based on a bought-in borderline ripoff of CP/M). Reasonably powerful- which it ought to have been at the price- but not revolutionary, and likely a success mainly because it was made by IBM rather than on merit.
I'm sure that IBM- at that time the evil behemoth of the mainframe era- only gave the go ahead to *their* PC because it was *already* clear by then that personal computers in general were the future regardless of what they did- and that if they'd left it any longer they'd have lost out on this and been increasingly marginalised. Given the choice, I'm sure they'd rather have killed the personal computer and sat on their mainframe laurels. The revolutionary thing was IBM even building a PC (and the informal way in which it was designed), but that was only because they were forced into it by an even bigger revolution.
Yes, IBM's PC became the de facto standard, but it wasn't the original personal computer, and the format's success had more to do with the name on the box (originally) and the very genericness of the hardware making it easy to clone (later on) than anything revolutionary about its design.
The lights are on, but you're not home
your mind is not your own
your whiskers twitch, your body shakes
another hit is what it takes
Whoa, you like to think that you're immune to the stuff, oh yeah
it's closer to the truth to say you can't get enough,
you know you're gonna have to face it, you're addicted to cheese^w light
What did you want them to call it? The DS Lite Plus?
What about the "DS Liter"?
Though I doubt that would sell in America... they'd have to call it the "DS Two-and-a-bit Pints" there instead.
if it made it up there, it rode the tank back down.
Like a batty Doctor Strangelove?
Forced to choose, I'd rather they wasted my taxes by (not) spying on me incompetently than used them more "efficiently" to track me and every other damn person in the UK in the name of counter-terrorism.
Of course, the terrorists have already won- because the UK government's actions were exactly what all terrorists want, to disrupt and alter the behaviour of an entire nation on the basis of a small number of attacks. Remember that the next time you vote.
This assumes that the government didn't *want* to do this anyway, whereas it was more likely a convenient excuse that exposed their underlying control freak authoritarian mentality.
It's been said (by I forget who) that despite the Labour party leadership's political swing away from their early radical left-wing roots in favour of what I'd consider centre-right politics (*) and the post-Thatcherite free-market consensus, their underlying modus operandi and mentality is still essentially Marxist. In a lot of ways, the modern Labour party has the worst of both worlds.
(*) By post-WWII British standards; they're probably still commies by US standards, along with anyone to the left of Genghis Khan :-/