If the day after 9-11 we carpet bombed Afghanistan back to the primordial ooze, Iraq would have never happened.
WTF do you mean "Iraq would never have happened"?
Whether or not it was justified, the fact is that "[the] Iraq [war]" happened because the US made the decision to invade Iraq.
Not that the link between Iraq and Afghanistan was ever anything more than verging on nonexistent outside the Bush administration's attempts to pretend otherwise.
most of the other crap going on with the moron in charge of North Korea would not be happening.
Yeah, right.
Are we talking about the same North Korea whose leader would (and has) let large parts of the population starve to death and runs the country like an oversized concentration camp? Unless you can show quite clearly that you're capable of catching and/or killing *him* specifically, I doubt that any threats to flatten half the country are going to stop him. Like he would give a fuck.
And nukes aside, the *massive fucking problem* with North Korea is that they're right next door to South Korea, and quite capable of laying waste to large parts of it in the event of any aggression.
As for all this "we could flatten the world" stuff... well, you probably couldn't. In fact, you likely couldn't even flatten more than a few isolated areas before triggering off a chain of events that risked flattening parts of the U.S. and cementing the rest of the world against you.
Problem is America is too busy trying to fight a "moral and nice" war.
That's probably because war is a means to an end; America's support of Western Europe via the Marshall Plan was a brilliant move that probably earned them more strategic benefit for the financial input (allies and stability against the Soviet Union) than any war could have.
Trying to achieve the same result via direct military means- even if you didn't give a flying fuck about Europe per se- would have been pointless ideology over a more sensible solution. Nothing to do with being "nice".
America is not at war, we are trying to be the global police. It's not even remotely self defense.
So what happens when the "global police" start making noises about trying to unseat a slightly questionable, but nevertheless democratically elected leader like Hugo Chavez with the mentality "anyone trying to fight a nice war is a moron. you attack your enemy with all your force and you destroy them. ALL OF THEM"?
Never said otherwise...! Which part of "your other points are fair enough" didn't you understand?
You brought up and addressed timeshifting as a discrete issue. The way you (and others) talk about it as if it's something new *in itself* is misleading.
Sure, it's a bit more convenient now (I much prefer my DVR to my old video recorder), but most of us have had the ability to watch TV when it suits us for 20 to 30 years now!
I don't think the GP was that serious, you know... and given that China are hardly a neutral party, I seriously doubt the US would trust them to hand over the correct information.
Call me sceptical about a story that involves the US openly discussing problems surrounding nuclear issues that are normally top secret anyway.
Yeah, well speaking of obligatory references, I notice that Wolfram only chose to announce this *after* Patrick McGoohan's death. Maybe they were afraid that he'd cause it to blow up by asking tricky one-word philosophical questions?;)
Is a 1.5TB drive the fairest comparison? I can't be arsed looking up the figures, but aren't 500GB - 1TB drives still the sweet point in bytes-per-buck? It's only recently that 1.5TB models were at the top end in terms of size (and with the accompanying premium).
It was a sad day when Enron closed its doors after making horrible management decisions that cost their employees, customers, and the general public billions. But curiously enough, nobody ever blames management.
What you describe was true in the majority of situations until recently, but it's changing now... partly. Thing is, too many will still get away with blaming it on the economy.
Clearly, you jest. You really expect us to believe you are married and you read slashdot?
Believe it or not, even geeks can get married. Slashdot has been around a while now and the demographic is getting older.
This has resulted in something akin to sublimation; many Slashdotters have gone straight from not getting laid because they can't get a girl to not getting laid because they're married.;)
If they can get people to *think* they're getting 40% off in the frenzy, that's all that matters. Doesn't really matter if people realise that it wasn't that great a deal later on and say "I'm never shopping there again!"
IIRC there was some legal loophole allowing them to claim "40% off" compared to the old prices; something to do with the "40% off" being relative to the prices set by the administrators when they started running the company.
Personally, I found Zavvi's (ex. Virgin Megastores UK) closing down prices to be nothing special for similar reasons. They had the likes of 20% off (I think rising to 40%), but I noticed that one item they'd been selling for 7 or 8 quid (competitive with Amazon) was at £20 pre-discount. Nothing special... but that was Virgin/Zavvi all over.
The same retailer that- along with HMV- was selling full-price back catalogue CDs for approaching £15 (and even breaking through it at one point) back in the 90s and early 2000s, before they started getting competition from the likes of Fopp (RIP), large supermarkets, Amazon and P2P downloading.
Oh, I understand that, but the Apple ][ predates most of the others and is worthy of an historical footnote. Besides, if they want to limit this to European brands, they should remove the Atari from the list as well.
Where did it say they wanted to do that? I think they were focusing on computers that were popular here. Which obviously biases it towards UK machines, but doesn't exclude American ones.
While the Atari 800XL was never as popular here (or as well-supported) as the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC, it still had a notable user base.
Dixons (UK electronics chain) sold a lot of them at knock-down prices during the mid-80s.
As someone who did development for Apple ][ add-on hardware in the UK, I can tell you the APPLE ][ was HUGE in the UK.
Huge would be, at best, a relative term. It may have had some popularity behind the scenes in businesses (still being in short trousers during the early 80s, I can't really comment on that). I know that my Dad used them in his work at a hospital.
But even that latter example was (and is) about the only place that I've seen Apple II in the flesh. They were also bordering on nonexistent in the UK educational field and as mass-market home computers.
Only businesses with a PDP11 or DG Nova did not need an Apple ][, The Apple ][ cost about GBP100
£100? I'm calling bullshit on that, and it makes me question the truth of what you said above.
The integer-only, black-and-white, touch keyboard ZX80 was a big deal when it came out in 1980 as the first computer under £100. The ubiquitous rubber-key ZX Spectrum (cheapass peoples' favourite) was £125 for the 16K version when it came out in 1982. And this was during the Apple II's American heyday.
I doubt that the Apple II was *ever* sold for anything even in the same ballpark as £100, even latterly when it was dated and outspecced.
BTW, Visicalc was also available for other computers such as the IBM PC, Atari 800 and Commodore Pet.
Apple II's were sold over here, they were just not that prevalent.
Yes; the UK hospital my Dad worked at had Apple IIs, but this was one of the few (if only) places I saw them in the UK. Had I not seen them there, it's quite possible that I'd never have seen one at all.
They actually sold Euro-specific versions; reading this I find out that (supposedly) these were mono-only (yuk!) because the smart but NTSC-specific hack Woz used to get crude colour on the original didn't work with PAL.
This explains why my Dad (who used the things quite extensively) was never aware that the Apple II was supposedly capable of colour. I found this surprising, even allowing for the fact that all the ones at the hospital only had green-screen monitors.
I suspect that since the Euro Apples were mono only (regardless of what they were plugged into), references to any colour facilities would have been removed from the manuals. (Assuming they left the firmware relating to the U.S. colour facilities in the ROM for compatibility).
Anyway, I'd guess that the combination of high imported prices and reduced spec hurt its European popularity initially- and that as a result it wouldn't have achieved the critical mass and network effects required to ensure continued popularity in the face of newer and better-specified computers (unlike in the U.S.).
I mean, I don't know how much the Apple II was circa 1981/82, but I doubt that it would have been cheaper than the somewhat high-end and better-specified BBC Micro. And in the absence of any significant pre-existing support for the Apple, I know which one I'd have gone for.
I've got an Apple III as well and they are even rarer - didn't know they existed until I was given one instead of the owner dumping it.
I don't know when he dumped it, but I'd assume that any Apple IIIs are rare enough to be worth a bit now...?
And having to watch it again the next week at the exact time, which would be programming my life around the show and not the other way around.
Your other points are fair enough, but it's like everyone here has forgotten that video recorders giving you the ability to watch when it suits *you* have been around for a generation!
In the same time, Y rents another copy of the same DVD from BB, rips it and returns it the next day. two weeks later, they watch it and delete it. BB has since re-rented the same DVD twice.
The latter scenario is effectively time-shifting, and it's arguably better for BB, and likely better for the studios, which I presume get a cut of rental fees. However, although it's better for everyone, it's officially considered a no-no.
For the studio, only better if the increased rental fees would overall make up for what they would have made by selling the DVD. Yes, some will argue that they wouldn't have bought the DVD anyway. This might or might not be true in some cases. And some people who definitely *would* have bought it will rent or pirate it instead.
And for Blockbuster, you have to consider that a person might rent a DVD more than once. Less likely, but still an issue, and both these points illustrate that whether it is a win-win-win situation isn't as straightforward or as obvious as you seem to think.
With analog TV, bad reception results in some snow on the screen. Programs are still perfectly viewable because there are no frame dropouts, and the audio is still there. Digital TV's failure mode is generally catastrophic [etc]
Yes, we *know*. This point is brought up every time there's a digital TV thread on Slashdot- this one isn't even directly about OTA digital TV!- and it results in almost exactly the same discussion of the same points as it did the last time.
I have to admit that ironically, I *have* been using vim for my HTML and CSS design and have recently been considering using a higher-level tool (specifically, Dreamweaver(!)) at least for the layout.
Why? Because I was concerned that tweaking minor aspects of HTML/CSS layout in vim that way was slowing me down. I'm no snob, and if I could have a half-decent visual tool that was worth my time learning, but still let me control the HTML and CSS directly and *did not mess the underlying code up*, then I'd consider it.
The problem is that I'm using this HTML for dynamic sites. The Dreamweaver-generated HTML/CSS would have to be clean enough to be hand-splittable into template fragments, and also not "brittle"- that is, it wouldn't be tied together in such a way that it would fall apart when I tried manipulating and reworking it outside Dreamweaver.
But I'd also considered learning Dreamweaver because I was under the impression it was still quite standard within the industry. Yet if what the article says is true, it hasn't adapted to the Web 2.0 world. Even working in my own, unhealthily-isolated way I could have come to the conclusion that using a simple database and template for a small website made more sense than using static pages.
And while what you say is true, and I'd be happier using high-level tools to complement vim, I get the impression that Dreamweaver isn't that tool and that it's based around yesterday's web architecture.
I'm somewhat skeptical that this could even work for a few reasons
Notice that both the original linked article and the TorrentFreak original were very light on detail as to how this actually works and how effective it is in practice?
They could be playing up the effectiveness of a technology that's actually not that great in practice or- at worst- is totally made up, but a good way to scare people off.
It's an effect that's noticable in every monopoly protected sector, from pharmaceuticals to music; more money gets spent on marketing than on the actual product.
Much as I dislike some of the workings of the pharmaceutical industry, most such drugs would not have been developed without some sort of patent, since they're dependent on expensive development and *more expensive* testing, approval, etc.
One might argue that they were the wrong approach anyway; medicalising issues because that's where the money was.
I would accept that this is true in some cases, but not all- and since you didn't mention this, I don't believe it was the point you were making anyway.
Which is rather tragic, as it means we're getting less of what we, as a society, actually want, in exchange for more of what we don't want. Way to go, intellectual 'rights'.
Your problem is that you effectively argue for abolition of copyright and patents (as would be the result of removing the artificial "monopolies" you criticise and which these rely on) but you present no workable alternative.
And twice as tragic, as most such goods mostly sell themselves if left to do so.
Many of these "goods" wouldn't exist to sell themselves in the first place if there wasn't some form of enforced monopoly to ensure that the creator gets their due.
A bad game with marketing will almost always outsell a good one with no marketing.
I'm sure you're right, and that's one of the more severely damaging aspects of copyright. In a free market system with interchangeable goods there's a limit to the value of marketing; make too much and your product becomes too expensive and people buy the competition.
Perhaps I'm missing the point you're trying to make, but if there was no copyright protection then the "free market" would result in the cheapest price being charged by duplicators who give nothing back to the creators.
There are certainly flaws with copyright as it stands at present, and in many ways it's gone too far. However, the basic reasoning behind it is sound- ironically for the reason that many Slashdotters give when saying copying such goods isn't "theft".
Because, for most intellectual works, the marginal cost of making more copies is low to negligible without reducing the product's value *to the end user*. Yet at the same time this does nothing to address the fact that the cost of creating such information is usually non-zero and such a system guarantees *nothing* back to the creators.
I don't believe for a second that charitable or goodwill donations to the creators would be a workable substitute for the majority of situations.
If you agree that it's desirable for people to be rewarded for the effort involved in creating any intellectual work (in the broadest sense), but you dislike copyright, then you're going to have to come up with a workable alternative.
Copyright isn't perfect, but as a general principle it's probably the best workable solution to rewarding intellectual effort in the same way as more traditional forms. I'm not sure why abolishing it would improve the games market unless you think that the hobbyist-who-can-afford-to-write-a-small-game-in-their-own-time is the best model.
(I don't know why this comment was considered "troll", so I'm replying anyway).
Do you also know that this non-native execution downgrades performance by 5 times?
Relative to what? If (say) Intel can build a RISC-based chip that runs 5 times faster by some metric(s), and stick an x86 CISC -> RISC wrapper on that, then it's just as good.
If it had been more productive- or practical- for Intel to continue basing their x86 line on "native" x86 cores, I'm sure that they would have.
I remember reading about the x86 design, its accumulated cruft and architectural legacy and being amazed that the Intel engineers could do *anything* with such a design while retaining compatibility. When I found out that the newer chips were in effect transparently emulating x86 on a RISC core, it made a lot more sense.
Your "5 times" comment is only meaningful if Intel could have continued improving their chips while still basing them around an actual x86 core, and I'm not convinced that that would have been possible.
And do you know that current Intel and AMD processors emulate x86?
yeah right. What is this emulation you speak of?
The emulation that has formed the basis of all Intel's x86 processors from the Pentium Pro/Pentium II onwards, that's what!
The core of the processors are RISC-like (unlike the "genuine" x86 CISC cores of the original Pentium and older chips). x86 instructions are converted internally to RISC format before execution. (More).
To the best of my knowledge, this is transparent to the rest of the system and any code running on it. In fact, that's an interesting question- is there *any* way of accessing the CPU at the RISC level? My guess is that there must be, because IIRC Linux (and possibly Windows) can alter the behaviour of the CPU to compensate for bugs.
Slashdot Mirror
"All recently made hard disks have a built in secure erase function that erases on the disk level."
However, wholesale file sharing of copyrighted material also strikes most people as wrong.
[citation needed]
No it doesn't. Most people, when they think about it even a little, realise that copyright itself is in fact wrong.
[citation needed]
If the day after 9-11 we carpet bombed Afghanistan back to the primordial ooze, Iraq would have never happened.
WTF do you mean "Iraq would never have happened"?
Whether or not it was justified, the fact is that "[the] Iraq [war]" happened because the US made the decision to invade Iraq.
Not that the link between Iraq and Afghanistan was ever anything more than verging on nonexistent outside the Bush administration's attempts to pretend otherwise.
most of the other crap going on with the moron in charge of North Korea would not be happening.
Yeah, right.
Are we talking about the same North Korea whose leader would (and has) let large parts of the population starve to death and runs the country like an oversized concentration camp? Unless you can show quite clearly that you're capable of catching and/or killing *him* specifically, I doubt that any threats to flatten half the country are going to stop him. Like he would give a fuck.
And nukes aside, the *massive fucking problem* with North Korea is that they're right next door to South Korea, and quite capable of laying waste to large parts of it in the event of any aggression.
As for all this "we could flatten the world" stuff... well, you probably couldn't. In fact, you likely couldn't even flatten more than a few isolated areas before triggering off a chain of events that risked flattening parts of the U.S. and cementing the rest of the world against you.
Problem is America is too busy trying to fight a "moral and nice" war.
That's probably because war is a means to an end; America's support of Western Europe via the Marshall Plan was a brilliant move that probably earned them more strategic benefit for the financial input (allies and stability against the Soviet Union) than any war could have.
Trying to achieve the same result via direct military means- even if you didn't give a flying fuck about Europe per se- would have been pointless ideology over a more sensible solution. Nothing to do with being "nice".
America is not at war, we are trying to be the global police. It's not even remotely self defense.
So what happens when the "global police" start making noises about trying to unseat a slightly questionable, but nevertheless democratically elected leader like Hugo Chavez with the mentality "anyone trying to fight a nice war is a moron. you attack your enemy with all your force and you destroy them. ALL OF THEM"?
You forgot the secret ingedient, Chemical X.
What happens if you replace it with tar?
Never said otherwise...! Which part of "your other points are fair enough" didn't you understand?
You brought up and addressed timeshifting as a discrete issue. The way you (and others) talk about it as if it's something new *in itself* is misleading.
Sure, it's a bit more convenient now (I much prefer my DVR to my old video recorder), but most of us have had the ability to watch TV when it suits us for 20 to 30 years now!
I don't think the GP was that serious, you know... and given that China are hardly a neutral party, I seriously doubt the US would trust them to hand over the correct information.
Call me sceptical about a story that involves the US openly discussing problems surrounding nuclear issues that are normally top secret anyway.
Yeah, well speaking of obligatory references, I notice that Wolfram only chose to announce this *after* Patrick McGoohan's death. Maybe they were afraid that he'd cause it to blow up by asking tricky one-word philosophical questions? ;)
Is a 1.5TB drive the fairest comparison? I can't be arsed looking up the figures, but aren't 500GB - 1TB drives still the sweet point in bytes-per-buck? It's only recently that 1.5TB models were at the top end in terms of size (and with the accompanying premium).
It was a sad day when Enron closed its doors after making horrible management decisions that cost their employees, customers, and the general public billions. But curiously enough, nobody ever blames management.
Huh? In the Enron case, they certainly did!
And the bank chiefs in the UK are the ones being vilified and getting stick for what happened. (But eh... they'll still mostly keep their fatcat bonuses and pensions, despite the best attempts of Her Majesty's Government to backtrack over their unpopular agreement to let them keep it when they nationalised the banks, and pretend that they opposed it all along.).
What you describe was true in the majority of situations until recently, but it's changing now... partly. Thing is, too many will still get away with blaming it on the economy.
Clearly, you jest. You really expect us to believe you are married and you read slashdot?
Believe it or not, even geeks can get married. Slashdot has been around a while now and the demographic is getting older.
;)
This has resulted in something akin to sublimation; many Slashdotters have gone straight from not getting laid because they can't get a girl to not getting laid because they're married.
If they can get people to *think* they're getting 40% off in the frenzy, that's all that matters. Doesn't really matter if people realise that it wasn't that great a deal later on and say "I'm never shopping there again!"
IIRC there was some legal loophole allowing them to claim "40% off" compared to the old prices; something to do with the "40% off" being relative to the prices set by the administrators when they started running the company.
Personally, I found Zavvi's (ex. Virgin Megastores UK) closing down prices to be nothing special for similar reasons. They had the likes of 20% off (I think rising to 40%), but I noticed that one item they'd been selling for 7 or 8 quid (competitive with Amazon) was at £20 pre-discount. Nothing special... but that was Virgin/Zavvi all over.
The same retailer that- along with HMV- was selling full-price back catalogue CDs for approaching £15 (and even breaking through it at one point) back in the 90s and early 2000s, before they started getting competition from the likes of Fopp (RIP), large supermarkets, Amazon and P2P downloading.
Oh, I understand that, but the Apple ][ predates most of the others and is worthy of an historical footnote. Besides, if they want to limit this to European brands, they should remove the Atari from the list as well.
Where did it say they wanted to do that? I think they were focusing on computers that were popular here. Which obviously biases it towards UK machines, but doesn't exclude American ones.
While the Atari 800XL was never as popular here (or as well-supported) as the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC, it still had a notable user base.
Dixons (UK electronics chain) sold a lot of them at knock-down prices during the mid-80s.
As someone who did development for Apple ][ add-on hardware in the UK, I can tell you the APPLE ][ was HUGE in the UK.
Huge would be, at best, a relative term. It may have had some popularity behind the scenes in businesses (still being in short trousers during the early 80s, I can't really comment on that). I know that my Dad used them in his work at a hospital.
But even that latter example was (and is) about the only place that I've seen Apple II in the flesh. They were also bordering on nonexistent in the UK educational field and as mass-market home computers.
Only businesses with a PDP11 or DG Nova did not need an Apple ][, The Apple ][ cost about GBP100
£100? I'm calling bullshit on that, and it makes me question the truth of what you said above.
The integer-only, black-and-white, touch keyboard ZX80 was a big deal when it came out in 1980 as the first computer under £100. The ubiquitous rubber-key ZX Spectrum (cheapass peoples' favourite) was £125 for the 16K version when it came out in 1982. And this was during the Apple II's American heyday.
I doubt that the Apple II was *ever* sold for anything even in the same ballpark as £100, even latterly when it was dated and outspecced.
BTW, Visicalc was also available for other computers such as the IBM PC, Atari 800 and Commodore Pet.
Apple II's were sold over here, they were just not that prevalent.
Yes; the UK hospital my Dad worked at had Apple IIs, but this was one of the few (if only) places I saw them in the UK. Had I not seen them there, it's quite possible that I'd never have seen one at all.
They actually sold Euro-specific versions; reading this I find out that (supposedly) these were mono-only (yuk!) because the smart but NTSC-specific hack Woz used to get crude colour on the original didn't work with PAL.
This explains why my Dad (who used the things quite extensively) was never aware that the Apple II was supposedly capable of colour. I found this surprising, even allowing for the fact that all the ones at the hospital only had green-screen monitors.
I suspect that since the Euro Apples were mono only (regardless of what they were plugged into), references to any colour facilities would have been removed from the manuals. (Assuming they left the firmware relating to the U.S. colour facilities in the ROM for compatibility).
Anyway, I'd guess that the combination of high imported prices and reduced spec hurt its European popularity initially- and that as a result it wouldn't have achieved the critical mass and network effects required to ensure continued popularity in the face of newer and better-specified computers (unlike in the U.S.).
I mean, I don't know how much the Apple II was circa 1981/82, but I doubt that it would have been cheaper than the somewhat high-end and better-specified BBC Micro. And in the absence of any significant pre-existing support for the Apple, I know which one I'd have gone for.
I've got an Apple III as well and they are even rarer - didn't know they existed until I was given one instead of the owner dumping it.
I don't know when he dumped it, but I'd assume that any Apple IIIs are rare enough to be worth a bit now...?
And having to watch it again the next week at the exact time, which would be programming my life around the show and not the other way around.
Your other points are fair enough, but it's like everyone here has forgotten that video recorders giving you the ability to watch when it suits *you* have been around for a generation!
In the same time, Y rents another copy of the same DVD from BB, rips it and returns it the next day. two weeks later, they watch it and delete it. BB has since re-rented the same DVD twice. The latter scenario is effectively time-shifting, and it's arguably better for BB, and likely better for the studios, which I presume get a cut of rental fees. However, although it's better for everyone, it's officially considered a no-no.
For the studio, only better if the increased rental fees would overall make up for what they would have made by selling the DVD. Yes, some will argue that they wouldn't have bought the DVD anyway. This might or might not be true in some cases. And some people who definitely *would* have bought it will rent or pirate it instead.
And for Blockbuster, you have to consider that a person might rent a DVD more than once. Less likely, but still an issue, and both these points illustrate that whether it is a win-win-win situation isn't as straightforward or as obvious as you seem to think.
With analog TV, bad reception results in some snow on the screen. Programs are still perfectly viewable because there are no frame dropouts, and the audio is still there. Digital TV's failure mode is generally catastrophic [etc]
Yes, we *know*. This point is brought up every time there's a digital TV thread on Slashdot- this one isn't even directly about OTA digital TV!- and it results in almost exactly the same discussion of the same points as it did the last time.
Is most of Dreamweaver written in some interpreted language like Javascript?
JavaScript has had integrated regular expression support for quite a while now, ironically.
I have to admit that ironically, I *have* been using vim for my HTML and CSS design and have recently been considering using a higher-level tool (specifically, Dreamweaver(!)) at least for the layout.
Why? Because I was concerned that tweaking minor aspects of HTML/CSS layout in vim that way was slowing me down. I'm no snob, and if I could have a half-decent visual tool that was worth my time learning, but still let me control the HTML and CSS directly and *did not mess the underlying code up*, then I'd consider it.
The problem is that I'm using this HTML for dynamic sites. The Dreamweaver-generated HTML/CSS would have to be clean enough to be hand-splittable into template fragments, and also not "brittle"- that is, it wouldn't be tied together in such a way that it would fall apart when I tried manipulating and reworking it outside Dreamweaver.
But I'd also considered learning Dreamweaver because I was under the impression it was still quite standard within the industry. Yet if what the article says is true, it hasn't adapted to the Web 2.0 world. Even working in my own, unhealthily-isolated way I could have come to the conclusion that using a simple database and template for a small website made more sense than using static pages.
And while what you say is true, and I'd be happier using high-level tools to complement vim, I get the impression that Dreamweaver isn't that tool and that it's based around yesterday's web architecture.
I'm somewhat skeptical that this could even work for a few reasons
Notice that both the original linked article and the TorrentFreak original were very light on detail as to how this actually works and how effective it is in practice?
They could be playing up the effectiveness of a technology that's actually not that great in practice or- at worst- is totally made up, but a good way to scare people off.
Married a chick from Eastern Europe, who is .. cough, 19 years younger than myself. Will we get Viagra or Britney Spears Perfume advertising?
You sir, are my hero.
He didn't mention the fact he's 32.
Which makes the Britney Spears perfume advertising unlikely then. 13 has got to be way past the target age for that stuff...
It's an effect that's noticable in every monopoly protected sector, from pharmaceuticals to music; more money gets spent on marketing than on the actual product.
Much as I dislike some of the workings of the pharmaceutical industry, most such drugs would not have been developed without some sort of patent, since they're dependent on expensive development and *more expensive* testing, approval, etc.
One might argue that they were the wrong approach anyway; medicalising issues because that's where the money was.
I would accept that this is true in some cases, but not all- and since you didn't mention this, I don't believe it was the point you were making anyway.
Which is rather tragic, as it means we're getting less of what we, as a society, actually want, in exchange for more of what we don't want. Way to go, intellectual 'rights'.
Your problem is that you effectively argue for abolition of copyright and patents (as would be the result of removing the artificial "monopolies" you criticise and which these rely on) but you present no workable alternative.
And twice as tragic, as most such goods mostly sell themselves if left to do so.
Many of these "goods" wouldn't exist to sell themselves in the first place if there wasn't some form of enforced monopoly to ensure that the creator gets their due.
A bad game with marketing will almost always outsell a good one with no marketing.
I'm sure you're right, and that's one of the more severely damaging aspects of copyright. In a free market system with interchangeable goods there's a limit to the value of marketing; make too much and your product becomes too expensive and people buy the competition.
Perhaps I'm missing the point you're trying to make, but if there was no copyright protection then the "free market" would result in the cheapest price being charged by duplicators who give nothing back to the creators.
There are certainly flaws with copyright as it stands at present, and in many ways it's gone too far. However, the basic reasoning behind it is sound- ironically for the reason that many Slashdotters give when saying copying such goods isn't "theft".
Because, for most intellectual works, the marginal cost of making more copies is low to negligible without reducing the product's value *to the end user*. Yet at the same time this does nothing to address the fact that the cost of creating such information is usually non-zero and such a system guarantees *nothing* back to the creators.
I don't believe for a second that charitable or goodwill donations to the creators would be a workable substitute for the majority of situations.
If you agree that it's desirable for people to be rewarded for the effort involved in creating any intellectual work (in the broadest sense), but you dislike copyright, then you're going to have to come up with a workable alternative.
Copyright isn't perfect, but as a general principle it's probably the best workable solution to rewarding intellectual effort in the same way as more traditional forms. I'm not sure why abolishing it would improve the games market unless you think that the hobbyist-who-can-afford-to-write-a-small-game-in-their-own-time is the best model.
Do you also know that this non-native execution downgrades performance by 5 times?
Relative to what? If (say) Intel can build a RISC-based chip that runs 5 times faster by some metric(s), and stick an x86 CISC -> RISC wrapper on that, then it's just as good.
If it had been more productive- or practical- for Intel to continue basing their x86 line on "native" x86 cores, I'm sure that they would have.
I remember reading about the x86 design, its accumulated cruft and architectural legacy and being amazed that the Intel engineers could do *anything* with such a design while retaining compatibility. When I found out that the newer chips were in effect transparently emulating x86 on a RISC core, it made a lot more sense.
Your "5 times" comment is only meaningful if Intel could have continued improving their chips while still basing them around an actual x86 core, and I'm not convinced that that would have been possible.
And do you know that current Intel and AMD processors emulate x86?
yeah right. What is this emulation you speak of?
The emulation that has formed the basis of all Intel's x86 processors from the Pentium Pro/Pentium II onwards, that's what!
The core of the processors are RISC-like (unlike the "genuine" x86 CISC cores of the original Pentium and older chips). x86 instructions are converted internally to RISC format before execution. (More).
To the best of my knowledge, this is transparent to the rest of the system and any code running on it. In fact, that's an interesting question- is there *any* way of accessing the CPU at the RISC level? My guess is that there must be, because IIRC Linux (and possibly Windows) can alter the behaviour of the CPU to compensate for bugs.