Assad / the Assad regime had absolutely nothing to win by using chemical weapons and could only lose by such an attack. For his opposition it was a field day.
Gallaudet University is a school for the deaf. They (Glenn Lockhart and Stacy Nowak) wanted to use the content for their coursework, but couldn't use it as is, so instead of providing closed captioning themselves or work something out for the specific material they were interested in they decided to sue Berkeley.
Sadly this is not made clear in the submissions to slashdot, so speculations run amok about ambulance chasing attorneys and some deaf students suing.
I hope Glenn and Stacy are happy with their result.
It seems to be easier and faster to switch the battery, load it in sufficient time, and switch it into another car...
Of course there are some things that need to be adressed (who "owns" the battery, standardisation and safety issues), but if it's technically doable the finance folks and lawyers usually come up with a design to cover the rest.
1) Producing the desired magnetic field with the proposed wire-loop can't work, you can probably get a few gigawatt from Maxwell rotating in his grave in result of that paper.
2) The electric current in the wireloop is aparently driven by a static electric field, ever hear about static electric fields being conservative?
3) Somehow electric current is generated by catching electrons, but where do they leave the System?
4) Where does the energy come from to separate electrons and protons from the plasma? To put some spatial distance between positive and negative charge you need energy.
5) A sail of 8.400 km with (square or what?) shall produce 10^27 W of energy. That means over a 4-Billionth (1/4*10^9) of the solid angle of the sun it produces 2.5 times the total energy output of the sun. Surrounding the sun completely with these contraptions should yield 10^10 times the total energy production of the sun.
This paper can't even stand up to basic highschool-physics.
... when it traded at 200 times of its current value.
They more often than not just copy the PR of the businesses they "analyze", don't bother checking their facts and firmly believe in the biggest players if they're not in their pockets anyway.
It's funny how the MPAA uses just the argument that "they didn't know the information was (obtained) illegaly" that they forbid everyone else who might download a shred of "their" intellectually propertized goodies to use. Plain and simple the MPAA hired Anderson to steal that information and now they leave him hanging.
Well, that's how it works out for anyone doing the dirty work for the MPAA.
In the discussion of bought CDs vs. legal downloads vs. "pirated" downloads there's always the question coming up if 99c (equals $1 to me) is a justified price. As i see it it is not because of two things both resulting from comparing the downloads with the price of a CD-Album. On a CD you get about 14 Tracks and pay somewhere from $10 to $20, so that's also roughly $1 per track, give or take some cents. But there you buy a CD with better sound quality, booklet and whatnot, storage medium, and if you want you can still make some mp3 of it (even in better quality). So for the same price you get much less with the download. When you look at the publishing costs it's even worse: it's really much cheaper to put up a song for download than to press it on CD, ship it, and sell it in a store.
That's why i think $1 is not justified. Somewhere from 20-30c is more like it.
Whenever you install, upgrade or update Windows and it's components there's quite scary language too. How is that any less frightening?
Nobody reads that anyway and most of it is so silly it's obviously unenforcable. The rest would've be up for a court to decide if any corporation issuing that gobbledygook would ever dare to bring the case up. In principle you should consult a lawyer whenever one of the things pops up (which would about triple the cost of any IT-administration).
When people want to use Windows (especially the newest and thus obviously "best" variant) they should pay the price Microsoft is asking for it. The same goes for Office and Software in general (and not just from Microsoft): if you want it pay the price, if it's not worth its price take another product.
The idea is to make the market work: The real reason Windows (the newest one) and also Office is on nearly every private PC is because of "unofficial" installations. If people really stopped to consider if they really need Windows XP, or if maybe Windows 98 (which the PC came with) will still do considering the price then we'd see a lot less Windows XP, and if they really pondered shelling out for Microsoft-Office vs. Star-Office or maybe OpenOffice then we'd see a lot of different decisions.
Bill Gate once said that he preferred PCs that run a pirated Windows to ones with a competing OS and he's right: All those pirated Windows-Versions cement the Microsoft monopoly and the pirated MS-Office-Versions even more so. If everyone really were to pay for their MS-Windows and MS-Office we'd see a lot more Linux and OpenOffice around.
Thus i'm really happy that MS is working at just that: make people pay the price for Windows (and Office too). Keep up the good work, Bill.
Wasn't it Bill Gates who called the internet just a "passing fad" as late as 1995 and wasn't Windows exceptionally late to the internet (especially out of the box) which is a good thing because so we now have a protocol (TCP/IP) that actually works and not something like "MS-Word" that's incompatible even with itself.
So now all of a sudden Bill states that computers don't make sense at all without internet when that's exactly what most of us had ten years ago and what (among other things) Microsoft grew up with. It really amuses me to read now that i diddn't learn anything at all from the computers at our school with no network, weak processors and small screens.
What BG is saying now is that computers make no sense without all that network, the latest and best OS, big screens and whatnot. Either take the whole package or nothing, and if you're already taking that big package it doesn't really make a difference to buy an expensive computer too (and of course a windows license).
It's obvious that Microsoft has a problem with computers that are cheaper alltogether than their OS even at a discount, but that's Microsofts problem, not anyone elses. So that's why we have Bill Gates mocking those cheap computers and stating against historic facts that computers like that are worthless (if in education or elsewhere).
Nuclear material for reactors will last us about 70 years (with the current usage). So this means we replace one finite ressource with another one. Of cource there are predictions of huge uranium finds in some unforseen future, just as there are for oil, but i'd say 70 years is a good number.
with the current increase in energy usage and china awakening 30 years is probably more realistic. So what do we win with increassed usage of nuclear power? In the end some radioactive ruins and still no lasting concept.
Of course the industries probblem with regenerative energies is that many of them are decentralized. They don't want everyone to get cheap energy from the roof and reduce their energy usage because that would loosen their grip on the energy market and cut into their profits. So for them it makes perfect sense to build nuclear power plants to prolong their grip on the energy market just for a little longer, but from a global perspective it makes no sense at all.
It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China. I mean, what is it, is it paranoia or is it that US-Politics needs that big evil enemy to distract their people from the problems at home? It's a never ending story, China, Terrorists, evil Communists... did anything change since McCarthy or do we need to relive all that crap because of 9/11?
Sure, 9/11 was a tragic event, but even more tragic is what was done to the american ideals of freedom and democracy in the name of the "war on terror".
Now what has all this to do with Galileo vs. GPS you may ask. Well, GPS is under US-military control. ATM they're acting like they could throw a fit of paranoia anytime and switch off all civil GPS functionality. Sory, but that's the picture the US government is sending out into the world: self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.
Now you wouldn't trust someone like that with a system your life depends on, but that's exactly what we need: GPS- (or Galileo-) guided navigation systems for planes and ships, fully automated systems relying on accurate GPS-coordinates for positioning, you name it. If it isn't lives depending on these systems it's at least big money.
And no, noone trusts the US to provide a reliable GPS service. They might switch off the system without prior warning because of some perceived terrorist threat (thereby doing more damage worldwide than any terrorist could), they might do it to damage european economy or threaten to do it in some kind of blackmail-scheme, who knows.
Obviously you believe in some kind of religious fundamentalism that forbids an open debate about religion. And yes pointing out fundamental flaws in a concept is discussion, even if done by means of jokes.
Forgot those Licenses they wanted to press onto every commercial Linux-User? Also let's not forget all that crap about the GPL being unconstitutional and unenforcable. Then they trash talked Linux so much that it now comes back to haunt them in the courts. Their PR-campaign was squarely aimed at Linux. Not to forget that it's aparently SCO corporate culture to call Linux Coders "long-haired Smellies", maybe some SCO-folks see this as their personal vendetta.
"Wow, 24% cost savings, that's pretty much" i wondered. "How comes when you get a cheap copy of Windows thrown in with every PC and there's special discounts and all?"
But it's not just the OS. For a start the Windows-Home edition isn't up to it, not even for schools. Once you want proper networking and at least enough security to protect the systems from overambitious pupils you need the "Professional" (i.e. not dumbed down) Windows and probably a server and the licenses for all those clients too (i know of at least one antivirus software that recently needs that for centralized updates).
So you need to "upgrade" to a "better" OS and you need a Virus-scanner before you can even start to think of the Apps. And then it really starts to get expensive: MS-Office, PaintShop, Nero or something else for CD-burning,... educational and scientific software like Mathematica,... the whole (very expensive) shelf of proprietary software, and of course all the updates too.
A lot of this you get for free with OSS: OpenOffice, GIMP,... but to start with OSS is also a whole different mindset: when you start with OSS you're used to look for all those freebies, it would never cross your mind to spend money on CD burning software. You could also put OpenOffice, GIMP and loads of other free stuff on a Windows machine, but usually on the Windows-side it's proprietary software all the way (even if it's not properly licensed).
So i think what really makes the difference is the mindset: If a "Windows person" needs new software he starts looking in the shops, the "OSS person" starts with the distri and looks for open/free software first.
What if Tridge wrote something that totally hosed the kernel source on BK's server? People would be screaming bloody murder at BK for letting it happen.
... and rightly so. If BitMover doesn't put a proper authentification protocoll in place and doesn't safeguard against corruption of the BK database (what if some false bytes due to communication errors hosed the database?) then it's their fault. If it was as easy as you suggest in your posting then i'd call that gross negligence on behalf of BitMover.
Most BK servers are part of the internet, opening a simple telnet connection to a well known port is no secret at all. If Tridge could corrupt BKs database any blackhat could. There's really no excuse for implementing poor security or none at all in BK. For the benefit of BitMover i assume that they did put proper security in place and safeguarded against accidental corruption of the BK database. Regardless of that your argument is moot.
Whenever we buy new RAM, mostly as part of new PCs, we run Memtest86. It's easy to do, it takes a while so do it overnight. There's so much that can go wrong with RAM, even with "good" RAM: it might not work together with the board, the SPD-timings might be off, whatever. Every once in a while we find some RAM that doesn't work for us and return it to the shop. We never had any problems at all to get it exchanged.
For hardware-sellers it's probably more expensive if they have to factor in a certain return-rate (and the overhead for that) so they will look to it that the RAM they buy is ok. That way market forces will work for the benefits of all of us: untested RAM will, in the end, be more expensive than tested RAM. It's much easier and cheaper to do RAMtesting factoryside than having it returned by millions of customers.
Of course that doesn't work if you buy your PC in a supermarket, but even for cheap PCs it's better to configure them yourself than buying crap. That way you can specify exactly where to save money and if anything breaks you get it fixed much quicker.
... because you're not prepared to handle them. Which is because most times you don't use them. Apparently you can afford to throw away the change, lucky you.
I live in Euro country, but i think the pricing here is not that different from the pricing in the US. I think it'd be too expensive to throw all the change i get for anything in the 0-5 Euro-Range.
Also coins are the most used currency here, there's a reason to use coins for that: they're much more durable. Also most people are prepared to handle coins, so it's not a problem of losing them out of pockets or the like.
Those 84% computer-users who don't know what a trojan is wouldn't know either if it was called different. So what? They can't be bothered to learn those gritty details, some are even downright proud of it (the "I don't even know how to program my VCR" fraction).
Now it's supposed the geeks fault that the average computer user is to lazy to learn a few simple concepts? Because no matter what you call it, if you don't understand the concept you can't understand the word. It's really fascinating: tell them something vital about computers and their eyes glaze over within seconds but they know the tiniest details about every player of their favourite soccer- (baseball-, football-, basketball-, Wrestling-) team to their heart.
Netscape was in the business of selling an app, namely a browser, and that was a good business-model until Microsoft came along and "gave away their browser for free", only Microsofts browser wasn't free: anyone buying Windows paid its development costs.
Microsoft could do that very same thing to the majority of software-apps out there and in fact they've already begun with some: mediaplayers, file-compression, firewalls, virus-scanners, CD/DVD-burners, DVD-players, all kinds of visualizing tools,...
But that's just the start, in principle they could bundle any application with their OS, why not throw in the Office suite, Image manipulation, and whatnot? If the competition with OOo/Staroffice becomes too big we might well see Microsoft bundling MS-Office with Windows.
If Netscape had a bad business model selling browsers then anyone selling application-software for Windows has.
Link: estimates put IE at 30%-35% market share. Since This is an Article describing IE4.0 just being out that 30% must be IE1-3 and maybe some IE4 beta. The Article may be a little onesided but it's hard to find "neutral" information from the middle of the browser wars.
But anyway that's beside the point.
Again you say "people voted with their wallets" but they had no alternative. If they needed a PC-OS there was no real alternative to Windows to run the majority of applications, and Windows came with IE. Where in this is the "voting" part? By bundling IE with the OS Microsoft creates an extremely uneven playing field and the usual rules of the market no longer apply.
As for your argument that there's no "divine law" that there has to be a browser market: No, there's no "divine law", but there's human laws, laws concerning monopolies for example.
Also i don't claim that MS cannot add stuff to their OS, they can and they do, that's painfully obvious. What i claim is, that in this way they destroy markets and those missing markets and the missing competition deprives the customers of choices. That in turn negatively affects product quality as can be easily seen: Only when some competition (Linux) came to the PC-OS-market could Microsoft be convinced to improve the security of their products.
IE4 was still a buggy product, there were numerous reports of crashes. Maybe it's arguable which was the better product at that time, but calling NN4 "bloated shit" compared to the 60MB IE4 is overdoing it a bit. As for features: IE4 was still behind in some areas, maybe they introduced some new features but that's beside the point.
Microsoft had already grabbed a 30% to 35% Market share before IE4, with a vastly inferior product. They gave their IE away for "free" (meaning you had no choice but to buy it with Windows anyway) and so most people who had already bought a browser with their OS wouldn't go and buy a second one even if it was better.
It's really straining reality to talk of a working market and "people voting with their wallets" here. Had Microsoft sold IE separately from Windows, with it's own pricetag, things would've been different.
As for mp3: if nearly noone can encode in a format (for example to convert their CDs to mp3) that makes a big difference, don't you think? Windows had the ability to encode to mp3, so there was a way to do it without licensing. Maybe that was not the best mp3 encoder there but why rip it out? Also what happens here is, on a smaller case, the same as with IE: Microsoft "gives their encoder away for free", read: Microsoft leaves you no choice but to buy their encoder with their OS.
As for the US- antitrust case against Microsoft: MS was already found to have abused its monopoly and the DoJ "suddenly" seeked much lesser penalties under the Bush administration. Bush had already signalled that he opposed a breakup of MS during his campaign. The final decision in DoJ vs. MS was considered a big victory by MS and it was basically a present given away by the DoJ. The DoJ had a very strong position and could've achieved much more.
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Assad / the Assad regime had absolutely nothing to win by using chemical weapons and could only lose by such an attack. For his opposition it was a field day.
Cui bono?
http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/07/berkeley-deletes-200000-free-online-vide
Gallaudet University is a school for the deaf. They (Glenn Lockhart and Stacy Nowak) wanted to use the content for their coursework, but couldn't use it as is, so instead of providing closed captioning themselves or work something out for the specific material they were interested in they decided to sue Berkeley.
Sadly this is not made clear in the submissions to slashdot, so speculations run amok about ambulance chasing attorneys and some deaf students suing.
I hope Glenn and Stacy are happy with their result.
Head ripping off is considered a most humane, swift and painless method:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfsMMVgIToA
A wild black hole appears.
It attacks sun with gravity.
It's super effective.
It seems to be easier and faster to switch the battery, load it in sufficient time, and switch it into another car ...
Of course there are some things that need to be adressed (who "owns" the battery, standardisation and safety issues), but if it's technically doable the finance folks and lawyers usually come up with a design to cover the rest.
... oh, this isn't about some IRC mod.
Nevertheless, same rules apply.
Aparently it's about this article: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/abscicon2010/pdf/5469.pdf
1) Producing the desired magnetic field with the proposed wire-loop can't work, you can probably get a few gigawatt from Maxwell rotating in his grave in result of that paper.
2) The electric current in the wireloop is aparently driven by a static electric field, ever hear about static electric fields being conservative?
3) Somehow electric current is generated by catching electrons, but where do they leave the System?
4) Where does the energy come from to separate electrons and protons from the plasma? To put some spatial distance between positive and negative charge you need energy.
5) A sail of 8.400 km with (square or what?) shall produce 10^27 W of energy. That means over a 4-Billionth (1/4*10^9) of the solid angle of the sun it produces 2.5 times the total energy output of the sun. Surrounding the sun completely with these contraptions should yield 10^10 times the total energy production of the sun.
This paper can't even stand up to basic highschool-physics.
... when it traded at 200 times of its current value.
They more often than not just copy the PR of the businesses they "analyze", don't bother checking their facts and firmly believe in the biggest players if they're not in their pockets anyway.
It's funny how the MPAA uses just the argument that "they didn't know the information was (obtained) illegaly" that they forbid everyone else who might download a shred of "their" intellectually propertized goodies to use. Plain and simple the MPAA hired Anderson to steal that information and now they leave him hanging.
Well, that's how it works out for anyone doing the dirty work for the MPAA.
There's no such thing as thieves' honor.
In the discussion of bought CDs vs. legal downloads vs. "pirated" downloads there's always the question coming up if 99c (equals $1 to me) is a justified price. As i see it it is not because of two things both resulting from comparing the downloads with the price of a CD-Album. On a CD you get about 14 Tracks and pay somewhere from $10 to $20, so that's also roughly $1 per track, give or take some cents. But there you buy a CD with better sound quality, booklet and whatnot, storage medium, and if you want you can still make some mp3 of it (even in better quality). So for the same price you get much less with the download. When you look at the publishing costs it's even worse: it's really much cheaper to put up a song for download than to press it on CD, ship it, and sell it in a store.
That's why i think $1 is not justified. Somewhere from 20-30c is more like it.
Whenever you install, upgrade or update Windows and it's components there's quite scary language too. How is that any less frightening?
Nobody reads that anyway and most of it is so silly it's obviously unenforcable. The rest would've be up for a court to decide if any corporation issuing that gobbledygook would ever dare to bring the case up. In principle you should consult a lawyer whenever one of the things pops up (which would about triple the cost of any IT-administration).
When people want to use Windows (especially the newest and thus obviously "best" variant) they should pay the price Microsoft is asking for it. The same goes for Office and Software in general (and not just from Microsoft): if you want it pay the price, if it's not worth its price take another product.
The idea is to make the market work: The real reason Windows (the newest one) and also Office is on nearly every private PC is because of "unofficial" installations. If people really stopped to consider if they really need Windows XP, or if maybe Windows 98 (which the PC came with) will still do considering the price then we'd see a lot less Windows XP, and if they really pondered shelling out for Microsoft-Office vs. Star-Office or maybe OpenOffice then we'd see a lot of different decisions.
Bill Gate once said that he preferred PCs that run a pirated Windows to ones with a competing OS and he's right: All those pirated Windows-Versions cement the Microsoft monopoly and the pirated MS-Office-Versions even more so. If everyone really were to pay for their MS-Windows and MS-Office we'd see a lot more Linux and OpenOffice around.
Thus i'm really happy that MS is working at just that: make people pay the price for Windows (and Office too). Keep up the good work, Bill.
Wasn't it Bill Gates who called the internet just a "passing fad" as late as 1995 and wasn't Windows exceptionally late to the internet (especially out of the box) which is a good thing because so we now have a protocol (TCP/IP) that actually works and not something like "MS-Word" that's incompatible even with itself.
So now all of a sudden Bill states that computers don't make sense at all without internet when that's exactly what most of us had ten years ago and what (among other things) Microsoft grew up with. It really amuses me to read now that i diddn't learn anything at all from the computers at our school with no network, weak processors and small screens.
What BG is saying now is that computers make no sense without all that network, the latest and best OS, big screens and whatnot. Either take the whole package or nothing, and if you're already taking that big package it doesn't really make a difference to buy an expensive computer too (and of course a windows license).
It's obvious that Microsoft has a problem with computers that are cheaper alltogether than their OS even at a discount, but that's Microsofts problem, not anyone elses. So that's why we have Bill Gates mocking those cheap computers and stating against historic facts that computers like that are worthless (if in education or elsewhere).
Nuclear material for reactors will last us about 70 years (with the current usage). So this means we replace one finite ressource with another one. Of cource there are predictions of huge uranium finds in some unforseen future, just as there are for oil, but i'd say 70 years is a good number.
with the current increase in energy usage and china awakening 30 years is probably more realistic. So what do we win with increassed usage of nuclear power? In the end some radioactive ruins and still no lasting concept.
Of course the industries probblem with regenerative energies is that many of them are decentralized. They don't want everyone to get cheap energy from the roof and reduce their energy usage because that would loosen their grip on the energy market and cut into their profits. So for them it makes perfect sense to build nuclear power plants to prolong their grip on the energy market just for a little longer, but from a global perspective it makes no sense at all.
It's really amazing how all this cold war rhetorics is dug up again (or has it never died?). Only Russia is no big threat atm so now it's China. I mean, what is it, is it paranoia or is it that US-Politics needs that big evil enemy to distract their people from the problems at home? It's a never ending story, China, Terrorists, evil Communists ... did anything change since McCarthy or do we need to relive all that crap because of 9/11?
Sure, 9/11 was a tragic event, but even more tragic is what was done to the american ideals of freedom and democracy in the name of the "war on terror".
Now what has all this to do with Galileo vs. GPS you may ask. Well, GPS is under US-military control. ATM they're acting like they could throw a fit of paranoia anytime and switch off all civil GPS functionality. Sory, but that's the picture the US government is sending out into the world: self centered control freaks with tunnelvision that might jump anytime for reasons only they know.
Now you wouldn't trust someone like that with a system your life depends on, but that's exactly what we need: GPS- (or Galileo-) guided navigation systems for planes and ships, fully automated systems relying on accurate GPS-coordinates for positioning, you name it. If it isn't lives depending on these systems it's at least big money.
And no, noone trusts the US to provide a reliable GPS service. They might switch off the system without prior warning because of some perceived terrorist threat (thereby doing more damage worldwide than any terrorist could), they might do it to damage european economy or threaten to do it in some kind of blackmail-scheme, who knows.
And that's why we need Galileo.
Obviously you believe in some kind of religious fundamentalism that forbids an open debate about religion. And yes pointing out fundamental flaws in a concept is discussion, even if done by means of jokes.
Forgot those Licenses they wanted to press onto every commercial Linux-User? Also let's not forget all that crap about the GPL being unconstitutional and unenforcable. Then they trash talked Linux so much that it now comes back to haunt them in the courts. Their PR-campaign was squarely aimed at Linux. Not to forget that it's aparently SCO corporate culture to call Linux Coders "long-haired Smellies", maybe some SCO-folks see this as their personal vendetta.
"Wow, 24% cost savings, that's pretty much" i wondered. "How comes when you get a cheap copy of Windows thrown in with every PC and there's special discounts and all?"
... educational and scientific software like Mathematica, ... the whole (very expensive) shelf of proprietary software, and of course all the updates too.
... but to start with OSS is also a whole different mindset: when you start with OSS you're used to look for all those freebies, it would never cross your mind to spend money on CD burning software. You could also put OpenOffice, GIMP and loads of other free stuff on a Windows machine, but usually on the Windows-side it's proprietary software all the way (even if it's not properly licensed).
But it's not just the OS. For a start the Windows-Home edition isn't up to it, not even for schools. Once you want proper networking and at least enough security to protect the systems from overambitious pupils you need the "Professional" (i.e. not dumbed down) Windows and probably a server and the licenses for all those clients too (i know of at least one antivirus software that recently needs that for centralized updates).
So you need to "upgrade" to a "better" OS and you need a Virus-scanner before you can even start to think of the Apps. And then it really starts to get expensive: MS-Office, PaintShop, Nero or something else for CD-burning,
A lot of this you get for free with OSS: OpenOffice, GIMP,
So i think what really makes the difference is the mindset: If a "Windows person" needs new software he starts looking in the shops, the "OSS person" starts with the distri and looks for open/free software first.
Most BK servers are part of the internet, opening a simple telnet connection to a well known port is no secret at all. If Tridge could corrupt BKs database any blackhat could. There's really no excuse for implementing poor security or none at all in BK. For the benefit of BitMover i assume that they did put proper security in place and safeguarded against accidental corruption of the BK database. Regardless of that your argument is moot.
Whenever we buy new RAM, mostly as part of new PCs, we run Memtest86. It's easy to do, it takes a while so do it overnight. There's so much that can go wrong with RAM, even with "good" RAM: it might not work together with the board, the SPD-timings might be off, whatever. Every once in a while we find some RAM that doesn't work for us and return it to the shop. We never had any problems at all to get it exchanged.
For hardware-sellers it's probably more expensive if they have to factor in a certain return-rate (and the overhead for that) so they will look to it that the RAM they buy is ok. That way market forces will work for the benefits of all of us: untested RAM will, in the end, be more expensive than tested RAM. It's much easier and cheaper to do RAMtesting factoryside than having it returned by millions of customers.
Of course that doesn't work if you buy your PC in a supermarket, but even for cheap PCs it's better to configure them yourself than buying crap. That way you can specify exactly where to save money and if anything breaks you get it fixed much quicker.
... because you're not prepared to handle them. Which is because most times you don't use them. Apparently you can afford to throw away the change, lucky you.
I live in Euro country, but i think the pricing here is not that different from the pricing in the US. I think it'd be too expensive to throw all the change i get for anything in the 0-5 Euro-Range.
Also coins are the most used currency here, there's a reason to use coins for that: they're much more durable. Also most people are prepared to handle coins, so it's not a problem of losing them out of pockets or the like.
Those 84% computer-users who don't know what a trojan is wouldn't know either if it was called different. So what? They can't be bothered to learn those gritty details, some are even downright proud of it (the "I don't even know how to program my VCR" fraction).
Now it's supposed the geeks fault that the average computer user is to lazy to learn a few simple concepts? Because no matter what you call it, if you don't understand the concept you can't understand the word. It's really fascinating: tell them something vital about computers and their eyes glaze over within seconds but they know the tiniest details about every player of their favourite soccer- (baseball-, football-, basketball-, Wrestling-) team to their heart.
Netscape was in the business of selling an app, namely a browser, and that was a good business-model until Microsoft came along and "gave away their browser for free", only Microsofts browser wasn't free: anyone buying Windows paid its development costs.
...
Microsoft could do that very same thing to the majority of software-apps out there and in fact they've already begun with some: mediaplayers, file-compression, firewalls, virus-scanners, CD/DVD-burners, DVD-players, all kinds of visualizing tools,
But that's just the start, in principle they could bundle any application with their OS, why not throw in the Office suite, Image manipulation, and whatnot? If the competition with OOo/Staroffice becomes too big we might well see Microsoft bundling MS-Office with Windows.
If Netscape had a bad business model selling browsers then anyone selling application-software for Windows has.
Link: estimates put IE at 30%-35% market share. Since This is an Article describing IE4.0 just being out that 30% must be IE1-3 and maybe some IE4 beta. The Article may be a little onesided but it's hard to find "neutral" information from the middle of the browser wars.
But anyway that's beside the point.
Again you say "people voted with their wallets" but they had no alternative. If they needed a PC-OS there was no real alternative to Windows to run the majority of applications, and Windows came with IE. Where in this is the "voting" part? By bundling IE with the OS Microsoft creates an extremely uneven playing field and the usual rules of the market no longer apply.
As for your argument that there's no "divine law" that there has to be a browser market: No, there's no "divine law", but there's human laws, laws concerning monopolies for example.
Also i don't claim that MS cannot add stuff to their OS, they can and they do, that's painfully obvious. What i claim is, that in this way they destroy markets and those missing markets and the missing competition deprives the customers of choices. That in turn negatively affects product quality as can be easily seen: Only when some competition (Linux) came to the PC-OS-market could Microsoft be convinced to improve the security of their products.
IE4 was still a buggy product, there were numerous reports of crashes. Maybe it's arguable which was the better product at that time, but calling NN4 "bloated shit" compared to the 60MB IE4 is overdoing it a bit. As for features: IE4 was still behind in some areas, maybe they introduced some new features but that's beside the point.
Microsoft had already grabbed a 30% to 35% Market share before IE4, with a vastly inferior product. They gave their IE away for "free" (meaning you had no choice but to buy it with Windows anyway) and so most people who had already bought a browser with their OS wouldn't go and buy a second one even if it was better.
It's really straining reality to talk of a working market and "people voting with their wallets" here. Had Microsoft sold IE separately from Windows, with it's own pricetag, things would've been different.
As for mp3: if nearly noone can encode in a format (for example to convert their CDs to mp3) that makes a big difference, don't you think? Windows had the ability to encode to mp3, so there was a way to do it without licensing. Maybe that was not the best mp3 encoder there but why rip it out? Also what happens here is, on a smaller case, the same as with IE: Microsoft "gives their encoder away for free", read: Microsoft leaves you no choice but to buy their encoder with their OS.
As for the US- antitrust case against Microsoft: MS was already found to have abused its monopoly and the DoJ "suddenly" seeked much lesser penalties under the Bush administration. Bush had already signalled that he opposed a breakup of MS during his campaign. The final decision in DoJ vs. MS was considered a big victory by MS and it was basically a present given away by the DoJ. The DoJ had a very strong position and could've achieved much more.