Or perhaps they'd just like a prettier desktop and some customisability.
And oddly enough, thats the same reason I eventually took the plunge and upgraded my desktop from 2k to XP.;P I wanted a prettier desktop and more customisability, without having to reboot to play all my games.;P
I also have Gentoo on the desktop, and it runs well enough to play ut2k4 on my Radeon 9700, but most games don't run natively under linux like that, and I have had very poor luck the few times I've tried to set up a wine system to run a game.
I had Trillian running under wine fine, and was my linux IM app of choice until I found out about Kopete.
Being a recent grad w/ no savings.. I'm getting out of here as soon as I have some savings, and this job for a year+ for my resume.;P
Yeah, the job market sucks here.
Though w/ a BSEE, you might find good work at lockheed if you're in the akron/canton area.
If I had more UNIX experience(I have plenty of training, and some linux experience.. in my house, rather than in enterprise production systems.. but that doesn't get you an 80k/year job at a defense contractor!:P) I'd be trying hard to get in there.
"The point is that anyone could read the numbers off of your credit card and hav a field day with it. It is easily verifiable if these RFID tags respond to a challenge from any great distance, and I doubt they will in their final incarnation." It's somewhat out of their hands.
Directional antennas work both ways, they allow you to broadcast your signal further, as well as enabling you to get a higher signal-to-noise ratio on a given weak signal coming back. Unless they do stick these in a faraday cage(More likely they'll just use some metal mesh EMI shielding, and will still be readable with a powerfull enough antenna.)
The question is, how do honest citizens get the equipment to check this when they're released?
So, why NOT contract? You make sure and bill out enough to cover your own insurance... I think you may be ignoring a large number of the 'contractors' out there who are not the type of employee you seem to think they are.
I myself am a 'contract/temp' employee, and getting paid abysmally low compared to my peers(When you include benefits, company product discounts, and retirement funding; without counting all of that it's only a couple dollars/hour difference.)
I am fullfilling a specific role, but I am not getting the kind of benefits I 'should' be getting.
That said, I'm in an area with a completely horrid IT job market, and this is my first post-college job, so I'm glad to HAVE a job, and the people I work with are pretty cool, so I'll live with it to build my resume.:P
In any case, it's your negligence that makes you liable. You should have put that LP together right. If you, the person who is putting a work into the public domain, are responsible for that negligence then you are the one who is liable, regardless of how many hands the work has gone through before it gets to the person who suffered the damages.
I still don't see how that applies if, say.. You release a song in lossless *.wav format, and put it in the public domain. Then some 12 year old kid w/ some 1337 scripts puts it into an mp3 that can damage mp3 players, how are you liable?
Do you become liable if the person who made the mp3 was not purposefully trying to damage the mp3 players? (They used LAME, but an error in encoding caused mp3 players to blow up when they played the song back?)
I really don't see how the original producer of the work is responsible for damages caused by a physical representation that they did not make and have no control over.
If the notes of the song are tuned such as they break the ipod's screen.. then perhaps. But if it's something in the mp3 encoding(The ink someone else made a copy with is cancerous, for example), how are you liable?
With BitTorrent it's difficult to do this, because unless you upload (and peers report packets coming from you to the tracker) then your download speed is gonna suck. Leave your client uploading freely and your download rate will get fast quickly, but block uploads and it will stay slow.
However, many people with cable modems and other artificially-limited connections, see much better overall throughput if they limit their max upload to 10% under their true max.
If I let bittorrent use up all 40kb/sec of my upload, my downloads get locked to about 80-100kb/sec.
If I limit it to 25-30kb, I get 200-500kb/sec down. I still seed when it's done.. but usually not until I go to bed. I want that file NOW damnit.. And I don't want my connection saturated while I'm trying to game.. so I upload while I sleep.;P
Besides this, CL has done something really heroic by making it possible to cross the Atlantic.
While I have not studied that particular first, how does being the first one to cross the atlantic mean you made it possible. It's been possible for a long time, and I'd say the person who invented the plane had more to do with it.. or the person who invented the type of engine Mr. Lindeburgh used, or the person who designed his plane. It's not like he was the first PERSON to fly across the atlantic non-stop.. he was just the first to do it solo, which honestly isn't very usefull, since any commercial enterprise would have two people for safety.
On a more serious note, why should a word like that be relegated only to people who do something foolhardy(If they properly plan it, lots of people say "Thats no real hero, he was a pussy and took precautions!".. but kids want to BE heroes.. why shoudl we be telling kids that it is good to take unnecessary risks?)
There are very narrow circumstances where downloading a torrent of a movie is indeed 'legal'(If you can't copy the DVD you bought, but want a backup copy anyways.. damn css.;P).
Likewise, it is possible for a torrent to be 'legal' to download sometimes/by some people, but 'illegal' for other times/people.
Also, running a torrent site is not legal or illegal. Providing torrents(Or, perhaps more accurately, running a tracker) for copyrighted materials is quite likely contributory infringement, and therefor 'illegal'.
The sensors are built and configured the same, and the raw data they collect is sent back to earth.
However, nothing is perfect, and each sensor has slight imperfections. Before they were sent up, each sensor was measured so that those imperfections could be accounted for. This calibration data is unique to each sensor. They used the calibration data for Spirit on the data from Opportunity, and vice versa. Luckily, since they still have the original(un-corrected, raw) data, it is easy to correct.
And the irony is most/.'s drive crap cars to work. One narrow segment of/.'s lives is "all about the quality, no matter what!" and yet everything else in their life is devoid of any and all quality. Crappy cars, crappy diets, crappy furniture, crappy apartments, etc.
Yet/.'s are never able to understand why John Q. Public won't spend hours and hours screwing with their computer. Actually, Once I started spending my own money, everything became 'all about the quality.'
The trick is you have to be willing to research to get quality. When I realized I should buy a new car instead of repairing my beater over and over, I started researching cars. 6 months of research.. (well, most of it was done in ~3 months, but w/ 2005 models coming out, there was almost no data on em until recently.;P).
I eventually decided not to get the 'best' car I could, but get one thats $3000 cheaper and almost as good. Quality Vs. Price.. a 'value' comparison.
My compaq X1000 will accept any third party mini-PCI card.. as long as I don't update to the newest bios, where they implement a whitelist. I'd like to add an A/b/g or at least just a G card.. since when I bought the laptop, the ONLY choice was the intel pro/wireless 2100.. B only.
I have most chat programs on my PC set up to log my chats. If someone else sits down at my PC without my knowledge and has a private conversation that gets recorded.. am I breaking federal wiretapping legislation?(Or even just state legislation?) I certainly hope it's not the kind of thing that would stand up in court, but geeze, it makes one worry.
Why should we not hold microsoft accounable for doing something 'evil' like this? I'd like to hold every company that does this accountable, but most of the time we don't actually hear about it.
Last I heard, VU sued valve for a piece of that pie, so you DID give VU a dime..(About 500 of them actually..)
Also, I'd prefer no copy protection to their vaguely kerberos-style authentication system, which is still slightly better than 'make sure you have the RIGHT cd in the RIGHT drive when you want to play.... but at least we don't care about wether or not this computer has been online(with steam logged in) at any time in the last month.'
I'm sure steam will become a huge hassle sometime down the road if you just want to open up that old-ass game half-life 2 and play a few levels.(Call valve.. "You want to play HL2? Just play HL6, who cares about HL2?".. if valve is still around by that time.)
The power adapters we use for our IBM T40s are universal. All you need is a plug adapter(Just a straight US-to-* physical adapter) to use it w/ 50Hz-60hz/whatever and whatever voltages you might encounter.
As for straight 12V DC.. I don't see why that would be a huge problem.. maybe make the power brick modular.. seperate the voltage regulation circuitry from the rectifier circuitry.. if you want to plug in DC, bypass the rectifier.
It's also heartening to know that we have removed the torturous murderers who ran the country previously and have installed our own torturers. It's about damn time we stopped pretending to be civilized and resorted to the tactics everyone despises the most.
Do you mean we removed the torturers we propped up and bankrolled back in the 80's when they acquired that country? And when did we stop using the tactics everyone despises.. the big difference is that it's on the 8 o'clock news now.
In fact, there are many of us, which is why Bush got more votes than any President in history. Funny, I thought he got more votes than any president in history for the same reason kerry did.. There were more voters than any presidential election in history.
I really get peeved when people try and claim an overwhelming majority(Not necessarily your claim) of americans voted for bush since he got 'more votes than any president in history'.. So did his opponent who lost.
Now then.. about hate crimes, and hate speach legislation? Speach should be protected. Any action resulting from such hate speach should be harshly prosecuted. And what I think 'hate speach' legislation is usefull for, is getting rid of people who repeatedly whip up sentiment against a particular group, but never personally attack them physically.. they just get impressionable young people to do it for them. You can say what you want, as long as you are prepared for the consequences of your speach. And I'd prefer if laws were passed for that rather than lynch mobs roaming the streets to string up those 'preachers'.
Unfortunately, you need a DIRECT fiber line between the endpoints of the message.
That is why quantum cryptography is generally only used to distribute the keys for more mundane cryptography. Essentially, they're using a OTP and distributing the key w/ quantum cryptography. That way they KNOW the key got to the destination unmolested, before they start sending the encrypted data. OTPs are theoretically unbreakable, if the keys are generated from a true random source(Hard to find.). The problem is that the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt, so you somehow need to get that key to everyone who wants to receive the message, and if any copies of the key fall into the wrong hands, it's officially cracked wide open.
Not to mention that if MS is true to form, the new Word won't save doc files as the old version perfectly. There will be minor formatting glitches that make it unacceptable for things like resumes and other documents where you need it to look perfect.
A bigger problem is when legitimate sites w/ activex that needs to be whitelisted have a 'support' page that recommends changing the security settings so that whitelisting is no longer necessary.
I can't list any of these because I have not had to use an ActiveX control that required whitelisting since windows 98, but I have still seen these around.. "Change your security permissions from 'disable' to 'allow' or 'prompt' to make our site work." Rather than "Add our site to your trusted sites zone to make our site work."
In my random test, just conducted 30 seconds ago. I tried two different searches off of www.google.com
Search #1 only received 1 sponsored link/ad, it was on the right, seperated from the real results, labeled 'sponsored link', but not colored differently.
Search #2 received many sponsored links.. Two were in a colored blue box above the ads, that box had 'sponsored links' on the very right edge of the page. Search #2 also got a long list of ads displayed along the right side of the page like the ad Search #1 received.
So, where are these sponsored links that are displayed without colored backgrounds or physical separation from the search results?
Re:How many of us could actually mount a defense?
on
The Basics of EULAs
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· Score: 1
Which is all fine and dandy if you can get your lawyers to work for free until the judgement. Otherwise Mattel didnt pay the legal fees they just gave him back what he had already paid. This, of course, relies on you having the money to mount a defence and take the risk of waving goodbye to it if you lose.
And yet, in a perfect court system, you only lose if you were indeed in the wrong. In which case it's your own damn fault for trying to prove otherwise. I can't blame them for putting it that way. A good lawyer who thinks you are able to win the case should be willing to work pro bono if they think they have a good chance of being paid by the plaintiff when they win.
Not ALL lawyers are that way, but there are enough in most large cities. (Theoretically, a law firm would take a certain # of pro bono cases as a matter of goodwill and PR work, since those cases probably don't even signifigantly impact their bottom line, and if they win they likely get paid something.)
All this is beside the point. If you are truly in the wrong(What losing is supposed to confirm) then you don't deserve a free ride anyways.
Well, lets see, in 2001 you bought PC-133, which was the Ram Du Jour of the day, required 168 pins on the edge connector, and ran at a speed of 133 mhz, with a single-pumped bus.
You then go to the store and look at (Well, I'll guess pc2700 since it seems most common in actual stores) some DDR ram, that uses 184 pins, runs at 166 mhz, with a double pumped bus. The chips are a newer technology, and the higher speed coupled with a double-data rate bus means the traces on the PCB have to be routed more accurately, and manufacturing costs have gone up.. So you get newer technology of the same capacity as your older technology for the same price you paid for that older technology 4 years ago, and you accuse them of price fixing? (Well, besides the fact that a few companys DID get sued for it over PC133 days.;P)
While I'm not too happy with the current price of ram, most components have gone up in price except for hard drives. Hard drive technology hasn't had a major shakedown in a few years(SATA doesn't count, since it's relatively compatible with EIDE at the chipset level.)
Yeah, I wanted the latest knoppix iso, so I of course used the torrent. Within 5 seconds I had hit 250KB/sec, not exactly my physical maximum, but pretty good for my connection(From very rare sites, I can get 400-500KB/sec, but 90% of internet sites cap out at 250 for me.)
When it's something legal(And hence there is no reason to fear keeping your seed running) Bittorrent is still pretty fast.
Especially since a lot of traditional mirror sites for *nix distros have added torrent seeds to their ftp mirrors. This seems to me like a good way of sharing the bandwidth load while also keeping download speeds fast.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps they'd just like a prettier desktop and some customisability.
;P I wanted a prettier desktop and more customisability, without having to reboot to play all my games. ;P
And oddly enough, thats the same reason I eventually took the plunge and upgraded my desktop from 2k to XP.
I also have Gentoo on the desktop, and it runs well enough to play ut2k4 on my Radeon 9700, but most games don't run natively under linux like that, and I have had very poor luck the few times I've tried to set up a wine system to run a game.
I had Trillian running under wine fine, and was my linux IM app of choice until I found out about Kopete.
Being a recent grad w/ no savings.. I'm getting out of here as soon as I have some savings, and this job for a year+ for my resume. ;P
:P) I'd be trying hard to get in there.
Yeah, the job market sucks here.
Though w/ a BSEE, you might find good work at lockheed if you're in the akron/canton area.
If I had more UNIX experience(I have plenty of training, and some linux experience.. in my house, rather than in enterprise production systems.. but that doesn't get you an 80k/year job at a defense contractor!
"The point is that anyone could read the numbers off of your credit card and hav a field day with it. It is easily verifiable if these RFID tags respond to a challenge from any great distance, and I doubt they will in their final incarnation."
It's somewhat out of their hands.
Directional antennas work both ways, they allow you to broadcast your signal further, as well as enabling you to get a higher signal-to-noise ratio on a given weak signal coming back. Unless they do stick these in a faraday cage(More likely they'll just use some metal mesh EMI shielding, and will still be readable with a powerfull enough antenna.)
The question is, how do honest citizens get the equipment to check this when they're released?
So, why NOT contract? You make sure and bill out enough to cover your own insurance...
:P
I think you may be ignoring a large number of the 'contractors' out there who are not the type of employee you seem to think they are.
I myself am a 'contract/temp' employee, and getting paid abysmally low compared to my peers(When you include benefits, company product discounts, and retirement funding; without counting all of that it's only a couple dollars/hour difference.)
I am fullfilling a specific role, but I am not getting the kind of benefits I 'should' be getting.
That said, I'm in an area with a completely horrid IT job market, and this is my first post-college job, so I'm glad to HAVE a job, and the people I work with are pretty cool, so I'll live with it to build my resume.
In any case, it's your negligence that makes you liable. You should have put that LP together right. If you, the person who is putting a work into the public domain, are responsible for that negligence then you are the one who is liable, regardless of how many hands the work has gone through before it gets to the person who suffered the damages.
I still don't see how that applies if, say.. You release a song in lossless *.wav format, and put it in the public domain. Then some 12 year old kid w/ some 1337 scripts puts it into an mp3 that can damage mp3 players, how are you liable?
Do you become liable if the person who made the mp3 was not purposefully trying to damage the mp3 players? (They used LAME, but an error in encoding caused mp3 players to blow up when they played the song back?)
I really don't see how the original producer of the work is responsible for damages caused by a physical representation that they did not make and have no control over.
If the notes of the song are tuned such as they break the ipod's screen.. then perhaps. But if it's something in the mp3 encoding(The ink someone else made a copy with is cancerous, for example), how are you liable?
With BitTorrent it's difficult to do this, because unless you upload (and peers report packets coming from you to the tracker) then your download speed is gonna suck. Leave your client uploading freely and your download rate will get fast quickly, but block uploads and it will stay slow.
;P
However, many people with cable modems and other artificially-limited connections, see much better overall throughput if they limit their max upload to 10% under their true max.
If I let bittorrent use up all 40kb/sec of my upload, my downloads get locked to about 80-100kb/sec.
If I limit it to 25-30kb, I get 200-500kb/sec down. I still seed when it's done.. but usually not until I go to bed. I want that file NOW damnit.. And I don't want my connection saturated while I'm trying to game.. so I upload while I sleep.
Besides this, CL has done something really heroic by making it possible to cross the Atlantic.
While I have not studied that particular first, how does being the first one to cross the atlantic mean you made it possible. It's been possible for a long time, and I'd say the person who invented the plane had more to do with it.. or the person who invented the type of engine Mr. Lindeburgh used, or the person who designed his plane. It's not like he was the first PERSON to fly across the atlantic non-stop.. he was just the first to do it solo, which honestly isn't very usefull, since any commercial enterprise would have two people for safety.
On a more serious note, why should a word like that be relegated only to people who do something foolhardy(If they properly plan it, lots of people say "Thats no real hero, he was a pussy and took precautions!".. but kids want to BE heroes.. why shoudl we be telling kids that it is good to take unnecessary risks?)
Can you even get a dual-processor Athlon64 motherboard with SATA and PCI-X slots?
Yes. They call them "Opterons" though. Please do your research before accusing others of not doing theirs.
Well, actually...
;P).
There are very narrow circumstances where downloading a torrent of a movie is indeed 'legal'(If you can't copy the DVD you bought, but want a backup copy anyways.. damn css.
Likewise, it is possible for a torrent to be 'legal' to download sometimes/by some people, but 'illegal' for other times/people.
Also, running a torrent site is not legal or illegal. Providing torrents(Or, perhaps more accurately, running a tracker) for copyrighted materials is quite likely contributory infringement, and therefor 'illegal'.
The sensors are built and configured the same, and the raw data they collect is sent back to earth.
However, nothing is perfect, and each sensor has slight imperfections. Before they were sent up, each sensor was measured so that those imperfections could be accounted for. This calibration data is unique to each sensor. They used the calibration data for Spirit on the data from Opportunity, and vice versa. Luckily, since they still have the original(un-corrected, raw) data, it is easy to correct.
And the irony is most /.'s drive crap cars to work. One narrow segment of /.'s lives is "all about the quality, no matter what!" and yet everything else in their life is devoid of any and all quality. Crappy cars, crappy diets, crappy furniture, crappy apartments, etc.
/.'s are never able to understand why John Q. Public won't spend hours and hours screwing with their computer.
;P).
Yet
Actually, Once I started spending my own money, everything became 'all about the quality.'
The trick is you have to be willing to research to get quality. When I realized I should buy a new car instead of repairing my beater over and over, I started researching cars. 6 months of research.. (well, most of it was done in ~3 months, but w/ 2005 models coming out, there was almost no data on em until recently.
I eventually decided not to get the 'best' car I could, but get one thats $3000 cheaper and almost as good. Quality Vs. Price.. a 'value' comparison.
I doubt that is the whole reason.
My compaq X1000 will accept any third party mini-PCI card..
as long as I don't update to the newest bios, where they implement a whitelist. I'd like to add an A/b/g or at least just a G card.. since when I bought the laptop, the ONLY choice was the intel pro/wireless 2100.. B only.
I have most chat programs on my PC set up to log my chats. If someone else sits down at my PC without my knowledge and has a private conversation that gets recorded.. am I breaking federal wiretapping legislation?(Or even just state legislation?) I certainly hope it's not the kind of thing that would stand up in court, but geeze, it makes one worry.
Why should we not hold microsoft accounable for doing something 'evil' like this? I'd like to hold every company that does this accountable, but most of the time we don't actually hear about it.
Last I heard, VU sued valve for a piece of that pie, so you DID give VU a dime..(About 500 of them actually..)
Also, I'd prefer no copy protection to their vaguely kerberos-style authentication system, which is still slightly better than 'make sure you have the RIGHT cd in the RIGHT drive when you want to play.... but at least we don't care about wether or not this computer has been online(with steam logged in) at any time in the last month.'
I'm sure steam will become a huge hassle sometime down the road if you just want to open up that old-ass game half-life 2 and play a few levels.(Call valve.. "You want to play HL2? Just play HL6, who cares about HL2?".. if valve is still around by that time.)
The power adapters we use for our IBM T40s are universal. All you need is a plug adapter(Just a straight US-to-* physical adapter) to use it w/ 50Hz-60hz/whatever and whatever voltages you might encounter.
As for straight 12V DC.. I don't see why that would be a huge problem.. maybe make the power brick modular.. seperate the voltage regulation circuitry from the rectifier circuitry.. if you want to plug in DC, bypass the rectifier.
It's also heartening to know that we have removed the torturous murderers who ran the country previously and have installed our own torturers. It's about damn time we stopped pretending to be civilized and resorted to the tactics everyone despises the most.
Do you mean we removed the torturers we propped up and bankrolled back in the 80's when they acquired that country? And when did we stop using the tactics everyone despises.. the big difference is that it's on the 8 o'clock news now.
In fact, there are many of us, which is why Bush got more votes than any President in history.
Funny, I thought he got more votes than any president in history for the same reason kerry did.. There were more voters than any presidential election in history.
I really get peeved when people try and claim an overwhelming majority(Not necessarily your claim) of americans voted for bush since he got 'more votes than any president in history'.. So did his opponent who lost.
Now then.. about hate crimes, and hate speach legislation? Speach should be protected. Any action resulting from such hate speach should be harshly prosecuted. And what I think 'hate speach' legislation is usefull for, is getting rid of people who repeatedly whip up sentiment against a particular group, but never personally attack them physically.. they just get impressionable young people to do it for them. You can say what you want, as long as you are prepared for the consequences of your speach. And I'd prefer if laws were passed for that rather than lynch mobs roaming the streets to string up those 'preachers'.
Unfortunately, you need a DIRECT fiber line between the endpoints of the message.
That is why quantum cryptography is generally only used to distribute the keys for more mundane cryptography. Essentially, they're using a OTP and distributing the key w/ quantum cryptography. That way they KNOW the key got to the destination unmolested, before they start sending the encrypted data. OTPs are theoretically unbreakable, if the keys are generated from a true random source(Hard to find.). The problem is that the same key is used to encrypt and decrypt, so you somehow need to get that key to everyone who wants to receive the message, and if any copies of the key fall into the wrong hands, it's officially cracked wide open.
Not to mention that if MS is true to form, the new Word won't save doc files as the old version perfectly. There will be minor formatting glitches that make it unacceptable for things like resumes and other documents where you need it to look perfect.
A bigger problem is when legitimate sites w/ activex that needs to be whitelisted have a 'support' page that recommends changing the security settings so that whitelisting is no longer necessary.
I can't list any of these because I have not had to use an ActiveX control that required whitelisting since windows 98, but I have still seen these around.. "Change your security permissions from 'disable' to 'allow' or 'prompt' to make our site work." Rather than "Add our site to your trusted sites zone to make our site work."
In my random test, just conducted 30 seconds ago. I tried two different searches off of www.google.com
Search #1 only received 1 sponsored link/ad, it was on the right, seperated from the real results, labeled 'sponsored link', but not colored differently.
Search #2 received many sponsored links.. Two were in a colored blue box above the ads, that box had 'sponsored links' on the very right edge of the page. Search #2 also got a long list of ads displayed along the right side of the page like the ad Search #1 received.
So, where are these sponsored links that are displayed without colored backgrounds or physical separation from the search results?
Which is all fine and dandy if you can get your lawyers to work for free until the judgement. Otherwise Mattel didnt pay the legal fees they just gave him back what he had already paid. This, of course, relies on you having the money to mount a defence and take the risk of waving goodbye to it if you lose.
And yet, in a perfect court system, you only lose if you were indeed in the wrong. In which case it's your own damn fault for trying to prove otherwise. I can't blame them for putting it that way. A good lawyer who thinks you are able to win the case should be willing to work pro bono if they think they have a good chance of being paid by the plaintiff when they win.
Not ALL lawyers are that way, but there are enough in most large cities. (Theoretically, a law firm would take a certain # of pro bono cases as a matter of goodwill and PR work, since those cases probably don't even signifigantly impact their bottom line, and if they win they likely get paid something.)
All this is beside the point. If you are truly in the wrong(What losing is supposed to confirm) then you don't deserve a free ride anyways.
Well, lets see, in 2001 you bought PC-133, which was the Ram Du Jour of the day, required 168 pins on the edge connector, and ran at a speed of 133 mhz, with a single-pumped bus.
;P)
You then go to the store and look at (Well, I'll guess pc2700 since it seems most common in actual stores) some DDR ram, that uses 184 pins, runs at 166 mhz, with a double pumped bus. The chips are a newer technology, and the higher speed coupled with a double-data rate bus means the traces on the PCB have to be routed more accurately, and manufacturing costs have gone up.. So you get newer technology of the same capacity as your older technology for the same price you paid for that older technology 4 years ago, and you accuse them of price fixing? (Well, besides the fact that a few companys DID get sued for it over PC133 days.
While I'm not too happy with the current price of ram, most components have gone up in price except for hard drives. Hard drive technology hasn't had a major shakedown in a few years(SATA doesn't count, since it's relatively compatible with EIDE at the chipset level.)
Yeah, I wanted the latest knoppix iso, so I of course used the torrent. Within 5 seconds I had hit 250KB/sec, not exactly my physical maximum, but pretty good for my connection(From very rare sites, I can get 400-500KB/sec, but 90% of internet sites cap out at 250 for me.)
When it's something legal(And hence there is no reason to fear keeping your seed running) Bittorrent is still pretty fast.
Especially since a lot of traditional mirror sites for *nix distros have added torrent seeds to their ftp mirrors. This seems to me like a good way of sharing the bandwidth load while also keeping download speeds fast.