I think someone needs to meta-moderate this out of flamebait. The main point of the parents post is to state that people are too used to cheap and opt for cheap over quality. A very valid point in my opinion and most definitely not flamebait! He brings up some very good points, and even though his opinions may not be what you want to here...there is some validity in his post.
The same points could be stated about several companies; one that comes to mind is 3dfx. Create a wonderful innovative product that is light years ahead of anything else in the marketplace, then sit on your ass and expect that nobody will catch up to you while you make evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary advances.
The Macintosh is a great machine once again (G5, OSX, etc) and I now use a Mac as my primary computer, but I still have my doubts as to whether or not it's too little too late.
Why in the hell is the parent modded insightful? To summarize, in order for our labor forces here to compete with foreign outsourcing we would have to be willing to work at or below the labor rates in a third world country! WTF is good at all about this scenario? The last time I checked, the United States was not a third world country and you most certainly cannot buy goods and services, pay your rent, and in general live at third world rates.
Charge me $50.00 a month for rent, $1.14 for a full dinner at a restaurant, $2.78 for a pair of jeans and then maybe we can talk about lowering my salary. There is no way in hell that you can expect American workers to compete with third world sweatshop labor! The submitter of the article seems to think that it's a good thing that the US labor force is lowering their rates to the levels of a third world country and therefore the jobs are coming back to the US but I for one think that it's all a bunch of horse shit! Why in the hell should the US, which has worked and fought so hard to raise it's standard of living, be forced back into poverty due to a necessity to somehow compete with other countries that have a low standard of living and a massive poverty problem.
It seems such a shame that the people at the bottom of the food chain, the ones who actually fought in the wars on the front lines and the ones who bust their ass on a daily basis doing a shitty job for crap pay are being told yet again that they are getting screwed because third world nations will do the work for less and that in order to keep their job they would have to be willing to work for third world wages and somehow still be able to survive in an industrialized superpower of a country that most definitely won't lower their living expenses!
Sorry about the run-on sentence, but for f#ck's sake!!! I'm livid over this whole thread!
And Peter Fischli and David Weiss's "the way things work" is a blatant rip off of anything Rube Goldberg did (http://www.rube-goldberg.com/ ). At least credit the originator of these contraptions and not some other imitator.
Apple's prices aren't bad considering
on
G5 vs Opteron, Finally
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I for one recently switched from a Windows box to a Mac OSX box as my main machine. I tried Linux on the desktop for almost a year and was left with a somewhat bad taste in my mouth; For my servers Linux is definitely the OS of choice but it is still extremely lacking in the desktop OS department.
As far as the pricing on the Apple machines, it may seem a bit steep at first but when you look at the total package (sexy aluminum case, sweet fan setup, SATA hard drives, Firewire 800, 64bit PCI (even as far back as the old B&W G3 I recently picked up) and especially the resale value you really aren't doing to poorly. I love the comparisons where people say "I can build an x86 box for half the price". Well, the problem is that the x86 box is worth crap 3 months after you build it while the Apple boxen seem to hold their values long after your half priced x86 box becomes a machine you cannot even give away except maybe to a buddy who wants an old machine to use as an IPCop firewall box.
The G5 definitely isn't a slow machine, you will be able to resell your G5 without taking a bath on your investment, and OSX is damned slick....I mean...REALLY slick.
All in all I would have to say that the G5 machines are holding their own. Slower on some things, faster on other things, but nevertheless holding their own. The price/performance thing really depends on what you want the machine to do for you. I personally play games on a Playstation 2, listen to music on a real live stereo system and use a computer for browsing the web and checking email. So for me, OSX is a really nice environment to work in and the price of admission for OSX dictates Apple hardware. For others that play games I guess x86 and Windows is the way to go, and for those that like a total lack of intergration of their various UI components and appreciate a plethora of different "widgets" and toolkits all crammed together in a hodgepodge of a UI with no unified look or feel from application to application (wanrning, run-on sentence) and an almost unrelenting requirement to be tweaked and fiddled with then I guess a Linux x86 desktop is the way to go.
I guess where my rant is going is that the hardware playing field seems to be fairly level these days and therefore your choices in systems would have almost entirely to do with how you plan on using your machine and/or which particular environment you prefer to work or play in.
Looks to me like this hack/mod can be totally reversed to restore your unit to factory configuration. So, what the hell...if you sell the car, change it back, if you have to go in for warranty service, change it back.
I agree 100%. I am a field tech for a cable ISP and I can definitely say that I have seen more than my share of archaic machines in use at customers homes and businesses. There are plenty of people that are less privileged that would be happy to have a computer for themselves or their kids that quite simply works even if it is a bit slow.
As I have learned in my days with cars, a throwaway car to someone else was gold to me. With most of my cars being rescued from the junk heap (when I was more poor than I am today) anything that kept me from walking was an absolutely wonderful piece of machinery.
I'm sure there are plenty of poor people that would be more than happy to have an old P166 with a dialup modem for their kids to at least have something to use and get online with.
Lest we forget the basic business practice of leveraging someone elses money. The whole idea is that that 5% is a very small price to pay (depending on where you bought your home). I'm too lazy to do the math...but as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek example: Lets say that you buy a home for $100,000.00 with a 3% down mortgage at 5.75% interest. Your down payment with closing costs would be approximately $5,500.00. Now for your $5,500 dollar invest ment you accomplish several things. In my area (Pinellas County Florida) property is appreciating at approximately 8% per year. 5.75% goes to the mortgagee, the other 2.25% goes to you. You're already in the clear and making a return on your investment. Now, add to that the fact that you can write off the interest portion of your loan on your income taxes and the fact that you can claim (in Florida) a $25,000.00 homestead exemption on your taxes for your primary residence and you are coming out smelling like a rose. Now you are only paying about $580 bucks for your mortgage every month (average rent in my area is about $750.00 a month), add about $100.00 a month for property taxes and another $50.00 a month for homeowners insurance (provided you are not in a flood zone) and you are are coming out $20.00 a month ahead of the game over rent in addition to the above mentioned benefits. Now it gets tricky...20 bucks a month ain't a lot, but it comes to $240.00 for the year. factoring that into your initial investment of $5,500.00 for the home thats an additional 4% simple interest and change you can add on to the income of that initial $5,500 investment. Also, the 8% per year appreciation is not 8% per year of the $100,000.00...it is first year: 100,000 * 8%, second year..108,000 * 8%, third year...116,640 * 8%
Yes, I'm sure there may be a few things I may be off on by a bit, especially when I'm unwilling to calculate all the numbers at the moment, but hell....it really is a losing situation to be in when you pay rent to someone.
And I beg to differ. He supposedly gave a mortgage on his home. In the state of Florida the mortgagee can and will foreclose on the home and the elderly gentleman most definitely will be evicted and lose his home.
While it's true that standard credit debts cannot force the sale of your primary residence, they instead acquire a judgement lien against your estate, a mortgage can and will be foreclosed upon no matter what the circumstances are.
Sorry man, but they are retail for me. I drive to their shop (about 4 or 5 miles away) and pick up stuff at the counter..no pre-order necessary. No, they aren't a national chain, but the most definitely ARE retail and don't require a bulk purchase or an account.
Actually, it seems to me as though you are just buying from the wrong stores. As an example: Topline Internantional is real good for cheap (quality) SCSI cables. I have been buying my cables from these guys for YEARS. Hell, they have 7 foot snagless CAT5e cables for less than 2 bucks and 100 foot ones for under 15 bucks...as well as the previously mentioned cheap SCSI cables.
I used to crimp my own CAT5 cables, but at their prices...it's not even worth my time:-)
I agree, the story line was just too little to keep me interested. It's also that the whole "fantasy" theme never really grabbed me; I'm not much for the wizards and dragons type thing at all. It also seems that I am one of the only people I know that actually didn't like any of the Star Wars movies and also thought of Logan's Run as a satire on religion rather than just a "neato" sci-fi flick. Of course that's the beauty of movies; Different people have different interpretations that allow them to enjoy them in their own way.
Ack, this isn't a troll. I just don't get what most people see in these movies. I attempted to watch them but unfortunately couldn't make it past the first 20 or 30 minutes of any of them.
As for the new Matrix movies, I saw reloaded and felt as though they should have left the story where it was instead of trying to pimp out the franchise for more than it was worth. The original Matrix was a very good film and I think it left the story right where it should be.
As for movies that I thought were good this year: Seabiscuit, Blue Car, Finding nemo, The Italian Job, Kill Bill (Tarentino fan..so I may be biased), and an honorable mention to 28 Days later.
I'm probably not the person to be replying here as my movie tastes typically stray far away from my geek buddies. I'm more of a "Run Lola Run", "Interstate 60", "Natural Born Killers", and anything Tarentino kinda' guy.
I agree....it definitely should be unlimited if it states that it is. The root of the problem however stems in the excessive bandwidth charges the ISP must pay. While it's true that "unlimited" should mean just that...it's also true that what is prompting the cut backs is the excessive usage of bandwidth by the ISP's customers.
To give you a brief example: Due to my job, I come in direct contact with the general public on a daily basis in order to "repair" their slow and/or faulty internet connections. I can pretty much assure you that almost every place I have been has had Kazzaa running 24/7 on their machines causing their "slow browsing" issues. It may not seem like a lot...but doing the math shows that they in fact consume far more bandwidth in a day than I (I consider myself a power user) do in a week or two.
Let's see.. 384Kbps upload speed * 60 seconds in a minute * 60 minutes in an hour * 24 hours in a day = 3.955078125 GB per day...every day 365 days a year. Multiply this number times the amount of idiot moron AOL types that are running this type of software on a 24/7 basis and you have a shitload of morons eating up all the bandwidth.
Why is it that the educated consumer gets screwed when the real easy way to cut back on bandwidth usage is to lobby for legislation of things like: Spam email (chews up shitloads of an ISP's bandwidth), Idiot users that have every possible piece of spyware known to god and man installed...along with every form of virus, worm, or trojan you can think of, and P2P users. Most computer literate people I know can acquire the things they want/need through standard channels; Private FTP sites, Usenet, copied from a friend, etc without consuming nearly the same bandwidth as one single AOL computer illiterate moron running Kazzaa 24/7 on their computer with spyware and trojans running in the background and their friggin' email address signed up for on EVERY spam list possible.
Well, after reading their patent, I think that what they are refering to is more of a multi session write without importing the prior sessions.
According to the patent: "The Recording Technique provides a directory which indicates the location of only the last version of any stored information or modified entry of stored information, prior versions being transparent to the operating system."
Packet writing does not leave behind the old data and only make it "transparent" to the operating system....it in fact rewrites the sectors that are not allocated in directory entries (file allocation table??); I would also assume that this multi-session writing is already an ISO standard.
The bottom line is that people like to get shit for free. No matter what the recording labels do people are still going to download the music free because....well....it's available!
It gets pretty tiresome to see all of the "analysts" posting why they think P2P apps are popular when the real truth of the matter is that humans as a species will choose the free route to obtaining goods and/or services whenever possible. Hell, even those that know that what they are doing is wrong will still download the music for free. It's not "really" illegal if you don't get caught and you are only hurting a big mega monopoly and not some poor individual.
Sure, services like iTunes are selling tons of music, but I would wager my services as a fluffer for the gay porn industry that the iTunes buyers are the same people that have bought music legitimately all along and the "Napster" thieves will never buy music no matter how cheap it is as long as it's available for free elsewhere!
The main problem with enforcement of this is that it would be extremely tough to single out who is allowed to not pay royalties and who must pay royalties. For example, I let your kindergarten schools or churches use my copywritten materials as long as it's not for profit while I deny others the same rights. Would this not open up a whole new series of lawsuits for those denied free usage not for profit? Why then could I not use copywritten materials at my home without paying? Why could I then not start my own free radio station that was not for profit? Why could I then not "share" copywritten materials for free as is being done in the aforementioned churches and kindergartens?
I know, it's a big pain in the ass...but if the copyright holders were to allow specific groups free usage then everyone else would cry foul and we would end up with an even bigger mess than we have currently. Enforcement unfortunately has to be done across the board and without prejudice.
As a disclaimer, I don't support the methods of the RIAA, MPAA, etc through assumed guilt taxes on CD's and the like. But the fact remains that you really should be paying for licenses to the music, software, and movies you own and use. If you don't like that system there is always open source software that is licensed for free usage as well as a lot of really good indie groups that don't mind you trading their works, if for nothing more than to gain a larger listening audience.
Yup, unfortunately it's only the Mac that will do this as far as I know. I recently switched over to a Mac after playing with OS X on a free iMac 266 that i received as a tip from one of my clients. Since then, I'm all Mac and Linux....shiny new'ish (used) G4 on the desktop and my good old reliable Gentoo GNU/Linux (hi RMS) server.
Excuse my ignorance on this matter, but didn't a company called Mr. BIOS used to make high performance BIOS replacements for motherboards? If so, couldn't an open source initiative be developed that would provide open source and digital rights management free BIOS's? Maybe Windows et. al will REQUIRE a DRM BIOS, but that's OK...I don't run Windows.
this will get so held up in litigation and lobbying that it will never see the light of day. This one form of treatment would hit the pocketbooks of some of the major drug manufacturers too hard. Chemo drugs would not sell, radiation tratment would not be purchased, and it is likely that patent would be exclusively licensed to one company only. This would obviously kill of a large part of sales for the rest of the drug companies that make money off chemo drugs as well as the services end where you get paid huge amounts of money to perform radiation therapy....let alone the maintenance charges (regular visits and tests) and everyone else that gets paid several times over for the entire remaining lifespan of a cancer patient. This just cannot be alowed to happen in the good old US of A!
Of course, there is also the litigation side of things. People will sue for anything and usually win huge settlements for trivial things. In general, people are assholes. I used to work at a major (largest?) nationwide pizza chain. We had a lunch buffet and perfectly good food would be pulled off the buffet to be replaced with fresh food. This pulled food was placed into plastic bins in the cooler and a local charity organization would pick up all of these left over pizzas for homeless shelters, etc. One day, we stopped doing it; the manager explained to me that a bum got sick in some other state and is suing....guess what...company policy changed and all that buffet food is in the dumpster now and is no longer feeding the homeless. This is why malpractice insurance is so high. It's the one asshole that gets an award from a jury of idiots comprised of the lower 1% of the population (i.e. people that had nothing better to do at their trailer park that day) because everyone that does have important things to do gets out of jury duty. So, to make some sense of my ramblings above, some terminally ill person will die in spite of receiving the new treatment on a clinical study and the remaining family members will sue....and WIN a huge fat ass settlement. Then the price of the drug will shoot through the roof (as ALL costs such as these are passed along to the consumer) provided it even gets FDA approval and isn't lobbied out of existence in the first place.
A friend of mine is a fairly successfull local DJ and I would have to say that there are a few things that would make this device a failure. Quite a bit of the "DJ" thing is showmanship and performance. I seriously doubt that anyone would go to see an opera if the orchestra was made of all keyboards hooked up through a MIDI sequencer and the vocals were done with samples; It's just not the same thing. I could see if it was a DJ that played weddings and barmitzvahs (spelling??) but that type of DJ is more like a glorified Karaoke operator and not a true DJ in the traditional sense.
Another thing that would keep serious DJ's from using this is the selection of music. I can't speak for anyone but what I have seen of my friends vinyl collection. I can assure you that 90% of his vinyl is stuff you have never heard of ranging from no-name funk artists to Flamenco. He mainly uses them for the beats, but it's absolutely amazing to see what someone can do with some of this old unknown vinyl. His vinly shopping sprees usually end up in the 50 cent record bin at the local flea market.
So, if you want to simply create a seamless mix tape for your girlfriend this may work fine, but for a serious DJ this would be of absolutely no use.
So, a quick question here on this if I may for any qualified takers.
Based on section (3) "(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace." Would I be able to legally reopen my public FTP server of Apple II software?
I used to run one of the main Apple II mirrors hosting the Asimov, Cabi, Tarnover, and Ground archives and it was a huge disappointment when some troll in comp.sys.apple2 threatened to contact my ISP if i did not remove the mirror. (At which time I smartly invoked Godwins law on his ass)
"The main initial beneficiaries of digital television are the 15 percent of TV owners who still receive their shows through antennas. They will get improved reception, with no more fuzzy pictures."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it harder to pull in a digital signal properly than an analog one? I remember the days of analog cellular phones. Shure...the signal got a little bad and full of static at times but the call stayed connected. Now in digital..it's mostly "all or nothing" to get a signal. Digital TV with bad reception will simply trade static for at best macroblocking and at worst no signal at all.
Slashdot Mirror
The same points could be stated about several companies; one that comes to mind is 3dfx. Create a wonderful innovative product that is light years ahead of anything else in the marketplace, then sit on your ass and expect that nobody will catch up to you while you make evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary advances.
The Macintosh is a great machine once again (G5, OSX, etc) and I now use a Mac as my primary computer, but I still have my doubts as to whether or not it's too little too late.
Charge me $50.00 a month for rent, $1.14 for a full dinner at a restaurant, $2.78 for a pair of jeans and then maybe we can talk about lowering my salary. There is no way in hell that you can expect American workers to compete with third world sweatshop labor! The submitter of the article seems to think that it's a good thing that the US labor force is lowering their rates to the levels of a third world country and therefore the jobs are coming back to the US but I for one think that it's all a bunch of horse shit! Why in the hell should the US, which has worked and fought so hard to raise it's standard of living, be forced back into poverty due to a necessity to somehow compete with other countries that have a low standard of living and a massive poverty problem.
It seems such a shame that the people at the bottom of the food chain, the ones who actually fought in the wars on the front lines and the ones who bust their ass on a daily basis doing a shitty job for crap pay are being told yet again that they are getting screwed because third world nations will do the work for less and that in order to keep their job they would have to be willing to work for third world wages and somehow still be able to survive in an industrialized superpower of a country that most definitely won't lower their living expenses!
Sorry about the run-on sentence, but for f#ck's sake!!! I'm livid over this whole thread!
And Peter Fischli and David Weiss's "the way things work" is a blatant rip off of anything Rube Goldberg did (http://www.rube-goldberg.com/ ). At least credit the originator of these contraptions and not some other imitator.
As far as the pricing on the Apple machines, it may seem a bit steep at first but when you look at the total package (sexy aluminum case, sweet fan setup, SATA hard drives, Firewire 800, 64bit PCI (even as far back as the old B&W G3 I recently picked up) and especially the resale value you really aren't doing to poorly. I love the comparisons where people say "I can build an x86 box for half the price". Well, the problem is that the x86 box is worth crap 3 months after you build it while the Apple boxen seem to hold their values long after your half priced x86 box becomes a machine you cannot even give away except maybe to a buddy who wants an old machine to use as an IPCop firewall box.
The G5 definitely isn't a slow machine, you will be able to resell your G5 without taking a bath on your investment, and OSX is damned slick....I mean...REALLY slick.
All in all I would have to say that the G5 machines are holding their own. Slower on some things, faster on other things, but nevertheless holding their own. The price/performance thing really depends on what you want the machine to do for you. I personally play games on a Playstation 2, listen to music on a real live stereo system and use a computer for browsing the web and checking email. So for me, OSX is a really nice environment to work in and the price of admission for OSX dictates Apple hardware. For others that play games I guess x86 and Windows is the way to go, and for those that like a total lack of intergration of their various UI components and appreciate a plethora of different "widgets" and toolkits all crammed together in a hodgepodge of a UI with no unified look or feel from application to application (wanrning, run-on sentence) and an almost unrelenting requirement to be tweaked and fiddled with then I guess a Linux x86 desktop is the way to go.
I guess where my rant is going is that the hardware playing field seems to be fairly level these days and therefore your choices in systems would have almost entirely to do with how you plan on using your machine and/or which particular environment you prefer to work or play in.
Looks to me like this hack/mod can be totally reversed to restore your unit to factory configuration. So, what the hell...if you sell the car, change it back, if you have to go in for warranty service, change it back.
As I have learned in my days with cars, a throwaway car to someone else was gold to me. With most of my cars being rescued from the junk heap (when I was more poor than I am today) anything that kept me from walking was an absolutely wonderful piece of machinery.
I'm sure there are plenty of poor people that would be more than happy to have an old P166 with a dialup modem for their kids to at least have something to use and get online with.
Yes, I'm sure there may be a few things I may be off on by a bit, especially when I'm unwilling to calculate all the numbers at the moment, but hell....it really is a losing situation to be in when you pay rent to someone.
While it's true that standard credit debts cannot force the sale of your primary residence, they instead acquire a judgement lien against your estate, a mortgage can and will be foreclosed upon no matter what the circumstances are.
Sorry man, but they are retail for me. I drive to their shop (about 4 or 5 miles away) and pick up stuff at the counter..no pre-order necessary. No, they aren't a national chain, but the most definitely ARE retail and don't require a bulk purchase or an account.
I used to crimp my own CAT5 cables, but at their prices...it's not even worth my time :-)
I agree, the story line was just too little to keep me interested. It's also that the whole "fantasy" theme never really grabbed me; I'm not much for the wizards and dragons type thing at all. It also seems that I am one of the only people I know that actually didn't like any of the Star Wars movies and also thought of Logan's Run as a satire on religion rather than just a "neato" sci-fi flick. Of course that's the beauty of movies; Different people have different interpretations that allow them to enjoy them in their own way.
As for the new Matrix movies, I saw reloaded and felt as though they should have left the story where it was instead of trying to pimp out the franchise for more than it was worth. The original Matrix was a very good film and I think it left the story right where it should be.
As for movies that I thought were good this year: Seabiscuit, Blue Car, Finding nemo, The Italian Job, Kill Bill (Tarentino fan..so I may be biased), and an honorable mention to 28 Days later.
I'm probably not the person to be replying here as my movie tastes typically stray far away from my geek buddies. I'm more of a "Run Lola Run", "Interstate 60", "Natural Born Killers", and anything Tarentino kinda' guy.
To give you a brief example: Due to my job, I come in direct contact with the general public on a daily basis in order to "repair" their slow and/or faulty internet connections. I can pretty much assure you that almost every place I have been has had Kazzaa running 24/7 on their machines causing their "slow browsing" issues. It may not seem like a lot...but doing the math shows that they in fact consume far more bandwidth in a day than I (I consider myself a power user) do in a week or two.
Let's see.. 384Kbps upload speed * 60 seconds in a minute * 60 minutes in an hour * 24 hours in a day = 3.955078125 GB per day...every day 365 days a year. Multiply this number times the amount of idiot moron AOL types that are running this type of software on a 24/7 basis and you have a shitload of morons eating up all the bandwidth.
*sigh* Rant over.
According to the patent: "The Recording Technique provides a directory which indicates the location of only the last version of any stored information or modified entry of stored information, prior versions being transparent to the operating system."
Packet writing does not leave behind the old data and only make it "transparent" to the operating system....it in fact rewrites the sectors that are not allocated in directory entries (file allocation table??); I would also assume that this multi-session writing is already an ISO standard.
It gets pretty tiresome to see all of the "analysts" posting why they think P2P apps are popular when the real truth of the matter is that humans as a species will choose the free route to obtaining goods and/or services whenever possible. Hell, even those that know that what they are doing is wrong will still download the music for free. It's not "really" illegal if you don't get caught and you are only hurting a big mega monopoly and not some poor individual.
Sure, services like iTunes are selling tons of music, but I would wager my services as a fluffer for the gay porn industry that the iTunes buyers are the same people that have bought music legitimately all along and the "Napster" thieves will never buy music no matter how cheap it is as long as it's available for free elsewhere!
Heh, guess I'm the only one that recognizes that as a reference to when Fonzie jumped the shark :-)
I know, it's a big pain in the ass...but if the copyright holders were to allow specific groups free usage then everyone else would cry foul and we would end up with an even bigger mess than we have currently. Enforcement unfortunately has to be done across the board and without prejudice.
As a disclaimer, I don't support the methods of the RIAA, MPAA, etc through assumed guilt taxes on CD's and the like. But the fact remains that you really should be paying for licenses to the music, software, and movies you own and use. If you don't like that system there is always open source software that is licensed for free usage as well as a lot of really good indie groups that don't mind you trading their works, if for nothing more than to gain a larger listening audience.
Yup, unfortunately it's only the Mac that will do this as far as I know. I recently switched over to a Mac after playing with OS X on a free iMac 266 that i received as a tip from one of my clients. Since then, I'm all Mac and Linux....shiny new'ish (used) G4 on the desktop and my good old reliable Gentoo GNU/Linux (hi RMS) server.
Excuse my ignorance on this matter, but didn't a company called Mr. BIOS used to make high performance BIOS replacements for motherboards? If so, couldn't an open source initiative be developed that would provide open source and digital rights management free BIOS's? Maybe Windows et. al will REQUIRE a DRM BIOS, but that's OK...I don't run Windows.
Of course, there is also the litigation side of things. People will sue for anything and usually win huge settlements for trivial things. In general, people are assholes. I used to work at a major (largest?) nationwide pizza chain. We had a lunch buffet and perfectly good food would be pulled off the buffet to be replaced with fresh food. This pulled food was placed into plastic bins in the cooler and a local charity organization would pick up all of these left over pizzas for homeless shelters, etc. One day, we stopped doing it; the manager explained to me that a bum got sick in some other state and is suing....guess what...company policy changed and all that buffet food is in the dumpster now and is no longer feeding the homeless. This is why malpractice insurance is so high. It's the one asshole that gets an award from a jury of idiots comprised of the lower 1% of the population (i.e. people that had nothing better to do at their trailer park that day) because everyone that does have important things to do gets out of jury duty. So, to make some sense of my ramblings above, some terminally ill person will die in spite of receiving the new treatment on a clinical study and the remaining family members will sue....and WIN a huge fat ass settlement. Then the price of the drug will shoot through the roof (as ALL costs such as these are passed along to the consumer) provided it even gets FDA approval and isn't lobbied out of existence in the first place.
Another thing that would keep serious DJ's from using this is the selection of music. I can't speak for anyone but what I have seen of my friends vinyl collection. I can assure you that 90% of his vinyl is stuff you have never heard of ranging from no-name funk artists to Flamenco. He mainly uses them for the beats, but it's absolutely amazing to see what someone can do with some of this old unknown vinyl. His vinly shopping sprees usually end up in the 50 cent record bin at the local flea market.
So, if you want to simply create a seamless mix tape for your girlfriend this may work fine, but for a serious DJ this would be of absolutely no use.
Gah!! I'll answer myself I guess. Regular copyright law would still apply. Thanks Sonny Bono!!!
Based on section (3) "(3) Computer programs and video games distributed in formats that have become obsolete and which require the original media or hardware as a condition of access. A format shall be considered obsolete if the machine or system necessary to render perceptible a work stored in that format is no longer manufactured or is no longer reasonably available in the commercial marketplace." Would I be able to legally reopen my public FTP server of Apple II software?
I used to run one of the main Apple II mirrors hosting the Asimov, Cabi, Tarnover, and Ground archives and it was a huge disappointment when some troll in comp.sys.apple2 threatened to contact my ISP if i did not remove the mirror. (At which time I smartly invoked Godwins law on his ass)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it harder to pull in a digital signal properly than an analog one? I remember the days of analog cellular phones. Shure...the signal got a little bad and full of static at times but the call stayed connected. Now in digital..it's mostly "all or nothing" to get a signal. Digital TV with bad reception will simply trade static for at best macroblocking and at worst no signal at all.