Actually, we already have similar laws in France, as the US do by the way. Each time you commit an infraction, you lose "points" on your driver license (the bigger the infraction, the higher the number of points lost). When you do not have any point left, you lose your privilege to drive. I currently live in the US and there are similar laws here too. Too many infractions in too little time and your driver license will be suspended.
So, no, government do not seize your car (it is your property after all), but they can revoke the privilege to use it on public roads. Similarly, this law revoke your privilege to access the internet. Burden of proof is a little lower (and that will be the problem), but the principle is already firmly entrenched in all modern society.
Driving or access to the internet are NOT rights, they are privileges and as such, they can be revoked.
Now, I am not saying this law is either just or well phrased or even that it will be enforced equally, just that your analogy is actually a lot more real than your realized.
Sorry, but the one guilty of this "crime" in your words is the owner of the access then, as he is the one sharing the service without authorization, not the one connecting to it.
To come back to your analogy, if you enter an open door apartment and start watching HBO, you did not commit any crime that I know of. Trespassing needs the property to be marked as private and unavailable to the public (what a WEP key or an explicit name would do). If the owner finds you in his apartment, there is no crime until you refuse to leave when asked. Then you are trespassing. Why would you apply different standards to a wifi hotspot? The resource is freely available is unencrypted. The owner can either lock it or kick you out if your behavior (or even your presence) does not suit him.
After that, if the owner shares a resource he has no right to, then it is HIS problem to solve, not the one of the freeloader that just took advantage of a freely offered resource.
Dont forget also that the RIAA is trying to pass laws that would tie government financing of schools to their efforts in stemming piracy. Targetting a lot of college students will help make their case:
- look, we have 10x more college students receiving our warnings this month! they are pirating more and more! Colleges need to add filters from our partners!
Of course, this is a fallacy, provided they are the ones sending the notes, but it will still fly in congress...
1. Company sends take down notice 2. Alleged infringer has to prove that they aren't infringing 3. Company allows them to put the project back up
your step 2 is out of line. The DMCA has a very simple and well defined procedure to counter a take down. You just send a counter-DMCA notice and your site is back online as fast as it had been taken down (same legal obligation for both action). Now, if they want to go further, they need to involve a court.
In this case, there is no question of privacy or anonymity. The main contributor was known, even of CoreCodec. So, no need to prove anything, just to send the same form letter than you received, stating you dont think you are infringing.
Of course, this does not protect the offending company of their perjury if their first letter (take down notice) was in bad faith. This procedure is in place to protect both party:
1. IP holders can take down offensive sites very quickly
2. site holder can put site back online very quickly if take down is abusive and then turn against the company in a legal court.
This is a problem of responsibility, to avoid the type of procedure the RIAA has been quite fond of: fight by proxy, where they bother the ISP for the name of the infringer. The counter notice is the accused volunteering his responsibility and covering the host.
I can chime in with the opposite experience. I've been lost in the woods and gone "missing" for 6 days. cell was in the car and could have been located, but the company refused to release the information. Their decision was great for our privacy, but very dangerous for our well being.
We fell off the grid by mistake and our family and friends pushed very hard for the rescue effort. Police would not move before 72h (and did not do much even after that), phone provider would not release data. We did not tell anyone where we went.
*IF* the cell phone provider had given the last ping position it may have helped find us faster (i use may as cell phone reception was spotty and last reception could have been a way off, but still a better location than "no idea where to start").
So, this is a fine line between privacy and security. As long as only the police access this record only to prevent accidents, I'm all for it (and they look for the person, contact her and then decide if there was danger and how to release the resulting information). But it is a fine line and a possible slippery slope...
I mean, there's no way the OLPC is going to be able to run the common Windows software packages that I'm sure the leaders think are desirable Seriously, what is it with geeks and power? XP is 7 years old. It ran quite correctly on P3 with 256MB RAM, why would it NOT run on the OLPC? Turn down the effects and tune down the services that wont be used on this computer and you mat have a solid basis.
I agree with the rest of the comment, by selecting XP over Linux, they are giving up some of the transparency and educational value, but using technical restrictions is a straw man argument. The OLPC today is no worse than a lot of computers 7 years ago when XP came out. Wont be blazing fast, but it will work. Memory might be the restriction, not processing power.
You forgot the part where they racked in the profits, pumped up their stock prices and paid both fat bonuses to their executives (for keeping the profits so high by not investing) and paying fat dividends to investors.
This is one more example of a more general problem: lots of managements only care for the short term, the stock price and their own bonus. The future of the company does not enter the picture, by the time the problem will hit, they will have moved on.
So, now the problem hit. Money that should have been spent investing for the future (both from profits and governments handout) has been wasted in bonuses and cash outs. So, once more, they cry for other peoples to pay for their mistakes...
Educational Gaming is *ALREADY* here and it's already making a killing in the market, not only for kids but particularly for adults. Some of the best sellers on the Nintendo DS could easily be classified as Edutainment. Games like Brain Age, Flash Focus or Brain Coach are all games that will also teach you to use your abilities. More recently, games like my French/Spanish Coach or My Word Coach are designed to improve your mastery of your language or start on a new one. Those "games" work by making the necessary repetition of teaching (especially for language) less tedious than "classic" methods. After all, it does not really matters how little Johnny learnt to associate head with cabeza, it just needs to be drilled into his mind until the association is automatic. If it takes simple games to take the tedious part away, I'm all for it. I personally "play" My Spanish Coach and this has been the easiest method for me to get motivated and learn that language (YMMV). The DS has been a revolution on that front, seen as a very nice gadget by lots of adults on top as a game console for kids. The touch screen interface blends the genre and allows new type of software for such a cheap gadget (~$100, far cheaper than a pda and much wider spread).
Check some of the games available on DS. Lots of choices.
Now, the next version of Windows will come on a hardware-upgrade cycle for a lot of companies, so it will probably sell better. But even then, I imagine that many companies are planning to stick with XP until it's just no longer possible to run it on new machines. And that could be a long time.
There is no such thing as a hardware upgrade cycle anymore, because there is no application that benefit from it anymore. No upgrade is necessary to do what 80+% of the computing population is doing: web, email and office tasks. A PC 10 years ago was doing those tasks easily already, not much has changed since, except that even a bottom configuration will run those perfectly too now. Intel will be in a world of trouble soon, because a P4 2GHz and 512-1GB of RAM is all most users require to run most of their apps and you can grab computer with those specs or better for less than a few hundreds dollars. Games will still drive the high end, both processors and video, and of course companies doing computing intensive tasks (CAD, calculations, simulations, programing...) will always need the latest, but your office worker does NOT need an upgrade cycle anymore. This was the problem and the wrong model that lead to vista's failure: people won't buy a new computer to run the new OS, because no tasks they do will benefit from the added processing.
Until people get heavily into digital video or other NEW computing heavy tasks that would be the next "in" thing for all users, the upgrade cycles will stall.
You know, you are making a good point, but I can't prevent myself from drawing a parallel between those programming languages and some operating systems. C++ is a raw programming language with LOTS of library available. You can find some library to do anything, different library will run on different platform and compete for different functions. Compare that to Linux. Here is a kernel, powerful by itself, but dependent of a multitude of modules to run, either tools, windows manager, network, file system... The competition, like windows or OS-X, give a much more stream lined experience, providing both the kernel and the tool together, at the cost of reduced choice.
This is how I see this. C++ is unlikely to start providing that complete environment. This is not its goal. This is the same as expecting Linux to start choosing a single window manager or file system. This is all about providing a solid base and a varied ecosystem.
This is a discussion that does not have any good answer. Different people will disagree over the best solution and each will have good arguments. Other languages provide complete ecosystems, I think C++ will keep providing an open choice.
I'm not a radio engineer, but I seem to remember something about radiated energy falling off as the inverse square of the distance Correct. This is due to the fact that you can model the radiated energy as a perfect sphere centered on the antenna. The surface of that sphere is 4*Pi*R2. So, your energy would be equally spread on that surface.
Now, let's see... a wireless router usually radiates a signal weaker than 100mW (the well known Linksys are rated for 84mW). Same for your wireless card. You usually stand at least 18" away (for a laptop).
Compares this with your cell phone, which uses 1900MHz (fairly close to the 2400MHz of wireless) at 1W (10x the power) and 1 inch of your brain (so 18^2 more concentrated).
So, their conclusion was to call on their cell phone to ask for the ban, right?
As long as the customer paid, I don't see where the story would be? Chinese normally BUY the products they dismantle, so I assume this is what the GP meant, that they bought an airplane (nothing special in that), that it flew to China for delivery and was never seen again (but payment was received).
What a customer does with the product they bought is nobody's business, after all, but there is in this case a nagging feeling that it may be for reverse-engineering...
The OS is pretty much a moot point for most people now. Most everyone I know uses a PC to run a browser and email. Sure they may use office or whatever occasionally but the browser and perhaps a email client can just about get you anything you need. and how much resources do you need to run THAT? I ran that type of applications 10 years ago on an old sun station at school or on a 300MHz PC at home. Realistically, if you account for the "new" interactive internet, *ANY* PC, be it the most low end you can buy new in any retail store will satisfy your needs for basic computing:
- browsing
- email
- instant messaging
- a bit of music playing
- maybe burning a CD once in a while...
I have an old computer at home, 1GHz, 600MB or ram and it can do all that easily (while serving files, ftp and video). Vista does not bring anything new for those usages. It brings some useless shiny glitz. Security is a lot more a problem of users than software (place yourself behind a NAT and 99.9% of worms become irrelevant).
So, Vista's unique goal is to inflate intel's bottom line, by pushing you to buy a new computer, when any old one should fill your needs...
Provided AMD had no other major business in the platform world before their acquisition of ATI, you can guess where their profit came from. AMD refused to enter the chipset and platform market in the 90s for a lack of ressources They let VIA, SIS and other 3rd parties provide the platform for their flagchip processors, which lead to many problems, as those were not really up to the task (usually good hardware, but not always stable drivers). When nvidia entered the platform market from the graphic side (with their nforce chipsets), they gave a big boost to AMD, finally providing a nice, stable platform, both feature full and with good drivers. As a proof, they grabbed 50%+ of the market in less than 2 years (they owned over 80% until ATI entered it too).
Even for intel, their CPU division is still the bread and butter of the company. They dont necessarily sell at a loss through their major contracts, but they do give a lot of "rebates" and incentives. Until recently, those included a clause that the manufacturer could not sell any AMD chip.
you will have to explain how you can play on one computer but not an the other one. Steam is computer independent. You install it and you can play/install games when you enter your login. If you can login correctly on one computer, you should be able to install steam on the new computer and login on it too.
Of course, if you created a NEW login on the new computer, when you try to register the same serial on both account, it will fail...
The only reason I buy the Steam games off line is that you can very often find better prices in brick and mortar stores at release dates than on Steam. Once you have bought it, just input that same CD key in your steam account and never even touch the media.
Personally, I just go for the cheapest route when offered possibilities and the more possibilities (competition at retail and online), the cheaper it gets. Steam itself has sales regularly, with lots of titles discounted 10% to 50% or packs for reduced prices.
So, for me, the delivery is irrelevant. I must say that I do like Steam. Want to play one of your game while on vacation at a friend or at the family's house? just grab steam, put your password and choose your games. Reinstalling or switching PC? Just install Steam and all the rest will follow. If they just could implement a feature to sell back your games (transfer from account to account), it would be perfect (but I wont be holding my breath, resale is the worst enemy of game makers).
To be totally honest, you can do all those things on the ps2 also. They may not be integrated in as slick a package as XBMC, but all those functions are available on PS2. You will need to have a modded console or use an exploit to run those of course, but you can:
- run programs from the memory cards or the HDD (which needs the HDD/network extension)
- programs to view files, play music or pictures from HDD or network shares (using myPS2)
- a great program to play videos (called SMS)
- programs to run "backups" from HDD (HDloader)
Apparently the 360's external power supply is _very_ sensitive to brownouts. I've got the power supply in a place where I can see the colored light now - the "red ring of death" doesn't just apply to the XBOX 360 itself:)
Which is still shody engineering, as most cheap (and obviously lower power) transformer that you will receive with any electonic equipement will take anything in input
- from 100V or less to 250V or more
- 45 to 65 Hz if not wider and convert it into their output quite reliably. That the xbox (which, I agree, transfers more power than those usual appliances) cannot come with such a reliable transformer is another corner cut from MS.
The real story is that TV in the rest of the world can be considered viewable without heavy editing. I'm from Europe and I *HATE* any non premium channel in the US. Any movie will be cut by advertisement every 5 minutes (especially at the end of the movie). A 1h show is actually a 43minutes torrent, which means that every night, you have 17+ minutes of commercial during an episode.
This is the reason Tivo and DVR caught faster in the US than in the rest of the world, because they make the TV watchable again. This is a patch for a broken system.
After that, I agree that the DVR is a much better device than a DVD-recorder, but it does have some trade-offs, mostly that you cannot move a show and share it with your neighbors/friends. You cannot ask someone else to record a show for you, or you will have to watch it in their house. Quite inconvenient, but negligeable compared to the benefits given.
Actually, windows Media Center Edition is fairly simple to setup and to use. It works with both SD and HD (although on the winXP based version, you NEED a SD feed before it can accept HD) and you have lots of 3rd party tools that can convert the videos into anything you like (divx, dvd...) during the off-time (at night for example).
For me, it passed the wife test (she just loves it) and has been favorably compared to all the cable DVR boxes our relatives have.
As a bonus, this is a full fledge PC and will play anything your PC would, but on a tv. Completely usable with just the remote for the AV stuff, browsing, torrent and streaming available from my LAN.
"why do I need a separate power cable?" because most computer systems are not designed to provide the few amps of current that a laser printer can need? Because most of those interface are designed for low power peripherals and have specs mirroring that (USB for example can feed 0.5A into its own cable), but more powerful peripherals get plugged into it. So, to work, they need more power and get an external adapter.
The *REAL* problem comes from people unable (or, much more likely unwilling) to follow directions. Most recent piece of equipment, be them electronics or computer peripherals include a quick plug guide, but those people will NOT read it. My wife is one of them. She will NOT follow any instruction, but will then complain loudly that it does not work. Packages get ripped open and manuals discarded to the side while she tries to figure out the way to use it, gets frustrated after 5 minutes and complain it wont work. She will not open a manual, no matter what amount of frustration she will endure.
Is that new spec good and interesting? Sure, but then dont complain that you get crashes on your computer, because that new magic peripheral just pushed your power supply over its limit (most brand computer has very little overhead in its power supply).
That's funny, because Europe is *STILL* offering unlimited access and with much higher bandwidth than here. In Europe, you can get a service that offer phone (VoIP) + TV (over IP, with HD and DVR) + internet (up to 20Mbps/1Mbps) for 30 euros/mo.
No restriction on the amount of DL.
Then again, they have a weird thing in that domain: actual competition. All operators are actually trying hard to earn your money. But shh... Europe is communist, we all know that...
So no, saying it is far less popular is a stretch. 19% would be far less, not 39%. Sure, 39% for a NEW OS would be quite a feat. But this is not what is happening here. We have the "new OS from a monopoly that forces you to buy it whether you want it or not" and even so, people are only buying it on 39% of the computers, forcing the computer manufacturers to extend their sale and support of the preceding OS (XP in this case).
I dont remember anyone complaining that XP was so horrible that they wanted back to 98 or 2000 at the time, but this is what is happening with Vista.
So, sure, MS is not going to disapear overnight and they still have a quasi monopoly on PC, but those are the first crack showing and they may grow if MS does not repair them.
Antigua knew they could not really sanction the US in this dispute. The US illegally (as ruled now by the WTO) cut the ability for gamblers to play online abroad, while still allowing online play inside its borders, a clear cut protectionism. As retaliation, Antigua asked the WTO to clear them for copyright infringement on US products up to the value of $3 billions. The panel ruled for a smaller value of $21 Millions/year, but it still means that Antigua can legally infringe US copyrights and service up to that level every year. Technically, the Antiguan government could print Hollywood DVDs and sell them for $1 each without paying any royalty and do so legally (up to the limit of $21 millions.
This is the reason the poster asked if this clears HIM to download from an Antiguan server. It could actually be a great opportunity for someone to setup a itune/allofmp3 clone and sell music close to at cost while paying a part of the profit to the Antiguan government . This woulc be covered by this ruling and the US could not bother the WTO with it.
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Actually, we already have similar laws in France, as the US do by the way.
Each time you commit an infraction, you lose "points" on your driver license (the bigger the infraction, the higher the number of points lost). When you do not have any point left, you lose your privilege to drive. I currently live in the US and there are similar laws here too. Too many infractions in too little time and your driver license will be suspended.
So, no, government do not seize your car (it is your property after all), but they can revoke the privilege to use it on public roads. Similarly, this law revoke your privilege to access the internet. Burden of proof is a little lower (and that will be the problem), but the principle is already firmly entrenched in all modern society.
Driving or access to the internet are NOT rights, they are privileges and as such, they can be revoked.
Now, I am not saying this law is either just or well phrased or even that it will be enforced equally, just that your analogy is actually a lot more real than your realized.
Sorry, but the one guilty of this "crime" in your words is the owner of the access then, as he is the one sharing the service without authorization, not the one connecting to it.
To come back to your analogy, if you enter an open door apartment and start watching HBO, you did not commit any crime that I know of. Trespassing needs the property to be marked as private and unavailable to the public (what a WEP key or an explicit name would do). If the owner finds you in his apartment, there is no crime until you refuse to leave when asked. Then you are trespassing. Why would you apply different standards to a wifi hotspot? The resource is freely available is unencrypted. The owner can either lock it or kick you out if your behavior (or even your presence) does not suit him.
After that, if the owner shares a resource he has no right to, then it is HIS problem to solve, not the one of the freeloader that just took advantage of a freely offered resource.
those are $600 australian. ;)
With the way the US dollar is doing, this must be about 23 Gazillion US dollars by the end of the week
Dont forget also that the RIAA is trying to pass laws that would tie government financing of schools to their efforts in stemming piracy.
Targetting a lot of college students will help make their case:
- look, we have 10x more college students receiving our warnings this month! they are pirating more and more! Colleges need to add filters from our partners!
Of course, this is a fallacy, provided they are the ones sending the notes, but it will still fly in congress...
1. Company sends take down notice
2. Alleged infringer has to prove that they aren't infringing
3. Company allows them to put the project back up
your step 2 is out of line.
The DMCA has a very simple and well defined procedure to counter a take down.
You just send a counter-DMCA notice and your site is back online as fast as it had been taken down (same legal obligation for both action). Now, if they want to go further, they need to involve a court.
In this case, there is no question of privacy or anonymity. The main contributor was known, even of CoreCodec. So, no need to prove anything, just to send the same form letter than you received, stating you dont think you are infringing.
Of course, this does not protect the offending company of their perjury if their first letter (take down notice) was in bad faith. This procedure is in place to protect both party:
1. IP holders can take down offensive sites very quickly
2. site holder can put site back online very quickly if take down is abusive and then turn against the company in a legal court.
This is a problem of responsibility, to avoid the type of procedure the RIAA has been quite fond of: fight by proxy, where they bother the ISP for the name of the infringer. The counter notice is the accused volunteering his responsibility and covering the host.
I can chime in with the opposite experience.
I've been lost in the woods and gone "missing" for 6 days. cell was in the car and could have been located, but the company refused to release the information. Their decision was great for our privacy, but very dangerous for our well being.
We fell off the grid by mistake and our family and friends pushed very hard for the rescue effort. Police would not move before 72h (and did not do much even after that), phone provider would not release data. We did not tell anyone where we went.
*IF* the cell phone provider had given the last ping position it may have helped find us faster (i use may as cell phone reception was spotty and last reception could have been a way off, but still a better location than "no idea where to start").
So, this is a fine line between privacy and security. As long as only the police access this record only to prevent accidents, I'm all for it (and they look for the person, contact her and then decide if there was danger and how to release the resulting information). But it is a fine line and a possible slippery slope...
I mean, there's no way the OLPC is going to be able to run the common Windows software packages that I'm sure the leaders think are desirable
Seriously, what is it with geeks and power? XP is 7 years old. It ran quite correctly on P3 with 256MB RAM, why would it NOT run on the OLPC? Turn down the effects and tune down the services that wont be used on this computer and you mat have a solid basis.
I agree with the rest of the comment, by selecting XP over Linux, they are giving up some of the transparency and educational value, but using technical restrictions is a straw man argument. The OLPC today is no worse than a lot of computers 7 years ago when XP came out. Wont be blazing fast, but it will work. Memory might be the restriction, not processing power.
You forgot the part where they racked in the profits, pumped up their stock prices and paid both fat bonuses to their executives (for keeping the profits so high by not investing) and paying fat dividends to investors.
This is one more example of a more general problem: lots of managements only care for the short term, the stock price and their own bonus. The future of the company does not enter the picture, by the time the problem will hit, they will have moved on.
So, now the problem hit. Money that should have been spent investing for the future (both from profits and governments handout) has been wasted in bonuses and cash outs. So, once more, they cry for other peoples to pay for their mistakes...
Educational Gaming is *ALREADY* here and it's already making a killing in the market, not only for kids but particularly for adults.
Some of the best sellers on the Nintendo DS could easily be classified as Edutainment. Games like Brain Age, Flash Focus or Brain Coach are all games that will also teach you to use your abilities. More recently, games like my French/Spanish Coach or My Word Coach are designed to improve your mastery of your language or start on a new one.
Those "games" work by making the necessary repetition of teaching (especially for language) less tedious than "classic" methods. After all, it does not really matters how little Johnny learnt to associate head with cabeza, it just needs to be drilled into his mind until the association is automatic. If it takes simple games to take the tedious part away, I'm all for it. I personally "play" My Spanish Coach and this has been the easiest method for me to get motivated and learn that language (YMMV).
The DS has been a revolution on that front, seen as a very nice gadget by lots of adults on top as a game console for kids. The touch screen interface blends the genre and allows new type of software for such a cheap gadget (~$100, far cheaper than a pda and much wider spread).
Check some of the games available on DS. Lots of choices.
Now, the next version of Windows will come on a hardware-upgrade cycle for a lot of companies, so it will probably sell better. But even then, I imagine that many companies are planning to stick with XP until it's just no longer possible to run it on new machines. And that could be a long time.
There is no such thing as a hardware upgrade cycle anymore, because there is no application that benefit from it anymore.
No upgrade is necessary to do what 80+% of the computing population is doing: web, email and office tasks. A PC 10 years ago was doing those tasks easily already, not much has changed since, except that even a bottom configuration will run those perfectly too now.
Intel will be in a world of trouble soon, because a P4 2GHz and 512-1GB of RAM is all most users require to run most of their apps and you can grab computer with those specs or better for less than a few hundreds dollars.
Games will still drive the high end, both processors and video, and of course companies doing computing intensive tasks (CAD, calculations, simulations, programing...) will always need the latest, but your office worker does NOT need an upgrade cycle anymore.
This was the problem and the wrong model that lead to vista's failure: people won't buy a new computer to run the new OS, because no tasks they do will benefit from the added processing.
Until people get heavily into digital video or other NEW computing heavy tasks that would be the next "in" thing for all users, the upgrade cycles will stall.
You know, you are making a good point, but I can't prevent myself from drawing a parallel between those programming languages and some operating systems.
C++ is a raw programming language with LOTS of library available. You can find some library to do anything, different library will run on different platform and compete for different functions.
Compare that to Linux. Here is a kernel, powerful by itself, but dependent of a multitude of modules to run, either tools, windows manager, network, file system... The competition, like windows or OS-X, give a much more stream lined experience, providing both the kernel and the tool together, at the cost of reduced choice.
This is how I see this. C++ is unlikely to start providing that complete environment. This is not its goal. This is the same as expecting Linux to start choosing a single window manager or file system. This is all about providing a solid base and a varied ecosystem.
This is a discussion that does not have any good answer. Different people will disagree over the best solution and each will have good arguments. Other languages provide complete ecosystems, I think C++ will keep providing an open choice.
This is due to the fact that you can model the radiated energy as a perfect sphere centered on the antenna. The surface of that sphere is 4*Pi*R2. So, your energy would be equally spread on that surface.
Now, let's see... a wireless router usually radiates a signal weaker than 100mW (the well known Linksys are rated for 84mW). Same for your wireless card. You usually stand at least 18" away (for a laptop).
Compares this with your cell phone, which uses 1900MHz (fairly close to the 2400MHz of wireless) at 1W (10x the power) and 1 inch of your brain (so 18^2 more concentrated).
So, their conclusion was to call on their cell phone to ask for the ban, right?
As long as the customer paid, I don't see where the story would be?
Chinese normally BUY the products they dismantle, so I assume this is what the GP meant, that they bought an airplane (nothing special in that), that it flew to China for delivery and was never seen again (but payment was received).
What a customer does with the product they bought is nobody's business, after all, but there is in this case a nagging feeling that it may be for reverse-engineering...
The OS is pretty much a moot point for most people now. Most everyone I know uses a PC to run a browser and email. Sure they may use office or whatever occasionally but the browser and perhaps a email client can just about get you anything you need.
and how much resources do you need to run THAT?
I ran that type of applications 10 years ago on an old sun station at school or on a 300MHz PC at home.
Realistically, if you account for the "new" interactive internet, *ANY* PC, be it the most low end you can buy new in any retail store will satisfy your needs for basic computing:
- browsing
- email
- instant messaging
- a bit of music playing
- maybe burning a CD once in a while...
I have an old computer at home, 1GHz, 600MB or ram and it can do all that easily (while serving files, ftp and video).
Vista does not bring anything new for those usages.
It brings some useless shiny glitz. Security is a lot more a problem of users than software (place yourself behind a NAT and 99.9% of worms become irrelevant).
So, Vista's unique goal is to inflate intel's bottom line, by pushing you to buy a new computer, when any old one should fill your needs...
Provided AMD had no other major business in the platform world before their acquisition of ATI, you can guess where their profit came from.
AMD refused to enter the chipset and platform market in the 90s for a lack of ressources They let VIA, SIS and other 3rd parties provide the platform for their flagchip processors, which lead to many problems, as those were not really up to the task (usually good hardware, but not always stable drivers). When nvidia entered the platform market from the graphic side (with their nforce chipsets), they gave a big boost to AMD, finally providing a nice, stable platform, both feature full and with good drivers. As a proof, they grabbed 50%+ of the market in less than 2 years (they owned over 80% until ATI entered it too).
Even for intel, their CPU division is still the bread and butter of the company. They dont necessarily sell at a loss through their major contracts, but they do give a lot of "rebates" and incentives. Until recently, those included a clause that the manufacturer could not sell any AMD chip.
you will have to explain how you can play on one computer but not an the other one.
Steam is computer independent. You install it and you can play/install games when you enter your login. If you can login correctly on one computer, you should be able to install steam on the new computer and login on it too.
Of course, if you created a NEW login on the new computer, when you try to register the same serial on both account, it will fail...
The only reason I buy the Steam games off line is that you can very often find better prices in brick and mortar stores at release dates than on Steam. Once you have bought it, just input that same CD key in your steam account and never even touch the media.
Personally, I just go for the cheapest route when offered possibilities and the more possibilities (competition at retail and online), the cheaper it gets. Steam itself has sales regularly, with lots of titles discounted 10% to 50% or packs for reduced prices.
So, for me, the delivery is irrelevant. I must say that I do like Steam. Want to play one of your game while on vacation at a friend or at the family's house? just grab steam, put your password and choose your games. Reinstalling or switching PC? Just install Steam and all the rest will follow. If they just could implement a feature to sell back your games (transfer from account to account), it would be perfect (but I wont be holding my breath, resale is the worst enemy of game makers).
To be totally honest, you can do all those things on the ps2 also.
;)
They may not be integrated in as slick a package as XBMC, but all those functions are available on PS2. You will need to have a modded console or use an exploit to run those of course, but you can:
- run programs from the memory cards or the HDD (which needs the HDD/network extension)
- programs to view files, play music or pictures from HDD or network shares (using myPS2)
- a great program to play videos (called SMS)
- programs to run "backups" from HDD (HDloader)
And of course it can run Linux
More infos can be found here:
Apparently the 360's external power supply is _very_ sensitive to brownouts. I've got the power supply in a place where I can see the colored light now - the "red ring of death" doesn't just apply to the XBOX 360 itself :)
Which is still shody engineering, as most cheap (and obviously lower power) transformer that you will receive with any electonic equipement will take anything in input
- from 100V or less to 250V or more
- 45 to 65 Hz if not wider
and convert it into their output quite reliably.
That the xbox (which, I agree, transfers more power than those usual appliances) cannot come with such a reliable transformer is another corner cut from MS.
The real story is that TV in the rest of the world can be considered viewable without heavy editing.
I'm from Europe and I *HATE* any non premium channel in the US. Any movie will be cut by advertisement every 5 minutes (especially at the end of the movie). A 1h show is actually a 43minutes torrent, which means that every night, you have 17+ minutes of commercial during an episode.
This is the reason Tivo and DVR caught faster in the US than in the rest of the world, because they make the TV watchable again. This is a patch for a broken system.
After that, I agree that the DVR is a much better device than a DVD-recorder, but it does have some trade-offs, mostly that you cannot move a show and share it with your neighbors/friends. You cannot ask someone else to record a show for you, or you will have to watch it in their house. Quite inconvenient, but negligeable compared to the benefits given.
Actually, windows Media Center Edition is fairly simple to setup and to use.
It works with both SD and HD (although on the winXP based version, you NEED a SD feed before it can accept HD) and you have lots of 3rd party tools that can convert the videos into anything you like (divx, dvd...) during the off-time (at night for example).
For me, it passed the wife test (she just loves it) and has been favorably compared to all the cable DVR boxes our relatives have.
As a bonus, this is a full fledge PC and will play anything your PC would, but on a tv. Completely usable with just the remote for the AV stuff, browsing, torrent and streaming available from my LAN.
"why do I need a separate power cable?"
because most computer systems are not designed to provide the few amps of current that a laser printer can need?
Because most of those interface are designed for low power peripherals and have specs mirroring that (USB for example can feed 0.5A into its own cable), but more powerful peripherals get plugged into it. So, to work, they need more power and get an external adapter.
The *REAL* problem comes from people unable (or, much more likely unwilling) to follow directions. Most recent piece of equipment, be them electronics or computer peripherals include a quick plug guide, but those people will NOT read it.
My wife is one of them. She will NOT follow any instruction, but will then complain loudly that it does not work. Packages get ripped open and manuals discarded to the side while she tries to figure out the way to use it, gets frustrated after 5 minutes and complain it wont work. She will not open a manual, no matter what amount of frustration she will endure.
Is that new spec good and interesting? Sure, but then dont complain that you get crashes on your computer, because that new magic peripheral just pushed your power supply over its limit (most brand computer has very little overhead in its power supply).
That's funny, because Europe is *STILL* offering unlimited access and with much higher bandwidth than here.
In Europe, you can get a service that offer phone (VoIP) + TV (over IP, with HD and DVR) + internet (up to 20Mbps/1Mbps) for 30 euros/mo.
No restriction on the amount of DL.
Then again, they have a weird thing in that domain: actual competition. All operators are actually trying hard to earn your money. But shh... Europe is communist, we all know that...
So no, saying it is far less popular is a stretch. 19% would be far less, not 39%.
Sure, 39% for a NEW OS would be quite a feat. But this is not what is happening here. We have the "new OS from a monopoly that forces you to buy it whether you want it or not" and even so, people are only buying it on 39% of the computers, forcing the computer manufacturers to extend their sale and support of the preceding OS (XP in this case).
I dont remember anyone complaining that XP was so horrible that they wanted back to 98 or 2000 at the time, but this is what is happening with Vista.
So, sure, MS is not going to disapear overnight and they still have a quasi monopoly on PC, but those are the first crack showing and they may grow if MS does not repair them.
Antigua knew they could not really sanction the US in this dispute. The US illegally (as ruled now by the WTO) cut the ability for gamblers to play online abroad, while still allowing online play inside its borders, a clear cut protectionism. As retaliation, Antigua asked the WTO to clear them for copyright infringement on US products up to the value of $3 billions. The panel ruled for a smaller value of $21 Millions/year, but it still means that Antigua can legally infringe US copyrights and service up to that level every year.
Technically, the Antiguan government could print Hollywood DVDs and sell them for $1 each without paying any royalty and do so legally (up to the limit of $21 millions.
This is the reason the poster asked if this clears HIM to download from an Antiguan server.
It could actually be a great opportunity for someone to setup a itune/allofmp3 clone and sell music close to at cost while paying a part of the profit to the Antiguan government . This woulc be covered by this ruling and the US could not bother the WTO with it.