Napster / Scour are easy to use, by anyone, even complete cluebie luser college kids. They set sharing on by default. Most users are too lazy, don't care, or arent technically clueful enough to bother changing this.
P2P file sharing systems are less developed, and harder to use; and most of their users are fairly clued up, as a clueless person isn't really going to see the benefit of P2P file sharing over napster. The version of Gnutella I have doesn't even allow uploads (it is quite old though), and AFAIAA most P2P systems don't set sharing on by default.
As a result, there will always be less files accessible via P2P systems until someone releases a client that is easy to use, and enables sharing by default.
Without large numbers of college kids / AOLer / et.c. sharing their entire song collections, it's never going to reach the level of success Napster has.
Even if your assumption that only the rich will benefit from genetic engineering (which I'd imagine would only happen for a decade or so after if becoming commercially viable), then can't you see that there is no way of stopping this?
You can rant all you want about the lack of scientific ethics, but the fact of the matter is: if you ban genetic engineering only the _ultra_ rich will benefit from it. Banning something people want will _never_ eradicate it. Look at drugs - they're still available anywhere, they just cost a lot more than they would if legal.
You can't stand in the way of this technology any more than the RIAA can rid the world of MP3s
Did they spend all the money on advertising?
on
Boo No More
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· Score: 1
Because if they did, it was a bad move - their TV ads were _really_ lame (bad enough for me to turn down an interview with them - damn good job I did;-)
All this talk of the bottom falling out of the e-commerce market is so much hot air - the stocks were overvalued by naive investors, and a few companies were bound to suffer when they settled to a more sensible level; e-commerce is a high-risk venture, and boo.com (and also lastminute.com) weren't anything special or solid enough to weather it. Though I may not have had that much contact with boo.com, I can say from my limited dealings with lastminute.com that they are fairly clueless, and you've got to be at least two steps ahead of your competitors in this game....
It amuses me that there is a possibility that someone who may have been dumb enough to leave traceable information within the comments of a virus (incuding the line 'I hate go to school'(sic), which makes me wonder about his age, too) is still able to exploit the even greater stupidity of whoever at Microsoft decided that Outlook being able to run VB attachments was a good idea.
I can think of several good reasons to give kids Linux laptops:
Much much less expensive - you'd only need a very low-powered laptop for it to be useable, and software is practically free.
Likely to be much more useful to them in the future - knowing Linux makes you far more employable now, so what's it going to be like in 10 years?
If you don't give them root access, they can't fsck them up.
Far less games - I know, I know - I'm not against kids playing games, just trying to see it from their teachers' perspective.
Less potential for 'computer crashed & ate my homework' excuses;-)
Of course, you'd have big problems teaching kids how to use it; but, hell, if you'd given me a computer that just ran vi when I was a kid, you can bet your sweet ass I'd have used it;-)
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- Napster / Scour are easy to use, by anyone, even complete cluebie luser college kids. They set sharing on by default. Most users are too lazy, don't care, or arent technically clueful enough to bother changing this.
- P2P file sharing systems are less developed, and harder to use; and most of their users are fairly clued up, as a clueless person isn't really going to see the benefit of P2P file sharing over napster. The version of Gnutella I have doesn't even allow uploads (it is quite old though), and AFAIAA most P2P systems don't set sharing on by default.
As a result, there will always be less files accessible via P2P systems until someone releases a client that is easy to use, and enables sharing by default.Without large numbers of college kids / AOLer / et.c. sharing their entire song collections, it's never going to reach the level of success Napster has.
Even if your assumption that only the rich will benefit from genetic engineering (which I'd imagine would only happen for a decade or so after if becoming commercially viable), then can't you see that there is no way of stopping this?
You can rant all you want about the lack of scientific ethics, but the fact of the matter is: if you ban genetic engineering only the _ultra_ rich will benefit from it. Banning something people want will _never_ eradicate it. Look at drugs - they're still available anywhere, they just cost a lot more than they would if legal.
You can't stand in the way of this technology any more than the RIAA can rid the world of MP3s
Because if they did, it was a bad move - their TV ads were _really_ lame (bad enough for me to turn down an interview with them - damn good job I did ;-)
All this talk of the bottom falling out of the e-commerce market is so much hot air - the stocks were overvalued by naive investors, and a few companies were bound to suffer when they settled to a more sensible level; e-commerce is a high-risk venture, and boo.com (and also lastminute.com) weren't anything special or solid enough to weather it.
Though I may not have had that much contact with boo.com, I can say from my limited dealings with lastminute.com that they are fairly clueless, and you've got to be at least two steps ahead of your competitors in this game....
It amuses me that there is a possibility that someone who may have been dumb enough to leave traceable information within the comments of a virus (incuding the line 'I hate go to school'(sic), which makes me wonder about his age, too) is still able to exploit the even greater stupidity of whoever at Microsoft decided that Outlook being able to run VB attachments was a good idea.
- Much much less expensive - you'd only need a very low-powered laptop for it to be useable, and software is practically free.
- Likely to be much more useful to them in the future - knowing Linux makes you far more employable now, so what's it going to be like in 10 years?
- If you don't give them root access, they can't fsck them up.
- Far less games - I know, I know - I'm not against kids playing games, just trying to see it from their teachers' perspective.
- Less potential for 'computer crashed & ate my homework' excuses
;-)
Of course, you'd have big problems teaching kids how to use it; but, hell, if you'd given me a computer that just ran vi when I was a kid, you can bet your sweet ass I'd have used it