starting with Truman and ending with LBJ, neither of whom were Republicans (though they probably both would be today, along with the other Democrat during that period, JFK).
Dude, that is AWESOME. Retroactively drafting dead politicians into your party. In honor of Presidents' Day, I call Washington and Lincoln for the Democrats!
With a web browser, you don't inherently need to write to a filesystem (not counting cache since it isn't 100% necessary).
An "Office" suite's job is to create documents. Or edit them. Where do you store those when you're booted into this ROM-based Linux? On the Windows partition of your hard drive? Ok so now you need NTFS read/write drivers built-in, and to map the locations to one Windows user or another (since the user won't understand if his Splashtop "desktop" doesn't contain the same set of documents as his Windows desktop.
...people never use ebay, paypal, or online banking. (Would you log into any of these on a monitored computer?)
Yeah, because Microsoft is desperate to steal a couple thousand dollars from your bank account. It's not like they already have more money than God. They're gonna be going after robbing a bunch of paranoid geeks. Also, they see no reason why that behavior would cause a problem with the law or a PR nightmare.
> It doesn't hurt computer scientists and programmers to say mebibyte instead of megabyte or gibibyte instead of gigabyte
Um, YES IT DOES FREAKING HURT. "Gibibyte" has got to be the #1 asswipe word I've ever heard in my life.
Hello, how many Gibibytes is that drive? I DARE you to go into a store and ask that. They'll think you're a retard with a speech impediment. And if you said gibibyte, you would be.
Whoever invented these stupid-ass terms probably thought they were solving this whole 1000 vs 1024 problem. Too bad that asshole hadn't ever left his parents' basement.
Okay, so now China is the #1 world power? Nobody gave me that memo. You know what? Fuck China too. I'm sorry, a country that's pretty much 100% driven by greed and dishonesty (as their poisoning of the rest of the world's children to save a couple cents on each plastic piece o' crap proves) doesn't get my respect.
See, I know I come off like some sort of crazy Bush-cheering jingo when I advocate military action, but I actually almost never support drastic measures or war (and never did in Iraq, for example). It's just that this is just clearly wrong. Also, while I don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis personally, I do recall that it ended without global nuclear war.
Sure it'd probably be uncomfortable for us both to confront China and say, guess what, you're going to march in and execute the whole Burmese junta, and you're going to do it by November or else we're not buying your shit anymore. Sure we need them as much as they need us due to the massive trade deficits, but remember that cuts both ways. They wouldn't win by economically torpedoing us because their economy would tank too with us not buying their crappy exports.
It'd be uncomfortable but it would probably work. Isn't it worth a try?
Isn't this shit sad? I mean, a tyrannical military government that nobody wants in power, who's abusing that power by willfully shooting civilians. Of course, our leaders don't give a rats ass beyond talking about how "concerned" or "saddened" or "disappointed" because Myanmar doesn't have any oil, or strategic position we can use.
I'm not trying to say Iraq wasn't justified. It doesn't matter. Whether it was or not, I think Myanmar's military rulers need a good ass-kicking. And there's an ass we could kick overnight if we wanted to. Just bust in there to their headquarters and fire some automatic weapons at them just the same way they do to the innocent monks. That'll teach 'em. Throw in an election to put up a REAL government, and we'd be home by Christmas.
In California, you can take the Proficiency test (once you're 16 or finish sophomore year) and get a certificate equivalent to your HS Diploma. Then you're free to go to a college. Though many colleges require you to have taken certain things in HS, so you'd have a tougher time getting admitted to a selective school right off.
My friends who went this route went to the community college to get the classes they needed under their belt, and transferred to UC's after that.
Too bad all states aren't like that. In Utah, they don't have a proficiency test. There, if you find yourself beneath your learning level in high school, you have no choice but to DROP OUT OF SCHOOL, wait until you're 18, and then get your GED. That's stupid for so many reasons. "Proficiency test" carries no stigma--people who know what that is know it's for "smart kids" and think it's cool that you got to skip the last couple years of high school. "GED" carries the stigma of "Loser dropout who finally dragged his ass back to night school and learned to read chapter-books and do long division." No offense intended to GED holders, that's not the reality but that's what people think when they see that on a college or job application. Grouping kids who are brighter than their peers in with the dropouts is just such a bad idea.
Also, the proficiency test is no-risk, if you don't pass it, you can just stay in school. If you drop out only to find you weren't as smart as you thought you were and you fail the GED, then you can't go back in time to spend those years learning.
One objection: Games back then may have been an introduction to technology. I used to fool around with the BASIC source of this one stock market game on the Apple II.
But now? Give me a break! How is the latest PS3 shooter or RPG going to teach Junior anything but how to aim and shoot a gun at zombies using a D-pad? Do you really think he's going to say "Gee, I think I'll learn how to CREATE games just like this one, let me go out and buy the $100K dev kit and get started today!" Perhaps there are kids who think they'll work in the video game industry just because they like playing games, but they're just fat uncoordinated versions of those doofuses who think they'll become professional skateboarders or basketball players after high school.
Wow, lol. I had no idea it really was Oasis. Also, I almost posted "it sounds like the work of a bad Beatles tribute band" until I realized it more specifically sounded like Oasis. But others here have taken care of that for me too!
Actually, we're not using pills. I mentioned before, the non-hormonal IUD. All the hormonal methods, such as the pill or the NuvaRing, are incompatible with her other medications (which I'll just say *are* very necessary).
We arrived at the decision together, after about six months. The wife liked condoms even less than I did. While it's true that the IUD increases the severity, she already had cramps before, and, she prefers the better sex and (most importantly) the security, that comes with using a device. Also, as far as the convenience, it's sort of like the difference between unlimited cell phone minutes and prepaid. Not only are your minutes finite, but you have to purchase more periodically, and always at the most inconvenient time. It feels better and less stressful knowing you don't have to worry about wasting anything or even running out at all.
Also, it costs about $600 to get one of those things put in, and we didn't know how her body would react to it until we tried it. It's actually paid for itself by now vs. condoms, but we'd still be throwing a lot of money away to take it out prematurely.
So in summary, we both chose the increased pain in order to get the benefits I mentioned.
Interesting observation. This is especially relevant to me, because my wife's other medications preclude her from taking birth control pills. So she has a non-hormonal IUD for birth control. One of the things that causes for her is greatly increased the severity of cramps.
On this particular instance, I think you're forgetting one thing. Birth control pills do indeed lessen the severity and length of periods for most girls, but they're not *just* taken for that. I mean, many/most girls are mainly taking them to prevent pregnancy--not an easy problem to tackle without hormones, as we've learned ourselves. The non-hormonal method we chose has very real drawbacks. And condoms, while quite well suited for impromptu use when I was a teenager, quickly got tiring once I got into a long-term relationship, and later marriage.
I agree with you though, that I'd prefer for myself and my family to not need pills if there was a tolerable lifestyle change to alleviate or manage the problem.
Also, you just reminded of one particular variety of Midol I saw once that was priced at about $10 for like 24 pills and they contained nothing but 200mg ibuprofen. Hilarious, when generic ibuprofen is like $6 for 500 (or even more ridiculously cheap at Costco).;)
I get your point with regard to pain being there for a reason, but regarding the cramps thing...why use that as an example? With back pain or a sore wrist, I could envision the medical advice that pain is trying to give you: "Stop lifting so many heavy things" or "Stop typing in a bad position." But what exactly are menstrual cramps trying to tell the girl? "Next month you'd better get pregnant or else you'll get cramps again!" ? I mean isn't there no real way to resolve that particular issue naturally (other than getting pregnant at every single opportunity. Which would be a pretty unreasonable request.)
Or maybe I'm being dense and not understanding the nature of this kind of cramps fully.
Why bother with flash when you already need a battery to power your real-time clock? Or do you want to go back to the dark days of the IBM PC XT, where it prompted you for the date and time every time you turned on the computer?
I disagree. All modern OS use NTP to synchronize their clocks anyway. As soon as your network stack is initialized at boot time, do an NTP lookup and set the clock.
What's the cost of 8MB of flash? Approximately nothing. Rather than solder the chip to the board, I'd just put an SD slot on it! If you nuke it, you just remove the card, which for your convenience, would come from the factory stamped with your motherboard brand/model/revision, insert into a reader, and "re-flash" with the latest firmware file. Or take it to someone who can.
> With num lock on, can the OS distinguish between num pad numbers and normal numbers? If that were the case, that'd work fine.
Yeah, it totally can. I'm sure of it because I've mapped keys using video game emulators and stuff and it'll say "Num Pad 4" instead of "4".
Your point is correct--it's useful to have 9 keys nicely arranged in a grid there, and to have games and similar applications be able treat them as directional arrows...but that wouldn't change if we eliminated Num Lock--you could still use them for the purpose you use them for now. They just wouldn't have "Ins", "Del", "->", etc. printed on them, and they'd work as numbers without you having to make sure "Num Lock" was turned on.
Money *does* always get you everything
on
Apache down, IIS up
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
> Little things like...oh...the Sherman Antitrust Act, anti-dumping provisions in the WTO, and likely future court rulings and legislation that might result from that sort of behaviour
OK, so let me just get this straight. You're actually serious here...
You think, that what's gonna stop MICROSOFT from doing something grossly unethical would be...
THE LAW?! LMAO!
Mod me down if you want for pointing it out, but the law has about as much effect on Microsoft as I do. They've PROVEN that they're above the law before. How many times do they have to do that before you accept it? Microsoft (like any ridiculously rich company) can do whatever it wants. It's the law that has to adapt.
> (especially from the EU and Asian countries that are slowly growing more hostile to Microsoft). Well...Maybe non-US governments will treat them a little less gently. But keep in mind, politicians in those countries love money just as much as our US politicians do. And--more importantly--look at what happened the last time the mighty EU got angry at Microsoft: A few fines and Windows XP Home Edition "N." Oooh, what a mighty blow for justice! Yep, offering that edition righted all the wrongs. Justice served and lesson learned, right? Thanks, EU! Yeah. Right. Pardon me while I choke on the lameness of that punishment.
Interesting...Sorry about my country's bad behavior when it comes to treaties and such.
Also there are very few large Canadian firms anymore as they all have been bought out by American firms.
That's a bummer. That really leads to mass homogenization—kind of like all the regional firms that have been snapped up (in huge mergers) into national firms, within the US...especially in areas like telecoms, grocery retailing, and financial services. You have my sympathy there.
Tell me about NAFTA, that it's a free-trade agreement. Yet it's free for the US not for Canada or Mexico.
Come now, NAFTA is just as advantageous for large Mexican and Canadian firms as it is for large US firms.
That is, after all, what it's attempting to be: A benefit for the largest of corporations in North America, at the expense of the US and Canadian working class.
See, given the wage equalizing effect it has (bringing US, Canadian, and Mexican wages for various types of work toward an average between the countries, its most positive effect (excluding on corporations and the super-rich) is on Mexican laborers (who now stand to make $1 an hour instead of $0.50, for example). Contrast this with American workers, who now command less wages and job security because of their new easier replaceability ("No strikes, no raises, no benefits, or we'll just lay off all your asses and move this factory to Mexico").
So basically I'm saying NAFTA isn't lopsided in favor of Americans; it's lopsided in favor of the rich. Greed is usually surprisingly blind to petty issues like nationality, race, religion, and culture. Example: the US's Business Party, I mean, Republican Party's constant whoring of itself to the Christian Right.
Sorry, I missed a "K" there. I meant "$10k" or "$10,000". Hope nobody got confused there.
NO ONE wants to early-adopt Blu-Ray! Why not wait?
on
How the PS3 Hit $600
·
· Score: 1
Every one else will have to pay $400 for an HD DVD player.
WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!
Hold on, let me say that some more:
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!
Welcome to the Real World. It seems you may have spent too much time in Sony Fantasyland, where people behave completely irrationally.
What happened when DVD players cost over $400? Nobody bought them!!(Except insane videophiles with $10 home theater systems.) They kept using VCRs and waited a couple short years until DVD players were $50-80 at any electronics or discount store.
Especially considering how almost no one has an HD-capable set, there is approximately zero demand for these new HD players. Maybe less than zero, considering how crippled they'll be with the HDCP.
NO ONE is clamoring to be an early adopter of this ridiculously useless technology! They don't have either the TVs to watch them on, or any complaints about the current standard--DVD. Perhaps you've heard of it? Also, the reason people switched from VHS to DVD wasn't the higher resolution. It's the convenience of optical over tape (random access, compactness, and durability in some ways). Blu-Ray and HDDVD have NO real advantages over DVD for normal people (except this promised better coating, which is irrelevant for people who take good care of their DVDs).
I dare you to explain why the mass market is interested in being early adopters (in this case that means suckers) for this technology when they could wait, flip the bird at Sony's PS3, grab a Revolution and a 360, keep buying DVDs, and buy a Lite-On BluRay+HD-DVD player for $40 at Costco in 2008?
I think up until a certain model PowerBook they were made in Taiwan.
The 1.33GHz PowerBook 12" was built in Taiwan; the 1.5GHz model that replaced it (it was the one that added Sudden Motion Sensor), in Communist China.
I happen to know this because I bought the Taiwan-made one, and my friend bought the 1.5GHz (China) one. I can't prove it, but I felt the build quality of mine was a bit better than his. His screen latch wasn't nearly as good as mine, and a few of his keyboard's keys were poorly molded or something--they sat at a slight angle.
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Dude, that is AWESOME. Retroactively drafting dead politicians into your party. In honor of Presidents' Day, I call Washington and Lincoln for the Democrats!
Actually generic socks are banned, you have to wear genuine Nike(R) or Adidas(R), whichever is the official sock sponsor this year.
Well one problem I can think of is this:
With a web browser, you don't inherently need to write to a filesystem (not counting cache since it isn't 100% necessary).
An "Office" suite's job is to create documents. Or edit them. Where do you store those when you're booted into this ROM-based Linux? On the Windows partition of your hard drive? Ok so now you need NTFS read/write drivers built-in, and to map the locations to one Windows user or another (since the user won't understand if his Splashtop "desktop" doesn't contain the same set of documents as his Windows desktop.
nt
> It doesn't hurt computer scientists and programmers to say mebibyte instead of megabyte or gibibyte instead of gigabyte
Um, YES IT DOES FREAKING HURT. "Gibibyte" has got to be the #1 asswipe word I've ever heard in my life.
Hello, how many Gibibytes is that drive? I DARE you to go into a store and ask that. They'll think you're a retard with a speech impediment. And if you said gibibyte, you would be.
Whoever invented these stupid-ass terms probably thought they were solving this whole 1000 vs 1024 problem. Too bad that asshole hadn't ever left his parents' basement.
Okay, so now China is the #1 world power? Nobody gave me that memo. You know what? Fuck China too. I'm sorry, a country that's pretty much 100% driven by greed and dishonesty (as their poisoning of the rest of the world's children to save a couple cents on each plastic piece o' crap proves) doesn't get my respect.
See, I know I come off like some sort of crazy Bush-cheering jingo when I advocate military action, but I actually almost never support drastic measures or war (and never did in Iraq, for example). It's just that this is just clearly wrong. Also, while I don't remember the Cuban Missile Crisis personally, I do recall that it ended without global nuclear war.
Sure it'd probably be uncomfortable for us both to confront China and say, guess what, you're going to march in and execute the whole Burmese junta, and you're going to do it by November or else we're not buying your shit anymore. Sure we need them as much as they need us due to the massive trade deficits, but remember that cuts both ways. They wouldn't win by economically torpedoing us because their economy would tank too with us not buying their crappy exports.
It'd be uncomfortable but it would probably work. Isn't it worth a try?
Isn't this shit sad? I mean, a tyrannical military government that nobody wants in power, who's abusing that power by willfully shooting civilians. Of course, our leaders don't give a rats ass beyond talking about how "concerned" or "saddened" or "disappointed" because Myanmar doesn't have any oil, or strategic position we can use.
I'm not trying to say Iraq wasn't justified. It doesn't matter. Whether it was or not, I think Myanmar's military rulers need a good ass-kicking. And there's an ass we could kick overnight if we wanted to. Just bust in there to their headquarters and fire some automatic weapons at them just the same way they do to the innocent monks. That'll teach 'em. Throw in an election to put up a REAL government, and we'd be home by Christmas.
In California, you can take the Proficiency test (once you're 16 or finish sophomore year) and get a certificate equivalent to your HS Diploma. Then you're free to go to a college. Though many colleges require you to have taken certain things in HS, so you'd have a tougher time getting admitted to a selective school right off.
My friends who went this route went to the community college to get the classes they needed under their belt, and transferred to UC's after that.
Too bad all states aren't like that. In Utah, they don't have a proficiency test. There, if you find yourself beneath your learning level in high school, you have no choice but to DROP OUT OF SCHOOL, wait until you're 18, and then get your GED. That's stupid for so many reasons. "Proficiency test" carries no stigma--people who know what that is know it's for "smart kids" and think it's cool that you got to skip the last couple years of high school. "GED" carries the stigma of "Loser dropout who finally dragged his ass back to night school and learned to read chapter-books and do long division." No offense intended to GED holders, that's not the reality but that's what people think when they see that on a college or job application. Grouping kids who are brighter than their peers in with the dropouts is just such a bad idea.
Also, the proficiency test is no-risk, if you don't pass it, you can just stay in school. If you drop out only to find you weren't as smart as you thought you were and you fail the GED, then you can't go back in time to spend those years learning.
One objection: Games back then may have been an introduction to technology. I used to fool around with the BASIC source of this one stock market game on the Apple II.
But now? Give me a break! How is the latest PS3 shooter or RPG going to teach Junior anything but how to aim and shoot a gun at zombies using a D-pad? Do you really think he's going to say "Gee, I think I'll learn how to CREATE games just like this one, let me go out and buy the $100K dev kit and get started today!" Perhaps there are kids who think they'll work in the video game industry just because they like playing games, but they're just fat uncoordinated versions of those doofuses who think they'll become professional skateboarders or basketball players after high school.
dude, that link. Nevada secretary of state website: secretaryofstate.BIZ.
That made my whole day.
Wow, lol. I had no idea it really was Oasis. Also, I almost posted "it sounds like the work of a bad Beatles tribute band" until I realized it more specifically sounded like Oasis. But others here have taken care of that for me too!
I guess great slashdot minds think alike.
"AT&T." Gag me with a spoon.
Hahahaha. I'd support that.
My next candidate: Those damn "The 'New' AT&T" commercials with their stupid "all around the world..." theme. It sounds like a bad Oasis song.
Yes! F*** vonage and those god damn f***ing commercials. If I never hear that damn "song" again it will be too soon.
Praise the lord!
Actually, we're not using pills. I mentioned before, the non-hormonal IUD. All the hormonal methods, such as the pill or the NuvaRing, are incompatible with her other medications (which I'll just say *are* very necessary).
We arrived at the decision together, after about six months. The wife liked condoms even less than I did. While it's true that the IUD increases the severity, she already had cramps before, and, she prefers the better sex and (most importantly) the security, that comes with using a device. Also, as far as the convenience, it's sort of like the difference between unlimited cell phone minutes and prepaid. Not only are your minutes finite, but you have to purchase more periodically, and always at the most inconvenient time. It feels better and less stressful knowing you don't have to worry about wasting anything or even running out at all.
Also, it costs about $600 to get one of those things put in, and we didn't know how her body would react to it until we tried it. It's actually paid for itself by now vs. condoms, but we'd still be throwing a lot of money away to take it out prematurely.
So in summary, we both chose the increased pain in order to get the benefits I mentioned.
Interesting observation. This is especially relevant to me, because my wife's other medications preclude her from taking birth control pills. So she has a non-hormonal IUD for birth control. One of the things that causes for her is greatly increased the severity of cramps.
;)
On this particular instance, I think you're forgetting one thing. Birth control pills do indeed lessen the severity and length of periods for most girls, but they're not *just* taken for that. I mean, many/most girls are mainly taking them to prevent pregnancy--not an easy problem to tackle without hormones, as we've learned ourselves. The non-hormonal method we chose has very real drawbacks. And condoms, while quite well suited for impromptu use when I was a teenager, quickly got tiring once I got into a long-term relationship, and later marriage.
I agree with you though, that I'd prefer for myself and my family to not need pills if there was a tolerable lifestyle change to alleviate or manage the problem.
Also, you just reminded of one particular variety of Midol I saw once that was priced at about $10 for like 24 pills and they contained nothing but 200mg ibuprofen. Hilarious, when generic ibuprofen is like $6 for 500 (or even more ridiculously cheap at Costco).
I get your point with regard to pain being there for a reason, but regarding the cramps thing...why use that as an example? With back pain or a sore wrist, I could envision the medical advice that pain is trying to give you: "Stop lifting so many heavy things" or "Stop typing in a bad position." But what exactly are menstrual cramps trying to tell the girl?
"Next month you'd better get pregnant or else you'll get cramps again!"
? I mean isn't there no real way to resolve that particular issue naturally (other than getting pregnant at every single opportunity. Which would be a pretty unreasonable request.)
Or maybe I'm being dense and not understanding the nature of this kind of cramps fully.
Why bother with flash when you already need a battery to power your real-time clock? Or do you want to go back to the dark days of the IBM PC XT, where it prompted you for the date and time every time you turned on the computer?
I disagree. All modern OS use NTP to synchronize their clocks anyway. As soon as your network stack is initialized at boot time, do an NTP lookup and set the clock.
What's the cost of 8MB of flash? Approximately nothing. Rather than solder the chip to the board, I'd just put an SD slot on it! If you nuke it, you just remove the card, which for your convenience, would come from the factory stamped with your motherboard brand/model/revision, insert into a reader, and "re-flash" with the latest firmware file. Or take it to someone who can.
Your point is correct--it's useful to have 9 keys nicely arranged in a grid there, and to have games and similar applications be able treat them as directional arrows...but that wouldn't change if we eliminated Num Lock--you could still use them for the purpose you use them for now. They just wouldn't have "Ins", "Del", "->", etc. printed on them, and they'd work as numbers without you having to make sure "Num Lock" was turned on.
> Little things like...oh...the Sherman Antitrust Act, anti-dumping provisions in the WTO, and likely future court rulings and legislation that might result from that sort of behaviour
OK, so let me just get this straight. You're actually serious here...
You think, that what's gonna stop MICROSOFT from doing something grossly unethical would be...
THE LAW?! LMAO!
Mod me down if you want for pointing it out, but the law has about as much effect on Microsoft as I do. They've PROVEN that they're above the law before. How many times do they have to do that before you accept it? Microsoft (like any ridiculously rich company) can do whatever it wants. It's the law that has to adapt.
> (especially from the EU and Asian countries that are slowly growing more hostile to Microsoft).
Well...Maybe non-US governments will treat them a little less gently. But keep in mind, politicians in those countries love money just as much as our US politicians do. And--more importantly--look at what happened the last time the mighty EU got angry at Microsoft: A few fines and Windows XP Home Edition "N." Oooh, what a mighty blow for justice! Yep, offering that edition righted all the wrongs. Justice served and lesson learned, right? Thanks, EU! Yeah. Right. Pardon me while I choke on the lameness of that punishment.
Welcome to capitalism. This is how we do things.
Interesting...Sorry about my country's bad behavior when it comes to treaties and such.
Also there are very few large Canadian firms anymore as they all have been bought out by American firms.
That's a bummer. That really leads to mass homogenization—kind of like all the regional firms that have been snapped up (in huge mergers) into national firms, within the US...especially in areas like telecoms, grocery retailing, and financial services. You have my sympathy there.
Tell me about NAFTA, that it's a free-trade agreement. Yet it's free for the US not for Canada or Mexico.
Come now, NAFTA is just as advantageous for large Mexican and Canadian firms as it is for large US firms.
That is, after all, what it's attempting to be: A benefit for the largest of corporations in North America, at the expense of the US and Canadian working class.
See, given the wage equalizing effect it has (bringing US, Canadian, and Mexican wages for various types of work toward an average between the countries, its most positive effect (excluding on corporations and the super-rich) is on Mexican laborers (who now stand to make $1 an hour instead of $0.50, for example). Contrast this with American workers, who now command less wages and job security because of their new easier replaceability ("No strikes, no raises, no benefits, or we'll just lay off all your asses and move this factory to Mexico").
So basically I'm saying NAFTA isn't lopsided in favor of Americans; it's lopsided in favor of the rich. Greed is usually surprisingly blind to petty issues like nationality, race, religion, and culture. Example: the US's Business Party, I mean, Republican Party's constant whoring of itself to the Christian Right.
$10 home theater systems.
Sorry, I missed a "K" there. I meant "$10k" or "$10,000". Hope nobody got confused there.
Every one else will have to pay $400 for an HD DVD player.
WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!
Hold on, let me say that some more:
WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG!
Welcome to the Real World. It seems you may have spent too much time in Sony Fantasyland, where people behave completely irrationally.
What happened when DVD players cost over $400? Nobody bought them!!(Except insane videophiles with $10 home theater systems.) They kept using VCRs and waited a couple short years until DVD players were $50-80 at any electronics or discount store.
Especially considering how almost no one has an HD-capable set, there is approximately zero demand for these new HD players. Maybe less than zero, considering how crippled they'll be with the HDCP.
NO ONE is clamoring to be an early adopter of this ridiculously useless technology! They don't have either the TVs to watch them on, or any complaints about the current standard--DVD. Perhaps you've heard of it? Also, the reason people switched from VHS to DVD wasn't the higher resolution. It's the convenience of optical over tape (random access, compactness, and durability in some ways). Blu-Ray and HDDVD have NO real advantages over DVD for normal people (except this promised better coating, which is irrelevant for people who take good care of their DVDs).
I dare you to explain why the mass market is interested in being early adopters (in this case that means suckers) for this technology when they could wait, flip the bird at Sony's PS3, grab a Revolution and a 360, keep buying DVDs, and buy a Lite-On BluRay+HD-DVD player for $40 at Costco in 2008?
I think up until a certain model PowerBook they were made in Taiwan.
The 1.33GHz PowerBook 12" was built in Taiwan; the 1.5GHz model that replaced it (it was the one that added Sudden Motion Sensor), in Communist China.
I happen to know this because I bought the Taiwan-made one, and my friend bought the 1.5GHz (China) one. I can't prove it, but I felt the build quality of mine was a bit better than his. His screen latch wasn't nearly as good as mine, and a few of his keyboard's keys were poorly molded or something--they sat at a slight angle.